Monday 18 November 2013

The Dave Perry collection: Chaos Space Marines part 2

In my first review of former 'Eavy Metal 'eavyweight Dave Perry's Chaos Space Marines I focussed on his Plague Marines; this week it's the turn of Khorne and the Iron Warriors. Bloooood! Deaaaaath!

Khorne


Monday 11 November 2013

The Bryan Ansell collection: Bob Olley's undead

There are many figures that Bob Olley produced for Citadel/Iron Claw back in the day that I absolutely love, and are among some of my favourite figures from that time. But there are also some which I...don't...quite...like...so...much...These undead fall into that second category. But hey, each to his/her own and it would be wrong of me not to post these just because of my personal tastes. So here goes:


Friday 8 November 2013

The Bryan Ansell collection: Night Horrors (Citadel Miniatures)

The "Night Horrors" range is one of my personal favourites and was released in the late 1980s, presumably to tie in with Games Workshop's Call of Cthulhu games license. It is one of those ranges that is very difficult to complete, partly due to the number of figures it includes, but mainly due to it having a small number of figures which for one reason or another are very difficult to acquire.

The range appeared in various adverts and mail order flyers but has never been seen painted. To date I have managed to find approximately a quarter of the range in Bryan's collection, some of which have very imaginative colour schemes!


Thursday 7 November 2013

Mining the Ansell horde: unseen unreleased Eltharion the High Elf

Following in the footsteps of the unreleased Rogue Trader adventurers, the latest previously unseen unreleased figure in Bryan Ansell's collection dates back to the early 1990's: Eltharion the High Elf. This figure is still available from Games Workshop but was originally a Marauder sculpt. Here's the advert for Eltharion riding Stormwing from the Citadel catalogue 3 (the Green Catalogue) from 1992 (image from the Stuff of Legends):


The variant I've discovered in Bryan's collection is a variant of Eltharion himself; Bryan's Stormwing figure is identical to the released version. The unreleased Eltharion is missing the high-backed "saddle" but gains a rather magnificent cloak:


Wednesday 6 November 2013

The Bryan Ansell collection: Warhammer 40k Epic scale Titans

Unless my memory is failing, it occurred to me that I haven't as yet blogged about any of the painted Epic scale figures in Bryan's collection. I'll start setting that to rights today with some of Bryan's Epic Titans. I've also included images from back issues of White Dwarf that illustrate these Titans in various battle scenes or adverts.


Monday 4 November 2013

The Bryan Ansell collection: Rogue Trader Eldar (Citadel Miniatures)

Last month I blogged about the wonderfully-painted Eldar in Dave Perry's collection, many of which date back to the original Eldar of the Rogue Trader period. This months kicks off with yet more Eldar, this time some of the ones from Bryan Ansell's collection. I number of these figures appeared in the Rogue Trader rulebook and the Book of the Astronomican.

What I particularly like about these Eldar is their colour schemes, which really "pop." You will notice that some of them are clearly unfinished, having had just a base coat applied. I'm guessing that these figures either formed part of a step-by-step painting guide, or else were part of a larger force destined to be photographed, with time pressures meaning that they faded into the background and didn't need to be finished off to high standard.

Unreleased Rogue Trader Trooper: another mystery solved

Last week I reported on the discovery of an unreleased Rogue Trader era "Trooper" sculpted by Bob Naismith. I also reported previously on a further mysterious figure that can be seen lurking in the background of an image from the original Rogue Trader rulebook. Well, a couple of sharp-eyed readers of this blog have left comments regarding another mysterious figure in the this image, which I completely missed, the "8 ball head", circled below:


It is of course none other than the "trooper" that came to light last week! So a big thank you to those of you who pointed this out; no idea how I missed this one...


Saturday 2 November 2013

The Dave Perry collection: Rogue Trader Eldar part 2

Here is the second installment of Dave Perry's superb Eldar collection. I particularly like Dave's deep and rich oranges on the Fire Dragons. Enjoy!

PS - I've started inserting "read more" breaks into my posts, which I think makes for scanning multiple posts easier. Any feedback would be appreciated.


Friday 1 November 2013

Unreleased Rogue Trader era Trooper (the Bryan Ansell collection)

This is the last of the five unreleased Rogue Trader era adventurer types that I've discovered in Bryan Ansell's collection: