This miniature is a mystery – an unreleased Warhammer treasure from the vaults of Citadel Miniatures.  Who is he?  Why have I got (perhaps) the only casting in existence?

Could this be a dark horse on a dark horse?

This casting was a gift from Marcus Ansell of Wargames Foundry (thanks Marcus). The tab (“GENERAL” and “ ©  GW 1987″) shows its provenance as a piece of classic Warhammer – but beyond that everything else is a mystery.  Who sculpted it?  What range was it destined for?  Why was it not released?

“A horse, a horse, my Romano-Germanic kingdom for a horse.”

The vibe of the figure is more historical than fantastical – the moustache, crested helm and scalemail give it a very Romano-Germanic kingdom vibe.  It feels like an Alan or Michael Perry sculpt judging by this face and care put into the armour detailing.  In fact it’s a bit too historically accurate to fit in with Citadel’s F3 Barbarian or F6 Barbarian Raider ranges, or the ADD21 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons mounted barbarian.  The closest thing released by Citadel are the F7 Mounted Barbarian Raiders.

F7 Mounted Barbarian Raiders.  Image from solegends.

The Mounted Barbarian Raiders were released at a time when the line between historical and fantasy figures was blurred, with Warhammer’s Empire, Norse, Bretonnian and Dogs of War ranges doing double-service as various historical Europeans.  It’s conceivable that Citadel had plans for a Warhammer race with a strong Romano-Germanic design elements, and this General was a testpiece.

I gave my General one of the F7 horses as it’s coetaneous, and he deserves a bodyguard of these classics at a future point.  I modelled the horse forward on the raised base so that when the planned regiment ranks up he will ride slightly above and ahead.

Then as I was researching colours a thought struck me.  Is this mystery figure a … Blandford Warrior?  He fits beautifully with the released Blandford Warriors in terms of style and scale.

The 13th (Blandford) Warrior.

The Medieval Warlords book comprises seven chapters each detailing a different warlord, and Games Workshop released miniatures for only six of these characters.  The warlord that appears as a chapter but not a miniature was Genseric – general of one of the most famous Romano-Germanic kingdoms.  I think this figure could be him.

Genseric led the Vandals from the heartlands of the crumbling Roman Empire to Africa and around the Mediterranean region until they stormed Rome itself, looting its treaures. The incident stuck in the West’s poplar imagination, and ever since the word “vandal” has been a byword for destroying property.

Genseric sacked Rome until politely asked to stop it by Pope Leo I, AD455.

I used the Karl Briullov painting above as the basis for my miniature’s colour scheme.  I love the satanically-black horse implying he’s the Pope’s archnemesis – but the menace is rather undermined by the pink leggings and ruby red shoes.

I painted the shield with an Arianist symbol – I’d like to stress this was the form of Christianity that took off in the Romano-Germanic kingdoms and was named after Arius and NOTHING TO DO WITH ARYANISM.  (After all those “arian symbol german” google searches I think I’ve been put on a list.)

Genseric and his bucellarius on the outskirts of Carthage.

Not Genseric.

Regardless of the figure’s true identity, it’s now definitely part of my Late Imperial Roman army and will get some outings in SAGA when I’ve painted enough for a 4-point warband … coming soon.

If you’ve got any theories or information on the figure, please please let me know in the comments.

At BOYL (Bring out Your Lead) it’s become a community tradition to create one-off figures to celebrate the three-day extravaganza of Oldhammery painting and gaming.  Here are three from 2017 painted up just in time to pick up 2018’s without any leadguilt.

Left to right: Helsreach Mayor, Grox Egg and Olivia Neutronbomb.

I really like event-exclusive miniatures as they’re tethered to a set of memories of friends, games, meals out, heavy drinking, stupid decisions and hangovers.  Lemme explain why these three minis came to be.

Olivia Neutronbomb

Olivia was the 2017 event’s commemorative figure, sculpted by John Pickford.  She’s a 28mm metal incarnation of the classic 1987 Rogue Trader illustration by Martin McKenna.

I painted Olivia to slot into my Rogue Trader Godbreak 84th Imperial Army.  Her animal-print trousers were repainted a few times as I wrestled with various animals’ colours clashing with the Godbreak’s grey-green and black.  Then I realised I needn’t be constrained by real animals in the distant alien future of Warhammer 40,000!  Hence the “Greyscale Giraffe” was born in my imagination.  (Geeez Curis, all that creative potential and possibility and all you come up with is a desaturated giraffe.)

Olivia leading the Godbreak 84th, showing her head for strategy.

Other people who’ve painted their Olivias are: asslessman, axiom, Dr Mathias, Grove,  Orlygg and Suber.  Check ’em out!

Grox Egg

Grox are the cattle of 41st Millennium.  They appeared as an illustration in the 1987 Rogue Trader rulebook, though they’ve never had a miniature incarnation.

That was until axiom commissioned John Pickford to sculpt this cheeky little hatching Grox.  Why?  Cos axiom was running a Grox-herding participation game and going several egg-stra miles to realise the world of grimdark ranching.

Mungo Beefhead lassoing a hatching Grox.  Find out more about this Space Cowboy here.

I painted the egg with green spots – obviously channelling Yoshi from Super Mario.  The shell fragments are cut-up plastic carton lid glued onto the base after drybrushing.  I planned on making a small nest diorama with several unhatched eggs (my sculpting ability just able to cope with unhatched eggs), but I ended up doing something more ambitious…

Mayor of Helsreach

Curtis at Ramshackle Games sculpted this miniature to celebrate his massive participation game at BOYL 2017, set in Helsreach – the iconic Rogue Trader townscape.  This miniature is really characterful and fun to paint, and on finishing it I immediately went and jumped some other Ramshackle bits to the front of the painting queue.  The game is running again at BOYL 2018, and I recommend stopping by to drink in all those square feet of his miniatures and terrain Curtis, Aidan and Danny have put together.

The Mayor touring the Cullentown Grox Incubation Facility.  His Techpriest tour guide is regarded as the Helsreach’s leading “egghead”.

The Grox incubation chamber is a cut-down cryo-stasis piece from Games Workshop’s Sector Imperialis Objectives. The transparent “glass” component needed great care to resize – the plastic is so brittle any stress on it will cause massive white cracks to shoot through the whole thing.  There were a few near-misses and lots of eggs-pletives.

BOYL 2018

This year’s BOYL is almost upon us – Friday 3rd August to Sunday 5th August at Wargames Foundry, Nottingham, England.  It’s my favourite three days in the gaming calendar.  Hopefully see you there!  Check out the site at for full details on  games and location: https://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/.

Years back I bought loads of ex-Citadel Wargames Foundry Normans and Vikings, with the intention of converting them as Men of Rohan to go alongside my 1980s Citadel Lord of the Rings. The project never materialised. Years later, I’ve dredged up the figures to make a historical Norman force.

I sold off the bulk of the Vikings, but kept a few to sprinkle into the force – everything kinda blends together in the Dark Ages. One of these Vikings has been repurposed as a Norman banner bearer.

The figure’s spear was replaced with a length of brass wire topped with a plastic spear point (which I later switched for a Goff Ork helmet spike). The banner is tomato purée foil cut to shape with a scalpel. To move the figure slightly away from the Viking look, he’s got a Norman kite shield. I later decided to Normanise the figure a little more by sculpting a t-bar onto his helmet. He still has the long hair and trousers that give him a hint of Scandanavia, plus I plumped for a Nordic dragon motif on his shield.

The design and colours are lifted wholesale from a Little Big Men Studios banner (sorry guys, but I’ve bought a load of your Legio X transfers recently so you’ve had some cash off me). The design seems to be a variation on William the Conqueror’s banner, so I’m unsure if they borrowed it too.   The design also pops up in Nico’s fabulous Norman army, which has inspired a lot of my own collection.

I had fun researching the shield designs – Normans give you licence to paint everyone as an individual with their own proto-heraldry and colours.  The unit champion, Lord Weuere de Hallam, has a pair of entwined griffons on his shield – a variation on the family crest.  Here you can also see the mud and blood splats applied liberally on the unit to distract from any irregularities in the sculpting, casting and painting.

The force has had several Saga outings, and I hope to grow it to a fully-painted 6-point force as soon as I can figure out how to paint horses.  Can’t have Normans without lots of horses.  I do deeply fantasise about having hundreds of troops for Warhammer 3–8E outings, but that’s at least several years off at my current painting rate.

Normans in action against James’ Viking Berserkers at the Battle of Stinke Bridge.

I entered the all Normans I’d finished as of April into the Salute 2017 painting contest.  Normally I paint miniatures specially for the contest (like these Algoryn last year), but I just took all the figures I’d got finished from my Saga force and blu-tacked them to a piece of plasticard.  To my utter surprise and delight, I won Gold in the Historical Regiment category!  I thought with them being painted to be “gaming standard” and also released in 1987 they’d be outclassed by regiments of newly-released plastics painted in NMM.  Those Perry sculpts still got it.

The Normans on the day of Salute.

I originally mixed together unarmoured archers with armoured sergeants as they were simply all the figures I had finished painting from across my Saga force, and I wanted the biggest mass of troops I could manage.  It made me uneasy blending different troop types in the same regiment, but my friend Rob reminded me that was the Warhammer mindset speaking – only able to conceive of rectangles of identically-armed troops.  In real life, Dark Age warfare was just a jumbled scrap of dudes with assortments of kit.  Reading up on the period I discovered that King Stephen had used the tactic of mixing together archers and dismounted knights at the Battle of Standard Hill in 1138, so what was initially a bulking-out cheat turned out to have good historical grounding.