u/statictyrant

Double post to fit more pictures in, and thank u/Gronk_Zilman for reminding me of these miniatures over on the excellent r/lostminiswiki subreddit.

These are “Starfighters Space Craft” and seem to be from the Elkiem Empire (painted brown) and United Nations Deep Space Fleet (painted blue).

This line was around in the 1970s, and I was not! These are a hand-me-down (or maybe “moved out and took them with me” would be fairer) and offer a glimpse into the practical realities of wargaming at the time. I’m pretty sure they are almost all recasts made using Milliput in some kind of improvised pressmould. Half a century later we might be able to forgive this small act of piracy. I think this sort of thing was quite common, with folks often ringing up (!) or sending a postal money order (!!) to a miniature company asking for one of every figure in their line. I guess as a manufacturer you would never have known if that was a prospective customer working around the lack of photos in magazines of the time and purchasing models “on spec” to see how well they scaled with the rest of their collection, a reviewer writing for a magazine, or the dreaded recaster!

So, what does this have to do with Warhammer? My hope is that this trip down memory lane will give you a better understanding of the ecosystem that game was born into. Not many of us were there at the time, and it can be hard to understand why certain business and creative decisions were made without that necessary context.

Just a random atmospheric scene from a larger photoshoot of spaceship models. More “capital ships” than “space fighters”, but if you enjoy one you may well like the other! More photos here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OldWorldhammer/s/R5QycySX5u

Or, we have Battlefleet Gothic at home.

Just some random Chaos and Imperial Space Marine themed mini-fleets I have kicking about, doing typical spaceship things like patrolling the lonely reaches of a forgotten solar system, refuelling at the last vorganite manistrom for seventeen parcliks, or battling it out to decide whose boarding parties should have the dubious honour of entering the foreboding space hunk first. What could go wrong?

Almost everything here is scratchbuilt, and not recently either. The very smallest ships include some Silent Death plastics purchased from EM-4 and a few others, acquired many decades ago, which are recasts from a long-defunct range by Leviathan Models. I’ll probably go into that in another post.

Orks and Gretchin doing a little roll-call to see how my painting efforts are going. That’s about fifty figures so far, with some solid units of bog-standard infantry plus some smaller mobs of specialist troops! No mean feat and probably not far off being able to field a fully painted 2nd Edition style army.

No characters or vehicles yet, but they’ll be fun and easy to add later — for now I’m riding the wave of motivation to get a whole lot of boots on the (squelchy, overgrown, infested) ground.

…without breaking some eggs. Or painting weird yellow alien jungle flora, but I think the principle stands. Working on the bases for a new batch of Orks and Gretchin — lots of fun little Squigs hiding amongst the underbrush, so there is some detail painting ahead but they’re getting there!

Swap the heads, swap the bows, stick an arrow up yer nose.

I actually have surprisingly few of these figures left. Not sure where they went over the years. Still, can’t do to have them all looking the same, so off with their heads!

A couple more photos of the WIP here.

After some painting effort the other day I ended up with… four painted archers. Not much of a unit! So here they are again, but this time with some new pals to die in the mud beside them. Work in progress but with the “metal” done, and most of their bows sporting a bit of a gradient blend from each end to the middle, they’re looking presentable enough to call it a night.

Hashed out some rules for a jousting tournament tonight — and, as pictured here, spent a good bit of time working out all the “minigame” events which will happen in-between rounds. So we had some archers trying to shoot arrows into the butt (tee hee!) and a couple of foot knights engaging in a free-for-all melee.

There will be a strong audience participation element to the game, as represented in the last pic by the small pile of coin bet on the outcome of the archery contest, with riches to be won by the archer with the keenest eye and steadiest hand… unless a sneaky halfling gets to the gold first!

Lots of good progress was made in refining dice mechanics, removing the need for measuring, and finding those elements of the prototype which will give the most enjoyable outcome for the participants and spectators.

Apart from the butt diorama (…never not going to be funny…) I also got some new figures painted for the game, and now have a grand total of four archers for the Bretonnians. That’s nearly a whole rank!

Integrated a few of the new Squigs into the bases of some of my greenskins, and took the opportunity to finish off the foliage on a few others. Here’s everything I have based so far — not shown, at least the same amount of figures again fully painted but not yet based. A few vehicles are also on their way towards being ready for battle.

First few of my Armageddon-style critters printed, painted and added to bases. They’ll join the various greenstuffed Squiggly Beasts scattered throughout the army, and add a nice splash of colour to the overall look.

Orks have always had the best pets, but now it seems like some new friends have come snuffling out of the undergrowth of the equatorial jungles. Knobbly-tailed little weirdos, these hungry critters will chew their way through a stone wall (or a suit of power armour) to get to a good feed!

Pitted some of my old mostly-metal Orks against the Tau today. A very close and fun game with all kinds of MVP performances from unexpected units. Mine were infiltrating Kommandos backed up by a Mek, some Grots, and a Rokkit Launcher. Across the table were some tough-as-nails Breachers, sneaky Pathfinders and a melee-focussed stealth Battlesuit that really brought the pain to my shooting-focussed list.

We used Firefight by One Page Rules so it didn’t matter that our guys came from different editions.

Pics also feature some new Armageddon/Necromunda inspired terrain I’ve been working on recently.

Wait, which universe are we in again?

Built these Zerg and Terran forces (and a little bit of thematic terrain) from scratch yonks ago. The wheel has turned and there’s a popular miniatures game based on the franchise, so I thought they should hit the table for a quick photo op!

Star-crossed lovers? The heart-shaped locket around his neck might suggest it. But she’s young enough to be his daughter. Could it be her old man yelling at her about the company she keeps, while himself being blind drunk and pantsless? And what’s he planning with that broken bottle? Maybe the town guard have just shown up, and the quarrellers are about to find common ground as they violently resist being “moved on”…

Just a couple of village idiots hatching their next get-rich-quack scheme…

It’s ok. You don’t need that here. The ones who never left are honourable traders: bullets, spare masks, food. Their credit is good, because their lives depend on it! Speaking of which… better stow that rifle before you make them nervous.

Finished four models for the front rank of this unit so far. Might drop some lore into the comments. Enjoy a bonus pic (if you scroll to the end) of all the cavalry I’ve started painting for this army.