New old lead

A couple of recent eBay wins have just surfaced from the vats of fairy power spray and half joined the back of the painting queue like the good citizens they are. Above is the Pirate (yes, another
bloody pirate!) from the original set of Rogue Trader figures.
He's a cool looking dude but appears to have a bucket for a head. The bucket may or may not have a little face on it, I'm still trying to decipher it little lumps and bumps. I'm not going to bother trying to collect all these figs as it'd likely drive me potty! 


The second figure that came out of the goop is this one from the Adventurers range which I did a big post about not so along ago. It says on her tab that she is a citizen but the Adventurers ad describes her as a Psyker. With a pose like that I think we all know that she's a Psyker, the gaming possibilities alone demand this to be the case!

Although this character isn't new I did have him in the soup in order to take his white undercoat off 
( I use black myself). It was then that I noticed a similarity between his gun and the ones that one of the foundry fish men are armed with. The above figure is a Perp from the 2000ad range but doesn't scale well with them at all and I've always suspected he may have originally been meant for something else.

Here you can see the two guns side by side, both have cylindrical bodies with a mechanism on top in a cross shape. The bodies have a chamfered cap with what look like boly holes either side of the barrel. The barrels are again cylindrical with gubbins attached. The whole gun has look of a bottle with added bits. I wonder which came first? Bryan Ansell mentioned the fishmen on the facebook group the othet night and said that either he or Rick (Priestly) had converted them for either playing laserburn or playtesting Rogue Trader so I can only assume that the Perp was from around about the same time. Any mad theories out there?

Just so you don't think I'm teasing here are the to Fishy Xenos with a paint scheme I inadvertently knicked off Cheetor.

While I was doing miniatures jobs I quickly repaired the mace on my Baron Brightgore. When I got him I noticed it was wobbly and during cleaning it broke off altogther.  I simply chopped off the rest of the haft, drilled a hole in the neck of the mace and another one into the handle and glued a piece of plastic rod. Job done. Once he's painted you'll never notice.

I need to do similar jobs with these two models, except I don't have the original parts. And here lies the quandry. Do I try to repair the hatchet job that someone has made or do I take the opportunity to create a unique miniature that adds to, rather than copies, the original? The navigator above, what could he be doing with his raised arm? Should I chop the arm off at the elbow in order to get a more unique pose? Should I take a risk and reposition his head as well?

And this guy. Who decided that the Talisman astronaut looked better without his axe? Should I simply give it back to him? Should I give him a blaster of some sort? A weapon in his existing hand, a dagger perhaps? Decisions, decisions......

Comments

  1. Give the navigator a new hand that looks like he's wagging his finger and saying 'uh uhhh'. Astronaut has to have a blaster added surely!

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  2. Nice post.

    I'll have to give the Fairy Power Spray a try, I've been using a floor cleaner that I'm not 100% happy with.

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    1. I've never used Fairy Power Spray before. I'm currently using Dettol since Mr Muscle Kitchen Cleaner suffered the dreaded 'new and improved formula' which made it crap for stripping paint.

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    2. Highly recommended, the least smelly paint stripper I've used ( I used to use nitro-mors and worried about my plumbing!)

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  3. A veritable treasure trove of possibilities! If you'd prefer an out of the box navigator, I have one I am planning to chop apart...I'd be happy to swap :)

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    1. Well if you are going to chop it up anyway it would only be sensible to swap.

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    2. Do you need it before BOYL or shall I put him in the case? :)

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    3. No hurry, I can wait a couple of weeks :)

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  4. I love bucket head. He's a got a very dynamic pose for the time. All the other Rogue Trader figures are standing around, or pacing about as if they're in need of a hip operation. Bucket head is all action! Next time I glue together a plastic Space Marine, I'm going to try to imitate that pose.

    Here's the likely inspiration for his mantle: http://gijoe.wikia.com/wiki/Bulletman

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  5. Lots of lovely old miniatures, I always wanted to get some ofthe Fishmen but was never able to. Like the Hobgoblin too.

    The guy with a bucket on his head always reminded me of a 40k version of the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. I think the model is a conversion from an old C-seriesC01 fighter with a sword named 'Cedric' http://www.solegends.com/citc/c01fightersc3-01.htm

    As for the guns, that exact style of gun is present on the Space Slann models. If memory serves me right the Judge Dredd Perps were released in about 1986, and the Fishmen were 1986/7 conversion of Fighting Fantasy series Fishmen. So it's possible given the several years development of Rogue Trader that they were made around the same time, but which one is any ones guess.

    There was an article in the First Citadel Compendium in 1983 about using Sci Fi weapons. On page 17 there is a picture in the article of a hand gun that looks quite simliar to the 'bottle' one, and the article was written by Rick Priestly. So It might by that the fishmen were armed first as they are the older models.

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