Two Beowolves and sneaky hobbitses

I’m getting closer on finishing up all my barbarians (excluding a bunch of plastics), and I think this one is the oldest — the Ral Partha Beowulf, which dates back to 1978 I think. Mine had some filing on the base so I’m not positive; the Lost Minis Wiki also shows a version with a separate axe, which might be earlier or might be a conversion.

Here he is side-by-side with another Beowulf, the Asgard/Viking Forge figure.

Asgard’s figure certainly looks more like an historical Viking type, maybe from a bit later than the Beowulf story. Apart from the horned helmet, Ral Partha’s is pretty convincing for the dark ages.

I’ve been working some more on halflings, and this batch is all from the Grenadier AD&D set, except for the chubbier thief who was in the Thieves set. Not pictured are an archer who has been missing for decades, the lookouts who I posted long ago, and the lancer on a pack mule who is still not painted — I have a lot of mounted adventurers to get to some day. These guys are a little close to being finished that the Ral Partha figures posted last time, and mostly just need their bases finished and their eyes fixed. The first batch are especially bug-eyed.

 

The thief (center right) always struck me as Frodo, and the swordsman next to him as Bilbo decked out for the Battle of Five Armies. This particular one needed some reconstruction as he’d lost his sword. Because I have another of the same, I also moved his arm to different position. (I just realized I painted them both in reds and greens!)

 

I always liked the guy in the middle, relaxing against a tree stump. Painting him, I realized his pipe stem was miscast, missing partly. I just filled in the gap with some white glue, which seems to have worked. The “spear chucker” (as he’s labeled in one insert) needed repairs too — the front of his javelin had broken off. I see that his atl-atl was miscast as well, partly missing.

I’m pretty sure the halflings set was the first box of miniatures my brother & I ever purchased, probably in 1980 or 1981.

 

Barbarians at the gate!

This Sunday I got on a bit of a painting tear and finished off a bunch of barbarians.

The oldest ones first. The two ladies on the left are the Heritage “barbarian woman” from the Cavern of Doom set. The leftmost is in better condition; the other one broke repeatedly long ago, and I had to create a new right leg and left foot, as well giving her a new sword. The new legs aren’t quite right and she ended up looking upward, maybe fighting an ogre or giant? The next guy is Ral Partha, the “barbarian hero” from the Adventurers boxed set. I thought of him as Boromir. He bears a passing resemblance to the depiction in Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings movie. Lastly, Hercules from the Grenadier Action Art “Mythological characters” set. I’m not sure the photo captures this so well but I did some effort to get the wolfs head on Boromir and the lion skin on Herc realistically colored. Before stripping these two, my original paint jobs from the 80s had all the fur light brown.

Next up, some barbarians from Viking Forge — recasts of old Asgard minis. I never saw these among the old Asgard ads in Dragon Magazine. They must date from a bit later. I understand a company in the UK also casts these Asgard minis. They were fairly fun to paint. The sculptor went on to work for Citadel and I can see some similarities in theses and older Citadel minis. The guy on the right would make a passable druid or even a shaman for later editions of D&D.

These next two are much newer, but still older. Both are from Reaper. The clansman was fun to paint; I’d never tried a tartan design before so I went very minimal. But at this scale it is recognizably plaid. The seated figure is obviously Conan. He was last one I finished, and it was pretty late, so I didn’t realize how badly I screwed up his face. I may need to fix that.

Then a few assorted figures I did at the same time. The center figure is a barbarian — in this case a plastic Celt from a kit for the wargame Hail Caesar! I am planning to use parts of them to create some Chaos Thugs, at some point. On the left, a small creature of dubious origin that was a “bonus” (not mentioned on the package or anything) for the Grenadier “Fantasy Fiends” Action Art set. No idea what he’s supposed to be. The guy on the right is a modified DreamBlade figure. He was originally faceless — nothing but turban. And had a funky but badly bent sword.  I found a photo of the original for reference. I gave him a new face (from a severed head in the versatile Zvedza Orku kit) and his sword is from an old earring of mine from junior high, when I wore various heavy metal earrings and had a killer mullet. Painted up ok.

As I was painting these I realized that Hercules and the whatever are both sitting on the same rock!

Anyway here are all the lightly armored berserker/barbarian types in their very own container. I probably featured some of the others here in the past. A few could use some more work but that will have to wait.

Here are the armored barbarians in another box, which will probably be the next project, as there are just half a dozen to paint: