Cleaning can bring unexpected revelations

These days I made a cleaning test. I took samples from some groups of the newcomers to find out if the paint is easy to strip. And there is a reason for that. Sometimes the old paint definitely does not dissolve and you end up having minis that stay half painted. Horrible to work with...

So I put these guys in paint thinner and forgot about them for more than a week. And I was right to test it beforehand. The male and female barbarians and the dwarf on the top left have kept most of their paint and therefore should not be treated with paint thinner. Now I know which groups I can clean easy and on what figures I have to work on top of the old paint.

Yes, I know, I said that I don't want to strip the paint this time, but working on some of the miniatures I found out that working on old paint that once was applied to thick is not so funny. A lot of the details are lost. I changed my mind on this.

Remember the miniatures I called 'Smurf Elves'? I did so because of the blue skin they have. But now one of them is free of paint and glue I was able to read what's written under the base: "Garrison" and "SS87". According to the StuffofLegends website this is a "Man-goblin with bow and spear" from their Sword & Sorcery range. "Sculpted by the late John Braithwaite and based on the Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian novels" (LostMinisWiki)

Fine, now let's find out what a "Man-Goblin" is and where they appear in the Conan stories... ;-)

The "Orc" has the mark "RAF" and "C." and "1985". I did not believe for a second that the Royal Air Force ever made orc miniatures so the next guess was RAFM miniatures. And I was right, I found them on the LostMinisWiki ( LINK ):

"RAFM originally released this Orcs series as "Legions of Darkness" and they were part of RAFM's "The World of Repauria" setting. This range of 25mm figures featured Orcs & Goblins and used product codes in the 3xxx range. All the models were sculpted by Bob Murch apart from the Chaos Goblins by Stephen Koo. In the UK, Portage Miniatures had the rights to manufacture this range. "