Work in progress, but getting the wings done (barring those little field generator symbiotes clinging on to the tops) is a big painting milestone. Unashamedly retro theme and colour scheme, green bases will never go out of style!
More pictures in the linked post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OldWorldhammer/s/kMBM8xUmjP
Dug out an old project to nudge towards completion. Hours and hours later… the wings are done. Plenty of figure left to paint, but it’s a real milestone I’m happy to have achieved.
It was only after putting the brush down that I realised what my subconscious inspiration for the colour choices must have been. Went looking and sure enough, I still had the old 2nd Edition psychic power templates to hand. “Destructor”, was it?
I’ve also included some comparative shots with colour art pieces and ‘Eavy Metal paintjobs from the 90s — I reckon the inspiration for the kitbash and overall colour scheme will be readily apparent.
Last photo is a value comparison with a piece of interior B&W art from the Codex. I was hoping that my
work might in some small way echo the brooding, high-contrast feel of the original. I’m getting there, I reckon, though a few darker tones here and there wouldn’t go astray! As you might be able to see from the extra figures on the base, this particular artwork was hugely influential when I was designing this character.
Maybe not the most thrilling part of the magazine for some, but the hobby challenge is to read an issue cover to cover, so here we are. I think the catalogue pages are an important part of the experience.
Newer hobbyists may not be familiar with how metal minis used to be parted out and sold. Often the only instructions available were these pages in the back of whichever random magazine happened to feature them! Basically you’d rip open a blister pack, tumble out all the parts, and figure out what seemed to go where. These listing pages were also useful when trying to collect every variant of a figure (as they were packed in random assortments — luckily you could peer into the clear plastic blister to see what you were getting).
Special bonus content at the end (images 10–14): my second-hand copy of this magazine was in such great condition that it still came with a small insert booklet. Seems to be a comprehensive list of all local outlets at the time (note that there were very few actual GW stores in our country back then) as well as a fairly extensive catalogue of products available. Ah, those 1995 prices…
Mostly Tyranid-themed content in this issue; the cover might have been the giveaway there! However, there are also some very pretty Eldar and Blood Angels models. The Death Company article is a reprint (with modern stats, I suppose) from issue 168. The idea that content from less than three years earlier would be inaccessible and effectively lost to the general public is kind of wild today.
The Elf character for Warhammer Quest got a lot of air time in this issue. Not to worry, it’s a lovely sculpt with a great paintjob that really benefited from the full-colour art treatment.
There were also a few Dark Elves here and there, and quite a few shots of the new Chaos special character. Remember when you’d cut banners out of White Dwarf and glue them onto your metal figures? Photocopying in full colour was a real luxury, so my earliest copies of the magazine tended to end up riddled with holes shaped likes flags, cards, or game templates… 😳
There were a few news items and articles related to the Epic scale games in this issue. Love the colours of those Command Tanks, as well as the zany idea of packing three disparate unit types into one blister. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen the metal flags in the wild, so maybe they did!’t sell hugely well.
Perhaps my favourite element is the hand-painted backdrops used to set the scene in the Battle Report (no spoilers!). A proper hive city!
As part of the W.A.R.P. hobby challenge, I’m going to be going back through one old issue of White Dwarf each month. Here’s the first of a series of posts going through a particularly well-preserved copy of the Australian edition from August 1995. Although I was well into the hobby by the mid 90s, this magazine was one I picked up second-hand only quite recently!
In these photos we see some of the non-article content: front and back covers, table of contents, select news items and a staggering amount of weekly and one-off events being advertised. What a time to be alive!
Reading back over these sections left me wondering if Andrew Smith is still in the hobby (what a haul!) and if there was anything Mike McVey couldn’t do…
What’s new is old again… nowadays, a Tyranid Prime is a character-level leader of Tyranid Warriors. There was never a model of such a thing back in the day, so here’s my somewhat gross reimagining of the concept: a particularly old, bloated and heavily armoured version of a Tyranid that has grown to a ripe old age and only grown more cunning and specialised in its tactics as the years go by.
Obviously inspired by the Bob Olley Patriarch, this creature has nothing like that level of sculpted detail, but I’ve tried to make up for that lack with a more subtle and detailed paint job than most of the rank-and-file Tyranids are getting. In theory the more “colourful white” scheme will let it blend in with a diverse range of units painted in the 2nd edition codex’s motley style.
The gloss varnish is still drying, but I took photos now as I doubt the opalescent armour plates will ever look this good again. They’ve been through about six iterations now — looked good several times but I kept mucking them up — now I’m leaving well enough alone and calling it done.
Do you often find yourself looking through back issues of White Dwarf magazine? Does the retro-nostalgic look of old metal sculpts hit you right in the feels? Perhaps you’ve been collecting miniatures for a while now, but want to impose a bit of structure on your efforts to make sure projects come to completion. You might enjoy seeing what other folks are up to, or maybe you’re in need of inspiration. It could also be that you just like a challenge!
If any of the above apply to you, consider getting involved with the new OldWorldhammer monthly challenge, W.A.R.P.
Each month there will be four simple goals to aspire to. You can aim for as many as you like. Share what you get up to throughout the month and see if you can surprise yourself by hitting all four targets!
The four monthly goals are:
White Dwarfer — read an old issue of the magazine, cover to cover. It’s not just about the articles. The adverts! The prices! The catalogue pages! Glorious.
Artificer — make or paint something, inspired by what you’ve read or seen. It can be a sculpt, a kitbash, a freehand design, a full figure or even a unit. Take your pick, just try to finish something by the end of the month.
Roller of Dice — play a game that draws upon decades past. Solo, head-to-head or co-op. And yes, more than one player can tick off this part of the challenge all at once! The game can be anything that floats your boat. A new ruleset inspired by those that came before is fair play. Old editions, or a classic scenario? All good. It could even be a game that’s gone, but far from forgotten…
Paragon — a personal quest you choose to embark on. Anything not covered by the previous categories belongs here. Writing your own retro-inspired ruleset, or a piece of fiction that continues on where an old battle report left off. Taking out an old collection so they can be photographed and shown to the world. Documenting a bit of history before it passes into the mists of time. Representing old rulesets at a convention or helping someone else get into the hobby. These are all valuable goals, well worthy of recognition. Set your own challenge goal (privately or publicly) and when you achieve it, be sure to let us know!
Comment below if you have questions, think this sounds like a good idea, or want to discuss your own progress. You’re welcome to share updates as individual posts — I doubt we’ll need to confine these to a megathread or anything of the sort — but you can report back in any format you feel comfortable with (text, images, video, etc.).
The one thing the Orcs and Dwarves can agree on is that things used to be better back when everyone was krumping the Elves!
Might be bit hard to see in bare plastic, but this pair are meant to be reminiscing over an old hobby magazine while the Grey Slayer paints up his latest project.
I fear I may have caused some confusion with my earlier post. Not to worry — we’re not changing direction and there are no icebergs ahead! OldWorldhammer continues to value human creativity, and celebrates all forms of honest artistic expression.
I have now replaced the placeholder W.A.R.P. signage with the real deal. Here’s the first evolution of the idea of a pair of former enemies turned cheerful comrades-in-the-hobby. Anyone have any ideas for what we should name our new mascots?
Do you often find yourself looking through back issues of White Dwarf magazine? Does the retro-nostalgic look of old metal sculpts hit you right in the feels? Perhaps you’ve been collecting miniatures for a while now, but want to impose a bit of structure on your efforts to make sure projects come to completion. You might enjoy seeing what other folks are up to, or maybe you’re in need of inspiration. It could also be that you just like a challenge!
If any of the above apply to you, consider getting involved with the new OldWorldhammer monthly challenge, W.A.R.P.
Each month there will be four simple goals to aspire to. You can aim for as many as you like. Share what you get up to throughout the month and see if you can surprise yourself by hitting all four targets!
The four monthly goals are:
White Dwarfer — read an old issue of the magazine, cover to cover. It’s not just about the articles. The adverts! The prices! The catalogue pages! Glorious.
Artificer — make or paint something, inspired by what you’ve read or seen. It can be a sculpt, a kitbash, a freehand design, a full figure or even a unit. Take your pick, just try to finish something by the end of the month.
Roller of Dice — play a game that draws upon decades past. Solo, head-to-head or co-op. And yes, more than one player can tick off this part of the challenge all at once! The game can be anything that floats your boat. A new ruleset inspired by those that came before is fair play. Old editions, or a classic scenario? All good. It could even be a game that’s gone, but far from forgotten…
Paragon — a personal quest you choose to embark on. Anything not covered by the previous categories belongs here. Writing your own retro-inspired ruleset, or a piece of fiction that continues on where an old battle report left off. Taking out an old collection so they can be photographed and shown to the world. Documenting a bit of history before it passes into the mists of time. Representing old rulesets at a convention or helping someone else get into the hobby. These are all valuable goals, well worthy of recognition. Set your own challenge goal (privately or publicly) and when you achieve it, be sure to let us know!
Comment below if you have questions, think this sounds like a good idea, or want to discuss your own progress. You’re welcome to share updates as individual posts — I doubt we’ll need to confine these to a megathread or anything of the sort — but you can report back in any format you feel comfortable with (text, images, video, etc.).
Slowly painting up the metal re-release of these Bretonnian spearmen (plus a couple of ring-ins to make up the unit size). Today was shield day, apparently! Made up the designs as I went along — hopefully the muted colours and simple themes will blend in well enough with some more historically accurate figures, depending on which game system we’re playing in any given week.
Raw WIPs today. Haven’t the time right now to finish this batch, but I’m about ready to call the bones done.
Not sure what’s got me itching to paint undead again — might be the recent passing of John Blanche, as morbid as that sounds now that I type it out? Seeing his diorama of a column of the risen dead besieging a Dwarf fortress (nowadays on display at Warhammer World) was always very influential, second only behind poring over the box art for the set some of these minis came in (see last pic!).
I guess the Skeleton Horde / Skeleton Army may well have been the first plastic box sets I ever owned. Always wanted a full army in that pre-Tomb Kings style (armoured cavalry, wights and ghosts and skeletal reapers and mummies, archers on foot and in chariots, Carrion and Screaming Skull catapults, etc.), and it feels odd now I’m so close to that goal.
So anyway, here’s what’s on the workbench. I’ll post an update when I get them done, and in the meantime I suppose I’ll have to dig out some of my crappy amateur photographs of that classic Blanche diorama!
Didn’t have any Blood Angels to hand so I painted a motivational poster instead. 🤷♀️
Another character for a game this week. This time a “rescue” of sorts, salvaging several broken parts from different models picked up in trades and eBay lots. Plastic head and backpack accoutrements, metal body. Looked like a Scorpion to me (in terms of pose and weapons) so that’s what I went with, but I could be wildly wrong! Wouldn’t be the first time I have been tricked by a part from a Necromunda Spyrer or other rare figure.
I thought the “scorpion tails” on the banner were a fun touch. They’re from some kind of Blood Bowl Elf, if I remember rightly. The main banner itself might be the spiny frill off a dragon, or something like that. 🤷♀️
Facial tattoo is loosely inspired by the shrine’s runic designator. Adding any more of the symbol would have clashed with the facial expression, so it probably means something wildly inappropriate in Aeldari, but I like the slightly feral creature-of-the-night look it engenders.
One of three characters I’ll be running in a game this week — counting as a Warlock, of all things! Realised I didn’t have time to get my Made To Order batch of psykers based and painted in time, so instead I spent about half as long “finishing” a couple of Exarchs.
In this case, that meant detailing the face and painting a freehand pocket-watch to hang from their belt. It’s always a quarter to midnight in the 40K setting, but doubly so when you’re the last bastion of a dying race.
This one was converted a while ago, so your guess might be as good as mine when it comes to what bits were used. Anyone recognise the shield generator backpack, banner, etc.?
idly revs weapon-engines
“Do you have a moment to discuss how embracing slaughter could change your life?”
These door-to-door skullsmen are the second batch of Jakhals I’ve done for a mate’s World Eaters army. They’ll get snowy, gory bases in due course, so I thought I’d amp up the colour a bit. Best description of them so far is that they look like they ran amok on my painting station chainsawing everything within reach — fair call, I suppose!
Tried to spend a bit more painting time on what is (in-game) a bit of a fodder unit, because the tragic individual stories of the human cultists who fall to Chaos are generally more interesting to me than the Traitor Legions (who are often represented as having turned en masse, and can be a bit “one-note” as a result).
Let me know if you can spot the eye-gouger, or the fellow sporting the BFTBG t-shirt. Been staring at these for long enough that I’m not sure if the details stand out or are just hallucinations at this point.
Rabid and very expendable footsoldiers for the World Eaters Chaos Space Marines, these cultists are apparently pumped full of stimulants and blood products before (and during) battle. I’d already painted one unit with a traditional blood effect in their IV drips, so I decided to go for more of an “energy drink cocktail” vibe on these. Of course none of the photos show the tanks on their backs… 🤦♂️
…nevertheless there are a few nice details I hope you can pick out in some of the pictures, like the “Blood for the blood god” t-shirt and the one who’s gouged out his own eyeballs to decorate his wargear. All the better to go into a chainsaw-swinging frenzy, I suppose!?
Basing will be snow and yet more gore effects, to be added when they’re reunited with their previously-painted brethren in a mate’s collection.
WIPs on a second batch of Jakhals. They arrived pre-assembled, hence the “identical twins”! I’ve then done some conversion work on a few key pieces.
First squad had bubbling arterial blood in their tanks, and a red/brass theme. Wanted to mix it up so this lot are sporting more of an energy drink vibe, with the classic blue and white scheme represented on some of their wargear.
Long time since I’ve worked on these Eldar-of-no-known-abode. Got inspired to get them back on the table for the end of yet another edition of 40K, start of the next one, so I’m working on a few units I never quite finished such as the Rangers and Storm Guardians. A few anachronisms, but there’s the makings of a good 2nd edition army in that lot!
Lovely art book backdrops were fun to work with — last image has the title and author.