Imperium Approved

The other day a gentleman on the Oldhammer Forum pointed out these Rogue Trader stickers on an old japanese robot kit box.

Apparently these stickers were used to promote the game during the early days of the game.

At the time Games Workshop sold model kits from third parties, encouraging to build and kitbash any kind of tank, walker or troop transport you wanted. At least some of these boxes were sold with these stickers stuck on them.

I've been painting these two squads  of  Blue Moon miniatures for the Lead Painters League:  non-Citadel miniatures for my Rogue Trading. Imperium Approved I tell ya!

Imperial Space Marines

Scientist astronauts that looked remarkably like the Prometheus crew, even though I think they were released before the film came out

In the meantime I tracked down a dodgy PDF copy of Chapter Approved, the Book of the Astronomican on google. This was the first 40K/Rogue Trader supplement. I'm still not sure why I never got the book as I did get all the other supplements at the time. Either it had a low print run or possibly I was just weirded out by the cover and inside artwork. Sure they had different standards with art direction and looking back I really love it.
Reading it now for the first time it felt like being fifteen years old again. The armylists are great because they're like more ideas for an army and not anything fixed. With a very open background that inspires to invent your own. Besides it features warbands that got completely forgotten after, like mixed human and eldar pirates, Space Wolves marines that weren't space vikings yet, orks on stolen landspeeders and insane imperial agents.
Exactly what I needed for my Rogue Trader Redux project.

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.

 

Genestealer Cult II, "We foresee a slight problem on planet Tishtrya IV"

I'm finishing my Genestealer Cult after what could be more than fifteen years. The cockroach themed Purestrain genestealers and familiars I already painted last year.
The hybrids are all the Jes Goodwin sculpts, who were clearly innspired by both the Navigator Guild and Harkonnen costumes of  David Lynch's Dune film.

The Brood Brothers, infected human soldiers, with colours loosely based on the Nostromo crew's spacesuits from Alien.
The miniatures are Bob Naismith's Cobalt-1 security troops. Rogue Trader Redux Approved.

Much of the designs for Dune were done by the same people who did Alien, so it all makes sense.  
This group among whom Moebius and H.R. Giger, initially met thanks to Alejandro Jodorowski when they worked on his never released Dune film which could have been he most insane lysergic science fiction film ever made.

My army so far, still missing are inner-circle cultists which will  be Superfigs minions. In the back allied native ratmen scavengers.

(As a complete coincedence and to me by surprise, GW recently released new genestealer hybrids, something I didn't believe and had dismissed as wishful thinking by fanboys until a week before release.)
 

new pictures of old lead

I took some new photographs of old painted lead.

A couple of ambulls

and some orks. I painted them caucasian skin to represent alien space monkeys or skinhead mercenaries.

And a simple conversion of a chaos renegade space marine.

Coming next: Genestealer Cult and Abdul Goldberg

Desert Denizens

A quick update with more Tishtrya IV personalities.
Here's a ganger with power-sword. The figure is an old Grenadier Fantasy Warriors amazon character. The knee-pads and overall dressing sense makes her look more like a 2000AD/Dredd character.
Hey, where's Rey?

A trio of Eldar Raiders securing a neighbourhood.
The bareheaded one got a big part of his '80's mohawk removed.
I preferred the 1990's crusty mullet sported by early ravers and tekno-travellers back in the days. Kind of makes sense for space elves.

I painted some more figs but I submitted them to the Lead Painters League on Lead Adventure, so I can't show them yet. :)

Hard Suits

Some new stuff I painted this week. 
Here is Gerson Aziz, xenobiologist, encountering a sandworm.

A Cobalt-1 miniature without helmet and backpack. 
I've tried out classic astronaut colours, for a more civilian spacesuit look.
The sandworm is an old Trinity Battleground figure. 
Fortunately I got the miniature when they were released because they went out of production soon. 

A squad of renegade marines. I did these conversions many years ago but I only finished painting them this week. The heads of course are classic plastic Imperial Guard. The old Rogue Trader book had a detailed drawing of all components of a power armour suit. It suggested basically that the marine and guard helmets were the same.
From left to right: Morris, Robo, Chuck, Ginn and Dez.

Bob Naismith Spacemen Files

Bob Naismith is one of the original Citadel sculptors and was reponsible for many of the first Warhammer 40.000 Rogue Trader miniatures. Most notably he designed the first Space Marines and also the dreadnoughts. My favorites must be the space pirates. Second hand these miniatures go for crazy prices now, which I refuse to pay. I may be mad but I'm not stupid.  This pic was nicked from the Stuff of Legends.

Fortunately Bob didn't quit sculpting after he left Citadel, in fact he actually made quite a few science fiction miniatures for many others. I'm going to try to list them all here, in no particular order.



More than a decade ago the Cobalt-1 range was self-released, I believe in collaboration with West Wind or Old Glory. The range was discontinued, but fortunately picked up by Black Hat. I really love the retro style powered armour suits and scouts and rebels in the Mercenary range, but the aliens and characters are also very good.

In the meantime a superhero range was sculpted for the SuperFigs game. Most of them classic spandex heroes but some very useful characters too: aliens, robots, high tech soldiers and very useful henchmen squads. At the moment they're available from Old Glory in the USA and in Europe from Old Glury UK on request.

 

A fairly new company is Blue Moon Manufacturing 

The Aliens and Spacemen range started out with a bit trashy 1950's sci-fi aliens and spaceships but recently a whole range of hard-sf mercenaries were added. Recalling Starship Troopers and the original Alien spacesuit designs by Moebius and Cobb and also new powered armoured marines. In Europe available through Old Glory UK, on request.

Speaking of Starship Troopers, Naismith also did the official S.T. miniatures for Mongoose games. Especially the big exosuits are a good alternative for the old Dreadnought Suits. These days the range is available from Rebel Minis, sold as generic SF now.

 

Last but not least, Warlord Games sells the Judge Dredd miniatures, created too by Mongoose for the old Gangs of Mega City One game.
At the time there were also plastic gangers, but they are not available at this moment. 
The ganger characters and perps are great and of course the 2000AD universe was of huge influence on Rogue Trader, so it all makes sense! One of the Grizzly exosuits got recycled as the Dredd Holocaust Suit.

Naismith also did many plastics for many manufacturers. Still available from Em4 Miniatures are the Space Rangers. Originally released in the 1990's by Hobby Games as alternative 'Space Crusade' style monopose space marines.

He also did plastics and metal miniatures for short-lived wargames like Trinity Battleground and Havok.