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Greetings! Here is another Citadel vintage mini from my collection - "Reptile Warrior With Sword". I think this is one of the first figures I ever bought many decades ago & has recently received some love via a re-paint I've just been photographing some more old school minis today which I'm hoping to post soon.

This year the minis I manage to paint will all count towards the resolutionary challenge. As per the resolutionary painting challenge guidelines, I will post them here, and link in my post in the challenge thread. from the lead age strata of Ye Pile of Olde... Some lead miniatures from the 80s, Citadel Zombies. A bit worse for wear, one of them is missing an arm. Luckily no sign of any lead rot or such. They were taken out of their pack ages ago, which probably saved them. But since these are zombies of the not-entirely-fresh variety, I don't see the missing arm as much of a problem. One of the others have probably had it for lunch. Zombies Warhammer (Oldhammer) Citadel Miniatures Lead metal from the 80s 25mm bases

When I first started painting armies some years back, I was contacted to paint up a few old-school Praetorian Imperial Guard. I played Imperial guard back when the Praetorians were first released (originally meant in the limited edition box set). I'm also a big fan of the film Zulu! that inspired them (Michael Caine is always good). So I was excited. I figured I wouldn't get a lot of chances to paint Praetorians again, since they were no longer being made, and they weren't ever produced as a regular line of imperial guardsmen. Somehow, I was very wrong. He has expanded his force many times, with more classic out-of-print minis than I thought I'd ever end up seeing. Now, I like me some close ups, and I did put a warning about this thread being pic heavy, so:

Another recently painted classic mini from the olden days....... This "Umber Hulk" comes from the mid 1980's when Citadel had the licence to produce Advanced D&D minis. I painted it as per the description in the 4th Edition Monster Manual & I'm happy with how it turned out, I'm not so happy with the simplistic base, I'll probably go back and sort that out sometime. Thanks for looking!

What's got 3 heads & goes "roar", "hiss" & "baaaaaa"............? This vintage Citadel "Chimera"! I based my colours on the description in the 4th edition AD&D monster manual but changed the dragon head from orange to red. Interestingly, this mini never had wings. Thanks for looking.

Here is an early Citadel mini "Necromancer" from their "Fantasy Adventurers" range. I enjoyed painting him, it's always nice to visit the dark side! This guy has a wonderfully malevolent expression on his face & I love the way his staff is carved into the shape of a "diving" skeleton. Thanks for looking!

I re-painted this wonderfully sculpted Citadel old school mini from my collection recently. As a kid back in the day, when I first painted this figure, I learned a very important painting lesson - never use oil paints! It never really dried properly & was tacky for months, maybe even years!

This Citadel figure comes from their very old "fantasy tribe cavalry" range & is pretty creepy. I'm not totally sure if the red on the horse's body works but from what my old eyes can tell these areas are either muscle or (top) skin so, I guess it's ok?

Here is another one of my vintage minis. I was going for a simplistic "Scooby-Doo" villain style glowing white ghost for this mini & rather than paint the lantern as an actual object, I wanted to make it part of the spirit of the ghost.

Today's update shows off an "Oldhammer" Warhammer Goblin Unit made up of 2nd-3rd Edition models, almost entirely sculpted by Kev Adams back in the day and based on Rounds and turned into a KoW regiment by virtue of some blu-tac and a movement tray. These figures have been painted over quite a few years, with many painted 5-10+ years ago, a couple last year, and the last stragglers done in the last few weeks as part of my "finish those bloody things" drive. I'll show them off in threes to start with. The command group of the unit (not that these things matter in the new edition of KoW, but I digress). The leader is "Kleaver" from the Goblin Battle Chariots box set with the addition of a Marauder Goblin Shield. The rest of the crew also found their way into this regiment. I think I started painting them to add to the chariots, which I never got painted and slowly faded into the depths of time. I'll have to do something about those sometime soonish. Perhaps they can have some plastic crewmen? The other two are simply command figures from the late 1980's, probably painted sometime in the 1990's. I didn't feel a need for a flag or pennant. Not all standards are giant flags, after all. I gave the musician a Nine Inch Nails back tattoo, since as a gobbo musician he's clearly really into his industrial music. The leader got a red hood to make him really pop, especially given his chainmail coat and plate boots take away a lot of the opportunity to add colour and interest. The next three feature two more from the 80's command figures - the mod-posed figures are a Champion, a Leader and their cohort is a regular goblin from '91. Though I think he looks like the sort to be a unit champion with his cute little glaive. Two of these three also came off the chariot sets mentioned earlier. The centre spear and hammer. Clearly the "red" spear is a close relation to the Hammer, and no doubt that helped me decide to paint the pair of them at the same time. All three of these were originally painted in the 1990's... ...and then the two on the outer were "re-finished" this year. The copper and Bronze scale mail were originally red, and purple. Hideous, you might say? Yes. The shield was originally absent entirely - just a shield boss sticking out of the back of the figure, painted black - so I decided to add a shield. I went for a leering goblin face design. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it falls under "good enough" for me. I could spend time trying to figure out why I'm not satisfied with it, or I could just move on and do a better job on the next freehand shield. So I've chosen the latter. These three are a little more interesting. The first goblin, with the hammer and net is an early slottabase figure, from the C13 Small Goblins range, circa 1885-ish. I haven't managed to find this specific figure in the catalogues, but it looks to be the same style as figures like "Spear Thruster", so possibly/probably sculpted by the Perrys. This one was entirely painted recently, and while I'm not super happy with how his musculature came out, the head is fine, and the mohawk was a fun old-school touch. The other two figures were also painted years ago. The middle figure is one of Bob Olley's Iron Claw Goblins from 1988. It's from the same range that the recent Fanatics I shared came from, and he was probably even purchased in the same blister that they came in. I went for something entirely different on his shield, trimming off the edging and painting it in a kind of pseudo-3D goblin moon-face style. Why is the moon red rather than yellow? Probably so it'd stand out more against the green of the goblin's hide. Dunno. It was an experiment, after all. That's what the more individual metal models did for me back in the day, before mass plastics were the norm. I liked to experiment with a lot more of my models' paint jobs, even if it meant that they lacked a unified unit look. The final figure, another of the late-'80's "champions" also had a shield experiment. The narrative to that figure, if you will - is that he painted his shield himself. I always wondered how brutal creatures like Orcs and Goblins, who had brutal and crude weapons and armour always had such fine, delicate and artistic designs on their shields, banners and gear. I decided to paint this guy's shield as though he'd painted it himself. [see boxout above] Recently. The skull is crude and simple. The blue (and red) paint is messy and spattered everywhere (including on his clothing) and the paint had also pooled at the base of his shield, leading to a mess on the metal where it was leaning on the ground in a pool of paint. Cast yourselves back to your Primary/Elementary School Art Room, and you'll feel the inspiration for this guy. On the backside of these three, both the Iron Claw goblin and the art-school candidate had their clothing repainted. Iron Claw boy lost his garish purple and yellow 1990's tunic and skirt while The Artist's blue scale mail was repainted in a bright copper. Are Heartbreaker miniatures "Oldhammer"? Technically probably not since they were sculpted after Kev Adams left GW's employ, but then again their aesthetic follows the 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy look and feel quite closely. This guy is still available today from Ral Partha Europe/RPE as part of their range of Kev Adams Goblins. I should buy some more of them sometime, but at 2 quid a figure by 12 or 24, that comes to £24/48 or a little shy of AU$50-100 for one unit, which is a bit hard for me to justify to myself right now. I just wish they had discounted unit prices for sets of 10 or 20. Basically, they're super-cheap for heroes and unit leaders but it adds up quickly if you want to build whole units. (Though they're probably still cheaper than whatever GW is charging for plastics these days!) Still, this guy is a great figure and for only 2 quid, an easy and easily-justified purchase. And now, The Unit Shot! (Lots more over on the Wordpress)

Hi! I've been looking at everyone's excellent work on this forum for some time now & decided that it was about time that I signed up & posted something myself. So, here is a recently painted "Village Idiot" Citadel mini from the early 1980's from my collection. I figured that when he wore out the knee hole in his blue trouser leg, he made a patch to cover it from his green trouser leg..........

I'm building an Ogre army for Mantic Games' Kings of War, since pictures of it in play seem to give off an old-school Warhammer 3rd Edition vibe in a lot of ways, and the game allows pretty free proxying of models, so you can use whatever you like and feel is cool. I put together and painted a couple of units of Mantic's new Ogre Shooter models recently. The main reason I started Ogres though, was to have a reason/excuse to get out my classic Citadel Ogre models that I'd just painted for the pleasure of it. All of them painted between 10 and 23 years ago. I've also got several that are still unpainted, and a couple that got started and never finished. With this in mind, and after some bloody stupid moves a couple of years ago when I stripped some very well painted figures from my youth in order to repaint them "modern style" that I now hugely regret, I decided not to repaint these guys, but to touch up where needed (chipped paint or toning down overly garish bits, re-highlighting metals) but to keep the essence of them as they were originally painted. So where some of the highlighting is a bit rough, or the blending on the flesh tones isn't 100%, that stuff stays untouched. The old railway-flock bases have been redone with painted sand and tufts so they fit in with my current stuff, but that's mostly it, aside from the touch-ups. I'll post them one at a time, and more complete pics will - as always - be on the blog (when it gets updated). I'll update this thread periodically after updating and photographing the figures as I go. First Up: Hrothyogg, Ogre Captain. Sculpted by Jes Goodwin. For the moment, he's leading the first infantry unit. I've not glued him to the resin base, as I'm also considering mounting him in a chariot to be the Warlord of the entire force, as this is my favourite ogre figure ever, and also one of my favourite miniatures ever.

Continuing on with the Febuary challenge goals I set myself, (painting at least one of each from the following categories: Reaper Bones, Oathsworn, All Quiet of the Martian Front, Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40.000, Kings of War, Deadzone, DreadBall, Mars Attacks, Shadows of Brimstone, Sedition Wars, Drake, Grendel Productions something or other, and to finish something that currently stands around half-done on the shelf of shame), I have done a few minis over the weekend, As per the resolutionary painting challenge guidelines, I will post them here, and link in my post in the challenge thread. Here goes for Warhammer Fantasy Battles: I love these old classic Jes Goodwin sculpts from Warhammer. So much character! This one is truly a God of the Arena! 40mm base, white metal.

This is a 3rd party resin mini that I painted up to be Sanguinius. I've forgotten who makes him (any help there'd be appreciated). Anyway, here he is:

I think we got this years ago from a friend. After much looking, I finally identified this guy, I found him in the Citadel Spring 1986, Mr Abdul El-Crud. The miniature had a pretty bad paint job of Testors enamel paint on it, so I decided to spruce him up some.

This post is a follow-up to A Pair of Very Old Dwarfs and a Very Old Gnome. The best I could come up with for a size comparison was a work-in-progress conversion of a current GW plastic Dwarf warrior model. As you can see, they are pretty similar in size, but the overly-muscled design of the newer dwarfs makes the King look quite the shrimp! I've also included a picture including the newly-finished Queen Asabelle Dragonsmiter, and a group shot of the completed Court-to-date. Thanks for looking!

Happiest of New Years to you all (if you're into that sort of thing)! With the holidays behind me I hope to get back on track with more frequent posts. Here are three completed models from the Dwarf King's Court set to start off the new year. I was more than a little bit happy to receive that ancient (1982 is pretty venerable if you are 1" tall and made of lead) Citadel Miniatures boxed set for Christmas. My wife scored major points with that one! I have been plugging away at them since tearing the wrapping off, and have finished three so far. They are King Dumin Ironbeard, his bodyguard Orizad Oldrock, and the gnome jester, Corbit Shortstuff. I hope you like them. Comments and questions are always much appreciated. Thanks for looking!

Hey all, I mentioned in a previous thread that I had been working on a Dwarf Treasure Hunters warband for the Mordheim game. Here are the pictures that I have so far. These are all Games Workshop or Marauder Miniatures. Questions and comments are always welcome. Thanks for taking the time to look!

Hey all, just a quick picture of an Imperial Dwarf from the early days of Warhammer Fantasy. He is pulling duty as the Noble for my Mordheim Dwarf Treasure Hunters these days. His color scheme set the stage for the entire warband (which I can post another time if there is interest). Questions and comments are always welcome. Thanks for looking!

Over in the Randomness Thread, I was lamenting the state of my painting desk and how it was killing any interest I had in painting. I finally bit the bullet and started organizing. Ub3r asked for before and after pics, and I obliged. While cleaning and stowing, I came across the case with some of my earliest minis and figured since I had the camera out already, I may as well snap some pics. I didn't bother to set up my dedicated photo area, but they seem to have come out ok enough. So without further adieu, I give you a pictorial timeline of my miniature painting. These two knights are some of the earliest example of my work. They are either Heartbreaker or Citadel and have seen plenty of action over the years. The swordless one on the left originally had a crescent moon crest on his helm that I promptly removed in what may have been my first conversion. These fine fellows are part of the Three Stage Fighters (from Grenadier? maybe Ral Partha I put them away and I'm too lazy to go check). They were painted around the same time as the knights (late 80's).

Been working a little. First up, my first (!) orc: Thought we had him identified as a Gladiator from Ral Partha's Legion Of Death set, but I've since come to think that may not be quite right. Does appear to fit with that set. I'unno. If anyone has further ID'ing info, much appreesh. Is that an okay green? For an orc? Serious question. A Dwarf Clansman that I guess Marauder put out through Citadel. Or something like that. I kind of love this sculpt, in its simplicity. Shield's been swapped out for a plastic replacement, I guess. I thought about trying to free-hand something on it but chickened out. Totally can't draw. Base was in poor shape and I haven't decided what to do with it, yet. May try some fake gravel (I've learned I hate the grass flock, but anyway) Any feedback and advice is extremely appreciated.

So here I am trying to get 20 miniatures painted again this month. Things will probably be easier when the Bones KS arrives, what with Rats and Skeletons and other easy to paint fast miniatures hitting the shelf of shame then. Completed Miniatures (16) Reaper: 14604: Joeliyn, Sister of the Blade Warlord Citadel: Official AD&D Umber Hulk (mid 1980's vintage) Reaper: 02675: Giant Snake Reaper: 77096: Labella DeMornay, Banshee Reaper: 77144: Mummy (1 from KS) Reaper: 77046: Bat Swarm Reaper: 77028: Mortar, Gargoyle Bombshell: Meagan the Buccaneer Reaper: 77048: Mocking Beast GW (1980's): Official AD&D Owlbear Reaper: Bones Skeketon Swordsmen (2) Reaper: Bones Skeletal Archer (2) Reaper: Bones Skeleton Spearmen (2)

Since my current postings deal with older figures (vintage, if you will) and display my very early figure painting attempts (which began about 18 months or so ago)...I decided to post the (very 1st fantasy miniature that I ever painted). He is a chaos lord/knight from the old Citadel figures...I have no SKU data on him...This was/is the 1st miniature gaming piece I painted for my RPG group. Prior to using metal miniature figures (I used Steve Jackson card figures for both the adventure group and all enemy)...He is finished in a heavy gloss finish so that he wears well during all the heavy game play handling. The figure was named (by me) The Dark Lord " Vazar of Darth "...all of you can guess who the figure was based on.

Here's another diorama from my archives painted long ago. This one is Ral Partha's Black Dragon of Fire and Darkness painted as a brown desert Dragon. Three Citadel Snotlings are chasing a snake at the back. The base is made of wood covered with carved expanded foam and natural sand.

This is my first attempt at painting miniatures. Worker at the FLGS (Hat's in Tucson) talked me into trying this paint set as something fairly simple, with lots of flat surface and not too many fiddly details or textures. I've definitely got a long way to go still, but I liked the way they came out, overall. I ended up painting three of the five. I was painting in the hobby shop, and, having just gotten back to the states, I didn't want to be too late getting home. The other two are in the background. I'll eventually get to them, hopefully after my skills have improved, and I can compare them with the first three. Here's a top view, giving a look at the box they came in, along with the two in the back. Here's a front view. The bit of muck on the Marine on the left's forehead is apparently supposed to be wreath-like, signifying he's in charge. Obviously, I did not do well on that detail. About face! I like the way the skulls came out. Face right! The sword-sigil things on their pauldrons had... mixed results. I need to work on thinning out the paint, and not picking up so much water on the brush. Face left! Those are supposed to be arrows. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed from the paintwork either. Overall, better than I expected them to turn out, though I need to work a lot harder on the details.