Haul from the Fleamarket at the local Wargames Club

Fleamarket at the local Wargames Club in November. I always find some nice old stuff. (Yes, late, but at least I took photos.)

I had seen these Warhammer Wood Elf Warhawk Riders before but really believed they were from the early nineties because the riders are very small. My memory deceived me, they are old but not that old. I finally found them in a Games Workshop catalog from 1997 (but not in earlier catalogues). The horses below them are from Minifigs, Aureola Rococo Series, (ARH4 Knights Silver Rose Horse). Sadly no riders. And a cave troll from Lord of the Rings (GW).

These unicorns and riders are also from Minifigs, Aureola Rococo,  Mortals & Male Warriors (ARXC1, the horse ARH5). All a little bit damaged but nothing that can't be fixed. I think they make good companions to Brandor the Avenger, they look very similar. Unicorns where a thing back then. Two ogre spearmen without weapons from Ral Partha (02-149) and some Chainmail Gnolls.

Plastic Undead Chariots (Warhammer?) bought from someone who had about 20 pieces of them on his table. Or more.

And a sci-fi bridge from Mutant Chronicles for my invisible and still "undefined" sci-fi project. 

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. "

Brandors Archers are ready

With the news on here the whole day, it's gotten really hard to focus on anything else. Programming is also very difficult for me at the moment because all the time I have the feeling that I am missing something. I really have to force myself to stop constantly following the news. Seems that I'm still hoping for a spontaneous change in the situation that will end the madness.

However, one thing is clear. After what has happened during the last days we will probably not be able to find our way back to that (relative) calm in which we made ourselves so comfortable. (Here in Europe) We must not again succumb to the illusion that our old enemy, the Soviet Union, is really gone. It was only sleeping. And so were we.

Well, besides that, by working a little bit on miniatures every evening, I still managed to get something done. Brandor's archers are ready, 31 men in all.

Next come these figures, which need a repaint and repair. They also will be part of Brandors Avengers. Most of the minis are so called 'Forest Warriors' from the World of Greyhawk series made by Minifigs. Meant as a kind of wood elves I believe. Even though some of them look more like Aztecs don't they? But I think in the 70's an 'exotic look' was enough to be seen as a fantasy figure.  Maybe also in real life.

These gentlemen are bandits who once followed a certain 'Robin Hood' on his crusade against the establishment. (Figures by Hinchcliffe). According to the Lost Minis Wiki, they were also sold as playing pieces for a boardgame.

I have not yet been able to identify these two guys. Any ideas?

The Always Forwards Hobby-Strategy

In a comment to my last post Maudlin Jack Tar wrote ' I've never seen so many of these figures together in one place!"

Somehow I needed some days to see what that really means. It's so right. Who, back in the early days when these minis came out, bought so much fantasy miniatures? Nobody had something like that, fantasy wargaming was not a big thing. And later, in the 80's, people had different miniatures I think. From Ral Partha, Grenadier or Citadel(?). 

So someone really took the bull by the horns, right?

I don't know how the collection once was build up and I can't speak for the previous owner. As for me: I'm not rich. The opposite is the case. In fact, I got these old figures so dirt cheap that you would fall out of your chair if I told you how cheap they were. You could have dinner with your wife in a restaurant for what I gave. But it wouldn't be enough for a second time. OK, I heard you falling...

So I just grabbed an incredibly good opportunity. And that's the strategy I follow for while now.

In the past I have observed again and again that even people who - based on their financially situation - had the chance to get ahead more easily in their hobby (or other things) but always just plan, talk, hesitate, hesitate and then do nothing. They have this one quirk: they can't decide. These are people who could sometimes purchase anything they say they want or need for their favorite project with the money they can easily spare in just a single month. But then always just talk about it, so that in the end nothing ever happens.

At some point I realized that hesitation is nonsense.

To be honest, the things that we need for our hobby, for example, are actually not out of reach for most of us. I have therefore decided for myself that I will seize a good opportunity if there is one.

However, sometimes you have to take a risk. As a (nearly former because I'm about to give that up) trader - I'm maybe a little more used to jumping in at the deep end and saying "yeah, give me the three boxes." And don't let me be bothered by the fact that some deals come with a bit of junk.

I did that again a few days ago. I was offered a large stock of old moulds still in their original packaging and I bought them all. I will take some for my collection to exchange existing used ones for good new ones and the others I will probably sell and get most of my money back, if not more. 

Collectors have always done this. They take advantage of the fact that most people are afraid of the risk of a bulk purchase. And they don't shy away from the effort of selling the surplus again or using it as barter goods. Some collections can only be completed in this way because if you are waiting to buy things individually without 'risk', you may be looking for forever.

By the way, not that the impression arises that I would like to seek some kind of absolution for my purchases here because I said in my "Mission" that I would like to go the cheapest way possible. Not at all, I only want to explain that I am currently pursuing a kind of 'forward strategy' and that it seems to be working. And it also works in other areas of life, I've found.

The Great Reinforcement - Box 2 - Woodelves, Hobgoblins, pig-faced Orcs and Smurf-Elves

Here are the contents of the second box from my big figure purchase. With both boxes, my fantasy collection has grown by the enormous amount of 465 miniatures and the number of figures for the project has now exceeded the mark of 1000 pieces.

You could say "stop, that's enough". And that would be true. That was my first thought too. But then I decided that it would be foolish to say that because I wouldn't stick to it anyway (I know myself). And secondly, it's still possible to get old treasures at the moment for a reasonable price sometimes. That will become harder and harder. I've watched the prices for classic miniatures and other old Wargaming and RPG stuff rising like nothing else in the past few years. So I keep on looking.

The miniatures now have to be restored and partially repaired. I think I'll save myself the stripping of the old paint this time, it's just too much effort. I hope the existing paint layer turns out to be a usable foundation.

You could already see some of them in my blogpost from Monday. Maybe you remember the archers, which I was able to reinforce during my 'time travel experience'. They once were 3 miniatures hopeless alone and are now 30 pieces strong, a fairly large unit.

These hobgoblins complement the Black Baron miniatures I found last August. If you think that they look a little bit weird: the design is based on the illustration in the first D&D Monster Manual form 1977. So this is how D&D-Hobgoblins originally looked like...!

Ahh...pig-faced Orcs, also an early D&D design. Everybody should have some, no household is complete without them.

Orcs in the background but what's that in the foreground? Smurf-Elves?

I went down the rabbit hole almost to the beginning with this purchase. You can hardly go much further back in time. In this post here on the blog 'Where the sea pours out' we can see that the the hobgoblins were already available in June 1977 when Minifigs announced them in the Battle for Wargamers magazine. The pig-faced orcs were available in 1978. 

Perfect timing, it seems the TSR and Minifigs worked hand in hand. The D&D Monster Handbook was released in 1977 and miniatures based on drawings in that book are produced and sold in June of the same year. In those days Minifigs had the sole rights to produce figures under the D&D label and at that moment in time they were somehow at the forefront of the fantasy hype to come...

(By the way, has anyone seen miniatures from this collection in action anywhere, does anyone know who the previous owner was? From the rest I've seen during the sales, the owner was a very busy wargamer. He had big armies for the ECW,  7YW, Romans, Greeks, Persians, also medieval knights and armies for the Malburian age. Old school miniatures, armies for both or more sides or nations. What was sold must have been about 10-15.000 miniatures, if not more. Nearly everything painted, the pike & shot minis often based in groups of 4. I don't believe that nobody has ever seen them.)

The Great Reinforcement - Box 1 - A lot of stuff from the "World of Greyhawk"

As already mentioned, I haven't painted or built much in the past few months, but of course I haven't forgotten my hobby. Late last year I came across a number of online auctions from a dealer I know who had bought up a very large Wargaming collection and was selling it in bulk. And among them were two boxes with fantasy miniatures. Luckily nobody had discovered these offers and so I was able to acquire them without having to fight over it.

And here are the contents of the first box. Most of them seem to be figures from Minifigs 'World of Greyhawk' series released around 1980.

Of course I checked it and found out that you can actually still buy some of the figures. (Or again...?) But the whole nature of the mentioned collection as well as the very old-fashioned paint job and the practically 'antique' grass on the bases suggests that these are actually very old figures. 

A first look at the content. Fortunately, they came
all in large groups and not just single figures.
The legacy of a wargamer.

Hmm what is that? Elves with blowguns?

More men for Brandors avengers?

Barbarians. If you still have doubts about when they were designed,
check out the haircuts...

Nice, I always wanted to add some amazons.
Or are these just female barbarians?

We can have nice things

Whenever we came home from a convention, we had fun sifting through the treasures we had found. We always did that and normally sat together in a group and talked for a while about everything we saw and what we are planning to do with our new acquisitions.

There was no convention for us this year, everything was canceled. So, to compensate that a little bit, I took another trip to the shop I wrote about before. And this is what I found:

Looks like the stuff I usually take home with me. Because, whenever possible, I always rummage through the boxes with the old and dusty stuff. Not so much to look for cheap things, it's more like a treasure hunt for me. Finding the unexpected is more exciting than choosing something from new products. If it is a treasure is of course a matter of opinion, but my fantasy world is a little more colorful again.

(The blister with the Future Warriors in the middle doesn't quite fit into the picture. From time to time I pick up material for a SciFi project that is slowly taking shape. )

I was really lucky with the dragon, because that's exactly the one I've always wanted to have because it has a nice action pose, very different from most of the dragons that you usually find. (width about 30cm, lenght 21cm)

The cardboard kit unfortunately only contains the middle floor of a three-story building, but I hope I can add the rest by myself (scan, adapt and print) or convert the whole thing into a single building. 

In the post this morning : Black Baron Hobgoblins!

In January I wrote that the Hobgoblins from the Black Baron range would fit into my project too - if they would still be produced. Today they are here. Found them online by chance and bought them right away. 

This is how foam looks like after more than thirty years...

Despite their age, the figures are in excellent condition. Only the standard bearer is damaged but that can be fixed.

Strange looking creatures.The modeling is nice, but a bit rough, a little bit like a woodcut. If you look very close it's possible to "see" the modelling process.

The Original Box

While looking at the minis, I noticed a little problem with my concept. If I use groups of miniatures in my fantasy game that are so jumbled up and that I cannot expand into larger armies or regiments because they are so old and no longer available, I should refrain from making rules for "races" . Instead, I should just create a simple system of classes or qualities.

By race rules I mean: Orcs do this but hate that, Dwarves hate Elves, the Undead never run away and such. This naturally spices things up and can lead to special events or unpredictable behavior. But it also ties miniatures to a certain behavior or "fate". And do I want that?

Progress report : Isenstein archers

Imperial Archers from 'good old' Warhammer Fantasy make up the first unit of Isenstein.

The archer is a Citadel/Warhammer model from the mid 90s. In the annual catalog from 1995/96 it is the archer No. 4. Back then, every piece from the Warhammer range had an order number and it was possible to order exactly the minis you wanted. It was also possible to order every single piece, loose arms, parts from warmachines or monsters. To me that was the golden age of Games Workshop.

I always hated the slotta bases with the diagonal openings so I mounted the archers straight on the square base. Means pinching off the holder bar at the bottom and filing the underside of the feet. The gap in the base was closed with an matchstick glued in place.

The holder bar shows something interesting. The figure is named 'FORSTJAEGER'. That is a pseudo german word because 'Forst' means wood and 'Jaeger' is the word for hunter but this combination of both words is not eligible in german. So the real meaning could be a 'forest ranger' but I can't remember that the empire had any unit like this. Forest rangers seemed to be more a wood-elven thing.

Something is missing in the linup above. A Lord who has only a unit of archers and nothing else would be in trouble soon. At the moment I don't know what minis I can add to make the picture complete.

The only ones I have that seem to fit are henchmen from Advanced Heroquest that I once bought loose on a wargamer flea market. In fact there is one here in the area twice a year and usually you can buy a lot of Warhammer and Games Workshop stuff there. Too bad. If the event comes back my fantasy armies will nearly be ready I think.

Don't know if I should use them in this context. I do not want to put the light blue color on them, a color scheme like this here would suit them better.

By the way, they share the same fate that a lot of plastic miniatures face : The material is a little bit brittle nowadays. The bodies are still ok but the weapons are not so durable anymore.

Brandor the Avenger is back

Let's go on with the strange things we can't let go.  I start the new year with another 'blast from the past'.

This is - as far as I remember - the very first fantasy miniature that I ever bought in my life. (In the shop that I mentioned in the last post.) And I am happy that I still have it after all the years so that I can give this hero a second chance to 'be someone'.

I never knew who was the producer and if the mini belonged to a kind of 'army' or something like that. But thanks to the Lost minis wiki I finally identified him.

It's the 'Super Hero on horse' (Nr. B20) from a british company named 'Borbur Enterprises' that had a fantasy line under the name 'Black Baron'. The company existed from 1975 to 2006 but according to the wiki their fantasy line was stopped in 1987. Funny, sold alone as B20 the hero's horse is named correctly a unicorn.

(By the way: there is an interesting piece about Black Baron on the 'Dear Tony Blair' Blog.)

The wiki also says that Stone Mountain Miniatures in the U.S. still produces Black Baron figures, but the fantasy line seems not be in production any more. And if we look at the minis in the wiki, we can see that most of the old figures have a special charm but not much market value anymore. Ok, I would buy the Winged Demon (B14), the War Chariot (B43) does not look bad and a band of that hobgoblins would also easily find a place to live in Retrosia. But thats me and maybe a handfull of other people around the world. No reason to dig out the moulds again.

The super hero after cleaning the old paint off. The Airfix paints I used back then were applied to thick and the white 'horse' was to yellow now to be acceptable anymore.

As you can see above the original miniature ist shown with a lance but I could swear that my copy came with the double ax shown in the photo (that I made a while ago). It's sad, but Brandor - so his new name - finally got a smaller axe because by mistake I used the original one with another mini and I cannot change it back because I cut the handle. So the weapon on my figure is not the original, but his shield, regardless of how often it fell off the mini, is still there after all the years and keeps the old paint.

(Note to myself : stuff like that goes together into a zip bag so that pieces won't get lost or used elsewhere...)

Riding of the painting table for new adventures...

...oh, wait, this way.

Now I have a leader for 'Brandors Avengers', a group like Robin Hood and his merry men, living in the free countrys on the border of the empire. Their home will be an old border fortress near to a river:  Orkford Castle.

A REAL time travel experience: Going back to 1987 simply by car (no DeLorean involved...)

One afternoon last November (2019) I got in the car and drove back to the year 1986 with no problems. Or was it 1987? I made a little trip and visited the shop where I bought my very first fantasy miniatures. The shop has a different name today and also has moved, but it's still the same company. And although they now actually operate a different business, there are still remnants of the no longer actively operated gaming and miniature business to be found in a corner of the shop. (Yes, strange but true...)

What I found was a big surprise: I found the matching figures for the wood elves from Essex Miniatures of which I only bought a few pieces in 1986/87 in the same shop. Packed in the same blue blisters as I used to know them.

 

When I told the shop assistant (not the owner but also an expert in the hobby) that I had bought figures from that series from them decades ago, he told me straight away that these blisters had been lying around since that time. And the blisters did look old, the outside was crushed and the foam inside had seen to much sunlight.

Back home and back in 2019 and I did a little research. Company reports published on the Internet showed me that the address on the back of the blisters was only used by the manufacturer (Essex) until 1995. After that they moved. And the shop I'm talking about also had a kind of 'business interruption' between 1989 and 1995. They did not run a retail shop during that period. (They came back as a producer of their own line of miniatures, but thats a different story.)

So it is very likely that the photos above actually show exactly the blisters that were hanging on the hook right next to my first fantasy miniatures when I bought them.

Seriously, I have absolutely no doubt: These minis were waiting for me for over thirty years! I am sure, I will never get that close to the feeling of real time travel again. A year later and I am still extremely happy that I made the trip.

The old group of wood elfs was always much too small to form a real unit and therefore didn't really fit in anywhere. Thats over now.  They will be part of a small army of brigands : Brandors Avengers.

This block of lead, that I also found, is of course not a wood elf but what was a "giant" back then. It is the Essex figure Q83 "Giant", modeled by Bob Olley. With its rather low height of just 50mm probably too small to be a giant in a modern game. But nice, a bit weird and I really like it. Very 'old school'.

 

Above's another look into the past: In the "Agamemnon" magazine No. 2 from 1986 I found the announcement of the wood elves shown above (FN103-FN107). Also look out at the masterpieces of modeling art from Citadel on the right. Even big ones start out small.

This is how some hobby magazines used to look like. You didn't had photos of everything and if you weren't buying in a store, you often would order the 'Dwarf with sword', 'Three different wood elf archers' and the 'Adventurer number five with a dagger' from a simple list and then you were really curious to see what you would get. Back then, people still had the courage to take little 'risks', don't they? 

By the way: As I wrote in a previous post, Essex has stayed true to itself and is still producing its old fantasy miniatures.

And now : Guess where I will go 'shopping', when the Corona-Lockdown is over...