Move over Penn & Teller, move over Siegfried & Roy – a new magical double act is in town.  Coming all the way from the pyramids of the Old World are twin brothers Lapis & Lazuli  – fantastical Wizards of Light.

Masters of the mysterious and occasional caberet performers.

This magical duo are going to be the Kairic Adepts in my vintage Silver Tower project – where I replace all the 2016 boardgame pieces with Citadel Miniatures from about 20 years previous.  Like the Brimstone Horrors I painted previously, 1990s era Warhammer didn’t have Kairic Adepts, but did have Egyptian-flavoured magic users in the form of Light Wizards. And the 1990s Light Wizards also had Acolytes, which are perfect for Silver Tower Kairic Acolytes.

These Light Wizards turned traitor from the College of Light alongside their Patriarch – Egrimm van Horstmann.  They have found sanctuary from the Empire in a Silver Tower of Tzeentch in my personal Warhammer canon.  Egrimm himself will be big boss of the Silver Tower, as he was Tzeentch’s favoured servant in the 20 years before Gaunt Summoners were invented.

Lapis & Lazuli supported by Blue Horrors in their Silver Tower.

Games Workshop originally released the plastic Light Wizard (on the right in the photos) as the High Priest in the 1994 Talisman expansion Dungeon of Doom.  He later appeared as one of the eight free wizard miniatures on 1995’s White Dwarf 186.  Getting a Warhammer character miniature in plastic was an insane novelty in the 1990s, as plastic was normally reserved only for the massed ranks of mono-posed regiments.

Here’s Lazuli with the other classic 3rd edition Talisman miniatures I’ve painted to date.

Lazuli and Pazyryk Banefire in the ruins of a non-metallic tower.

Coming soon on Ninjabread: more vintage lead miniatures to populate my time-warped Silver Tower.

Curtis over at Ramshackle did a limited run of figures for Bring Out Your Lead 2016, and I’ve painted one to accompany Clyro Burns. As an event, BOYL focuses on “Oldhammer”, so Curtis sculpted this model holding an old hammer.  Ha!

I’ve converted my figure with a new face shaved off a Citadel Judge Dredd Perp – Zuggy Spotz/Crazy Joseph.  I then resculpted the hood around the front with putty.  This does make me feel a little guilty, but of all people Curtis will understand the need to hack up and convert figures.

Post-Knavecon games of Dragon Rampant have made me feel uncomfortable with my wizard unit – Clyro Burns plus five tiny familiars. This reduced strength unit gets caught in combat, and seeing a tiny familiar taking as much effort to kill as two chunky human-sized models is really odd.  I’m planning to reforge the unit at twelve-strong – all twelve being human-sized figures.

Nocturnal rituals being enacted in the Mourning Wood.

Shout out to Curtis for his generosity and community spirit!  Check out his shop full of other wonderful nonsense.

One of the things to get your head round for Frostgrave is that you’re not really playing with a warband, like you would in Mordheim.  It’s about your wizard.  And I agonised over different wizard models for a good long while before settling on the Citadel ME-56 Saruman, for reasons of:

–  I want the warband to be built out of 1980s Citadel Miniatures
–  I’ve got a couple of spare Sarumans (“Sarumen?”)
–  Importing the Lord of the Rings figures into Warhammer proper is pleasing.

“Tell me, friend, when did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for Tipp-Ex®?”

I really do like the 1980s Middle-Earth figures popping up in mainstream Warhammer.  After Games Workshop lost the the Tolkein licence in 1987 a lot of the not-character figures were rolled into the main Warhammer range, like the Noldor Elves into the High Elf range.  Occasionally the named character miniatures pop up in artwork or studio photographs, like ME-1 Gandalf here in the colour section of the Ravening Hordes supplement.

Gandalf™ is a wise and powerful wizard.
Gandalf™ est un sorcier sage et puissant.
Gandalf™ ist ein weiser und mächtiger Zauberer.

To unSarumanise the figure the Palantir hand was replaced with a suitably chunky hand from a Citadel Night Horror.  Saruman’s left hand was flipped over and had a flame effect added from a (gasp!) modern Tzeentch kit.  This anachronism still makes me feel uneasy.

Despite leading a Chaos warband, I made no attempt to make him chaotic.  The red scheme and the age of the figure ties him in enough.

A burning sensation in your palm – classic symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome.

He initially had grey hair, but it looked bad. Too much like Saruman still.  To remedy this I sculpted over his bald patch, and repainted his hair fiery orange.  One of the nice things about figures so old is my own limited sculpted talent doesn’t look as out of place as it would on a laser-crisp modern miniature.

I finished the figure with bone-coloured flames on his robes.  I was hesitant initially as he had flames popping out of his hand – I thought both 2D and 3D flames together would be confusing.  But keeping them a flat colour rather than the blended highlights of the Tzeentch-fire, and putting them in bone rather than a orange colour, keeps it obvious what’s meant to be real and what’s meant to be pattern.

Clyro Burns, looking a little like Donald Sutherland in Kelly’s Heroes.

There he is, Clyro Burns, alongside his 1980s Chaos warband.

I call them “Burns’ Knights”.

Sorry.