Identifying old lead

So a good friend was kind enough to give me a huge load of old miniatures over the weekend, stuff he no longer used in his own vast collection or was simply too old to find a place any more. 

The problem is I can only identify around a third of the models so I am asking for your help in identifying the rest. Some I know are Citadel and can identify easily enough. Some are Grenadier, some may be Citadel but I am not sure, others I have no idea what so ever! This is going to be a pic heavy post, but I have optimised the images so they are all relatively small (in kb) and will load quickly. 

So lets get on with it then.

1: First up is what I assume is an early Citadel chaos mutation

2: Some sort of bugbear/beastman? Appears to be Citadel from the base.

3 :Lizardman type no idea on the make.

4: I am pretty sure this is an early Citadel beastman.

5: Appears to be an Orc, company unknown.

6: Citadel I think? Maybe an early beastman as well.

7: Orcs from an unknown company (plastics)

8: A lizardman type from unknown company

9: Beastman/Lizard from unknown company

10: Orc from unknown company - could be an Ogre as it is on a large base

11: Citadel Orc from early 80 or so I beleive

12: Orc from unknown company - could be an Ogre as it is on a large base

13: Orc from unknown company - could be an Ogre as it is on a large base

14: Orc from unknown company - could be an Ogre as it is on a large base

15: I suspect these are Grenadier Hobgoblins

16: Grenadier Orc I believe 

17: Pre-slotta Citadel Orcs. I recognise a few that were continued into the late 80s with slotta bases

18: Citadel Orcs from the mid 80's

19: Orcs from an unknown company. Look a bit like they are meant to be Black Orc types

20: unidentified Grenadier miniature

21: Citadel Orc dated 1984. A shaman of some sort?

22: Grenadier Orc riding a dinosaur/wyvern/cold one?

So that's the lot of them. I eagerly look forward to working out what a lot of these guys are, that's half the fun of this Oldhammer gig after all :) Please let me know which miniatures you are able to identify.

A small gathering of Orcs

My small horde of Orcs is taking it's time growing but it is growing little by little. More importantly I am making some (slow) progress at getting them painted. The command models to complement the plastic Orc boyz have now been painted and fit into the unit perfectly.

Some close ups to reveal all my flawed painting...

Now a group shot of the assembled horde. Led by the as yet unnamed lvl 20 Black Orc hero riding the Wyvern, a Skull Krusha keeps the troops amused, while a lonely Troll waits in the background (his friend seems lost in the post). 3 Orc archers on wolves trot down the road, followed by a lvl 10 Orc hero with crossbow riding a boar. 2 units of 10 arrer boys soften up the enemy before the unit of 19 boyz, a unit of 14 biguns and 9 Black Orcs close in to get their blades wet.

All in all this lot amounts to a little over 1000 points which is a decent start. I will be adding more Orcs and some Goblins to the list as well as an allied contingent of Chaos - Kaleb Daark, 5 Chaos warriors and 2 Minotaurs so far.

Realm of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness

I just got my grubby little mitts on a copy of Slaves to Darkness. A lovely near mint copy to boot. Now to collect myself an nice little Khorne warband.

Sorry, not much of post is this? I promise to put up something more interesting next time.


EDIT - added some photos:

Some great colour photos of miniatures in the centre pages that I had never seen before (in PDF versions)

And just look at that lovely black and white artwork. Just gorgeous...

Getting on with it

Most of my time over the short holiday break was taken up with terrain building, many hours spent in the hardware store and model train shop. So I have gotten a decent start going on my modular terrain. 3 sections down at least - namely the easiest of the lot as I rather chickened out on the hills and river sections. Still I have 3 very nice road sections done and 4 excellent wall sections to go with it (thanks to some Hirst mould pieces).

Its a good enough start and I have one more road section to complete before I tackle the hills next. Then I will have a playable table of  the bare minimum 6 boards. I have a few more trees to make then I should have enough for three or 4 decent  sized forests. Next up after that is to construct a few loose hills before tackling the river sections and a couple more hill sections. I intend to have one long river section (basically a double length modular terrain board) and 2 curves.

So here is my very first attempt at a major terrain building project. Dreamfish was the major inspiration behind this project, as was Quindia Studios

After a bit of trial and error I settled on 20mm x 20mm wooden frames for each terrain piece. They were stuck down over MDF board and a piece of expanded polystyrene cut to and glued fit into the frame.

Next up was texturing the board. For this I watered down some wood glue about 75% glue and 25% water which I then squirted onto and brushed over the surface of the boards. I did this in roughly 10 to 15cm squares, then scattered my small stones (aquarium sand) over the board before painting on another square of glue and repeating the process. I left the area where the road was going to go clear of the sand. Once all the sand was glued down I textured the road surface with polyfilla, covering the entire surface of the road and scraping the road texture into the putty, leaving ruts and grooves where carts may have travelled. Nothing too exact but just enough to give it a nice surface. I left all of this to dry overnight and then sprayed a heavily watered down wood glue and water mix over the entire board to help seal the sand in place. 

Once all of this was dry I painter the entire board in a "burnt umber" (big pot of acrylic craft paint), then liberally dry brushed "sienna" over this followed by a lighter dry brush of "flesh". This gave the board a nice earthy feel over which I could then add the grass.

Yet more wood glue (I am using a hell of a lot of this stuff!) was painted onto the board surface, leaving patches of bare earth. I then sprinkled my cheap static grass over the glue, occasionally adding a more yellow static grass to break up the colour of the board. It tended to come out in a fairly clumpy finish which I like, giving the appearance of an actual field and not a smooth billiard table. 

Give this another few hours to dry then I turned the board upside down and tapped the back of the board to remove all the loose grass (all of which went back into the big tub of static grass to be sprinkled over the next board). Next up I worked on sticking together random pieces of  bricks from a Hirst cast to make some walls. Nothing much to these but I may describe how they are painted another time. 

I did go back to the boards once they were basically finished and glued a few more clumps of grass onto them to further break up the surface and add some more colour variation (yellow grass and the brighter green citadel grass)

And thats all I have for now. When I get a chance (and the 4th board is made)  I will take some better photos (all of these are with the cellphone) with some units on the boards.