Monday 8 July 2019

Once more on the old school miniature train!

And now for something a little different...

For the most part the miniatures you see painted on my blog are my miniatures that I've painted for myself.  The few rare exceptions have been when I've painted a miniature for one of my non-miniature painting friends I'm playing D&D with or when I inevitably lose EVERY painting bet I make with my friend Darren.  Today's entry is the first time I've painted models for anyone I'm not personally gaming with since I left Games Workshop.

On Instagram I follow VintageRPG who produces a lot of content reviewing (mostly) retro-RPG products.  During an exchange about miniatures he asked if I'd be interested in painting up a few older figs for him.  I was more than happy to lay my hands on some models I hadn't seen in decades and see what I could do with them.  So here we go!

The group itself is made up of (from left to right); a Couatl, a Dwarf Cleric, and a Minotaur.
The Couatl was pretty straight forward, but made me realise I don't actually own one myself so I'm going to have to find another one for my own collection at some point.  Also I know the goal was to show off some classic figures to I resisted the urge to add a super-muscular arm and turn this fig into Trogdor The Burninator.
Next up, and my personal favourite of the three, the Dwarf Cleric.
One of the frequent knocks against older RPG models is that they tend to be fairly flat and without much texture to work with.  This Dwarf figure definitely doesn't fall into that and I think between the heavy armour and the fur cloak would like right at home next to any modern Dwarf miniatures.  I'd also like to call out an element on this figure that I'd like to see more of in modern figures; a mace that is studded rather than spiked.  I have two reasons for wanting to see more of this; firstly as a fan of a lot of old school RPG art maces were typically studded not spiked back in the day, and secondly in my experience a lot of smaller spikes don't seem to cast very well or very crisply on modern miniatures.

Lastly, the Minotaur.
This is a really nicely detailed straightforward Minotaur miniature.  I'm generally a proponent of newer non-metal models but I have to say I like this Minotaur more than the one I actually painted for myself when I did my 2017 Monster Manual advent calendar (an idea I think I'm going to bring back this year by the way).  The texturing is again very good and the proportions are well done making for an imposing but not comically gigantic miniature.
Years ago I lost all of my Ral Partha figures in a move so I don't think I'll have more of these vintage figures to show off anytime soon but it sure was fun to do these up.

-Jay

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