More Olderhammer Dwarfs - The Doughty Dozen Part II

The continuing tales of a pre-slotta dwarf project. 

I was born in the suburbs, into the agony of hope. I was born on a Friday. On the same day in 1974 that Richard Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared. 

It was the same day that Japanese Manga author and writer Masashi Kishimoto was born. 

In November 1974, Democrats made significant gains in the U.S. Congressional mid-term elections, as the Republican Party suffered losses over the Watergate scandal. 

In November 1974, Ron Defeo Jr murdered his parents and four brothers and sisters in their family home in Amityville, Long Island, NY.

In November 1974, the United Nations general assembly granted the Palestinian Liberation Organisation observer status; terrorist bombs blew up pubs in Woolwich and Birmingham and former Chief of Staff of the I.R.A. Sean MacBride won a Nobel Peace Prize. 

'Everything I own' by Ken Boothe was the UK number 1 single.

"Should this be dull green or gloss black edging to the base chaps? Is this Oldhammer??"

Then came toy soldiers. Then girls. Then Rock and Roll. Then work. 

The office blocks' sick yellow glow dulling the stars. 
Following tacked-orange roads home, from the grey neon of the city to the scattered glitter of the suburbs. Then toy soldiers again.

From the Summer of 2009 until the autumn of 2016 I worked on the corner of King Street and Dalling Road in Hammersmith. Number 1 Dalling Road was about 100-yards from my desk. When I used to shop miniatures in the mid-to-late eighties in Hammersmith the Games Workshop store had already moved to King Street, where it was within about 30-seconds walk of the independent “Games World” store. 

The closest Games Workshop store these days is the Warhammer store on the corner of Goldhawk Road and the Chiswick High Road by Stamford Brook station. It’s kinda, sorta where the parliamentary reserves would have been in August 1642 – I’m not sure how many GW stores actually sit on genuine battlefields, I'm sure somebody knows the answer to that question.

I only found out a few years ago through the Oldhammer Facebook page what no. 1 Dalling Road’s history was. To me it was a building that looked like it was built in a hurry by the builders from Fawlty Towers. 

There were various businesses in no. 1 Dalling Road while I worked the day job (terrifying myself simultaneously analysing the finances of three local authorities) – they were mainly immigration advice centres as I recall. The last I remember was the “Bosnia & Herzegovina Community Advice Centre”. 

In my last couple of years it became a yoga club / pole-dancing training centre. Today I believe you can buy this hastily constructed two-story shack that smells of frying from the café next door, for a modest £550k. Rumour has it – O.K. I admit it…I still have contacts at City Hall – that it’s for sale with pre-approved planning permission to make room for what will probably become a couple of million quid’s worth of London-W-postcode accommodation. Trust me - it's not listed and it's not likely to get a blue plaque any time soon. So it may not be there much longer. 

"This two-storey shack can be yours for just half-a-million quids…"

"The bed may look like a weights-bench but it's very comfortable. The all-in-one Bathroom / kitchen requires a little modernization," 

"Multiple red-cloth sky swings come as standard...the ground floor is only over-looked by lots of properties on the opposite side of the road or anyone driving up one of the busiest streets on Planet Earth..."

That’s the somewhat laboured introduction to a pre-slotta dwarf collector’s confession, that even though Gee-Dub had stopped selling their own pre-slotta stuff by then – you could still buy them in Games World on King Street. For around 40 to 50p for one in a blister. And I didn’t. And I loathe myself.

But back to the tin-soldiers. There's a happy-ish ending to this not very interesting story. 

As I said in my last post...I got some.

So here are my first 12 pre-slotta dwarfs, "The Doughty Dozen". The paintjobs are a bit basic but I wanted to get them done and I also didn't want to overdo it on such cheerfully uncomplicated sculpts. 

"Allaric One-Horn of Ravenscar"

Shameless comic-tie-in alert...

Prince Allaric One-Horn is the incompetent hero of my embryonic Oldhammer comic. This miniature has little to do with him (and certainly doesn't bear his raven heraldry) although it did give me the idea of a dwarf noble with a single-horned helmet. Obviously the original miniature had two horns. The truth is that this was one of my most sought-after dwarfs from childhood and I therefore bid on two with the hope to win one. I ended up getting this one for a quid as it was "damaged" figuring that I could easily remodel the missing horn with some wire and some green-stuff. 

I also won the second model, but once they had both arrived I fell in love with the character of this damaged copy and gave away the intact one. He's a beautiful sculpt with a massive tankard on his belt. The shield is a home-made decal copied from an online source which has been painted and washed over with standard GW washes before a lot of Dullcote! I have no idea what his previous owner did to lose the horn as there is absolutely no way it would "snap off", but that's part of his charm.

 "Rodulfr"

  

This is a great sculpt which I believe was used as the base of the "axe over the shoulder" ME33 LOTR dwarfs and at least one later dwarf adventurer. He was a joy to paint. Great detail on the fur and just enough face to have some character. The shield is a decal cut from a larger "Little Big Men Studios" shield design and weathered with my home-made powders. I'll explain in the notes at the bottom of this post.

"Borri - son of Gorin"

Even amongst the later Perry sculpts this is one of my favourites and harks back to a time when miniatures were sculpted by artists who understood what gamers liked to paint. It has no needless fiddly detail, plenty of character and a well-detailed face. I've used a fairly muted palette with the blues supplied by Foundry (the "Union trouser blue" triad) and Vallejo "Blue-Grey". The shield is a detail again cut from a Little Big Men banner decal and weathered with my own powders. In fact...if that is NOT the case with any of the Doughty Dozen I will specify. Seems easier.

  "Snorri - son of Gorin"

Obviously sculpted from the same dolly as Borri, I've made these guys brothers. And why wouldn't you? For the sake of colour theory their genes gave them different hair pigmentation.

"Elfric the Red"

Despite the horrendous weirdness of his helmet - which obviously looks like it was 4:45pm on a Friday and the Andover Arms was calling so no-one could be bothered to finish off the horns...I still enjoyed painting this chap. Mainly because of his massive "please paint me ginger" beard. Yet another huge tankard and just enough belt to not have to paint it "generic belt brown". Yummy.

"Thorek Thrungfleg" 

Thorek came from (what I believe was) the first iteration of Bugman's Rangers. The more knowledgeable and observant amongst you will have noticed that the finial is not the original. I have heard the original called "the horns and hairy scrotum of Bugman" - but for whatever reason it was missing on this model when I acquired it and again I therefore got it for next to nothing. 

There was plenty of room in the metal, sculpted banner to drill in and pin on this hammer and wings from my bitz box. I've used a garish colour scheme on the banner and a muted colour scheme on the dwarf, using the oil wipe-off technique for the buckskin. I paint purple rarely, so genuine thanks and much love to Blue in VT and Darkblade for their advice and help with the cloak.

 "Ulther Tvagorz"

 Although the sculpting of the cloak is superb, this figure has very delicate detailing - such as on the beard - that does not have much depth. Some people like this, and I did find it quite nice not to have to drybrush fifty gradually lightening layers. But it did require a bit of a technique change (as many of these figures did). The cloak is painted in one of my favourite greens Humbrol #88 "Deck Green". It's nice sometimes to be able to paint something without having to mix in Tamiya "flat base".

"Grimnir"

There's not a great deal to say about this guy. He was one of the ones I really wanted from "Heroes for Wargames" (see previous post). I gave him a fairly basic paintjob and I'm not massively happy with the shield. But he is what he is and looks great ranked up with the others.

"Ragnar DenJeger"

Another mini that was a joy to paint, I decided while I was collecting these that I was going to be as muted as possible with the colour schemes. A dull green, against a red-brown beard with leather gloves. This chap has a lovely characterful face and I think the unbleached woollen cap sets him off nicely. It's hard to stop yourself overcooking these but I've done my best!

"Okri Ulfarsson Den Armborst"

I'm not sure why but pre-slotta dwarfs have a lot of bare forearms. I have no idea why so don't ask. I've found there's also several (like this chap) where a beard falls over a fur shirt. I have to admit to finding painting natural looking fur a bit of a challenge. On this chap I'm hoping the expanse of forearm flesh and a shiny bronze helm draws attention elsewhere!

"Loki Svensson-Varag"

Like "Rodulfr", I think one of the ME33 LOTR dwarf poses was based on this guy. I love the massive nose-guard for what I assume is a huge Paul Bonner-sized dwarf nose. I gave the shield a red rim to brighten him up a little and to tie it in with the red in the wolf on the shield design.

"Fimbul Katalhuyk"

To say I hated painting this sculpt would be an understatement. I have two copies of this sculpt, one has a spear broken off at the hand and this one whose spear broke off while being painted. I therefore had to drill out a glove I'd already painted and pin the spear back in. You can tell by the close-ups that it doesn't quite line up properly. But I really couldn't be bothered to remodel the hand for a sculpt I don't particularly care for. Aside from the fragile spear this sculpt suffers a massive helmet which prevents any character in the face; a cloak that has little definition meaning you have to paint it in yourself (heaven forbid) while also being a dwarf who has a moustache and huge sideburns but no actual beard. Perhaps he was modelled on the Mighty, Dark-Winged, Avenging Lord of Chaos. Perhaps someone should check.

And...Next...Some of these?

Shield and Weathering Notes:

Just some notes on the shields as touched on above. Most are details carefully cut out from Little Big Men Studios shield and banner designs. I'm lucky in the fact that a few Christmases ago my family found that LBM decals were a good "stocking filler" for me. To be honest, unlike fridge magnets for football teams I don't support and six calendars they are incredibly welcome.

I've found that they don't age particularly well, and that the cover sheet often becomes catastrophically inseparable from the decal. I've been told that placing them in a bag of rice for several generations sorts this, but my own several-month-long attempts at this have still resulted in around seventy-percent of the decals becoming unusable.

As such I often cut out small details from both shields and decals when they are new to at least get some use from them. If you've never thought to do this, just use nail scissors or an X-Acto blade to cut out the raven or dwarf or rune you need. Then apply according to the instructions. GW Lahmian Medium is fairly decent at sealing them. All decals dry glossy so you usually need several coats of matte medium. I use Testors Dullcote but other matte varnishes are available. Apparently.

With weathering, I make my own powders. I'm a pagan / heathen / infidel from the point of view of some armour specialists. I'd link this post to them but I want to save you two hours reading about pigment powders that you'll never get back. I do fine art and comics too in several mediums, so I understand pigments - but like public sector audit, it's really knowledge that most people in the world really don't need in their life.

I'll post in-depth science stuff at some other point as to why many modelling companies want to convince you to pay lots of dollars for weathering "pigment powders". But I pay £0.80 for an artist chalk pastel and scrape along it with a knife to get powder and then apply at the bottom of cloaks and at the bottom of shields with a really dry Citadel drybrush.

No. I don't seal powders with spray because the spray can act as a carrier and alter the finish or discolour the pigment. Chalk pastels are cheap, and I don't mind reapplying for 10 seconds every couple of years. It takes less time than repainting the whole thing.

I understand that this was a lengthy and unwieldy post. If you made it this far. Thanks for being on the journey. Things aren't great at the mo!

Much love x

  

Where It All Began - The Doughty Dozen Part I

The last time I was out after 11pm was Saturday night in Newark at Bring Out Your Lead 2018. 

Myself and Mrs Street haven’t been out after 11pm for as long as I can remember, but we happened to be out last Friday as she’s going away for a while (not to prison). I wondered as we waited for a midnight cab home if there would be a day when I got a cab home after 11pm and “Holding Back the Years” by Simply Red wasn’t on the cab radio. 

Trust me. It was not that day.

There will also be a day when I blog and I don’t mention the old man.

But it is not this day.

I was struggling with the twelfth member of the pre-slotta unit currently known as "The Doughty Dozen". But I made time yesterday to finish him off. So far so good.

The battle-hardened pre-slotta veterans thus far

I’m sure we all have memories of the first miniatures we bought and painted. My first wargames force was an American Civil War 15mm army by Tabletop Games bought from a shop in Kings’ Cross called “Games People Play”. Rumour has it that Rick Priestley may have sculpted some of the wagons, but hey…*citation needed.

Memories come flooding back *sniff* check out those identical horses

I painted those blues and greys and threw them across flocked polystyrene boards and threw dice to decide whether slavery was a good idea or not. I only sold them about 5 or 6 years ago after many years of games (because by not gaming with your painted chaps you are robbing them of their soul) and I really needed to downsize to 6mm.

So how did I get from my ACW obsession to Oldhammer when it was "Nowhammer"? 

In the latter part of 1986 (or maybe early 1987), partly due to the Fighting Fantasy books, and Krull and Hawk the Slayer on VHS, I was crazy on Fantasy. One Saturday my dad took me to the much missed Harrow Model Shop. He often visited on a Saturday afternoon after we had spent the morning doing more boring shopping with mum. 

Anyone who remembers the store will recall how awesome it was to be twelve years old and roaming around its three sections. Over to the left was the model railway and scenery section, in the centre was the remote control car, boat and aeroplane section. In between these two was a large Subuteo display where you could almost any team in the known world as long as you didn’t mind them being strangely all the same race.

Finally over to the right was the biggest section, my dad could genuinely dump me in there all day like a crèche and I would still not want to leave when he came back. Plastic model kits of all kinds and scales; paints and sprays from every manufacturer that ever made paint; shelves of boxed wargames of every kind; Car Wars and colour-it-yourself counters and of course miniatures. Lovely lead of all kinds, shapes and sizes, which of course meant a large selection of Citadel.

“Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? Dad can I have this? PLEEEEEASSSSSSSSE”

I waved a blister in front of him. “Dad it’s an Imperial Dwarf Bolt-Thrower!”

“What about this one?” he countered, and showed me a Grenadier Dwarf Giant Crossbow which just happened to be 45p cheaper.

“But dad – this one comes with free bases and look…they have their names on the tabs, this one is called ‘LOADER’”

I gave him my best on the verge of heartbreak look, I’d learnt it from our pet Labrador who three minutes after eating a leg of lamb could convince you he hadn’t eaten in a week.

He looked at it for a little while and gave in.

“You’ll paint this tonight.” he said in a way which meant - "You WILL paint this tonight".

When my mum caught up with us in the shop my dad broke the news to her as I flicked through a White Dwarf:

 “Matthew wants to buy and paint dwarfs, we should therefore divert a significant portion of our household income into supporting his desire to buy and paint dwarfs.”

And so it came to be.

I celebrate as dad convinces mum that I should have more dwarfs

As I gazed with eyes like saucers he bought the Dwarf Lords of Legend set (for me) and the Chaos Renegades (for himself). That night we sat at the table with our backs to the TV sharing a lamp. We painted them in enamels and they looked better than anything I’d ever seen. Dad was an experienced mini-painter and showed me how to drybrush chainmail and armour as I sat open-mouthed. Any kind of whiff of turps or white spirit and I’m back there at the table breathing in spirit fumes and passively smoking ten cigarettes. We tend not to mix naked flames and highly flammable liquids these days but this was the mid-eighties before it was dangerous.

And then that Friday he brought me home the book “Heroes For Wargames” by Stuart Parkinson. The greatest book in the entire history of Oldhammer, Games Workshop or basically anything to do with words and pictures. Not bad for a book which Bryan Ansell once told me was basically made up from whatever miniatures they happened to have around the office that day. 

I wonder whose desk the chicken dragon was on?

More beautiful than Micelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2

I pawed through the pages gazing at the full colour plates of classic painted miniatures accompanied by beautiful artwork and Jes Goodwin and John Blanche miniature concept sketches. My favourites of course were the dwarfs – many of which I couldn’t find in the Citadel Journals I owned and never saw in the shops. I always loved the minis but at the time I never saw any in the flesh, and my young-self resolved to track down and acquire some of these minis when I was – like, you know a proper grown up.

Paint your shields Street - no more of this decal nonsense

Of course I never did grow up. But many years later when something called the internet was invented, I realised that the reason I never came across these was that by the time I started my Warhammer career, most of these so called “pre-slottas” were already out of production. Eventually, while I was selling off the majority of my non-dwarf collection a few years I spotted a few on eBay and bought a handful. Back then they were at least fifty-percent cheaper than their slotta counterparts and I picked up seven or eight models for one to two pounds each.

 Later on I bought a collection of Perry dwarfs which by sheer luck came with some twenty-plus “Fantasy Tribes” plus another 20 or so assorted pre-slottas some of which were damaged. Shortly before this year’s Bring Out Your Lead I thought it was high time I started painting some these and so I made a start.

To be continued in part II when we can have a closer look at the legendary “Doughty Dozen”. 

Spoiler alert – they’re not going to be as good as the ones by the studio staff!

P.S. Apart from the first two pictures the rest of the dwarfs in this post are lifted directly from the book "Heroes for Wargames" by Stewart Parkinson (1986 - Paper Tiger). The photos used do not have a painting credit - although I'd be interested to know who did them.

Golden Demon - May 1989

Friday 26th May 1989.

I'm fourteen years old. The same age my Grandad was when he joined the Royal Marines in 1939 - a few short months before WW2 started.

I'm supposed to be having an early night. Long day tomorrow. It's about 9:40pm.

Just another couple of minutes dad.

Ninety-two minutes gone. The ref checks his watch. That should be it.

And then Lukic bowls it out to Dixon, Dixon punts it hopefully forward, Smith takes one touch then flicks it on.

Michael Thomas is charging through the midfield like Forrest Gump, what the &$%£ does he think he's doing?

Somehow Thomas' poor control bounces off Steve Nicol's back, or his arse, or something...I don't know...but it's hit Thomas' knee and sweet Jesus NO. It bounces back into his path and he's into the penalty area. Twelve yards from goal.

"IT'S UP FOR GRABS NOW!..." screams Brian Moore.

And my whole 1989 falls apart.

I was at my parents' place this afternoon for various reasons that are unimportant to those reading. My long suffering mum is still surrounded by my dad's hobby stuff. I count four large WW2 models in the conservatory in various stages of construction. A Mark V Spitfire; some Russian armour; an American half-track and another allied truck of some kind all sprawled out over the furniture of the space my mum would probably like to sit and read in if only there were a few less Tamiya spray cans laying about.

Like any parents, mine keep various things of their kids' around. For me it's usually art pieces - Don Troiani ACW studies and pretty girls from school who posed for me back when I had Michael Hutchence hair and about fifty pounds less weight around the middle.

One strange thing they have kept of mine though is in my mum's glass display cabinet. A large cabinet in the corner of their living room that is full of the tat that she has amassed in around fifty years of marriage. It's a dwarf gun emplacement that always sends me back to that May '89 horror show.

Covered in dust but under there somewhere is the original paint.

The reason I was supposed to be getting an early night that early summer day of 1989 was because I was a finalist at Golden Demon at the Assembly Rooms in Derby the next day. My dad had showed some of my (frankly embarrassing now) painted models to the manager of the Games Workshop store in Harrow which back then was my closest GW store. He encouraged me to enter the Golden Demon regionals (back then there were only a few stores in London) and although there was an under 16s competition my vignette was entered into the adult competition and won.

You can probably see that it's the original Perry dwarf cannon and two of the crew plus the spotter from the old dwarf bolt-thrower. The emplacement is a resin ACW earthwork we picked up somewhere and the non-moulded stones were picked up on the banks of the river Pinn near our home next to the old RAF Uxbridge base.

Dad was very determined that I do all the work myself. Even the bits that these days would have a health and safety officer doing cartwheels.

You'll be able to see that the top of the observation platform is the top of a snotling pump wagon. We had about a dozen as my dad once wanted to build a six story snotling siege tower (yes really). The logs of the tower and ladder are actually old pieces of plastic sprue. Dad showed me how to carve them into pointed logs with a big £&$^%ing sharp knife and then using a really £!^&ing hot etching tool and a soldering iron - how to carve in wood grain and melt in knots in the logs.

I added on some engineering tools from the old British faithful Essex Miniatures (still going - still awesome) and raided two shields from my poor-man's Kev Adams Man-Mangler attempt. I was done. As an extra addition for the finals dad showed me how to add the (now rather amateurish) fireball. There's a piece of brass rod drilled into the barrel of the cannon and a ball of Milliput placed on the end as the base of a flame-cannon fireball. I scraped thin pieces of sprue to make the licks of "flame". Once painted we tried to cover up how bad it looked with cotton wool which in the intervening thirty years has discoloured somewhat.

So now it's Saturday 27th May 1989. Last night's worst night of my life is forgotten and dad drives me the few miles to Harrow (it doesn't take so long at 5:30am). At the GW store is a free bus to Derby. It's 3 or 4 hours drive and to amuse us they give everyone a set of the GW top trumps. In fact because it's me and dad they give us all six sets. Where are they now? No idea.

My entry in the display cabinet next to a superior piece.

I have nothing but great memories from the day. I had a jacket potato with Red Leicester for lunch (GW Harrow gave us bacon sandwiches on the coach), the tables were amazing. The entries really made you humble, they were that good. And back then acrylics were poor and enamels were dull. If you got good results from those then you were a better man than I was a boy.

There were 80s British haircuts and Def Leppard T-Shirts. That smell from modern wargames shows of leather and no shower was as exciting as to a 14-year-old me as it is disgusting today! Outside there were Viking re-enactment chaps beating the living £uck out of each other.

There are a few items such as the shield, crossbow and whatever I dangled from the flagpole that have since been lost to my mother's "dusting"

My piece that was the most important achievement of my life up to that point (and I had made most bases with Carolyn Murphy) was man-handled by several members of the WD team whose mullets I'd looked at with fear for my entire hobby life thus far. I could tell by one shaking his perm that I wasn't going to get photographed.

One of the original artworks on display that I photographed with my point and click 36-shot camera.

My last memory of the day was watching the Slayer-sword winner (Steve Blunt) picking up at least three trophies. Whoever that skinny guy in glasses was running down the stairs from the gallery to pick up his next trophy...he was like a god to me.

I don't remember getting home. I'm guessing dad got me on the coach and after a long day I probably fell asleep for the 4 hour drive back to Harrow.

I never forgave Michael Thomas. Just so we're clear.

P.S. These photos were taken in the days before digital cameras. Although they have been adjusted in photoshop I still understand that the quality is poor. I have about 35 pics from that GD show and if you want to see them they are in an album in the Oldhammer community. The link below points to the album but if you are not a member of the community you won't be able to view.

Photo album link