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Back around 2015 I was at a convention and picked up a handful of vintage fantasy miniatures. I’ve collected, painted, and played with fantasy miniatures since 1974 (as best I can reconstruct), but was working on Bones and similar figures in Heroic 32mm (or whatever) size at the time. Anyway, that random handful of old minis sent me back along a retro path, and I ended up acquiring a great many vintage figures from auction and flea market, as well as fresh castings from vintage molds where such are sold legally. Somewhere in those early lots, I ended up with a few Broadsword Miniatures, a company active for a short period around 1980. I have no recollection of them at the time. I don’t have magazines from the period to check for ads, and I didn’t make it to many conventions while in college. I ended up with a group of 7 Rangers, which work out to be the contents of 2 original packages, P-11 Rangers (an archer, a ranger/bard, and a ranger swordsman/captain), and P-12 Rangers firing (four copies of the archer from P-11). You have to love a group that comes with their own bard. I painted them up back in 2018: As you see, I painted them mostly in greens and browns, with a red hat motif to tie them together as a group. My current favorite set of fantasy rules suitable for throwing a random selection of vintage fantasy miniatures on the table is Dragon Rampant (Dan Mersey, Osprey Games), and it uses units of 12 for most foot figures. Scouts are in nominal units of 6, which is what these rangers have been deployed as to date. I have been keeping an eye out for more of the archers, so as to be able to deploy them as a 12 figure unit, and managed to acquire a second pack of P-12 a while back. That put me up to 11, so I needed one more figure. My first thought was that I would add a dog or some such. According to the Lost Minis Wiki, the was a Broadsword catalog number P-34 Falconer, Houndsman and Hounds, and an M-22 Wolf Pack, but nothing like that has shown up for sale. I looked around and the only original Broadsword animal I could find was a pack of NG-05 Sabretoothted Tigers. Well, I thought, that would at least be a serious combatant as a companion animal. Then I started looking through other possibilities for a 12th figure, and found that there as an enchantress (P-06) in sensible clothes for a tromp through the woodlands. Moreover, she was wearing a beret with a feather, so could be red-hatted to fit with the unit theme. Better yet, I already had one bagged and tagged in my vintage minis boxes. So, hedging my bets, I got them all cleaned up and primed this winter, but have been dsitracted and didn’t start on them. This weekend I was constrained by work to be in a hotel halfway across the country, so it seemed like a good time to bring them along (with the travel paint kit) and get them done. Basing will have to wait until I get home. The castings are a bit rough, so I decided there was a limit to what I would try to do with them, but here’s a closer view of the enchantress and one of the tigers anyway: I still need to put a thin coat of brush varnish on the tigers before heading home, and it’ll be later this week before I can base them to match the first group of rangers. After that, I’ll be eager to get them on the table in a Dragon Rampant game.

I’m away from home (again) with my travel paint kit. I was experimenting a couple of months back with a Zorn palette of 4 paints. A rogue seemed like the sort of person who might want to be somewhat subdued in color, so I decided that this Ral Partha rogue from The Adventurers range (set 98-013 Female Adventurers) would be a good figure to paint with the Zorn colors to stay in practice. It wouldn’t hurt to actually read/watch some theory on NMM, but there’s not too much metal on her besides the dagger, so it should pass on the tabletop. She is part of an effort to ensure a reasonable selection of PCs for my planned OD&D ampaign revival.

Yesterday was a hectic day at work, so when it came to be lunch time I wanted to close my computer and take a complete break from things. It was raining, so walking seemed like it would be unpleasant. I decided to pull out the paint set I keep at the office and have a go at this old Ral Partha cleric. I didn’t set an actual timer for a speedpaint challenge, but this was right up on an hour. I don’t usually use yellow, so I was experimenting. As finished (before varnish), the shading on the yellows are not quite as smooth as I would like them to be. Two coats of varnish (one by brush to protect the figure to get it home, and one spray after the basing is completed) will, as I know from experience, smooth things out a bit more. I’ll post pictures of the based figure after the spray varnish sometime later today. A few weeks ago I inventoried my true 25mm individually based fantasy figures suitable for a vintage D&D game, and concluded that I was very short on armored mace-wielding clerics in the classic D&D mode, and that I had no recently painted bards at all. I pulled out a male and female in each category and cleaned them up on Tuesday (plus a stray female thief) and brush-primed them on Wednesday. Five figures seems like a manageable goal to reach before some other Muse comes along to drop off a random bit of inspiration. 😆 I would like all five of these figures to be a departure from my usual color palette, but we’ll see… This figure is part of a group of 8 Wizards and Clerics sold by Ral Partha as a boxed set in a range they called The Adventurers, which eventually reached a total of 15 sets. Sculpting was a mix of Dennis Mize, Julie Guthrie and Tom Meier. While not specifically identified on the Lost Minis Wiki, this figure has a marking on the base (somewhat visible in the top picture by the head of the mace) of “ES73”, which suggests that it was originally intended as a 4th figure in the Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night “Clerics” set (ES-73 or 01-073), and therefore is presumably a Tom Meier.

I had a day off yesterday and wanted to get some work done toward staging an Original D&D game sometime “soon”. I’m working on a handful of potential PCs, but wanted to get a couple of smaller monsters done. These have all been sitting around in primer for a long time and I’m tired of looking at them. So…drybrush the heck out of them and call it a day. The figures are all Ral Partha, two trolls (01-063), three skeletons (01-046), two wraiths (01-030), and a small carnosaur (13-004, an erythrosuchus to be exact).

Continuing with my group of under-represented character classes, I painted up this bard from the Ral Partha set “Female Adventurers”. I’m not sure who the sculptor was; the range was a mix of Mize, Guthrie, and Meier. I’m trying to use some colors I don’t use as often on these; hence the lavender shirt. This is a fairly petite little figure. I know @72moonglum would have highlighted the nail polish 😂, but I can’t see that on the table. How petite, you ask? Scale creep, anyone?

I looked the thread from 2020 where I did the first of this group of four vintage Tom Meier sculpts. I had forgotten over the intervening two years that I painted him as a nerve-settler on the day before we were all sent home from work for the duration. My office is still basically on limited office manning, with one day a week for most of us, and yesterday was day 700 of the current emergency. 🙄 However, things were quiet and a bit chilly outside for walking, so I settled in for a speed paint of the fourth thief from the set, the other two having been finished up on Sunday. As can be seen by Sir Forescale (whose base I should have shimmed somewhat), these old Ral Partha figures are very petite by modern standards. I started with this figure primed in white and washed with black previously, but with no other paint on it. This was the result of about 45 minutes of work (not including the basing), and consists of the tanned flesh triad, the olive drab triad (which I will miss now that it is gone), and a couple of brown and gray sample paints I’ve acquired along the way. As a thief, he is deliberately subdued and non-descript in his attire. I dug into my sotrage boxes and fished out the first thief from March 2020, so here are all four together: Just for fun, I also dug out one more figure. The reason I bought this packet from Ironwind Metals in the first place was that I wanted to have another go at painting the fellow with the tall pointy hat. I had originally obtained him as a member of a bonus blister pack, the Chaos Wars pressgang, which came with my copy of the rules in 1986 or so. I wanted to take some inspiration from my original ~1990 paint job, but go a little easier on the monochrome blue: By then I was at least using Partha acrylics and had learned drybrushing, so I’ve seen a lot worse vintage paint jobs. These days, at least practice has made me faster. 😁

This is what I finished up this morning during the Dean family paint and chat session. My brother, my two sons, and I are all gamers, so we try to have a weekly chat to discuss what we’ve been playing and/or reading, often to the accompaniment of brushes rattling in cleaning water. These guys were primed back in March 2020, after I got home from Cincycon where I had spent the weekend worrying about the looming pandemic and playing Chaos Wars. I painted one of the four thieves in this set promptly, and then set everything aside. This week I have been thinking about whether I had the figures (in old style small 25mm) to support a game of D&D (original brown booklets style, most likely) and that prompted me to pull out some of the already-primed things at hand. Sculpting by Tom Meier…

Rayguns and Rocketships Painting pulp figures isn't really my thing, but this might be a nice resource if you do.

I started painting again on my vintage Minifigs Middle Earth/Mythical Earth/Tolkien project recently, and finished off a bunch last weekend. Since I got a unit done, I gave myself permission to relax and paint a couple of individuals from start to finish. In keeping with the vintage Minifigs theme, these guys are catalog numbers NS9 (leveled spear), NS12 (club), and NS25 (raised spear). I had to reinforce the raised spear, which I discovered had cracked, with some superglue; I probably should have gone the rest of the way and improvised some sort of pennant wrapped around the spear shaft, since it left some irregularity. While these fellows are theoretically historical, they could see service in Middle Earth as militia of Bree, Laketowners, dismounted Rohirrim, Sharkey’s thugs, Dunlendings, or the more rustic Gondorians without being too much of a stretch. I found an ad for the range, which had been newly released as of October 1976, so just over 45 years ago. Minifigs apparently thought they were crossover figures of interest in the fantasy market, at least enough to put an ad in The Dragon (before it lost the “The”). All of you kids can be glad that you have modern figures to work with. 😁 For those who were there with me BITD, I will note that it is a lot easier to paint these today with acrylic paint triads and brushes that will hold a point than it was to use Testors or Humbrol enamels when these were new.

I am not good at telling stories on paper. my mind races far ahead of where the story wants to go and I never get it right so I will let the diorama tell itself. this is an original copy of the Clutch of Fear produced by Ral Partha in the early 1990s. The piece is high lead content. so soft infact that without some strategic pinning the joints fail (or so I have been told). The basic story is that 2 egg thieves come to relieve a mother dragon of one of her eggs and she comes back early catching them just as they are leaving. The setting on the box seems to be some type of sulfur spring or volcanic hot spring and I get the impression of stillness of morning broken only by the shriek of an enraged mother. I went pretty classic on this one, going with the red dragon and robin blue eggs like the box art but decided that the spines and chest plates should be more contrast than the slightly darker red of the box. I took the original base pieces included in the box and expanded them to a small diorama of a hotspring using Magic water, a transparent epoxy to create the water around the spring. The resin developed a little bit of a lip at the edge but I wasn't willing to cut it down and risk the clarity of the water by trying to sand and polish the resin. (its more rubbery that solid and difficult to polish -- I tried on two sample pieces and it didn't work out well.) anyway the WIP is here if your interested: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/94482-a-new-year-a-new-old-dragon/ and here are the images of the final project. Hope everyone has as much fun looking as I did creating this. Feel free to comment and question away as always. The project was a lot of fun and the they got the expression of the egg thief who is looking back to see an enraged mother dragon bearing down on him just about right! One shot from the human's perspective to give an idea of the trouble they are in.... And one from a mothers perspective as she hones in on the ones who are trying to steal her precious eggs!

More vintage minis from my childhood. Been soaking a dozen or so in isopropyl for about a week to get the 40 yr old enamel paint off them. With much scrubbing some of them came out pretty clean! Will post as they come along, here's one of my all-time favorites. I remember when I bought him in a little attic hobby shop in Ithaca, NY. Unfortunately I don't remember the packaging. Such a stoic little dude...any ideas?

Gave a shot at this funky Dark Horse githyanki yesterday. I only had a few Dark Horse pieces circa 1983, not the sharpest sculpts, but always interesting and I loved their newsletter and indie vibe. I pulled out my old Fiend Folio for inspiration.

Continuing to dig up my childhood minis... This crazy old dragon was done back in 1984, I basically dunked him in turquoise enamel. While not sophisticated, the color was beautiful and it's one of my all time favorite sculpts so I left it intact and decided to try adding some details. Results below!

Finished! From my childhood box of unfinished baddies. He's stamped 1979, I feel old! :)

Hi Gang, dug up these two tough guys from my box of childhood minis. One was my attempt as an eleven year old using Testors model paints, got so frustrated I didn't paint again for thirty-five years. Feeling inspired after tackling my Reaper starter kits and recent Battle Troll. Got isopropyl at the drug store. Let's see how it goes... :)

Greetings! FF53 - Ogre from Citadel miniatures "Fiend Factory" range, early 1980's. I'm guessing that for older members of the forums, this old Citadel mini might be considered somewhat of a classic, maybe even iconic? Back in the day, It's imagery definately played a part in getting me into the hobby as a wee lad. I never owned it back then but recently picked one up & painted it up! Thanks for looking.

Finished this one a couple weeks ago. I think it worked out really well. It's one of my favorite Grenadier dragons I've painted so far. Not just the paint work I did, but the sculpt too. Pretty simple color palette with a B&W underpaint.

So, as I mentioned, I was given a pristine old Grenadier set of Champions supervillains for Christmas. On the cover is a little splash logo: “FREE Starter Scenario Game Aid and Figure Accessories” The “Starter Scenario Game Aid” is just a folded piece of paper with a hex map on one side and some suggestions on the other. But the “Figure Accessories” are two actual, substantial molded pieces: a pair of rockets and what I think is a hover-scooter. You can see them in the middle row on the far right, between two figures, here: https://mobile.twitter.com/AchronalA/status/1078009215850029058 These two pieces are not pictured on the box art, nor are they listed in the set description. They definitely go with the set. The box was sealed when I received it. They are not mentioned nor shown on the Lost Minis Wiki page of the set: http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Champions_(Grenadier)#4002_Super_Villains_Box_Set Question: Should I document and upload pictures of these accessories to the wiki?

So, in the course of loading my miniatures onto the storage shelves last weekend, I opened a box of partially painted figures to find this group. Sold by Archive in the late '70s, I've owned these since then. My original paint job on them was unappealing enough that I didn't end up rebasing them in the great rebasing I undertook in the late '90s, and they languished until I started reworking vintage fantasy stuff from my collection around 2015. Unfortunately they have been languishing again since then, so when I found them this weekend, I decided to dry brush the heck out of them and base them up for gaming.

Following the muse today, I set aside my vintage Minifigs orcs for these two Adina hill giants. I’ve had one of the rock throwers for many years, although I didn’t know what it was for a long time, but recently managed to pull this pair off of eBay. I started with the club-wielder: There isn’t a lot to them, so both are now waiting while base treatments dry. I should have them varnished by tomorrow. I’ll put Sir Forescale in the next picture. Even for 1978 these weren’t the tallest giants around...

Finally varnished these guys today...as noted last weekend, they amount to a packet of Broadsword P11 and P12 each, and were acquired in a couple of different eBay purchases. Since they had some fun and interesting figures back in the day (~1980) and I didn’t have any of them, I conclude that none of my local hobby shops carried the line.

My significant other is in a songing competition this weekend, and I’m along for moral support. Knowing that I would have some quiet time, I brought my travel paint kit and some miniatures. On the left are five Broadsword rangers, and on the right three Minifigs true orcs. The orcs are part of my Mythical Earth warbands project, but the Broadsword figures are a one-off. I didn’t have any Broadsword back in the day. Apparently none of the hobby shops I visited stocked them. My first encounter with them was in larger eBay lots while fishing for other old figures. I ended up with four of these archers in a large lot early in my eBay history, and then went looking for the command/personality pack later. I painted the swordsman/captain and the ranger-bard last summer. Now that they are almost all done, I hope to get them out as a unit of scouts in a Dragon Rampant game soon.

"One of my favourite range of figures ever was Citadel's 1980's licensed "Lord Of The Rings" minis. I have finally decided to get all the miniatures I own painted up (over time) & try to acquire the ones which are missing from my collection (& paint them up too!)". Here is my next completed mini - Strider. It's actually part of a blister of 3 minis (ME1 - Fellowship Heroes) which also includes Gandalf & Frodo. I love the sculpting on this figure - grim yet regal. To make him look like he is roaming the wilds, I added some dirt onto the bottom of his cloak & boots by drybrushing a light brown followed by a dark brown nearest the bottom. Thanks for looking!

"One of my favourite range of figures ever was Citadel's 1980's licensed "Lord Of The Rings" minis. I have finally decided to get all the miniatures I own painted up (over time) & try to acquire the ones which are missing from my collection (& paint them up too!)". Here is my next completed mini - Gandalf. It's actually part of a blister of 3 minis (ME1 - Fellowship Heroes) which also includes Strider & Frodo. He was quite nice to paint overall - not too complicated either. Thanks for looking!

One of my favourite range of figures ever was Citadel's 1980's licensed "Lord Of The Rings" minis. I have finally decided to get all the miniatures I own painted up (over time) & try to acquire the ones which are missing from my collection (& paint them up too!). Here is the first completed mini - Frodo. He is actually part of a blister of 3 minis which also includes Strider & Gandalf, I will be painting those 2 sometime at a later date. This was also an opportunity for me to use my newly acquired "Flockbox" to create a more lush realistic upstanding static grass effect on the base, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Thanks for looking!