Way back in the day I used to paint gaming miniatures.
Unfortunately, over time my minis have begun to deteriorate due to humidity, dust and general wear. So before they completely disintegrate, I thought I’d share them w/ y’all.
With a single exception, all of these figures were cast in lead before Congress outlawed its use when making them, which probably makes them illegal…
Babes and Elves:
Elvish Knight:
Personalities:
A Colorful Group:
Doomed Investigators:
The Big Guys:
Now this guy is special. This is Grenadier’s Chaos Dragon, part of the Dragon Lords line.
For a full year in 1985, Grenadier released a dragon a month in this series. The Swamp Dragon, the Iron Dragon, the Cliff Dragon etc. Each mini came w/ a little altar and a sheet of D@D game statistics.
The Chaos Dragon was released in March or April of that year.
At the time, I was collecting them all. This is the only one to have survived. I lost the altar and the game stats, but somehow I still have the box.
He’s just about 23 years old, give or take. His tail once broke off, but he’s in pretty good shape otherwise.
I used to have a collection of those figures. The giant is the one I remember. That was some time ago. It looks like the ones you have, have survived rather well. I don’t believe any of the figures I had survived. I think I gave most of them to a freind who gamed AD&D. It sure does bring back some memories. Thanks for posting.
For work done nearly a quarter of a century ago, they look excellent. Did you use the old Ral Patha acrylic paints or enamels? I used to play AD&D and MERP (Rolemaster) a lot in those days and figures were an integral part of the gameplay.
My wife paints miniatures and figures. Whilst rumaging through my cupboard of oddments, I came across a Ral Patha Amythest Dragon and of course the Dragon Lords Wyvern. She loves Dragons so these where snapped up and started immediately. The Amythest Dragon is most impressive, using Reaper accessories to make the vignette, entitled “Magic of the Orb”
I used the Ral Parthe acrylics, they came in those little plastic tubs with snap on lids. We had a group of freinds that played every Sat. afternoon. The dragons you have are very nice.
Wow guys, both of you have some really cool figures. I’ve been looking into trying some warhammer 40k figures. I dont play the game, I just think the pieces are cool. I just dont have enough money right now to buy figures and paint and glue. Someday I’ll try it. I’m really into fantasy stuff so those figures all look great to me.
Heh, yeah they’re pretty old. On the elvish knight, the Steel color on the barding has begun to corrode. If you look closely, you can see that I transfered the blue and white check pattern to the rear of the barding as well, but the underlying corrosion has dulled it to near invisibility… [sigh]
Back then I used acrylic paints manufactured by a company called The Armory (they sold figures and dice markers too) and the Polly S Advanced D&D line of paints. Both are long out of production. Polly S paints were the best, w/ colors like “Slime Green” and my all time favorite “Canine Brown”, which was actually an excellent all around tan color. Looked just like old concrete.
For metallics, I used Testor’s enamels. Acrylic metallics just didn’t give me the same effect.
Thats some pretty nice work there. The heavy drybrush, high contrast style always looks great in photographs. In the first photo, what did she make the base/floor from?
Highlights on the orb are nice too. What paints did she use?
I’ve been looking at those 40K figures too. I went to a game shop for the first time in years last week, and I saw some Tau(?) minis and vehicles that looked sweet.
I’ve been seeing a lot of nice mini dios lately too, like this one by bultenibo in sci-fi:
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…so I’ve been jonesing to paint me some minis lately. Maybe I’ll do a WIP.
A WIP would be awesome. I’d love to see how you do it. I’m confused though. I was looking up D&D miniatures on the official site and it says all the figures are assembled and painted. Is this a change from the way things used to be? Or are there different companie that do it differently. Cause I like the WH40K stuff but I actually prefer the fantasy stuff in D&D.
Ok, waaaay back in the day gaming minis were cast in lead. They were sold unpainted by various companies, most notably Grenadier and Ral Partha. They were very inexpensive; w/ the exception of the chaos dragon, not one of the above figures cost me more than $1.50.
Then in the early ‘90s, Congress outlawed the use of lead in minis as an environmental hazard. Mini companies had to come up w/ new metals to cast the figures in. This caused the price of minis to go up by about 300%. Since part of the attraction of painting these was how cheap they were, a lot of people stopped buying them.
Grenadier and Ral Partha didn’t do so well…
Games Workshop (the makers of 40K) however, had always cast their minis in a non-lead metals, and had always been expensive. When the Congressional ban came down, GW was relatively unaffected. They basically kept the market alive.
When Wizards of the Coast released D@D 3rd edition in 2001, they wanted in on the mini market that GW had made. They began producing a game called (imaginatively) “D@D Miniatures”, and began selling poorly painted collectible vinyl game figures to support the game. Those are the ones you found.
Did that help, or did I just add to the confusion? [:D]
When I’m in the mood to paint some, I find them here:
That really does help. I found a website selling the minatures and they were only a couple of bucks for the new ones that were uncommon so I wondered how metal figures were so cheap. I’ll look at that site.
Thanks Eddie. Can I call you that? FE? Mr. Fingers? Which would you prefer? [swg]
Yeah, still gaming after all these years. That’s my other expensive hobby, although I haven’t actually painted a mini in 12 years or so. Bought some new figures just last month w/ the intention of trying it again, but cleaning and priming them is as far as I’ve gotten…
I have not pen and paper gamed for a number of years now. There are four of us from the original group, all 40 somethings who meet each month for LAN RPG fun. Our game of flavour is the Never Winters Night series (AD&D)
However, just yesterday, Graham suggested a Runequest quick scenario at a pub Sunday session. Looking forward to that!
Cosmic, you can call me that, but my real name is…Paul.
Call of Cthulhu was another fave roleplayin’ game of mine, but I was always goin’ insane! There was a range of figures for this game, not sure if they’re still bein’ produced now though. [:)]
Well Paul, you may call me John. It seems only proper.
CoC and Runequest. [8D] You guys have good taste, they are the same basic rule set.
I run a CoC game every year for Halloween (at least, every year I can talk people into it [:D] ). If you guys are ever in the States, consider yourself invited.
Man I envy you guys. I wish I had some people to play these games with. It would be fun. My friends all moved away to different states for college, like permanantly, and I’ve always been so slow to make friends that the only person since then I’ve met and talk to is my girlfriend. But I am so picking up some of these minis to try painting.
About … 7 years ago my friend and I started playing Warhammer 40K. Stopped playing it around freshman, maybe Junior year in high school. I still have all 4 of my armies, and he still has his one army. I had a Tau army, Ultramarine, Dark Angels, and Tyranid army. I’ve been thinking about getting them out and painting some of the unpainted ones in between paint and gluing times on the models.
If any of you guys want some just to paint and dink around with, PM me and i’ll send them to ya for free. I’ll post some pics so you can see what they are. I have no use for them anymore and don’t ever see myself playing it again.
Nice job, I still have some of those figures around somewhere. I had a huge collection I started around 5th grade. I’d love to get the CoC figures and do them up again, they were always my favorites.
I found a store while on vacation last year that had a nice selection of figures and I bought several. Here are a couple I’ve finished.
