Ral Partha's Galactic Grenadiers, 1980

Here are some photos of the Galactic Grenadiers 15mm figures from Ral Partha's 1980 game, painted and based on US pennies. In my humble opinion, these over thirty-year-old sculpts are still some of the finest 15mm SF miniatures out there, and they have some stiff competition! I've had these guys since the mid-eighties, and I recently bought a second set on eBay which I haven't painted yet.

While I love the figures, I remember the game they were made for as being pretty crap. This is based solely on memories of the few times we tried playing it 25+ years ago, so I might dust off the rules and try a solo game to refresh my memory.

Ral Partha made additional miniatures for the 15mm Galactic Grenadiers line, and I'd be interested in acquiring more of these models. If anyone out there has any to sell, trade, or donate, let me know in the comments or via email!

I'm back!

Unlocks door, turns on lights, looks around...

Well, it's been a long time since I've been here. Which is a shame, as the last post, way back in September, was the first I actually promoted to some forums and thus the most views I ever got on the blog... Life got in the way, mostly an extremely busy time at work, which ended with your narrator getting laid off once the bulk of the work was done. C'est la vie.

Anyway, I find myself with lots of free time on my hands all of a sudden, so it's time to start posting again. When I was last here, I was working on my self-imposed challenge to paint 300 figures from the lead pile before the Reaper Bones Kickstarter loot arrives. I've fallen way behind, due to the same craziness that kept me from blogging, but here's what I did accomplish... 

I don't know where the orc came from, but it's a figure I've owned since the mid-eighties or earlier. The sorceress is from Reaper.

Reaper Bones dwarf and ogre – I figured it would be a good idea to paint some Bones figures before all the loot arrives, and the process wasn't any different from what I do with metal or plastic figures. I cut off the dwarf's chunky integral base and glued him to a US nickel, while the ogre is on a 40mm Citadel base.

More orcs – from left to right we have Grandpa, Aunt Peg, Gramma, and Cousin Louie... Various manufacturers.

The goblin on the left is from Der Kriegspielers/Custom Cast, from 1975 or so, and the other three are my own sculpts in an attempt to mimic the style.

Women warriors! I'm not sure about the blonde on the left, but the other three are Ral Partha from 1988-1990. I think this shot illustrates why I like mixing my own flesh tones – instead of all of these figures having identical skin tones, there's a realistic variation.

The fellow on the left is from Mega Miniatures, I think the knight in the center is Grenadier, and the blue wizard is from RAFM. I'm not thrilled with the paint job on the wizard, but I don't find the sculpt very inspiring either, so it's not worth repainting him.

The SF gal is from Mega Miniatures, the demon and zombie are eighties Grenadier.

Custom Cast hobbits from the 1970s. These guys will join the six I posted last year as a small (12 figures) warband in a “Defend the Shire” scenario I'm thinking about.

Finally, Ral Partha's superb Galactic Grenadiers 15mm figures. I've got the rest of the figures from the set painted as well, but haven't taken photos yet. So that's 37 figures (The set came with 38, but one of the grenadiers has gone missing), plus the 28 detailed in this post. I've also got four Reaper kobolds painted that I'll be posting once I finish up their bases and take photos.

I'll likely post more details about some of these figures in the future, but for now they're just getting added to the challenge total. Total: 90 figures painted, 210 to go...

I doubt I'm going to make it to 300 figures before the Reaper stuff gets here, but I'm still going to give it a shot. I have some small units of various figures that I'm going to try speed-painting assembly-line style to bring the number of completed models up.