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.

First figures of the challenge

As I mentioned in the last post, I've set myself a challenge to drastically reduce the number of unpainted figures in the house before the Reaper Bones Kickstarter loot gets here in March. Here are the first figures I pulled out of the pile of old lead - a Grenadier wizard from 1982, and two late eighties / early nineties Ral Partha female fighters.

A Reaper vampiress, with the bit of scenery and demon bat familiar she came with. These are fairly recent, 2006 maybe, but I neglected to look at the bottom of the base for a date before blue-tacking them to bottle caps, and now I can't be bothered to take them off and check.

Finally, an early eighties Grenadier demon and a fairly rotten plastic orc from Zvezda. The orc is part of a cheap box set I bought a few years ago, figuring they couldn't be all that bad, but I have to admit they're pretty dire. This guy is only the third I've put together, and the second fell apart almost immediately, so he's the only one assembled and unpainted.

This is the chieftain of the set - He actually painted up pretty well, but no paint job can truly save a sculpt this bad...

And a back view - the crappy iPhone pic doesn't show the shading very well; the paint job is much nicer in real life. I normally don't paint orcs green, but the Zvezda models are obviously going for the GW look, so why not?

Well Drakken Completed

Well, here he is, in all his glory. The base was started with wall spackle, as shown in the last post, with the broken cork rocks glued on. I followed that with a coat of white glue and brown paint mixed together, then dipped the base into a box of sand. Various shades of brown were applied once the sand dried, then patches of watered down glue and flock. 

The cork "rocks" got a streaky, thin wash of gray paint, which allows the various shades of the cork to show through and made for easy, realistic rocks. Glue and flock (a different shade this time, to make it look slightly different than the ground cover) took care of the moss on the rocks, and small patches of static grass help break up the look of the ground.

The pool of water was scraped out of the spackle right at the beginning, and I painted the bottom and sides in various dark browns and greens. The reeds are model railroad tall grass, trimmed, the ends dipped in white glue and allowed to dry to a tacky state before sticking them to the bottom of the pool. The water is 5 minute epoxy, mixed carefully to avoid bubbles and dripped in one drop at a time using a toothpick.

And that's pretty much it for the old guy. In spite of what I said in my last post, I have a feeling this model's gaming days are over. There's too much scenery on the base for him to look right on the table, at least in my opinion. He'd be dragging a couple of boulders and a pool of water around with him wherever he went, and that strikes me as a little silly...

I'm happy to have him looking this good, though. Like I said, I really love the sculpt, and if I decide I want one of these for the game table, there's always eBay.

Ral Partha Well Drakken 1983

A few pics of a current work in progress, Ral Partha's "Well Drakken" from 1983. I've had this model for years, and for most of those years it wore an unflattering dark blue paint job. Here it is stripped and repainted, with some work started on a scenic base for the old boy. I just love this sculpt; reminds me of Brian Froud's artwork...

The base is a slab of wood built up with wall spackling compound, with bits of cork glued on for rocks and a couple spots gouged out to create pools of stagnant, brackish water. My plan is to go for a swamp look for the base, with lots of vegetation and wet areas. I may even try my hand at sculpting some water plants similar to those draped over the figure itself to place over one or two of the rocks and tie the base in with the model... We'll see.

The base might, at first glance, seem a little large for gaming purposes, but I figure with arms that long this guy has to have a hell of a reach.I'm particularly pleased with the look of the vegetation on the figure... It looks appropriately filthy and nasty...