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Miniatures for the Mos Eisley Cantina
 Luke Skywalker's entry into the cantina on Mos Eisley is the defining moment of the first Star Wars movie. The scene introduced a universe without definitions. It promised us that everything to come...
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Death Star Chic: The Imperial Navy in 28mm
The first rule of good fiction is to make the audience identify with the villain. When it comes to Star Wars, George Lucas couldn't allow us identify with the morality or outlook of the Imperials --...
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The First Rogue Trader Miniatures
Warhammer 40K may be the most popular tabletop wargame in the world, but it started with a whimper not a bang -- at least in terms of the miniatures. The first murmur came in August 1986, in the...
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The First Rogue Trader Miniatures: Part 2
I have a bad habit when it comes to collecting miniatures. Maybe two bad habits, if you consider collecting miniatures itself to be a bad habit.Let’s say I decide to pursue a certain range of vintage...
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The First Rogue Trader Miniatures: Part 3
This is the third post dedicated to Citadel's first Warhammer 40K miniatures. I, of course, am not the first Oldhammer fan to take up the challenge of painting the rare miniatures in the RT1 range, and...
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Where Did Oldenhammer in Toronto Go?
Attentive readers will have noticed that there was (another) gap of a year during which Oldenhammer-in-Toronto went silent. That's because I am incapable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. To...
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The First Eldar Miniatures in WH40K Rogue Trader
The first Eldar miniatures were sculpted by Jes Goodwin and released by Citadel in September 1987. There were twelve models in the range, which was labeled RTO4 Space Elves and later renumbered to...
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The First Eldar Miniatures: Part 2 - Geriatricus speaks!
Back in my day, we didn't have "Aeldari" or "Asuryani" or even "Eldar". Hear that? Not even Eldar. We had SPACE ELVES. And that was good enough for us. Just plain old Space Elves. We didn't need...
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The First Eldar Miniatures in WH40K Rogue Trader: Part 3
I hope you enjoyed last week's guest post by Geriatricus Maximus. I didn't. What a grouch. For the final installment of my tour through the RTO4 range of original Space Elves, I thought I'd start by...
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Scribblings
For those of you who might be interested in my other writings, I recently had a couple articles published in Watkins Mind, Spirit, Body Magazine. My print article on Zen koans is available in the...
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The War Monster
 I've always wanted to model a War Monster and last January I finally did it.The incitement for this project was reading Saga: Age of Magic (2019) by Alex Buchel and Fred Machu. Saga has been one of my...
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Adeptus Mechanicus Servitors by Bob Olley
I'm high on Bob Olley. My latest foray into his world are two of the 4011 Adeptus Mechanicus Servitors he sculpted in 1989.Painting Olley miniatures is often challenging, but these two were a joy. The...
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Eldar Command Group for 40K Rogue Trader
If there is anything that's cooler than the original RT401 Space Elves released in 1987, it was the RT402 Eldar Command Group released in 1988. With these figures, we see sculptor Jes Goodwin starting...
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Rogue Trader Adventurers from 1988
The RT601 range of Rogue Trader adventurers came out in the Spring of 1988, just months after the 1st edition of Warhammer 40,000 hit the shelves. In my eyes, the range was a crowing achievement: 32...
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Rogue Trader Adventurers: Part 2... Geriatricus Speaks!
You bastards. You have no idea how good you have it today. When I was young in the early '80's, we didn’t have nice rulebooks with full-colour illustrations. Holy Jumping Christ, we barely had rules....
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Rogue Trader Adventurers: Part 3... Forerunners
I am not the first painter to tackle the miniatures in Citadel's RT601 Adventurers range from 1988. Indeed, it's hard to love Rogue Trader and not want to paint some of these incredible models.However,...
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Rogue Trader Adventurers: Part 4... The Art of Bob Naismith
 The 32 miniatures in the RT601 Adventurers range for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader were sculpted by four top-notch artists: Aly Morrison, Mark Copplestone, Jes Goodwin, and Bob Naismith. We have...
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Rogue Trader Adventurers: Part 5... Stargrave
I've always loved Rogue Trader, but the impetus for my recent push to paint all of Citadel's RT601 Adventurers was the publication of Joseph McCullogh's Stargrave (Osprey, 2021).I see Stargrave as the...
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How Many Miniatures Can You Paint in a Year?
I kept track of my output this year and find I painted 135 miniatures in 2024. How was your painting?The last time I kept such careful records was in 2017, when I painted 220 models. The decline is...
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Rogue Trader Space Pirates by Bob Olley
Bob Olley's Iron Claw was an offshoot of Citadel Miniatures operating briefly between 1987 and 1988. Olley operated in a different visual language than all the other sculptors at Games Workshop, which...
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Rogue Trader Space Pirates by Bob Olley: Part 2
Space pirates were a big part of WH40K in its early days. In The Book of the Astronomicon (1988) we learned that eldar, orks, humans and even squats engaged in piracy. That tome also provides a...
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Iron Claw Space Pirates: Part 3... Guest Post by Geriatricus
Modern wargamers make me vomit. Back in the good old days, when we wanted to play Warhammer 40K, we didn't use army lists or codices. Do you know what codices are? The. Plural. Of. Codex. The only...
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Bob Olley's Sanctioned Psyker
Following my tour of Iron Claw's Space Pirates, I have a bonus Bob Olley miniature for fans of his work: one of the fabulous uncatalogued "Sanctioned Psykers" from the Rogue Trader era.Look at that...
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The Crew of the Ghost - Painted Miniatures for Imperial Assault
Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) remains one of the few treasures to be found in the rag-and-bone shop that is Disney's Star Wars franchise.Rebels revisited and reamplified all the treasured themes of the...
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Painted Miniatures for Stargrave
 My recent enthusiasm for Stargrave sparked me to paint some of the models produced by North Star Military Figures. I feel an affinity for North Star, partially because of their relationship with the...
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