Citizens Of The Imperium - Inquisitor in 28mm Scale

It's been a while since I last posted because I'm taking a short break, this is partly because I'm hoping to visit a model show soon. Rather than start another project I thought I'd wait and see what I inevitably buy while I'm there and then start a new project afterwards. In the meantime I was looking for something else to occupy my time.

This break gave me a chance to think about miniature painting again, and while I was thinking I was reminded of the Games Workshop specialist game, Inquisitor, that was released just over 10 years ago. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it was a 54mm scale role-playing game featuring small groups of characters. For me that was exactly why it appealed, the focus was on character models and I'd always enjoyed painting characters in 28mm scale. Of course small groups of figures meant this was never going to be commercially appealing to the Games Workshop and sadly the game disappeared after a short run, the models lasted longer but are now no longer produced. I held on to many of my models for years but eventually I decided sell almost all of them and re-invest in scale models.

I imagine now you're wondering what was I thinking about? Well I was thinking about painting character models in 28mm scale, in-between scale model projects. My first thought was to paint simple Warhammer 40K themed characters, citizens of the Imperium if you like. This train of thought eventually led me to thinking about converting 28mm Inquisitor themed models. The 40K universe has (or had, I'm not so up to date on it these days) such a rich background, for me it was typified in the works of John Blanche and the Inquisitor themed Eisenhorn and Ravenor series of novels by Dan Abnett. Further research led me to discover that there's an active community of 28mm Inquisitor players out there. While I'm not look at playing any more, just painting, it was very interesting to see that the game lives on in this form and people have long had this idea before I got round to thinking about it.

Of course when I was at my painting and converting peak you used to be able to buy individual sprues and parts from the Games Workshop. These days you can't and the cost of buying a box set just for a few parts makes converting prohibitively expensive. This was one of the main reasons I stopped buying Games Workshop products.

So, ordinarily that would mean I'd have to rely heavily on my ever dwindling (and mostly Warhammer Fantasy) spares box. There was a time when I would only use Games Workshop parts or sculpt them myself, partly because I had aspirations of entering the Golden Demon and the use of any third party parts would lead to a disqualification. But since then things have moved on, there are plenty of good quality third party parts out there. If the Games Workshop can no longer deliver what I need then I have no choice but to go elsewhere, and as I said, my spares are getting less and less.

So how did I pass my time? This is a first attempt, a young Eisenhorn as featured in the Dan Abnett novel, Xenos.

The model was actually made from Games Workshop parts and green-stuff. A mix of parts including, the head of a classic 90's plastic Chaos Warrior Champions, a body from the Empire militia set, a pair of Imperial Guard legs and a bit more sculpting than I was comfortable with if I'm honest!

Overall I'm quite pleased with this one. When I get more spare time I may well revisit this project and do a few more.
 

Buried Treasure?

A while ago my father asked me to take some of the huge collection of old miniatures that'd I'd left behind when I left home, almost 20 years ago. Of course in recent years I'd built up a sizeable collection of my own which was filling my own home but I took a few figures that I'd found buried deep in a box and promptly forgot about them.

When I started painting metal figure were by far the best option, plastics were far behind the models you see today. But as time progressed they caught up and I found myself painting them and my vast collection of lead and white metal figures were discarded into boxes to gather dust. I remember at one point I'd do anything to avoid painting metals, so old and out of date was how I viewed them.

Back to the present and I wanted to try a new way of stripping paint and so I decided these old figures would be good for a test. The paint stripping was a success (and will feature in a future blog post). After reading an excellent blog, Realm of Chaos 80s, I began to to look at the figures and see them in a new light.

Sure some of them were certainly worth something on eBay, I'd seen some of the figures selling for between £5 to £50! But really I have no desire to sell them, I feel inspired to give some of them a chance to be repainted rather than cashing them in for a short term gain.

So what did I find?

Here's some of the highlights:

First up a set of figures from the 90's game Warhammer Quest. The Pit Fighter and Chaos Warrior were playable characters, the rest were NPCs from the Lair of the Orc Warlord expansion pack (left to right Gubbinz the Jester, Bogoff the Snotling and Growler the Squighound).

Next up was part of large group of undead, I seem to remember writing a lot of undead scenarios for Warhammer Quest. If my memory serves me well these are all 1990's Wraiths, with the exception of the figure at the bottom left. This one is a 1980's Wight, made from lead.

Finally we have a collection of hero figures that I used over several years. The Golden Wizard and the Dwarf Pirate were more recent figures. The 2 Dwarfs were part of a larger group I had when I played advanced Heroquest in the late 80s / early 90s (before playing Warhammer Quest).





So is nostalgia going to be all it seems? I certainly have happy memories of the times when I played games with these very figures and maybe I was wrong to write off these figures all those years ago. Will they paint up well second time round or have me rushing back to painting newer plastic and resin figures? Well keep reading and I'm sure future posts will hold the answers.