Musings and Newsings

Hello once again, and welcome back to Realm of Chaos 80s. Its been a while since these fingers last typed their way through the wastes of Chaos but there has been much going on. The end of term approaches rapidly, and as any teacher will tell you, this time of year is excessively busy. On top of that, my wife has just had to undergo an operation and has needed time to recover and we are extending our home with a new kitchen, driveway and conservatory. 

Not much time for painting, collecting, writing or research then? 

Well, yes and no. I have been sneaking off to my desk for five minutes here and there to work on my miniatures projects; namely the end of my Khorne army and the construction of the Great Spined Dragon as well as cleaning up a number of other projects, big and small. Additionally, I have been working with two ex-Citadel Golden Age employees in the hope of bringing their stories to you, and hopefully glean another new nugget of old school gold or two.

In my more general reading around the Oldhammer Scene, I have come across several posts and blogs that I felt needed a little more exposure, so I though it good timing to share these with you before I head off to pursue more scholarly things.

The Problem of Crossbows

One of Jaeckel's latest dwarfs. Bloody lovely isn't it?

Side by side comparison of Old Citadel and Foundry Crossbows. 

The exceptionally talented Jaeckel has been delighting us with his incredibly painted old school dwarfs for some months now, and his latest batch certainly continues the high standards exhibited in his work. However, he has been in cahoots with Stone Cold Lead and has explained that it is possible to order metal crossbows, of a similar size to the annoyingly difficult to get old '80s Citadel ones, from Foundry Miniatures. This service is not listed on their site, you have to contact them for further details, but it appears that for £5 plus postage you can get your hands on 16 of them. Very, very useful information indeed.

I shall be pestering Marcus Ansell for some of those in the near future, as I have chaos dwarf and dwarf crossbows on my 'to do' list. 

Some of Stone Cold Lead's Bretonnians. Bloody lovely too!

Realm of Citadel - Don Hans's Incredible Collection!

A brace of Night Horrors from the brush of Don Hans. I really like the flayed hand colour scheme, you can almost feel the clammy fingers brushing your skin, can't you? The understated ghost is also effortlessly brilliant.

Don has been stomping around the Oldhammer Scene for a while, but I have only recently spent any real time on his blog. I was glad I did, because it contains some of the finest Old School style painting that I have seen for some time. His work is original, imaginative and looks like it has just stepped out of an 'Eavy Metal article circa 1989. His colours have that realistic, believable tone often absent in my own work (no matter how hard I attempt to put such tone in there) and remind me of Steve Blunt's work the later '80s. 

Incredible work indeed. If you don't believe me, have a look at some of these miniatures I have borrowed from his site. Oh, and Realm of Citadel itself can be found here. At the time of writing Don's excellent blog only has 23 followers, which in my opinion is a travesty as there is excellent work on offer there. 

So go follow!

A Marsh Troll. Gorgeous colour and a beautiful base. The blending of the two colours on the skin are outstanding are they not?

Don has a very original approach to shield design. Regular readers will know that these designs are an interest of mine and his work is a real inspiration. 

Asslessman's Best Miniature Ever

How's this for an interesting idea for a blog? A site devoted to the discussion of the greatest old school (and beyond) miniatures. Asslessman has been contributing to some of the discussions brought up the comments section of this blog in recent weeks, and its great to see him extending Oldhammer into new avenues. Anyway, I think there are a few more hours to go until voting ends for the Greatest Old School Khorne Champion so I suggest that you head over to his blog, support and cast your vote. It can be found here. 

I went for Champion 3 by the way.

Orlygg

Acceptable in the '80s: White Dwarf 102

Issue 102 hit newsagents with the sound of a heavily laden renegade class pursuit vehicle colliding with a stainless steel girder. Dark Future, the game of highway warriors, was finally released onto the gaming world. That game, and its associated releases is part of one of my other long term projects, and will, one day, be resurrected. Today, we will be discussing the Warhammer Third Edition releases from this issue, so lets sit back and enjoy a slice of retro Warhammer at its best.

First up, and the major article of the issue, the Fimir. Now, way back when in the early days of this blog I published a link to this excellent article and discussed the nature of the Fimir in the context of Warhammer Third Edition. I see no reason to repeat myself, but the online world has moved on and it is now possible to embed items onto blogs, so I present the article again in this form. 

So what do we get?

Well first off, a little bit of narrative fluff that sets up the premise of the new race well. Mists, horror and hideousness. The article moves on to deliver a Warhammer Armies style armylist and a detailed WFRP adventure. This is a really good article and is well worth a read if you haven't seen it before. The art is also excellent, with some evocative pictures provided by Paul Bonner. 

Fimir Armylist, Background and WHFRP Adv by orlygg

Next up is an 'Eavy Metal article deals with that old chestnut, faces. As well as some interesting old school painting advice, there are a great deal of quality miniatures to gawp at, including the famous Dwarf wizard and many other rare models, including an early glimpse at some, then, forthcoming daemonettes. The eye candy ends with a rather wordy discussion about how to get the best out of a miniature's face. 

Then we have these crossbowmen. At first flick through the magazine its easy to miss these little shooty chaps. What we get is a set of sculpts, based on the same dollies, that provide troops for Imperial and Bretonnian armies. Anyone know if these models are now part of Foundry's ever expanded ex-citadel models?

Orlygg