Tuesday, February 3, 2015

'Real' Oldhammer, Part 2

More pics from twenty years ago! Over at Realm of Chaos 80s, Orlygg post an article highlighting Wayne England's dwarf army from White Dwarf and ended by wondering how many people were influenced to collect these guys...

I was one of them. Again, sorry for the blurry pics - these were scanned from glossy 4x6" photos taken in the days before digital cameras!




The army was 40 dwarf warriors (normally fielded as one giant unit!), 30 dwarf crossbows, 20 longbeards, 20 iron breakers, 24 slayers, and 12 thunderers plus assorted warmachines and characters. The collection started long before the article in White Dwarf, but serious additions and painting followed it. The color scheme for these guys comes straight from those articles (White Dwarf 135 and 144). I think these pics are from the transition from 3rd to 4th because of the gyro-copter and I seem to remember outfitting the army with runes rather than standard magic items so I must have had the new-fangled army book. Technically this falls outside of my current period of interest, but the models are mostly from my initial collection in the 80's (see the bright green bases?)...

I GAVE this army away to my brother in the late 90's because I thought I was through with fantasy (being primarily a 40k player and moving to more historical pursuits like Napoleonics). A few years ago he sold it to our friend Jim (who once originally owned part of these models - we each had dwarves and orcs and traded one for the other so he had an orc horde and I had all of the dwarves) who wanted to get back into Warhammer Fantasy after some time away from the game. Jim still has them and recently turned down my offer to buy them back...

I'm not finished trying to acquire them (I'll wear him down eventually), but the good thing is that Jim is willing to play 3rd edition. Once I get an army into shape and manage to find the time to actually play some games, I will have another opponent. I'm going to have to try and get some better photos of this collection.

7 comments:

  1. Jim, just sell him the army or play them, there's no other option here. They're like those violins locked in safes. You can make this right JIm, DO IT.

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  2. I wish I had the foresight as a young'un to photograph my gaming....would be a great walk down memory lane. On second thought, they would have turned out all blurry! Maybe it was for the best? :)

    Cheers.

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    1. I'm glad I didn't... I wouldn't be allowed to play with minis again...

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  3. Lovely collection...hope you get them back some day.

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  4. Love the Archeophotography. Like a window into the past. I too wish I had taken some gaming photos back in the day (though I didn't have anything this nice to photograph). We didn't know what we had, 'till it was gone.

    As for Jim, so long as you're offering something reasonably FMV, he really ought to sell them back to you. It's not about the money. He can always buy someone else's old minis, but you can only get your's back from him. He should do the right thing. I'm sure you'd lend them back to him if really wanted to play them from time to time.

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  5. Heh,,, just so anyone doesn't get the wrong idea, Jim has been one of my best friends for more than thirty years. He's helped me move three times! When I offered to buy them initially, I didn't think he really wanted them because we haven't played Warhammer Fantasy in at least five years (mostly my fault because I haven't has a fantasy army in at least ten years). He will certainly play some games if I can get my armies together!

    He also has a pile of orcs from the same era that used to belong to me as well, so that's two Oldhammer forces just waiting for action! If I can't get them back, I'm glad he has them...

    ...but it still won't stop me from pestering him! He probably won't play unless it's at my house anyway...

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  6. Hope to see some head to head action soon! =)

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