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Today's mini is a blast from the past, Reaper's casting of the Heritage Red Dragon. Because of his seemingly furry chest/stomach, he is called the hippie dragon. He is one of many miniature purchases from the old Lone Star Comics. I raided the store for weird miniatures. The had a lot of bagged Reaper minis for sale.

Howdy, Once more with the classic lead... Kev!

Howdy, Another classic lead sample... Kev!

Howdy, Some classic lead this week... Kev!

Howdy, More classic lead... Kev!

Howdy, Stripped and re-painted... Strange Magic, Kev!

So, I was recently asked to curate a collection of old minis given to my FLGS on consignment... There are somewhere north of two hundred pieces altogether. Most of it is old Ral Partha, Grenadier, Heritage and Citadel. The first three companies I know well. Citadel not so much, but I've already identified some of them from the Lost Minis Wiki. And then there are some that I don't recognize and have no marking on them. So I'll be posting pics in this thread over the next couple of days to see if anybody knows what they are. I'll also be editing the posts to update them as more things are identified. So eventually there will be a complete (ish) record of the entire collection. First up, we have some dwarves... EDIT: In the first pic the first four are from Alternative Armies - DH9-04 Dwarven Adventurer w/ Dagger, RM013 Auchan the Spiker, RM015 Colvin the Disturbed, and RM014 Luckburn the Iron Fist. The 5th one is Citadel FA-15, v2 and the last one is Asgard's DA7.v2 Dwarf King. In the second pic, the first figure is from Grenadier's 2008 Thieves box set - the Dwarf Thief. The second is a Citadel C06 Northern Dwarves pirate. The third is from Metal Magic's C1008 Dwarves set and the last is Grenadier's 1129 Dwarf Flamethrower. I'll be posting more as I come across things I can't find myself...

I finally finished the basing and got some varnish on some vintage figures. These two are the veterans of the crew; they are Minifigs ME (Mythical Earth, AKA Lord of the Rings) figures from about 1974. The ME34 Ithilien ranger is masked in the sculpt; some of the Minifigs faces were a bit rudimentary, but not that much! He's from an eBay lot, since my brother retains (and uses) the originals that we had. The ME56 heavy goblin is one of our original figures, from Rider's Hobby Shop in Ann Arbor, ca.1975. I had some fun with his shield. I've got seven of them, and want to paint all the shields differently, but the rest of the goblins will probably be jealous of this one. I finished these two Heritage figures on a recent business trip, with my travel paint kit. On the left is a movie Boromir (catalog number 1750), which is actually a Classic Miniatures modern casting. He's the last of the nine Fellowship characters to be finished, not being my favorite. (I never liked Bakshi's depiction of Boromir, representative of the last great civilization in Middle Earth, as a horn-helmeted barbarian...) The figure on the right is a vintage cleric (1101), part of a pack of four expansion characters for the Dungeon boardgames, as best I can tell. Here's a group shot of the Fellowship, now that they are all finished...short people to the front!

While a couple of these are from last week, I've been stuck around the house for the last few days. When my hands haven't been sore from shovelling, I've been getting some painting and basing done. As always, tabletop painting... This little group of archers is from three different Ral Partha lines, Legions of the Petal Throne, Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age, and the 1200AD historical range. This old Ral Partha frost giant, done more generically, was from my recent road trip. Also from last week was this ancient Ral Partha ES-3 balrog: I'm putting together a little skirmish game band of Ral Partha gremlins. These two are later versions. Between all the versions, I've got nine different poses, with the next three on the workbench: I'm gradually working my way through the early Ral Partha fantasy figures. Here's an early version ES-10, hill troll. I apologize for the glare; I'm still working on my lighting skills for these shots: Here's the early version Wyvern, ES-50: And, finally, a couple of ents. The one on the left is an old Heritage figure. He's lost all but one finger on his left hand, leaving him permanently a bit rude. He was one of a pair in an auction lot a while back, and I posted pictures of his brother earlier. The other is a Broadsword Miniatures Tree Troll, from 1980:

At the HMGS Cold Wars convention this spring I picked up a handful of vintage figures from one of the vendors, which precipitated me into this year's project madness to revive and expand my vintage 25mm fantasy armies. This fellow is a "Knight Assaulting with Keen-Edged Swords" (you have to love the original Custom Cast package titles) from their Chivalry (Arthurian) range. It's a rather dynamic sculpt for 1975. I kept it relatively simple rather than trying to freehand the charge onto the surcoat with all its folds. (Or, a griffin's head couped within a bordure gules).

A recent eBay lot had a heap of early Heritage figures, which will be going into my vintage miniatures games for next years' conventions. There's not a lot to some of these early figures, so I kept it simple.

Inspired by a few different events, I've been working lately toward staging a game with vintage figures next year. Here are a few recent completions: These two are the Heritage figures, both from around 1976. The stone troll on the left came to me, to my surprise, in an eBay package which was not well photographed. I don't think I ever saw one back in the day. The treeman I've seen before. The troll is quite a large chunk of lead. Here he is with a Ral Partha human, for scale: I also finished four Ral Partha figures, all from the ES (Personalities and Things That Go Bump in the Night) range. The Tree Shepherd (ES-49) and the dismounted armored knight (ES-43) jumped the queue because they looked pretty simple. The other two are more in line with my plan to do ES-1 to ES-64 more or less in order.

My significant other was in a chorus competition this weekend, so I didn't get a lot done. Several things are working through the queue for my OLD miniatures project, and I thought that I'd go ahead and post them pre-basing as works in progress. First up is a Ral Partha Patriarch, ES-06. The trim on the tunic is cast in, so I decided to echo it in the cloak. He ends up looking somewhat Roman in the overall purple and white scheme. He's going to need a base scultped with flagstones; my intention is to preserve/incorporate the integral base on figures with base detail. Next up, from my box of figures "to do" dating back to the '90s when I acquired it from a friend who was a Heritage fan rather than a Ral Partha fan back in the day, is a sorceress. She's one of four figures in catalog number 1206, Female Magic Users, and has the characteristic later Heritage style, a little cartoony, but with some nice animation. I decided to keep the color scheme simple. This homely fellow is an Archive 650 pixie, who was rescued from my junk box the other week, when I started on this. Without something to show the scale, it's not obvious that he's about 15mm tall, so the shading looks very exaggerated. He's going to need a scenic base with a rock to stand on. I don't want to cut off the original base, so that will be easy to sculpt over the exisiting one than a tree stump, which would be my first choice of a natural pedestal. Last is a group of three 1974 Minifig elves (ME5). They are also going to need some rocks and brush to fill out a 60mm square army base. The sculpts are typical of Minifigs; not a lot to work with...

This mini, along with two others, got put to the top of the painting order by Malefactus, who was EXTREMELY kind to send them my way. I'm trying the new WIP... but, as with my consolidated WIP... this will be sporadic and slow (at best). Camera is not on my side tonight, but you get the basics. I'm about 2 hours into the actual painting of the mini, about 4 hours total with prep and basing.

Out of the past, one of the ancient dragons from heritage. this one came to me with a missing tail and frill and some "interesting" solder work on the chest. The tail and frill are my own creation with green stuff and magicsculpt. I am still working on my photography and this is just off my bench so the veining in the wings is actually much redder than the picture would show. This little monster weighs about 5 pounds. Enjoy and of course, comments are always welcome