Here are those same 3 Grenadier minis after a touchup, as promised.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;816772Here are those same 3 Grenadier minis after a touchup, as promised.

What is the one in the middle? I don't think I've ever seen that mini. It is weird but cool. Great for some kind of boggle or other creature from the dark side of fairie.

Quote from: Bren;816802What is the one in the middle? I don't think I've ever seen that mini. It is weird but cool. Great for some kind of boggle or other creature from the dark side of fairie.

bugbear

Quote from: Sacrosanct;816803bugbear

I like it. :cool:

Early on, Ral Partha established themselves as my favorite (and they had a splendid little historical line, plus took over the Legions of the Petal Throne). The World of Greyhawk line from Minifigs looked very nice, though I never had any.

I couldn't afford much early on, so soft plastic Airfix and ESCI and Revell got use.

McEwan's Star Guard hit the scene around the same time as D&D, and had some popularity in my neck of the woods.

Martian Metals put out a ton of 15mm fantasy and sf models, cheap and convenient (especially for sf with vehicles, and for big egagements generally).

Later notables in my mind include Julie Guthrie's sculpting (I think for both Partha and Grenadier), Dragontooth, Archive, Rafm, and Prince August's Mithril Miniatures (Middle-earth) line - the last notably large in size (closer to 30s) as well as elegant (not garishly chunky like Games Workshop).

Grenadier UK had some nifty pieces for wargames or display; I recall particularly a huge giant carrying a missile platform.

Getting a good supply of monster figures was (and I think is) quite a challenge; there's always something for which one needs a substitute. Worse for me, I was drawn to exotic ones like a Napoleonic gamer who gets tons of Old Guard and skimps on the line. "What is this? It's not in the MM!" (Of course that's how a few critters in there got writ up in the first place, such as the rust monster iirc.)

When I got my first D&D box (the Basic set in the BECMI like) at John Menzies on Princes Street, Edinburgh, the Prince August "cast your own" figures were the ones on sale.  They're still going strong!

I didn't get into minis until I encountered White Dwarf and the gaming shop on Forrest Road later in the year.  Grenadier were good alternatives to Citadel, more realistic.  Still got plenty of models from that era.  The Grenadier stuff from the mid 80s - 90s is still available from eM-4 and Mirliton, and a lot of their ranges have aged well.  One day I will have the undead war mammoth!

I seem to recall that it's the tin that is expensive.  Tin-rich alloys also have a higher melting point so it's trickier to get good castings, especially on fine detail - you need to cut a lot of airvents as the liquid metal will cool and block them quickly, trapping air bubbles.  You're working near the melting point of some mould rubbers too...

After 30 years of dropping boxes of minis :rolleyes: I'd say that it's the pewter alloys that break, lead bends or dents, and plastic mostly just rattles about.  On the other hand, that softness makes lead minis easier to dent through normal wear and tear.

Fun fact - the grating feeling you get when you bend tin alloys is the long, thin tin crystals straining and rubbing against each other.  Do it sharply enough and the tin squeaks

I just bought some Grenadier models last month. Iron Wind metals in Europe still has a lot of thier masters. I ordered from the Ratscum line, which are basically the only non-Skaven classic minis that are anywhere near acceptable. Still not to the level of Jes Goodwin, but then, what is?



Ral Partha was the first company I ever got minis from. I still remember my first: an Anti-Paladin.

The first metal minis I ever had were from the AD&D Battlesystem boxed set. Each of the force commanders was an unpainted metal miniature.

I had no hobby shops or anything where I lived, so they stayed unpainted for a while. A couple years later I wanted to try and paint them so I grabbed some old Testors enamel paints and made a real mess of them.

The paint job on those sucked. Real bad. By that time I had moved closer to civilization and found more minis and paints and I was hooked. Now I have tons of minis, metal and plastic.

Anyone remember the "Lost World of Atlantis" minis by I think Phoenix?  Those were some pretty good sculpts from the late 70s.

Quote from: Omega;816964Anyone remember the "Lost World of Atlantis" minis by I think Phoenix?  Those were some pretty good sculpts from the late 70s.

Seen them in White Dwarf  - they were ca 64mm scale I think though, for dioaramas?

50mm if I recall correctly. Something like 1/42 scale compared to 25mm 1/64 scale? FFG a few years back tried to revive that scale with Inquisitor. Didnt take off. Same for the 50mm scale Mutant Chronicles revival.

Quote from: Tetsubo;816260I own a few. I don't think we ever used them 'on the mat'. We used lead, paper or plastic toys. The plastic figures from the D&D board games were great. Now you can pick up cheap HeroClix figures to. The pewter figures stay on the art shelf.

playing with lead miniatures seems really unhealthy (although to be fair i spend a lot of time with bullets so im not one to talk)

how long ago was it that they realised how bad for you it was

Quote from: Panjumanju;816625That would be great. I'd love to see some people's collections.

//Panjumanju

Only miniatures i have are from the set i brought when i first started and have never got to use as living in the middle of nowhere forces me to play by post and a bunch of unfinished stuff from my failed attempt to get into 40k (which failed because of that same geographical isolation but cant be as easily fixed by the internet)

I should get those barriers out and finish painting them i was quite proud of that bikes paint job crappy as it was.

I might try to round all that stuff up and get a picture maybe chuck the broken water tank i made in there to.

although i just checked a drawer and found a bunch of pokemon and simpsons toys i could use as well as something from the movie robots.

im off to go rummaging through old crap.

Quote from: tuypo1;817190im off to go rummaging through old crap.

I'm happy to encourage people to rummage through their old stuff.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: tuypo1;817188playing with lead miniatures seems really unhealthy (although to be fair i spend a lot of time with bullets so im not one to talk)

how long ago was it that they realised how bad for you it was

To my knowledge there is no evidence of any health hazard unless you are chewing on the miniatures or eating them. In 40 years of gaming with miniatures I've yet to see anyone do that.