Gonna paint me some old lead minis...pig-faced Orcs to be exact.

So, in the midst of some recent plastic minis vs lead figs comparison, I got a hankerin' to paint me some minis again. Now it's been a looooooonnnnnnnggggg time since I've done this (like 1983 or so), so I have a feeling the (re)learning curve could be mighty steep. Those brain cells are just a (non)memory now.

I have tons of these bad boys from "back in..." err.... yeah. In the heaping pile of lead that used to rule the kitchen table, I must admit that only a small percentage of my old lead minis are actually painted. I've shown a couple of them here in some previous posts, but I have tons of others, many that never got any paint slapped on 'em. As witnessed recently in the case of the burgular here.

At any rate, I think I'm gonna bust out some acrylics and see if I enjoy this long lost hobby as much as I hope I will. Maybe this crotchety old timer doesn't have the patience to pull this off - maybe he does. We'll see.

I'm think I'm gonna start with some pig-faced Orcs from the TSR AD&D line of 1983, in this wonderful box set named "Monster Tribes":

Here's the back, showing all the included figs:

The Orcs are the best of this bunch, IMO. They are the perfect pig-nosed variety we all loved back then. They're pretty similar to the ones available from Otherworld Miniatures, which are freakin' awesome, and I want some...NOW! Their Orc collection is here. And here's some shots of the Otherworld figs, from their gallery, painted very nicely by various skilled folks:

O1c - Pig-faced Orc with Bardiche, painted by Richard Scott

O4 - Pig-faced Orc Warband, painted by Kep Pump

and Pig-faced Orcwife, painted by Chris FitzPatrick:
Nice rack(s)! WTF?!?!?

Anyway, before I drop some major cash and impulse-buy nearly everything Otherworld makes (OMG! their stuff is nice), I figured I better just try painting some of the figs I already have... make sure I can even pull this off, ya'know?

So along with the TSR Monster Tribes box pictured up above, I still have many figs in the following sets that need paint too.




Some of those figs in my recent comparison were from this Fighter, Rangers & Paladins set:



This Specialists set here is the origin of my favorite Pally fig. I know many other folks dug that Paladin fig too.

Here's the Thieves set from which that bag-toting-burgular fig hails.... err sneaks. The sheet names him "Thief-sack"...ha!

Dig the paint jobs on this "Fighting Men" set (3rd pic here)....very nice! I believe those are painted by someone at dndlead.com. His/her site is freakin awesome! Check it out, and maybe buy some minis, too. According to the site, he/she sells some of them. Regardless there are some great info and pics there (these pics here all came from that site, BTW - I hope that's not an issue to show them here), as well as some great advice on painting minis. I'm printing that info out as we speak, to use when I crack open the paint jars for my own figs. Sadly, I will not be able to reproduce those kinds of results, but I'll give it the ol' college try.

I also have numerous loose lead minis, from various sets, including these two (from a duo blister pack back then). I've posted pics of my unpainted Umberhulk fig, but I never even attached the 3rd arm to my Xorn fig. Gotta do that too sometime soon I guess...26 years later...ha!

And here's a duo I just have to get my hands on. I only have one Grenadier Lizardman fig, and I would love to get some more.

I think my lizard-dude came out of this "Denizens of the Swamp" set, which me and my buddies back then split up between us:

I think we also shared this "Dwellers Below" set too, as I think I have the Doppleganger somewhere. Man, I used to love that fig...hope I can find him:

Anyway, time to paint! Wish me luck...


* BTW, hats off to the folks at dndlead.com again, for some awesome pics of some sweet old lead minis!

old AD&D figs vs new D&D minis: "That Was Then, This Is Now"

Ok, ok...I confess. A shot of Uhura, old vs new, has nothing at all to do with D&D minis, AD&D figs, Paladins, Rangers, Fighters, Thieves, or even Lizardmen. Although, truth be told ol' Gorn here fits that last role pretty nicely:


Anyway, tangent dismissed. Let me begin.

So ya see, I go through these phases. I dig something out of the pile-o-the-past and then I get all "into it" again....ugh. So, as of late I've been playing with some D&D minis with my kids. Well that of course leads itself to digging up some of the old minis from back in....errr....you know.

Now I already posted a couple times about my Lizardman and my Pally from those early days. In fact I even included some pics of them: my first ever D&D character, the now nameless Lizman and then my all-time-fave, a Pally named "Eridon." Ol' greenie himself even got some follow-up action in a later White Dwarf article post.

Anyway, back to the present-future... err...the recent past-preset... errr...a few days ago: I was dorking around with a bunch of my modern D&D minis (the WotC stuff), and found a nu-skool Lizardman in the bunch. So of course my mind immediately jaunted (hey check out that publication date...nice!) to my old Grenadier Lizardman. I just had to take a look at "old-vs-nu" and see how these badboys stacked up against each other.

My first D&D character (and my first fig) "theeeee Lizzzzzardman" vs some '90s-Godzilla-animated-series-ish-looking Lizardman:


Honestly, the static stance of my old guy there loses out a little to the dynamic pre-swing of the new guy, I still take my old Lizardman over the new guy any day of the week and three or four times on Sunday and Monday. Maybe it's just me. Dunno. Oldskool Liz could take this new punk even with his sword broken off at the hilt. Kinda looks like he's holding an ice cream cone there, eh?...ha!

Having fun with that one, I then proceeded to find some more old-vs-nu comaprisons. Here are the rest of them.

My favorite AD&D character, my old Pally Eridon vs the new often-controversial Dragonborn Paladin:


I actually am ok with the DB race in 4e, but I don't like to see it overdone. This particular mini is mine from playing him as one of the pregen'd 11th level characters in the most recent Worldwide D&D Gameday event. Even though the only new features of this particular character in the PHB2 promo event were the sneak-peek at some new powers from the forthcoming 4e Divine Power book, I got to keep this mini, and so far Dragonborn minis are kinda hard to come by. So I dug it. I just wis they would have chosen a sword for the cast that didn't look like some ridiculous mushroom-head, phallic symbol. That thing looks silly, IMO. Again, I favor old-school Grenadier Human Paladin here, but I'm sure it's purely sentimental. That Dragonborn looks like he could serve it up pretty good to my boy Eridon, but I got my boy's back here too, ya'know?

Ok, on to some Ranger love...err....something. Old TSR AD&D (Human?) Archer/Ranger vs new WotC Archery-style Elf Ranger:


Now here's where I turn the tide and go nu-skool. This may also be due to the fact that I use this particular mini for my current badass 4e 8th level Elf Ranger character. Even so, the old TSR has that whole Michael McDonald look going on. Not sure where that came from, but that's all I think of every time I see this fig. "Ya mo be there..."


Ok, so sticking on the demi-human vibe, here's an old TSR AD&D Dwarf Fighter vs one of his current kin from WotC:


Apparently in 4e they still don't have eyes. Ah well, who needs 'em down in the rock, eh? At any rate, in this case I think I'm leaning towards the leaner here, the newbie. I mean, I really like the old-school horned-helm look and all, but the new guy seems to probably kick a little more butt than the old guy, IMO. Maybe it's due to the missing hammer, dunno. That never stopped my old Lizardman from performing massive beatdowns with just a sword hilt (or ice cream cone) in hand, but here it kinda makes a difference to me. I like the old guy too, but he just looks like he'd get pushed around by the new bully there.

Ok, back to the elves. Here's what 1983 TSR miniatures box called a "Male Elf Fighter" (IIRC - writing this without the box for reference) vs a modern fighter-type dude with a huge tower shield:


Again, I'm going with the modern mini here. And again it may just be because I'm currently using that particular mini for a 4e Human Cleric of Kord that I'm playing in a level 4 campaign. That cleric is pretty balanced STR/WIS (18/18, I think), but he's definitely a front-liner. It's a small group (stared out as only 3, but now a solid 4), so he has to dish out some damage as well as heal/lead. His Righteous Brand is ...well...freakin righteous! That is a main tactic to set up our Brutal Rogue for some major boost to hit. Anyway, my guy is using a Mage's Bastard Sword (no feat required...awesome!) for the high proficiency (+3 for Bastard), and he's a sword&boarder, so this fig just screamed "use me!"...err something. Gotta do something about that ever-curving blade, though....jeesh! Oh yeah, and that old-school Elf looks like a dork. He loses this round.

Ok, that leaves us with one last comparison. Here we see old-school Grenadier "Robber" (well, that's what I call him) vs the same deal, nu-school style from WotC:


Sadly I never painted the old Grenadier version. In fact, I think my whole thieves set is still unpainted....hhhmnnn. Maybe that's a good thing. I might just have to bust out some Testors jars and go at it...ha! Funny thing is I still have the TSR paintset from this 1983 line of figs. My son saw it and was all giddy, thinking he and I would paint some stuff. Then I opened up the jars. OMG! Yeah, those babies are nice and dry. Big huge chunks of dried up 1983 paint. Still a cool box and cool memories, so I keep them, dried-up or not.


Anyway, as much as I like the sneaky look on the new WotC robber mini there, I think I'm gonna give this round to the old-school. He's survived all of these years and still has a full sack! Ok, now that just sounded wrong, didn't it?


So,wrapping things up here it looks like we have a tie 3-3. I guess I'll have to keep digging for another good comparison duo to serve as a tie-breaker. Gonna have to dig deep in the piles of nerdliness in the basement to find the "back in '81" (ish) version of this modern mug:


Of course those old-school eye tyrants looked a bit like beach balls with dreadlocks....err something.


Side out, mahn!

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."

My *favorite* AD&D character

My *favorite* AD&D character (1st ed. with some house rules mixed in, from '83-85-ish - high school):

class: Paladin
race: Human (no other option for Pallies back then)
name: Eridon

Ran this guy thru a yearlong (or more) campaign back then. That was such an amazing time for creativity and just getting into the game....and no, we never went down into the steam tunnels up at MSU, either...we weren't *that* kooky.

He has since been re-birthed over and over again, in various games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, NWN, D&D Tactics, DDO, etc).

Back then, tho ('83-ish), he was a strict by-the-book Pally. Funny I played by-the-book on this one, after that Lizard-man a couple years earlier, eh? 10 magic items max, consisting of: 1 suit of armor, 1 shield, 4 weapons, and 4 other magic items. That's it! 10% tithing to the church. And better watch those role-playing decisions...LG is LG, dammit!

He had 18/?? STR, I wanna say 18/42 or so, and a 17 CHA. Somewhat low CON if I recall, but DEX, INT, WIS were all decent, just not uber...in the 10-13 range, IIRC. Tough stat restrictions on those ole boys back then. You either got lucky on those die rolls or you were just a Fighter....ha!

We eventually quested (one *Hell* of a quest, BTW) for a +5 Holy Avenger (yes!) for him, and he had a Girdle of (hhmmmnnnn....) Frost Giant Strength (STR=21 ?), IIRC, a Ring of Fire Resistance, and a Warhorse as a mount (which I don't ever recall us using...crazy).

I seem to recall the Maul or the Mattock of the Titans, as an uber weapon that one of us wielded for a while. That was badass too. Oh and I used to love those sweet magical swords that were like +1 Longsword (+3 vs Undead), etc....cool stuff back then. Never had a Vorpal, but the sword that I thought was sweet (still noone ever had one in our campaigns) was the "Sword of Sharpness."

The rest is just plain blurry to me now. Gotta dig up those old character sheets. I have so much old D&D/AD&D/GammaWorld/StarFrontiers/TopSecret/GangBusters/etc crap, it's kinda silly. I still thumb thru the old hardcovers, and the old issues of Dragon magazine...so much fun to rekindle those old fires, now and again.