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Absolutely gorgeous. I love seeing armies like Praetorians and Mordies getting love, it's really uncommon.

What % was metal and what % was converted? Praes are an absolute swine to find, makes it doubly impressive.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
What % was metal and what % was converted? Praes are an absolute swine to find, makes it doubly impressive.

They are actually pretty reasonable to get on eBay if you take your time and avoid buy it now auctions. I tried selling a bunch of my extras, and ended up keeping them for what I could get in return.

The hard part is buying them platoon or even squad at a time.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
What % was metal and what % was converted? Praes are an absolute swine to find, makes it doubly impressive.

The majority are GW metal Praetorians. There is a single 10-man squad of Victoria Lamb penal troopers, a 10-man beastman squad (also Vic Lamb), 3 converted snipers (Vic Lamb parts), 10-man kilt squad (Vic Lamb and GW parts), as well a some character conversions. So, maybe 85% metal and 15% converted throughout the army? I tried to keep the conversions metal when possible. Like those Rough Riders on Rogue Trader era lead bikes, or female troopers who were converted from metal Praetorians, or using metal Vic Lamb parts instead of resin if that option is available.

The infantry elements of the army fill a full-size Table War case which is understandably a chore to lug around due to the weight. As a result these Praetorians have become my "home" army due to the weight and difficulty transporting all of the various elements (almost four total transport cases are needed between the infantry and vehicles).

I am still looking for an opponent with a similarly sized Ork force for an Apocalypse recreation game of the Battle of Big Toof River.




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 Polonius wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
What % was metal and what % was converted? Praes are an absolute swine to find, makes it doubly impressive.

They are actually pretty reasonable to get on eBay if you take your time and avoid buy it now auctions. I tried selling a bunch of my extras, and ended up keeping them for what I could get in return.

The hard part is buying them platoon or even squad at a time.

Agreed. And good luck re-selling most of the HWTs. I am up to my eyeballs in missile and autocannon teams that I can't give away.

When I started this army in 2009 eBay was hit & miss but I was able to get some large sized lots from Bartertown for reasonable prices. Regarding the current prices, I wonder if the great bits from Col. Gravis and Victoria Lamb have taken a bite out of original Praetorians' value?

Woah! That's really backwardly strange, because over here they are genuinely very pricy (bear in mind this should show 195 listings, if you're outside the UK, some may be obscured) - HWS and especially Missile launchers, seated gunners and occasionally corpses go for more than I can get an entire squad of 2nd hand Mordians for. Example - that's fething incomplete!
You'd think that was they were made here to begin, with it'd not be the case. But honestly, if there's one interesting Praetorian mixed in with a Mordian lot, I give up on it as a bad chase.

Apparently in Australia the old Prae box sets are one of the most expensive IG purchases. I've heard of them fetching $400 AU

Polonius, I genuinely suggest finding some way to offer them to Europe if you have anything outside the standard infantry.

Anyway, a stunning army. I so so want to see a Zulu re-enactment using this.

amazing paint job wish i was that good. love the army.

I suppose if this is going to go on for two pages, I should probably post a couple more photos. Here are a commissars that went with this force:






Commissars don't need any conversion to go with Praetorians, so there aren't any alterations to them. The second one is Viktoria Skivlana from WarForge Miniatures.


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On the ebay prices:

- the casualties are the most rare Praetorian things. While the regiment box was originally pitched as a limited edition thing, GW did sell Praetorian minis out of their webstore individually for a good long time.

BUT- they did not sell the casualties. The only way to get those originally was to buy the big regiment box.

I wonder if the prices on them are good enough to warrent re-casting them. The issue is that casting things in metal is a larger investment than casting in resin- and I think you'd need to sell a lot of Praetorians (while re-casting old armorcast parts will land a profit on the first one you sell).

You could bitz order the casualties through at least 2004:

http://www.solegends.com/citcat2004us/c2004usp0193-01.htm

I have a pretty large collection of praetorians, and I've never really struggled to collect them. Sure, I was able to fill out some of my stuff through Bitz, but they're mostly rare because people didn't buy them then because they were unavailable.

now, compared to other IG regiments, Praetorians often sell for a bit more, but most of the ebay lots, at least in the US, that actually sell, sell for roughly the original retail.

On topic: how did you get the bold red on the uniforms?

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I wonder if the prices on them are good enough to warrent re-casting them.

There are sellers on eBay who re-cast old Battletech miniatures in a brittle tin mix, so I am sure there is a cost-effective way of recasting the casualties in metal. To be fair those recast Battletech models are pretty poor quality and are known to shatter if dropped, but that would be less of an issue for casualty figures which are typically used for adornment of bases or terrain rather than as game models.

A friend of mine took to using the Praetorian casualties as test models to practice his own resin casting. The dead Praetorians on the Imperial Knight base on page 1 are a result of his experiments. He gave me a quart-sized bag of castings that I plan to use on the Wall of Martyrs terrain. The idea is to replace the dead Cadians with Praetorians, which will hopefully look really cool.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I wonder if the prices on them are good enough to warrent re-casting them.

There are sellers on eBay who re-cast old Battletech miniatures in a brittle tin mix..

Now, to be fair, I have a lot of original Battletech minis that were made in a brittle tin mix.

Right after the Lead scare in the early '90s, a lot of miniatures companies started making minis in lead-free pewter. One of the first was Ral Partha (who made Battletech back then). They made up a silly name for their alloy mix (I think it was Ranolium).

The mix wasn't a good one, and made for much more brittle miniatures. I haven't seen the substance return since the death of Ral Partha (and Iron Wind Metals certainly doesn't use that mix).

What I mean to say is, it is totally possible that the brittle tin mix is original, and not the work of pirates. I've even got some of them, and I bought them in the package off of the shelf in the game store (also have a few cast in lead).

Of course, it might be pirated stuff- no reason why they can't use brittle tin mixes too.

And sometimes piracy of out of print minis like this is done 'for the love.' I've met people who will give the minis away- they just want them to keep existing.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I wonder if the prices on them are good enough to warrent re-casting them.

There are sellers on eBay who re-cast old Battletech miniatures in a brittle tin mix..

Now, to be fair, I have a lot of original Battletech minis that were made in a brittle tin mix.

Right after the Lead scare in the early '90s, a lot of miniatures companies started making minis in lead-free pewter. One of the first was Ral Partha (who made Battletech back then). They made up a silly name for their alloy mix (I think it was Ranolium).

The mix wasn't a good one, and made for much more brittle miniatures. I haven't seen the substance return since the death of Ral Partha (and Iron Wind Metals certainly doesn't use that mix).

What I mean to say is, it is totally possible that the brittle tin mix is original, and not the work of pirates. I've even got some of them, and I bought them in the package off of the shelf in the game store (also have a few cast in lead).

Of course, it might be pirated stuff- no reason why they can't use brittle tin mixes too.

And sometimes piracy of out of print minis like this is done 'for the love.' I've met people who will give the minis away- they just want them to keep existing.

"Ralidium " was the metal. I still have some Battletech blisters with splash stickers touting the stuff. And the knock offs I referred to above weren't Ralidium. They were/are definitely home brews cast in a really cheap alloy meant to cash in on the high-prices associated with Battletech's "unseen" lawsuit designs.

There is an active Battletech trading community that tries to flag and take down auctions of reproduction miniatures (with about as much success as the users here on Dakka have getting eBay to remove knock off Forge World auctions). The repeat sellers are known among Btech collectors, and the quality of the miniatures are known to be abysmal (unlike a lot of FW recasters who are apparently great at their "craft").

Interesting.

The cheap alloy mix has got to be cheaper than normal casting (I don't know the material cost, but with material and labor, a pewter mold can easily cost around $100-$150).

The cheap tin has to be done with something cheaper to make (and I guess it is more brittle than Ralidium- man that stuff was a bad idea).

It is cheaper to make something out of resin, and a little more garage friendly. I'm not sure that anyone can really tell the difference between a real and fake Armorcast titan at this point (unless you got it from someone who has been posting a lot of ebay auctions).

The full Praetorian Gallery is up. Nearly all of the Praetorian pictures I have are up there.

That is so awesome! Cool theme for an army and perfect execution.

cheers
Kahnawake

Oh man, this thread is pure win.
Absolutely fantastic stuff. So want those female commissars.

In honour of these truely stunning Pretorians i have reworked the words of Men of Harlech.



Men of Dakka, paint to glory   
Tournaments are hov'ring o'er ye,
Unpainted minis stand before ye,
Hear ye not their call?
At your sloth they seem to wonder;
Rend the plastic sprues asunder,
Let the rattle-can's deaf'ning thunder
Stir your very soul
Sharp knives brightly gleaming
Flash and mould lines cleaning
Released from sprue and set with glue
A mammoth task it seems
Squads from every side assailing,
Forward press with heart unfailing,
'Till miniatures learn with quailing,
Dakka ne'er can yield!

Thou, who noble Dakka wrongest,
Know that hobby's cause is strongest
Painting lists may last the longest,
Ending but with death!
Dakka countless hosts can ready
Dakka holding paintbrush steady
Dakka no detail too petty
Gaming is in her breath.
See, they now are painted
Varnished lest the job be tainted
In cases pack'd foam layers stack'd
Our work to wear denying.
With long and hard earned cash we bought them
We have in time by toil wrought them
For love of gaming hither brought them
Dakka wins the field.

 theCrowe wrote:
In honour of these truely stunning Pretorians i have reworked the words of Men of Harlech.



Men of Dakka, paint to glory   
Tournaments are hov'ring o'er ye,
Unpainted minis stand before ye,
Hear ye not their call?
At your sloth they seem to wonder;
Rend the plastic sprues asunder,
Let the rattle-can's deaf'ning thunder
Stir your very soul
Sharp knives brightly gleaming
Flash and mould lines cleaning
Released from sprue and set with glue
A mammoth task it seems
Squads from every side assailing,
Forward press with heart unfailing,
'Till miniatures learn with quailing,
Dakka ne'er can yield!

Thou, who noble Dakka wrongest,
Know that hobby's cause is strongest
Painting lists may last the longest,
Ending but with death!
Dakka countless hosts can ready
Dakka holding paintbrush steady
Dakka no detail too petty
Gaming is in her breath.
See, they now are painted
Varnished lest the job be tainted
In cases pack'd foam layers stack'd
Our work to wear denying.
With long and hard earned cash we bought them
We have in time by toil wrought them
For love of gaming hither brought them
Dakka wins the field.

Bravo! That is brilliant!

Holy just wow what an amazing army love the paintwork on these guys and the conversions just awesome


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Holy just wow what an amazing army love the paintwork on these guys and the conversions just awesome

theCrowe- you are among the most awesome people in this world.

You probably already knew that.

Aw shucks, thanks.
To quote Garth from Waynes world: I like to play.

Awesome job on the army. It's a joy to behold.

So much love for all your work here, great, great stuff.