Monday 25 April 2016

Navigator and Company

 Thanks to both the Lead Painters League and the very inspiring Emporium of Rogue Dreams I actually managed to paint and repaint almost all of my human Rogue Trader miniatures that I've had for 25 years.

Here's my Navigator and his crew of technicians, soldiers and mercenaries.
From left to right: programmer, trooper, battledroid, navigator, pilot.
Mechanic, cook, spacer, astropath and assassin.
The troopers including a medic
Still to be painted is another medic on Vincent Blackshadow bike and my old rhino APC.

These days on the interwebs there are two particular pages that I find really inspiring.
the Lead Adventure Forum, with the annual Lead Painters League and the Emporium of Rogue Dreams facebookpage.
The Lead adventure over the years has become a huge source of anything miniatures related and the administrators have managed to keep it a very friendly and stimulating place. 

The Emporium is a page frequented by a select crowd of gentlemen connoisseurs and it's all about Rogue Trader. A sort of separatist movement that broke free from the Oldhammer FB page. The latter started out as something great but kind of collapsed due to popularity and the mass of people showing off ebay acquisitions, trying to sell things and asking continiously that damned question 'is this oldhammer?'. Boring as hell!
The Emporium Rogue Dreams is something else: painted miniatures, both vintage and new but in style. Obscure references to 2000AD and Dune. A group of people who really enjoy this particular niche of gamer-culture and who each have their own, very personal take on the WH40K universe, as if any armylist after 1992 never happened. Slightly elitist or masonic one could say. I would prefer describing it as indy or underground with a very creative approach and all for the better. 
Usually I never talk about the page as I have a deep fear that too much exposure may ruin it all. Having lived and survived the collapse of Frothers Unite and witnessed the TMP Wars, I know the disillusion and the bad taste in your mouth after the meltdown and collapse of a forum. 
So while I happily post my painted miniatures on the oldhammer page or other forums for the instant gratification of free likes, I post on the Emporium because I actually really care to show my stuff there.