Only a year from the last post showing the start of painting these, and five years from priming them, to now finishing these my Martian Metals K'Kree.
This must count as one of the longest lead pile to completion in the hobby, given that Martian Metals went out of business in the mid-eighties, and I acquired these in 1984.
 |
| Taken with my new Olympus 7-14mm F2.8 Pro, at 7mm, F8, 1.3 secs, ISO 200. Crop from 64 megapixel Hi-Res shot. |
There is rare, and then there is rare as rocking horse pooh or chicken's teeth, the latter not being as rare as you think–genetics being what it is and all. I bought these models on a trip to Toronto back in 1984 from a shop on Yonge Street.
Yes, they've been sitting in a box for 33 years waiting for me to paint them up ever since.
Equally surprising is that fact that despite all the things I've gone through over the years I managed to keep hold of them. What provoked me to get them out, clean off the white oxidation and base them was assembling the Clear Horizon figures, because I thought what the heck, three more 15mm figures is no big deal.
So here they are ready to be primed.
By now the news of Loren Wiseman's death has broken out on the internet. He along with Frank Chadwick, Marc Miller and Rich Banner were the founders of Game Designers' Workshop who published the Traveller RPG. Though I had played D&D before going to university, it was playing Traveller that made me go and buy the rules (little black books), and start running games.
So many happy memories.
So now I have another good reason to paint these because time is fleeting, and there are not enough hours in the day to do everything one wants to do, so best to do those things that are meaningful while one has time.
.png)
Another treasure trove of past work that I painted in the mid to late eighties. and the last of my 15mm posts until I paint some more figures. The above are a mixture from Citadel and Laser Burn that I used in my Traveller campaigns to represent the officers, and gentlemen of the Vilani/Solomani Imperial Navy.
Dress whites says it all, and of course there has to be a lady for the Admiral to escort to functions where the players would be trying to run a scam, or fulfill a contract, as part of the campaign.
I always played these as British Inter-War Naval stereotypes, and the players use to hate the fact that they were treated as the low-lifes that they were. Fun times and games to remember.
.png)
Pure Citadel Traveller Space armour figures, which I used as Imperial Navy Marines. If these arrived it was a signal that the proverbial had hit the can, and that the players were well and truly out of luck.
I remember one memorable game where the players had split into two groups on board a crashed starship that had sunk under a methane sea.
One group was using the survivors as slaves to try and get off the world, while the other team ran a resistance group in the ventilation shafts. The game ended when the marines arrived, and past actions came home to roost.
.png)
And another mix of figures to represent the general crew players might meet when boarded, or on shore leave. Less formal situations for the latter encounters, though they might lead to bar room brawls of course.
Looking at these figures I think that the white uniforms could do with an ink wash to add contrast, but like everything else they will have to wait, as I have much higher priority figures to paint.
.png)
The dogs are back in town. These are Citadel figures, who did a lovely set of eight different poses for their set of Traveller Aliens. I had planned on doing up a whole platoon of these, but got put off by by the complexity of the Striker rules, and when BattleTech came along, moved my small unit combat allegiances to it.
However, with TooFat Lardies about to do an SF set, whose title is Quadrant 13, which has already been labelled as Tentacles by their eList members, I might well be tempted to start playing with all of my old figures.
Could use my Daleks too!
While writing this post I remembered I still had some other 15mm figures hanging around. What I found were a single Aslan, and Droyne, but that I also had three Martian Metals K'Kree too.
Very tempted to put these on the bench and paint them up. But that way lies the madness of having too many projects on the go at once.
Muwuha, ha, ha, ha...
Time for some more Traveller figures from my collection. In any game I've run I've always had to have people and animals to mill around and make life difficult for the players.
I think the rider on the creature is a Martian Metals figure, which was another of those figures I picked up on my visit to Toronto back in 1983 from a place in Yonge Street. I found a stash of Martian Metals figures in a shop and just bought the lot.
Best figure purchasing decision I've ever made, period. The rest are from Citadel and Laserburn. The latter are still available here.
Then there are the other people and giant robot, which I modified as I didn't want it to be armed, just large. Inspired no doubt by watching the droids in Star Wars. All of these figures were used to play contacts that the players met to do deals with.
And finally, have spacesuit will travel. You never know when you might need a spacesuit, after-all one could end up being picked up by a passing spaceship?
After all this is Traveller we are talking about.
Above, basic crew, a mix of the old Citadel Traveller and Laser Burn figures. Below, Armed crew for when the going gets rough, which it often did. I remember running a FASA scenario that pitted a crew against hive like aliens that came out of a downed starship fleeing from a dying world that had been unfortunately infested.
Very Aliens...
We would also use these boarding action games using either Snapshot, or the lovely named Ashanti High Lightening board games that allowed one to rove around the insides of starships shooting up things, lowering property values, and generally chew gum and having fun!
Robots, droids, whatever you call them they spell out that this game is SF. These were all for spaceship, or spaceport use, hence the uniform colour. God, I miss playing games of Traveller.
Yes these are those Zhodani figures from the long defunct Martian Metals range. I got these on a trip to Toronto back in 1983, and I guess I painted them sometime around 1986, or so. I can't remember. As you can see there were five poses.
I bought all that the shop had, and was able to make up this platoon, which is one figure short as one of the commander miniatures has a broken arm awaiting the time I get around to fixing it.
Anyway, I'm posting these so that Thomas Nissvik can show his girlfriend some figures painted in pink.
Having spent today writing and doing these photographs for these posts I have been happily reminiscing about he good old day when I use to play in RPG campaigns run by my friend Kevin (who died a few years back after having a heart attack, I miss him), along with his then partner Rhona, with Patricia and Bill of the Warlord Games shop, not to forget to mention Dave Harwood, Saul and the others I played with too.
.png)
