Friday, September 26, 2008

Those old Grenadier lead minis: Lizardman and Paladin...oh, and Umberhulk

Well, I recently babbled about my first D&D character, and then my favorite AD&D character, from "Back in '81" (or close to that..hehe). At any rate, I dug up my boxes of old lead minis (Grenadier and TSR varieties), and here's a couple shots of the ones that inspired those old characters of mine.

The Lizardman (still can't recall my character's name...ugh) has seen better days. Poor guy seems to have misplaced his sword (I'm sure it was a rockin' Sword+1...so not such a tragedy I guess) and seems to have decided on using a much more compact weapon...presumably just the hilt is all this guy needs.


The Paladin mini is my fave of all of the minis I've ever had. I really liked the paint job I did on this guy. We had some TSR paints (found that box, recently too), and some good silvery "metal" options for the chain and plate. Plus a little gloss seems to have been applied to this dude...quite a bit more sheen there than on the Lizardman.../shrug.


The 3rd mini thrown in here is an Umberhulk figure that I really thought was sweet back then. It was in a 2 or 3 monster pack, including this Umberhulk and a Xorn, and maybe one more...can't recall. The thing about this one is I spent so much time trying to level out the base of it, that I never got around to painting it....ha! It would always rock back and forth, and sometimes even topple over, until I got the base all straightened out nice and flat.


And finally a little encounter...good vs ugly.


Ah well memories of...you guessed it..."Back in '81."

6 comments:

James Maliszewski said...

I loved that paladin mini too. I used it for my longest-lasting PC.

Zachary Houghton said...

Ditto on the Paladin mini. Absolute classic. Lotta gloss on there!

Keep up the great work!

Reis O'Brien said...

That lizard man is awesome!

Robert said...

My paladin mini still has bits of red clay stuck to him from the improvised green slime mini.

yoyorobbo said...

@Robert Fisher:
That is way too funny! I'm a little confused on the Green Slime leaving "red" clay though. Did you really not have any green clay or did it somehow mutate over the years from green to red? ;>]

BTW Robert, I have mentioned a couple blogs that were the first I ever read, and yours (http://malirath.blogspot.com/) and even more specifically your older archives (http://web.fisher.cx/robert/infogami/Classic_D&D) were among the very first blogs I have read. I dug your recount of B/E D&D modules B4 and X1 so much that they honestly stoked my old-school fire a ton. I have always loved to dig out the old books, mods, and mags from my RPG past, but after reading your "Lost City" campaign notes, I have been obsessed with wanting to run that one again. Thanks for some great writing/blogging and for the inspiration on B4. I *will* run my son thru that one ASAP (he's only 4-1/2 y.o. ATM).

Robert said...

It was actual modeling clay from a hobby store rather than play dough or something like that. I only had two colors: red and yellow.

Thanks for the kind words!

When my son was around four, I ran a Basic Set session for him. Just the sample dungeon in the Moldvay book. He enjoyed it, but I think D&D wasn’t the best choice for a solo kid that age. A few sessions of Prince Valiant went better. Just improvised a castle, a dragon, and a princess in distress.