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I used to have one of those Terminator captain models. That built in grenade launcher used to cause all sorts of havoc on the tabletop. Think you used to roll a D20 for it. I can't remember.

That mini was my favourite marine mini for years, why isn't the rim of the base goblin green?

Cool captain. Nice work on the freehand I can see why you're hesitant to strip it. The improvements you've outlined should make a difference though.

EDC

He is also a favorite of mine from the old days, Along with the chaos terminator captain and the inquisitor with bionic leg.

Love the old Terminator Captain. Brings back some crazy memories of Assassins charging two feet across the board destroying dreadnoughts and tanks like nobodies business. I really like the paint job, could so with some touch ups and I would like to see a bigger base. You may need to do some filler on it so he doesn't look tiny compared to modern Termies.

 Slinky wrote:
I think a thoughtful touch-up is going to make him look great - I reckon your list of jobs is spot on, though personally I would leave him on his 25mm base for nostalgic reasons

I do know what you mean, though I've really liked the effect that giving some of my models 32mm bases has had. That would probably be the ideal size for these old Terminators, actually.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
It would be great to see you tackle a whole BA army, I look forward to that. I think your plan seems great, the only thing I can think of is to either change the hair colour or to differentiate it more from the rest of the yellow on the miniature.

It is amazing the difference that the bigger bases make on Marines. My Iron Warriors just look odd to me now on 25mm bases.

I'll probably tone down the yellow on his chest, though I was considering doing the same to his hair. Still, don't want both to end up too similar so I'll choose one. I need to get back to my Iron Warriors as well at some stage - they were being built to 3rd/4th/5th? ed spec.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I used to have one of those Terminator captain models. That built in grenade launcher used to cause all sorts of havoc on the tabletop. Think you used to roll a D20 for it. I can't remember.

Frag or Krak? Rogue Trader was such a fun, wonderful mess!

Joyboozer wrote:
That mini was my favourite marine mini for years, why isn't the rim of the base goblin green?

I never did Goblin Green rims. I always stuck with black, which I copied from many of the Rogue Trader models. The only exceptions are my desert-based models which got brown rims. I should go back and finish some of those armies as well...

 evildrcheese wrote:
Cool captain. Nice work on the freehand I can see why you're hesitant to strip it. The improvements you've outlined should make a difference though.

Thanks. I'd rather touch it up and be happy with it in 2016 than strip it. After all, stripped old-school figures are easy enough to get hold of. I probably have another one or two of this guy buried somewhere, so no point wrecking this one.

 Theophony wrote:
He is also a favorite of mine from the old days, Along with the chaos terminator captain and the inquisitor with bionic leg.

I started to convert that Inquisitor with bionic leg into an Ultramarine Captain (ripping off that 'eavy Metal article pretty directly.) I never finished either the conversion or the paint, sadly enough - though he did stand in for Captain Invictus during 2nd edition. The poor Chaos guy never even got any paint...

 Archer wrote:
Love the old Terminator Captain. Brings back some crazy memories of Assassins charging two feet across the board destroying dreadnoughts and tanks like nobodies business. I really like the paint job, could so with some touch ups and I would like to see a bigger base. You may need to do some filler on it so he doesn't look tiny compared to modern Termies.

I remember my Assassins being hated on the tabletop. I didn't use them much, but I was never a huge fan of using or playing against psykers, so I always felt that my Culexis was a fair trade. If I go 40mm, I might have to find an appropriate resin base in order to give him enough bulk.

I remember that Terminator! I have a bunch of those old metals, also painted up (badly!) as Blood Angels. I loved them as a kid - 3+ on 2d6 made them seem like such unstoppable juggernauts.

Terminator armour was so amazing. Even plugged by a las cannon you had a chance on those 2 dice.....

Your ideas for revamping the Captain seem spot on. The only thing I might add to the list is to tone down the edge highlights-- the orange is pretty strong. That said, the blending is remarkably smooth, so it might be best to not fix something that isn't broken.

Your point about "character" is well taken. A lot of those older, single-piece metal models had "character" mostly because they were unique sculpts, and didn't have to be compatible with dozens of parts from other kits. Sadly, there were a lot of not-very-good sculpts out there. Funk value and nostalgia go a long way in this hobby, but even so, there is a lot to be said for 21st century miniature sculpting as well.

Yeah, they were bloody nasty. Well, since I fielded some, they were awesome.

BA Captain is now on the painting desk. There's some stuff in the queue before him so I'm hoping to have him done by the end of April at worst. I'm going to leave the orangey-red, since it's part of the "core" of that model. Plenty more models to paint in darker reds, after all. That's a good point, though Josh - this captain has a bit of character, but less than the newer models precisely because due to the way his first-wave arms worked he needed to remain compatible with the rest of the range. It wasn't until this guy came out in the mid-2000's sometime that there was really a dymanic individualised model for a Terminator Captain.

Last June I ordered a bunch of "Fir Bolg" Skeletons from Brigade Models, originally produced and still sold for the "Celtos" skirmish miniatures wargame. By August, I'd managed to paint up a unit of them armed with "Warscythes" to use in Kings of War before my focus in 2015 shifted to finishing off models that had been started months and years before.

For the Tale of Gamers challenge, I decided to paint up some more skeletons. After all, they're quite work-friendly, and it's always rewarding to finish stuff off. I've got a nice bunch of Skeletons done for KoW, role-playing or any kind of skirmish from Age of Sigmar to Dragon Rampant.



Once again, the colour scheme is pretty simple and in keeping with the rest of the army - Red and Black, Iron and Brass, Rust and Verdigris, Cadmium-Red wood - and Bone. The tabards and cloth have either been quartered or feature a par chevron to tie them in with one another or allow a distinction when both units are run side by side. Of course, they can be combined into a "Horde" formation as well.







There's quite a lot of these guys. By my standards, anyway. The initial two models from eBay that led me to Brigade's website have been incorporated into the units, so that just left me with 22 others to paint up to complete the units. As I've mostly worked on them during lunch breaks, they took quite awhile to get done. And yes, I need to touch up the bottom of the base rims.







Yes, I need to get more brown Renedra unit trays. Unfortunately the last time I ordered them from Firestorm they sent me sets of green ones, which clash with my model bases. Spray paint time, probably.



Awkward shield placement. Crescent shields to the rescue! I found the shields on these three to be a little problematic. They came with damaged Celt-ish shields, but these three guys were having none of it. I figured out a workaround, which was to use these really old Citadel shields, and then I followed up with the rest of the models by using selected WHFB4 Starter Goblin shields with skeletal iconography - for what is very much an unrealistic but old-school Warhammer-esque Undead look... (Why are "traditional" RPG and gaming undead covered in skeletal iconography? Who is smithing and painting their gear? - At least the sadly-Squatted Tomb Kings had some rationale behind theirs.) The original shields have gone into my bits boxes, and might come back out when working on Historicals down the line.



I used white for the embossed shield devices shaded with Vallejo's Pale Grey wash so that the shield iconography would be distinct from the "real" bone of the actual undead.



Both regiments combined into a Kings of War "Horde"-style unit. ...Skeleton Horde. There's a ton more photos on my Wordpress - I don't usually manage to paint this many miniatures in one hit, and these guys took a lot of effort and a lot of time - pretty much a full month. As much as I enjoy painting bone, I'm pretty sick of it at this stage. I'm still cleaning up the next unit batch of skeletons (only 12, thankfully), but I'll get the basics done (clean, prime, base coat spray, basing, first wash of brown) and then leave them for a week or two before getting back to them. I think in April I might try to do more character models for the painting challenge rather than masses of troops.

A Wordpress reader requested a tutorial on painting skeletons/bone in my style recently, so I took some photos as I painted these guys up. In the coming days, I'll sort them out and do a write-up. It's actually pretty simple.

Love the look of those skellies - your bone painting technique produces some very pleasing results. Nice models too! Looking forward to that tutorial.

Dude I really do like that approach to bone! it's very nicely done, the colour is perfect for the other spot colours throughout and as a whole look darn impressive!

Actually I'm reminded of Orlygg's (of Realm of Chaos 80s Oldhammer fame) similarly old school painting style. Maybe it's the models? In any case, it still looks great!

These particular models definitely follow the old-school style in many ways. The main things that define my style of bone is that it's (probably unrealistically) clean, and it's all in pale brown tones rather than whites and greys. Basically a result of the paint colour of my formative years being called "Bleached Bone", and the influence of a bloke called Dave Marshall who used to commission paint when I was an impressionable teen and was easily one of the better painters around my circles at the time - He used a technique that wasn't a mile away from what we now call "dipping" but he used various shades of ink, broadly similar to Weety's style. His method of "bone" was also quite yellowish.

And of course an attempt to emulate this sort of thing.


So mine has evolved from that, and while I don't mind using other techniques, that's basically my "default" bone style, particular for army painting when consistency is a thing.

Very nice. Harryhausen would approve.

Lovely work on those Fir Bolg (fun fact: Fir Bolg means Men of the Bag in Gaelic. It might mean Men of the Stomach (since Bolg is the modern Gaelic word for stomach) but Bolg seems to mean some sort of leathern bag or couldron! They were the race who inhabited Ireland before the Tuath De Danann.)

I was not a big fan of those minis when I saw them in the Celtos rulebook, but your clean style really brings out the best in old school minis. It's not cartoony exactly, but it's sort of working really well with those slightly cartoony models.

Everyone else has said it, but it bears repeating: those are some very well done skellies. They seem pretty hefty-- are they metal?

 Theophony wrote:
Very nice. Harryhausen would approve.

Thanks Theo. I have sometimes wondered what Harryhausen would have made of our hobby. I've got my Foundry Argonauts as well that I hope to get painted sometime this year - and WGF Skeletons that seem to be the heirs to his Hydra's Teeth.

 Da Boss wrote:
Lovely work on those Fir Bolg (fun fact: Fir Bolg means Men of the Bag in Gaelic. It might mean Men of the Stomach (since Bolg is the modern Gaelic word for stomach) but Bolg seems to mean some sort of leathern bag or couldron! They were the race who inhabited Ireland before the Tuath De Danann.)
I was not a big fan of those minis when I saw them in the Celtos rulebook, but your clean style really brings out the best in old school minis. It's not cartoony exactly, but it's sort of working really well with those slightly cartoony models.

I did know that they were a Irish/Gaelic raceof men from folklore (like the Fimir come from the Fomorians) though I thought undead were an odd fit at best for "Fir Bolg". Not that I've looked deeply into the mythology/fluff of Celtos to be quite honest. I got the rulebook with some of the models but haven't done any more than browse through it, and I understand that they have a new edition coming out soon(ish) that they're currently playtesting.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Everyone else has said it, but it bears repeating: those are some very well done skellies. They seem pretty hefty-- are they metal?

Thanks Josh - yep, they're metal. I'd have loved to buy up a bunch of "proper" "oldhammer" skeletons and undead, but I just can't stomach the prices being asked, so these models made for a good enough substitute with enough of a similar feel, since I was after sturdy, one-piece metal cast skeletons that looked decently good and were reasonably priced. Most others I found fell down in one or another of those criteria.

Late to the party, but I do like those skeletons - Definitely give me the "Skeleton Army" vibe as you say - I remember originally painting those with the inks from the Expert paint set - Just a mix of brown and chestnut slapped all over Yours look a bit nicer, obviously

Love both the sculpts and the paining of the skeletons, the drummer especially is full of character.

A bone tutorial from you would be much appreciated.

Celtos is a pretty suped up version of celtic mythology. The "orcs" of the setting are semi-aquatic, being Fomorians. I find the idea of that really cool, but the Orc models leave a lot to be desired. GW River Trolls would go well with the look though.

The Sidhe are also a bit weird - elemental faeries crossed with dragons. Again a cool idea, but the models don't pull it off too well.

Honestly, the Fir Bolg models are the nicest in the range, and they were supposedly wiped out by the Tuath De Danann, who are the "good guy" analogue in Celtos, so it makes sense for them to be the undead faction too.

I've the rulebook since forever, but never got around to playing any games with it unfortunately!

Those skeletons got me into the hobby when i was 14!

I've just got so many rulesets. I still haven't tried out SAGA or Frostgrave, so those are much further forward in the queue than Celtos right now. Let alone things like Wrath of Kings or GW's latest boardgames.

A bone tute will be forthcoming - hopefully within a week or so. I've been putting all of my energy into a big clean-up of the house and (especially) the war room, which has slowly become a dumping ground for boxes and random junk. So as soon as I can manage to sit down and write it up properly.

Awesome stuff, Nerdy - you'll have to start an undead skirmish warband for some good old retrogaming

Now something new to show that's actually very old! (by miniature reckoning, anyway)

Back in the early 1990's, shortly after the release of Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, a small set of Chaos models was released. At least one for each of the four Chaos Powers, and seemingly Khorne got a few extras. These particular models aren't seen a whole lot, as they weren't sculpted by Jes Goodwin, but by Mark Copplestone - and so had a much shorter production life. They're not the equal of Jes' classic sculpts, but they do have an interesting character (there I bloody go) of their own. Objectively, they're not amazing models compared to what has gone before or since, but I still like them.

I haven't managed to find them in Stuff of Legends nor in the old issues of White Dwarf, but I seem to recall seeing them named both as "Chaos Champions" and as "Chaos Warriors" at different times - which also happened with more than a few of Jes' champions. They're that "in-between" style of model that could reasonably fit into either category. These days at least, my thoughts on Chaos Warriors tend towards the more generic models as used in more recent years, so I'll call these guys "Champions" in my own collection - especially as the more generic "foot knight"-style armoured Chaos Warriors were a thing as far back as the pre-slotta days.



This guy is Slaanesh's entry. He features all-original paint from the 1990's as well. Amazingly there were no touch-ups needed whatsoever, nor any embarrassingly garish colour combinations that needed correction. All I needed to do to "renovate" him to 2016 standard was to rebase him - onto a 32mm round in this case since he overhung the 25mm square pretty badly. This way I can legit use him should I ever try Age of Sigmar as well. It doesn't matter in Kings of War as the game uses regimental bases, so as long as the footprint is sound, this guy and whatever other heavy, psychotic bastards he hangs out with can wreak havoc just as effectively once I actually start on them properly.

I've added flowers to his base not because I see Slaanesh as effeminate, but as followers of Chaos that can appreciate beauty as well as debauchery - just as they were back in the RoC days. The shield is NOT freehand, I should point out. It's a decal. It had some silvering but a coat of satin over the top fixed that up well enough.



A rather "cheeky" (hur hur) shot to finish up. It's more than a little silly, but such was life in Nottingham back in the late 1980's and early 1990's and it's pretty well known that the studio didn't take themselves so seriously back then, and took the piss out of everything including themselves (and they liked to sneak stuff past management) so I'm willing to give it a pass while if such a thing were released today, the implications would be a lot more disturbing.

I've got a Khorne Warrior-Champion from the same release who I'll show shortly. He just needs a bit of updating, so hopefully before too long!

Awesome. I have absolutely no memory of that model. I'm not really a fan of Slaanesh, but you made this one work.

Crazy beautiful colors you got going on their. I loved all those chaos warriors when I first started playing, still very cool to see them all painted up in style.

Those oldhammer minis certainly work best when they got a bright paint job going on.

Slaanesh dude looks very cool, cant say I remember him though.

Nifty and always nice when something needs barely a retouch to see use again

Thanks guys! Yeah these models weren't on release for all that long. Or at least compared to the older "classics" like Jes' Champions or the Slave to Darkness (and pre-Slaves) warriors. The ones for Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch might be a bit more familiar, but I'm going to wait until they're painted/ready to show before posting them up.

I might actually gloss his protruding "inner mouth" to make him look a little more freaky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thanks guys! Yeah these models weren't on release for all that long. Or at least compared to the older "classics" like Jes' Champions or the Slave to Darkness (and pre-Slaves) warriors. The ones for Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch might be a bit more familiar, but I'm going to wait until they're painted/ready to show before posting them up.

I might actually gloss his protruding "inner mouth" to make him look a little more freaky.