The Space Hobbo - Oldhammer Legacy Warband 2015

OK so it's the time of year when I wake up and try and fulfill my promises. One of my commitment was to model something for the Oldhammer 2015 legacy warband. After painting my transgender Asgard barbarian last year for the 2014 warband (see this and this if you don't get the meaning of it), I had to paint a turquoise pirate for Rogue trader.

I knew I wanted my pirate to be immediately recognisable as coming from Rogue trader so after some thoughts, I went for a plastic marine body from the RTB01box.

Since none of the heads were looking like I wanted, I opted for a plastic modern Space Wolf head (kindly donated by a generous belgian member) and opted for the full 80's way with the help of some putty. I wanted my Space pirate to be a mixture of all those icons below (I hope I'm not teaching you who they are) :

Lemmy Kilmister

Inspiration from comics... the occidental side

Being of an obsessive kind comes in different flavours... spending a lot of time/energy/money on little soldiers is one kind but obsession rarely comes alone...

One of the obsessions that has been accompanying me for as long as modelling has is comic books. I'd even go as far as to say they're 2 sides of a same thirst for escapism.

I was reading Colin's articles about 2000Ad publications and about the Incal and thought I could probably add a few inspirations of mine. The inspiration used to create the Warhammer universe through books and films (Starwars, Alien and many others) is well known but there are plenty of sources that are either not as well known and which have influenced game designers in the past OR new material that can inspire them and most importantly US hobbyists.

I'll take this occasion to share my collection, or at least part of it, with you and I really hope I can give you the will to open some of those. (I'm not posting it to brag or anything but more to let people get the exact references and see what others things I read I didn't mention here).

Now my collection is an atrocious mixture of comics of all sorts and origins (both in time and space) so I'm going to split this review into east and west like in good ol'days. I'll start with the occidental side of the collection based on pieces from Europe (and therefore UK) and the US with a slight southern America detour...

Being french, you'll find that all this is very oriented as all countries don't have the same access to the same titles and the translation issues may also have helped or handicaped some of them getting to France or getting out of it. My point is that I'll comment on what I know of the french versions of the titles (except for a few for which I've had the opportunity to compare with originals).
Not all of those titles will be available abroad depending on where you live but if you ever feel like giving a go at one of them, please do not hesitate to ask me for help/advice.

Since I'm failing at finding a proper order for all this I'll just list things as they appear on the shelves. The way books are placed in the shelves is due to the place available for a good part but I've also tried to keep a certain consistency as you'll see... (I'll be skipping some titles that have little relevance to the kind of models I paint but that doesn't mean one bit they're no good, far from it).

Chaos grav-attack !

Alright, some things get in our way sometimes... when I moved (back in December 2013) to the house  I'm living in right now (and am about to leave), the first model I started with was the dreaded chaos grav-attack.

Being of the obsessive kind, I knew I wanted my grav-attack to look like the original glorious grav-attack designed by Rick Priestley :

Picture from Solegend

And that meant starting on a deodorant stick base.

From Space fleet to Battlefleet gothic ? Part 2

OK, after talking about the previews of "Battle fleet Gothic" in WD119 (1989) in the previous post,  I'd like to develop a bit further on the game itself and how it evolved. The previous post and discussions around it (either on this blog or on the GW specialist Facebook group) have enabled to gather a bit more information on the whole story thanks to  Evo Von Himmel who playtested it at the studio back then and Andy Chambers who supervised the release of battlefleet gothic in its later incarnation.

Evo Von Himmel :

"There's actually a further layer to the game's history. I playtested the 'original' BFG in about 1990, prior to SpaceFleet being released, when I was working at GW.

The rules were incredibly complex, and involved lateral thrust, and protractors(!), from memory. I helped run a demo game of it at the Nottingham store. The version released in 1999 bore little to no relation to the original. 

(...)

From what I remember, the released version of BFG was a total rules re-write. I playtested both it and Confrontation at about the same time. Strange that it took nearly ten years for the new version and Necromunda to be released, and both were changed utterly from what I tested!"

Andy Chambers : "Just to round out the tale a little: When I started at the GW studio in 1990, Richard Halliwell was working on a spaceship game entitled battlefleet gothic. There was all the concept material you've seen, a plastic Imperial ship and a plastic Eldar ship already made for it, I loved the concepts from first sight, but the game was honestly not great and it never got anywhere. Andy Jones and Jervis did spacefleet a few years later to get some use out of the unreleased plastics. I tinkered around with doing a tabletop battle game for spaceships in 40K for a number of years (it started out being card driven), developed it in my own time and eventually managed to persuade studio manager Robin Dews to put it on the schedule. Because I'd always liked the name and I wanted to honour all the preceding work for it I asked that it be called Battlefleet Gothic - an easy sell since there had already been vague disappointment around the studio that the original never happened. I believe the tri-tail Eldar ship was a conversion, I might even still have it somewhere."

We now have a clear view of where the game was heading then and the similarities with confrontation and its rather complex ruleset (released at the same period) is even more surprising.

So how did the game evolve then ? The gamebox contained all gaming material for a quick and easy games playable by a younger audience as a sort of introductory game :

"The times they are a-changin' " or terminators, finecast and Emporium for a change

Always looking to populate my Rogue trader setting with intriguing new inhabitants, I recently fell upon a cheap model on a french trading site...

Yup, that's what it it, a Dark Eldar S-Slyth... in finecast.

Some of the early followers here my remember I have a particular fondness for Snakemen... and my southern brother Captain Crooks recently did a very excellent post to unveil the origins of these creatures (follow his blog, really).

SOOOoooo, having a blister is one thing but having a built model is another. With everything I had heard about the finecast, I was a little nervous about the time I might have to spend on filling voids and all...

Evil space dorfs - punkish squats for Rogue Trader

Xic, Cyke and ... Billy

They're as small as they're mean, their stench is as foul as the colours they wear hurt the eyes... Who are they ? The evil dorfs.

After painting some of Diego's models, I felt like keeping on the community sculpts with these little guys. They are a sub-range of Oakbound miniatures and are designed with the supervision of Chico "not without my bacon" Danks from Oldhammer on a budget.

Together these 2 fellows have designed a growing range of space dwarves (or dorfs) which are evil but not in a chaotic way. This is a very intersting path to explore as chaotic dwarves, however cool they can ben are a known subject whereas mean and bad ones are far more exotic. These Evil dorfs are the kind to cross streets outside zebras, to add beer in their wine and to shoot in the privates.

Rogue trader fishman - Zhar d'uin, piscean prince

After painting a brutal demon of violence and malevolence for last post, I decided to go with something a little more elegant and refined. I've had this piscean warrior model for quite sometime, (actually got it with my Space minotaur) and had yet to make something of him. The model is a fishman based on the original piscean warrior from the first Rogue trader release and sculpted by Diego Superstar Serrate.

picture from Solegend

Now, Diego's version, though inspired by the original, is a lot different in the details. The sculpt is taller, thinner and it has a very noble pose with his hand on the hilt of the sword (instead of holding a boltgun) and its elongated limbs. I'd even go as far as to say I prefer this one to the original (good thing for me since getting my hands on one of the originals would make my wallet bleed).

Khorne Bloodthirster...the Rogue Trader way

Blood thirsters get a lot of attention these days and though the release of mine coincides with those of the latest edition by GW, there is absolutely no link between the 2...

Some time ago, I was having a friendly chat with Diego Serrate on the Oldhammer facebook page and he proposed me to trade some Bloodthister body from the realm of chaos era. The body was missing a left arm and right hand...

Kiss my shiny reddish ass...

After discussing with Diego the potential donors for new arms and hands, Diego kindly proposed me to sculpt a new arm to my liking !
You read that right, a professional sculptor, (and talented with that) offering to sculpt me a custom arm for a model of mine !