Hello, with the good wife still away in NYC I am making the most of the painting and blogging time, you will not see this much activity a week from now so lap it up my friends.
As you know I completed my first major project sometime ago, I have still got finish it off some proper photography on this project but it is done, it's sister project was the RT502 - Mercenaries and although I cherry picked and painted 'Old World Jack' and 'Inquisitor Augustus' some time ago, this small code has been nagging me for some paint for a long time, so I am currently 10 miniatures in to a 16 miniature code, easy eh? funnily enough I do have most of these painted already as Catachan jungle fighters for Warhammer 40K 2nd Edition but I couldn't bothered to strip them as they are half decent may need just a spruce up.
All the RT502 Mercenaries were sculpted by Bob Naismith except 'Shorty' and 'Iron Bonce the squat' (not sure when?) and released in White dwarf 95 in 1987 , thanks to Axiom's blog post which confirms these are Bob's sculpts, I have used plenty of greys on these guy's to make them look like Imperial Army deserters and added some variations like Desert uniforms.
Many of these characters appeared in illustrations in the Rogue Trader Warhammer 40,000 rulebook so where possible I have took a snippet shot of them.
The characters like 'Sarge' Rockhard remind me of the cool characters from films like The Dirty Dozen and Cross of Iron, along with the comics the designers would may have grown up with like Warlord, Battle with their Rat Pack story drawn by Carlos Ezquerra of 2000Ad Judge Dredd fame who appears to often base his main character on James Coburn. I think Colonel Schaeffer's last Chancers are direct descendants of these influences.
Anyway onto the miniatures, enjoy!
First up we have a much loved miniature 'WorldBurner' illustrated in the Rogue Trader Warhammer 40,000 rulebook (and somewhere else I think), appears to have some sort of assault uniform and weapon.
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| Worldburner - front |
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| Worldburner - back |
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| Worldburner - RT Rulebook page 172 |
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| Worldburner - RT Rulebook page 126 |
Next up we have 'Plundering Pete', same uniform as Worldburner, maybe some sort of ranking on the shoulder of his bandolier, I painted him up as a renegade Tallarn guardsman.
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| Plundering Pete - front |
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| Plundering Pete - back |
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| Is this Pete - RT Rulebook page 109 |
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| More Pete from the RT Rulebook |
'Abbadon' is a repurposed miniature and first appeared on 1st Flyer March 1987 as a 'Ground Combat Trooper' but it as this miniature is tagged IPC and dated 1985 so it fairly obvious from appearance that this miniature is a Rogue trooper Souther that never made into the '8' miniature JD10 & 11 code. It's not the best sculpt so I don't know if that was the problem or that the code could not be an odd number for packing purposes, JD10 & 11 are both 4 distinct characters.
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| Abbadon/Souther - front |
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| Abbadon/Souther - back |
Next we have 'Mad Morris' storming ahead with his Lasgun, I had to do this one in Imperial Army colours, dynamic pose, his outfit quite typical of the Imperial Army so definitely a deserter.
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| Mad Morris - front |
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| Mad Morris - back |
'Hacker Harris' really reminds me of Philthy Animal from the heavy metal band Motorhead, with his wild hair and cut off jacket, he appears to have the same head as the Space Marine Captain Huron Grimm the face of this miniature was tough to paint you really need a bendy brush and a dentist mirror to get into the eyes due to the positioning of the head.
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| Hacker Harris - front |
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| Mad Morris - back |
'Space-dout Sam' is a 1st Flyer March 1987 miniature 'Imperial Heavy Infantry' that like the others didn't fit with the direction the Imperial Army was going in so found it's way into the Mercenary code, he has heavy battle armour with side deflector shields and a really great sculpted on flight pack which was a joy to paint.
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| Space-Dout Sam/Imperial Heavy Infantry - front |
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| Space-Dout Sam/Imperial Heavy Infantry - back |
'Sarge Rockhard', who appears to have the same head as 'Plundering Pete', uniform reminds me of the Chainsaw Warrior so I went for a similar colour scheme, I really had to fight the temptation to paint him with a cheesey 'The Sweeney' Robbers mask.
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| 'Sarge' Rockhard - front |
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| 'Sarge' Rockhard - back |
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| 'Sarge' Rockhard - RT Rulebook page 221 |
'Iron Bonce' the squat, another 1st Flyer March 1987 miniature first labelled as 'Space Dwarf' encased in a full battle armour together with flight or power pack (whichever you prefer), what's not to love about this miniature, although the first wave of squats are cute, I wish more of these were made, maybe it is proto exo-armour he is wearing?, it's much nicer than the horrid fantasy squat exo-armour of later years. Note he has the 'M' insignia that appears on several Rogue Trader miniatures and may have it roots in 2000AD's Rogue Trooper.
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| Iron Bonce the Squat - front |
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| Iron Bonce the Squat - back |
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| Iron Bonce - RT Rulebook page 59 |
Pirate is another 1st Flyer March 1987 miniature but this time the sculptor has removed the sword and scabbard of the C Series Fighter 'Cedric' and replaced it with one of the weapons used on the citadel Judge Dredd ranges, this miniature never got reproduced anywhere else. I went for the glam look of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, reds and golds complement his camp outfit.
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| 1st Flyer Pirate - side |
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| 1st Flyer Pirate - other side |
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| 1st Flyer Pirate - front |
Thanks for looking I hope you enjoyed, all comments mean a lot to me
J
