Painting a Rogue Trader Era Dreadnought.

The original Imperial Dreadnought, sculpted by Bob Naismith, for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader has always been one of my favorite miniatures, possibly because they were being rolled out right at the time that I was first getting into 40K or possibly because they're just so freaking cool.

Schematics by the enigmatic "H". Check out my interview with him here.

If only those prices were still valid.

Painted by Paul Benson. These images were hugely influential in forging my love for these minis.

Also by Paul Benson.

While reading the dreadnought rules in White Dwarf #100 I came across the following tid-bit about "DREADNOUGHT LEGIONS"!!! Entire armies made up of Naismith's kitty-cat inspired dreads?! Oh yeah, I'm totally into that.

Thanks to Marc Solursh on the Oldhammer Facebook group I aquired a couple of dreads and committed to building a legion. Or at least a unit of five. 

The color scheme was discussed on the Facebook forum and I decided on the Golden Knights with both the colors and name coming from my high school, Arlington. I have an idea for a legion icon based on a medieval tilting helmet but haven't really finalized it.

While I was prepping the miniature I made a couple of bases for the future legionnaires. It has come to my attention that these original 40mm plastic bases are sort of hard to come by so if anyone knows of a good source please let me know. Plastic diamond-plate, old plastic weapons, and hand twisted barbed wire cover a base of Milliput on these bases.

I made a small hill for on one of the bases so I could reposition on of the dread's legs to make it a bit more dynamic and "stompy".

Next up I attached the mini to a specially created "dreadnought cork", using a wooden disc screwed to the top of a cork to give a wider platform to attach the dread to. Luckily this survived pretty well so I'll be able to use it with the other dreads.

Since I wanted this fellow to be a Contemptor Class I needed to re-create two bolters since the arms I had only had one each. I used Instant Mold Putty and Procreate and am overall pretty happy with how they turned out. You can see how I use Instant Mold here.

Next up was painting and attaching to the base.

STOMP!

Showing the power plant. I like to paint tech-bits like these in various metallic colors to make them look like more than a single hunk of metal.

Showing the vintage Aquila decal that fell apart as I was soaking it. These early decals were never perfect and years of moisture and time have degraded some of the oldest decals.

"Hi there!"

One down, four more to go!

Citi-Def Squad for John Blanche Block

Just a quick post to show my recently finished Citi-Def squad for either Gangs of Mega City One or the newer Judge Dredd Miniatures game. I picked up two sets of GoMC1 as well as one of the Street Gang expansions for 5.00 a piece about three years ago at Gen Con. I figured that the minis would be useful for random sci-fi bad guys and they were a good price overall. I've been using them as examples on several blog posts but never sat down to finally paint some.

Here's what I learned from working with these minis:

They are not very well thought out at all.

Although I love the idea of modular miniatures based on the Judge Dredd comics these minis really don't capture the design style of 2000AD. Sure they have knee and shoulder pads and some of the guns look like they should but the biggest issue is that they don't want to go together in a way that looks good at all. Trying to get these Citi-Def troopers to look like they are actually holding their spug guns correctly was going to take a lot more time than I was willing to invest. And the poses are very static overall even if you use the various arms and leg combinations. 

One thing I do like about them is the inclusion of two helmeted heads in each set that can be used to make Citi-Def troopers so I set about making some for my first city-block The John Blanche Block. Even this proved to be a bit more work than I cared to put into them. The mold lines are brutal and the previously mentioned wonky parts fit made them a pain to assemble.

I painted them in red as that always seemed to be Blanche's favorite color when he was painting for Games Workshop. I was planning to do more text painting on them, which is one of my favorite stylistic ideas from the Dredd comics, but honestly I couldn't be bothered. So they get a quick CD on the helmet and then off to the Block War.

As a fan of Bob Naismith I'm not sure what caused these to end up so badly. Mongoose seemed to have some plastic production problems with their Starship Troopers line as well so I'm going to assume that Mr. Naismith turned in lovely sculpts that were changed drastically in the casting.

Maybe next time we'll get some Citi-Def troopers from Mongoose that really look the part. 

Retro Review 1: Chainsaw Warrior with Reaper

When I first got into the wargaming hobby I was young and constantly broke. My 1969 Chevelle Malibu took any extra cash I had and extended sorties into various gaming arcades took the rest. So when new miniatures came out I was often without funds to pick them up. And prior to the internet, ordering miniatures from Citadel, all the way in England for crying out loud, was a daunting task indeed. My local game store did a fine job of trying to get new product but often by the time I got there all the cool stuff was gone. All that was left were the many packs of Space Marine heavy weapons that all seemed to have conversion beamers. I still believe that there was a severe overcasting of conversion beamers in Nottingham and they made sure to secretly pack away as many of the as they could to The US. So many dopey conversion beamers.

bleah...feh...yech...

But I'm off topic. My idea for Retro Reviews is so that I can revisit miniatures that I used to to have or that I could never get my hands on. I'm a better painter now than I was at nineteen so I'm looking forward to painting these figures without the stress that I used to feel. Time to have some fun and check out some classic miniatures!


I'll be starting out with a Chainsaw Warrior from Citadel Miniatures. This miniature was sculpted by Bob Naismith in 1987. It is one of four Chainsaw Warrior minis that Citadel produced. They were created to support the solo-play game Chainsaw Warrior but were sort of shoehorned into Warhammer 40,000 as Imperial Guard troops since there was actually no need for them to be used to play Chainsaw Warrior. First lesson of making miniature games: make miniatures necessary to play the game.

After picking up this little fellow pretty cheaply on Ebay, I took a long look over it to see what kind of shape it was in and how I might improve it. And other than sharpening up the edges on the shoulder armor and reaper cannon I didn't have to do much since Naismith had created such a really impressive miniature. The sculpting is on par with other things that Citadel was producing in the day. The details are a bit soft and there is some interesting anatomy with the gloved hands. But honestly this mini is still really groovy.

The proportions and stance of the Chainsaw Warrior are outstanding. The reaper cannon that he carries is instantly recognizable as what it is, basically a big autocannon for making bad things die. The mini is also equipped with a combination headset microphone and camera (a pretty obvious inspiration from Aliens), two pistols, a communications device, and a canteen. The overall look is very 2000 AD which makes sense as the lead comic artist on Chainsaw Warrior was Brett Ewins of Rogue Trooper fame. Naismith does an excellent job of capturing the 2000 AD vibe while creating a character that works within the Chainsaw Warrior storyline.

The mini was cast in a lead based alloy and this helped to remind my of why I hate lead miniatures. My needle file gummed up just like in the 80s, my X-Acto knife stuttered along seam lines instead of gliding smoothly. And I know that a lot of detail has been softened over the years by simple abuse. All that being said the mini was in pretty good shape. Overall cleaning was followed by a matte black undercoat.  I wanted to use all military colors but still break up the figure so that armor was clearly defined from cloth, boots from pants, etc. I settled on a mix of olive drab, black, and urban camo for the BDU pants since for some reason all super soldiers in the 80s had to wear camo pants. I went with an olive for the gun housing since I wanted it to look like it was made of various types of materials. Drybrushing the whole thing chainmail would just be boring anyway.

A face only a mother, or drill sergeant could love.

One of my favorite parts of this mini is the face. Overly craggy and almost Neanderthal this guy seems like someone who has been around a battlefield or two. His crew cut is easy to paint and the headset really makes him seem like he's on a mission.

I built a quick base using a piece of corrugated plastic, a plastic tube and some wires to make a broken electrical conduit, and some scattered shell casings made from aluminum tube. Since the Chainsaw Warrior game takes place inside of an abandoned skyscraper I didn't want to add foliage or grass. It adds to the post apocalyptic feel anyway.

Overall this miniature still holds up as a tough as nails super soldier type character. It is big and bulky and wouldn't look out of place with today's standard "super heroic scale" minis. I'm looking forward to tracking down his three other brothers, even the sort of goofy Timescape version, and giving them matching paintjobs. It's been great to finally find a miniature that I've wanted since 1987 and have the time and skill to enjoy painting it.


Go deep into your lead pile and look around. Find some of those orphaned minis of yesteryear that you might have forgotten about. I think you'll be surprised by how much fun they still are.


Next Time:
Winners of Trash Bash 2011 Announced!