Another year has passed and it is now four years ago since the Aleatorblog opened its  gates with its first post. We’re basically still doing what we used to do back then yet we don’t get to see each other that often anymore. But most of us are still working like crazy behind our hobby desks to get these little plastic men ready for tabletop warfare. So we figured it could be fun to take a closer look at our starting point and the climax of our own brush history. What were the Aleatores’ first miniatures, what are their personal favourites? Let’s find out!

Broncofish:

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Elrond de Gravenesse:

The question which one of my painted miniatures I like the most is very hard to answer for a wargamer. At least I had this problem when this year’s anniversary post for the Aleatorblog was due. I still like a lot of the miniatures I painted over the years quite a lot but which one of them I like the most I really couldn’t figure out. That’s where “your first miniature aswell” came in pretty handy. I would have loved to show you some of my cruel experiments I did back in the late 90ies with Revell email colour to some Wood Elves. But like many other stuff they got lost somewhere in the cellar of my parents.

That’s why I came up with a compromise: Instead of picking one of my most recently painted favourite miniatures – and that were quite a lot – I went back one step and picked up one of my older Warhammer miniatures.

Tzar Boris Bokha, Radii Bokha, the Red Tzar

I painted him several years ago in an old school colour scheme during a time when most of the other Aleatores were mainly occupied by the dark grimness of the 41^st millennium. But thanks to our recent love for Warhammer skirmish this fella will get a new basing and roam the streets of the Border Princess soon. Seriously, who could resist a drunk fat man on a bear?

Tzar Boris Bokha

Radii Bokha

the Red Tzar

And Urskin his bear.

Flattervieh:

My first contact with the hobby was during the Rogue Trader days when my older brother and a couple of his friends were playing WH40K. I instantly fell in love with the artworks, the miniatures and the background. Little by little the first miniatures were bought, especially terminators and even a Land Raider had to be part of the collection. Both Space Hulk and Space Crusade (by MB) shortly thereafter were great presents I got back then.

The Space Hulk Terminators and the little green skin remain to be unpainted even up to this day.

This unit of Space Wolves was among my first attempts to get some colour on miniatures which didn’t got their paint strapped off during the years.

Choosing a favourite miniature was everything but easy. There were so many over the last years. Starting with the new Genestealer cult Hybrids, over almost the whole Horus Heresy range from Forge World,the first plastic Night Goblins or maybe the Black Orcs around Grimgork.

I finally went for Scabeiathrax the Bloated, Great Unclean One by Forge World as he was my first Forge World miniature and is still enthusing me up to this day.

Goatmoerser:

Like so many others my first plastic miniatures were a bunch of Hero Quest miniatures as our parents bought a box for my older brother and me. From the start on I was pretty much obsessed with the undead. Walking corpses – how cool is that? Painting them was quite a hassle though. I noticed that the skeletons would indeed look better if I left them unpainted in their natural “bleached bone colour” instead of slapping huge amounts of shining white on them. Quite a bummer for a start. The more interesting miniature is on the right. This was my first pewter miniature my father bought me more than two decades ago. I think it’s some sort of undead samurai warrior.

Neat freehand on his back, hehe. I have no idea which company produced this miniature. Maybe some of our readers knows the answer?

It really, really took me a long time to come up with “my favourite miniature”. This is what I came up with, the duel between Garviel Loken and Ezekyle Abaddon from Forge World.

I loved the books, I love the different characters, I am a Sons of Horus fan and I think this sculpt is great. And this is just such an iconic scene for the essence of the Horus Heresy, one of my favourite settings GW ever came up with.

Also I am quite happy the way the paint job turned out to look like. Of course the world wide web is full of better painters than me, but I really appreciate my take on the colours and would not trade this piece against a better painted version. Also I still like the fact that I gave it my subtle own note when I decided that Loken was wearing his helmet that day. The Garviel Loken from the books always looked much different from the sculpt from FW (at least in my imagination).

Kjeld:

While having had contact with our beloved hobby through school via friends who played Warhammer Fantasy I never got around to start it myself back then. It wasn`t til one day in my early twenties I walked past a Games Workshop store and finally decided to go in and not only look at the nice miniatures through the window. The store manager was a nice guy, we talked a lot about the hobby and he played my first game of 40k with me. After that I was fixed on the hobby, bought the Assault on Black Reach starter box and since today the hobby fun hasn’t stopped.

My first miniature I painted (if you don’t count the 1/72 scale army figures we all used to have) was the Ultramarine captain from the Assault on Black Reach box.

After playing 40k a long time I got into the Horus Heresy, which is my favourite game setting thanks to the rich fluff and the cool rules. But like everybody who gets into 30k has to face a very difficult decision: which legion do I start with? For me in gaming it was always about the rule of cool, so I browsed the FW homepage and found one of my favourite models of al time: The Night Haunter!

His mini is absolutely cool, you can feel the menace from just looking at it. So I knew my first legion had to be Night Lords. Isn’t that cape awesome?!? Great sculpt.

Rekrom:

20 years ago I came across WH40K at the end of the second edition. A new friend introduced me to the game and I was instantly sold. Back then I built some scale models by Revell but this was something completely different. As a Blood Angels player my buddy owned the Angels of Death codex and since money was short I went for the Dark Angels. My first miniatures was a pewter tactical squad. Most of them got their paint strapped off but I still found four of them with their first paintjob.

The only GW colour I had back then was Dark Angels green. For the rest I used Revell email colour. Of course the miniatures still had their mold lines and were not primed before.

My favourite miniature has to be my self build Tyranid Dimachearon, which was built using the kit of a Tervigon. But why is this one my favourite?

Well I like monsters and the bigger the better. The Dimachearon is my biggest Tyranid on foot in my collection. And after putting so much work and time into this conversion it does not come as a surprise that he is my favourite miniature.

 

scrum:

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