Merry Mercmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! Reconnecting with the miniature painting community in the last few weeks has been medicine for me. So thanks for all the greetings and encouragements. I truly enjoy each comment all of you leave behind when you come to visit. I hope you are all staying safe and finding ways to make the most out of this wounded holiday season.

I want to end 2020 on a high note, so here's one of my favourite Citadel miniatures of all time: the Warhammer 40K mercenary "Old World Jack." His grim expression of dread and his lively sense of movement make a compelling contrast. Plus his armour is an early ancestor of the beaky space marine armour that discloses how influential 2000 AD was on Citadel's visual style: those boots and knee-pads are right out of Judge Dredd:

Next is "Catachan Luke." He's named after the jungle planet Catachan, which is mentioned in the Rogue Trader rulebook as the deadliest of hostile "death worlds". But if Catachan is a mythic version of Vietnam, Luke is clearly patterned off a US infantryman, complete with an M16:

I don't know about you, but if I was going to spend my hard-earned money on a heavily armed mercenary, I would not hire a man who goes by the name "Spaced-Dout Sam." Jesus, Sam -- pull yourself together.

And finally we have "Mad Morris." Like many of the RT7 mercenaries, this model lived a double life as an Imperial Guardsman. But that, of course, is quite appropriate, since it is easy to imagine many of the more sociopathic Guardsmen deserting the service, repainting their equipment, and taking up life as a gun-for-hire:

Thanks for coming with me on this tour of the Rogue Trader mercenaries. In case you missed the earlier episodes, here are the first, second and third posts I wrote about the RT7 range of miniatures.

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I will leave you with one final piece of great personal news. Mrs. Oldhammer-in-Toronto and I adopted a retired racing greyhound. We had been thinking of getting a pooch for many months. She wanted a medium-sized dog and I wanted a small dog, so we compromised and got an extremely large dog. Seriously - he is so big, when he lays down (which is most of time time) he looks like there's a dead deer lying around my house. "Utopia" came to us from the racetrack on Wheeling Island, West Virginia, via the extremely caring and professional foster care at Gillian's Greyhound Adoption. 

I can assure my reading public that his is a very good boy.

Mo' Mercenaries for Warhammer 40K

Any student of history knows that mercenaries were an indispensable part of life in the ancient world. We see them in every force from Carthage's elite infantry to William the Conqueror's Flemish allies. Speaking of the Flemish... There's a marvelous legend that when Duke Baldwin of Flanders asked what compensation he could expect for helping William's invasion of England, William handed him a blank sheet of parchment. This seems to be the first example of payment by a blank cheque.

If not always completely reliable, ancient mercenaries were at least esteemed as necessary professionals. But after the modern nation state began to emerge out of the mercenary-infested wreckage of the Thirty Years War, renting soldiers fell out of fashion. In the late 20th century, mercenaries attracted a downright dishonorable reputation because of their role in vile bush wars and civil conflicts. If anything, the corporatization of mercenary work in the modern Middle East has only sunk their standing further.

The Rogue Trader minis that I've been profiling in my last couple posts reflect the idea of mercenaries that was current in the 1980's: these are decommissioned army men looking for a buck or poorly-organized irregulars. More like the Crippled Eagles of Rhodesia than Blackwater's shiny private army in Iraq.

Well, let's have at 'em. First up is "World Burner." I have always been a little entranced by this figure. He's armed only with an auto-pistol and a gas mask -- and yet his faceless glare (and sinister name) make him seem like a terrifying opponent:

Next is "Break Out Con." I feel like if I were an escaped convict, I wouldn't advertise that fact by making it a nickname. But then, of course, I don't have a fully loaded bolter. When you've got a bolter, they call you anything you want.

Here is "Hacker Harris." He and Break Out Con are a classic example of the Citadel Design Studio's modular technique, where the same basic sculpt is reconfigured to create two or more miniatures. First and foremost, this was a way of producing more miniatures in a shorter period of time, and it helps explain the Studio's ability to crank out so many different miniatures in such a short period of time (that and the drugs). But the modular technique has other benefits. It implants a pleasing sense of pattern in Citadel's miniature ranges.

And finally, here's "Fast-Star John"...

Fast-Star John appears to be a modular variation of World Burner. Both seem to be wearing a modified (and dyed) set of traditional Imperial Guard flak armour. Hence the sense that these fellows are decommissioned veterans or perhaps deserts. He also seems to be carrying an M16. Just the thing you want for your Bush War... in space.

Thanks for stopping by!