Part 0 - the master list
Hashut be wi’ ye, brothers in bull.
The moment fast approaches. The Grey Mountain must be scaled. What follows is as comprehensive a list of all my fantasy minis as I could make. This collection started a little over a year ago. If you want to skip the preamble, and all the personal stuff, please skip to “Dawi Zharr” for the master list of miniatures and links to stockists for the range of stuff I’ve got.
But if you’ve got time, a little backstory first…
By December of 2019, it became apparent that I had not been suffering from a simple bout of depression. I was suffering what finally turned out to be a (quite severe) endocrine disorder that left me absolutely demolished in terms of energy. The endocrine system is complex, with individual hormones governing many loosely connected systems at once, and in effect - the condition as it was threatened the energy I needed for my high-pressure job, the fertility that I depended on to start a family, and the life plan I was in the middle of executing.
I’m sure you can imagine this destabilised my life enormously. My response was to step back from my relationship and home, so I took a contract in Manchester, called in some favours, and moved in to an expensed hotel for three months to get myself together. I threw myself in to work, fitness, reading, and trying to grapple with what I would do with my life if I couldn’t have a family.
I should say I was working completely alone. In effect, I did three months in social isolation before Covid even happened - or rather, while it was building up. And when I got to the point of lockdown 1 being declared, I was actually in a hotel, which was… surreal.
To pass the time in my monkish isolation, I poured my spare time in to writing fiction for my personal enjoyment, and embraced my love of Black Library. I poured over old White Dwarf archives looking for individual battle reports and releases, and revived my love of the two great passions of my youth: writing, and miniatures. I hadn’t touched miniatures for fifteen years, but I found myself planning warbands, armies, pursuing ranges I remembered or half-remembered, and of course - lurking on this community.
That led me to creating this collection, which I planned at first with care and attention, doing hours of price research, building spreadsheets, calculating budgets. I love navigating the market and assessing value, tracking prices over time, I look back at the amounts I considered luxurious to spend at the time and laugh; I’ve made more just by selling on my ebay store than I originally planned to spend in total, and even more trading privately with you wonderful folks through the discourse and discord.
I’m profoundly grateful to everyone in our community for supporting and encouraging my writing, trading with me to complete our collections together, and shitposting.
Because of CDO and the support and confidence you guys gave me, I’ve now been paid as a professional writer and I’ve started painting again … and I’ve kept both those wonderful things as I recovered from my condition and rebuilt my life thanks to proper medication. I am back on track to have the life and family I wanted, and happier than I was before for having the hobby and this community. I hope that comes across on the Brazen Broadcast, speaking of which, I feel like I owe the following people my most heartfelt thanks:
@Oxymandias for all his effort, energy and discipline in making projects happen
@MichaelX for taking the time to be so encouraging to me in my writing
@Reaver for making me laugh like an idiot every day
@Admiral for being ringmaster of our little circus
@Zanko , @GhraskDragh and @Antenor for commenting with relentless positivity on my writing in the early days. Without you guys, I never would have persisted, and never would have gone on to sell my work to strangers for real money. That I spent. On more chorfs. Several times over.
I know this has gotten totes emoshe and also that there are so many great folks from the discord and comments sections that I haven’t shouted out. Especial good vibes go to Chayim, the aussie lads, and everyone who turned out to bump our youtube videos up the algo.
Now. Let’s talk Grey Mountain.
Oft have we observed on the podcast that I am “broker”. I buy and sell vintage miniatures, and often I don’t even do that - often I just show people where to find things they want to buy. But the only reason I have enough information to do that… is my collection.
In amongst the beautiful pictures of crates and boxes, I have got:
DAWI ZHARR
Games Workshop - 1993 range
7x Blunderbusses (one of each sculpt)
5x Axeman (one of each sculpt)
6x Command sections
1x Astragoth
Great Taurus & rider
Lammasu & Rider
2x other heroes/champions
~20x plastic Chaos Dwarf warriors
7x Bull Centaurs
1x Classic Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher
1x Classic Earthshaker Mortar
Games Workshop - 80s and older
1x Juggernaut
3x 80s Chaos Dwarf Renegades, inc. Master of Madness, Khazek Doomlord
1x 80s normal-dwarf Flame Cannon - this is really tiny - I like the crewman’s flat-topped hat, acceptably chorfy
1x Ass Cannon - original and best baby (thanks @Loidrial !! Big news on this coming later this year)
20x Hammerers which I plan to convert to Immortals using a combination of Kharadron and Chaos Knight parts
Forge World (ish) - 2011 range
10x Infernal Guard
10x Fireglaives
1x Command Section
5x Hellsmiths
1x Bale Taurus with rider
1x Shartorr the Executioner
3x Bull Centaur Renders
1x Bull Centaur Taur’rukh
6x K’Dai, might sell these, painting is a bit intimidating and not huge fan of the sculpt
Chronopia - 1997 Dwarf range
19x Dwarven Warshields
21x Horned One Legion - swords and shields, basically
21x Horned One Spearmen
4x Blood Bone Clawsmen (they’ve got big wrist claws, I’ll mix them in with the swords to make a 20-reg)
7x Axe-horn warriors (think these are really, really dumb)
1x Blood Totem and keeper, 90% for the keeper being totally honest
MOM Miniaturas Dark Dwarves
20x Warriors
3x Command - this annoys me - if you’re going to sell command separately, don’t orphan three of my block of infantry dudes - make the numbers even out or bundle them together! Maybe I’ll use the three spares as crew
Titan Forge
2x Chosen war golems
10x Dread Guards
10x Dread Gunners
10x Dread Reapers - I love scythes - I think these are super cool
1x Incinerator daemon-walker
1x Life-Shreader (sic) walking rocket launcher
5x characters - Bash-Ar Than, Ishan Go, Dhanu, Malchim, Thaugran - love these, some of the best use of cuneiform outside of Lost Kingdom
Russian Alternative
3x Characters - flaggy lord , choppy lord , shooty lord
20x Great Weapons - one of the remaster and one of the original
20x Shields - one of the remaster and one of the original
20x Harquebuses - one of the remaster and one of the original
6x Command - one of each group
1x Khadai
6x Bull Centaurs across two different kits
1x Cannon or Rocket - haven’t decided what I want to do with this yet
Mantic Games
30x Blacksouls - I think I assembled these half infantry, half firearms
10x Halfbreeds - I’ve been very open that I hate the kits for these with their big gaps
1x King - he is so huge - I know the implication is that he’s in an armoured suit that exagerrates his proportions but he just seems bigger across the board
1x Slave Driver
1x Supreme Ironcaster on Great Winged Halfbreed - this is a really bad kit. The dragon it’s based on is great but the lammasu head was a disaster and I’m going to need to do some serious pinning to make it work.
Titan Wargames
8x Dragoons
9x Heavy Infantry & Royal Guard
1x Pyromancer
1x Overlord
Admiralty Miniatures
4x Blunderbusses
Blood Bowl
OK I did some work and looked these up:
I’ve got the original GW team from the Made to Order run, and H’Thark
The Willy Miniatures team for which I hate the hobgobs and have tried to no avail to sell them on ebay at literally two pounds a man and still had no luck
The Bull Warriors who are awesome but very big. It’s cool to see how they mix up the tentacles and two heads mutation stuff with the mesopotamian aesthetic
These two huge mechanical bull-centaurs which I think are awesome
These two armoured bull-centaurs
I should say… I have no interest in Blood Bowl… I want to use all of these are minor (weapon in hand) conversions. Particularly the bull centaurs I think often look better because they’re armoured in blood bowl ranges.
GREENSKINS
Going to break these down by type rather than supplier. Assume GW unless otherwise specified.
Hobgoblins
1x Hobgoblin Big Boss
6x Hobgoblin Command
4x Hobgoblin Wolfboyz (axes), inc Big Boss on Wolf and Standard… so actually two sigh
7x Hobgoblin Archers
3x Sneaky Gitz
12x Oglah Khan’s Wolfboyz
1x Gazak Khan
40x Hobgrot Slittaz
20x Hobgoblin hand weapons by Battleforge
1x Sneaky Git by Admiralty Miniatures
2x Hobgoblin Slave-drivers by Admiralty Miniatures
~20 Chronopia Blackblood Orc Swordsmen - although very rare, plan to run these as hobgobs. Love their distinctive arab aesthetic.
~10 Chronopia Caravan Guard and Assault Troops - thanks Flagellant!
I’ve also got a handful of the archers too but they’ll just merge in with my other hobgob archers.
20x Russian Alternative Archers across two sets of 10 sculpts, can’t link the other one but easy to find
20x Sword/Spear infantry from the same range along with a command group
10x Wolfriders along with two characters who give off Big Boss and regular Boss vibes
8x Knightmare Hobgoblins - I also have the lord - it’s a shame they aren’t hunched but they look great otherwise.
Plains Gobbos
60x Classic WHFB Goblins
10x vintage Goblin Wolf Riders
3x Rippa’s Snarlfangs
Various bosses from across the history of citadel,
40x Mantic goblins
10x Mantic wolfriders - don’t like the open mouths/stick out tongues personally but I got these free using the Power of Complaints so good for me
1x Mincer
1x Big git
~12 Chronopia Goblin Swordmasters and Crimson Blades - second only to those double double axemen in terms of goofy-huge weapons
~30x Marauder Miniatures 80s goblins - these were official GW stuff under a sub-brand - got some spider riders too. Obscenely expensive, my treat to myself for promotion
~50x Ral Partha goblins - Kev Adams mainly - this is a big mix of spears, maces, command sections, heroes, even a chariot. Everything Ral Partha Europe sells with the word “goblin” in it, basically
~50x Black Tree Designs goblins, who have a great classic look. Smaller noses, bigger teeth - how goblins used to be before they all got massive noses in the plastic era.
~90 Knightmare goblins of various types. I like the armoured Black Goblins, the steppe styled regular Goblins and the Hill Goblins. I especially like the riders without wolves who are very well priced and will give my Oathmark wolves some riders.
1x Marshcrawla Sloggoth which I intend to discard/sell the Sloggoth and reuse the howdah for another project
1x Beastskewer Killbow which I’ll replace the orc with a Hob-grot if I can get away with it.
I don’t much like the Night Goblin analogues - the Doom Goblins - and the Forest Goblin equivalents, the Feral Goblins. So, Knightmare doesn’t appear in those items below.
Forest Goblins
~10 Vintage metal Forest Goblins including a few vintage Spider Riders - these were some of the best things Li’l Chitz painted as a boy - I will likely not strip and repaint these
30x Forest Goblin spears - this is a weird one - some dolt took the plastic riders for like three sets of spider riders and ditched the spiders, then sold them as is for a knockdown price - best case he got BFSP three times over but otherwise this is just silly
25x Forest Goblin Spears by Shieldwolf
20x Chronopia Swamp Goblin Mantis Guard and a few blowpipes
1x Arachnarok Spider
1x Scuttleboss on Giant Spider
Night Goblins
60x BFSP-era Night Goblin Spears
40x BFSP-era Night Goblin Bows
Various bosses, shamans, champions etc.
I’ve also got a mess of stuff coming to me on this front, classic stuff like the Doom Diver, Grom the Paunch, some wolf chariots, all sorts.
You’ll note I don’t care for squigs or trolls. That’s because I… don’t.
Warslaves of En-Tarah-Anah
This group will make more sense when we get to the relevant point in Among The Wicked Dawi. Essentially, it’s an army of humans and warbeasts in service to the Chaos Dwarfs, that they use for slaving. Let’s do it by theme.
Tilean Armoured Mercenaries
21x Ricco’s Republican Guard
10x Braganza’s Besiegers
2x Voland’s Venators - desperate to complete this set, these two are dupes
You can tell these all have the same aesthetic/armour style, and I like it!
Men of the Dark Lands
~20x Mycenean Hoplites - covered in horns as they are, they make great human Hashut-worshippers.
30x Victrix Armoured Persian Archers
30x Victrix Armoured Persian Spears - mainly because of the phrygian caps on these
~20x Persians and Thrakians from the Mortal Gods range - again, phyrgian caps…
Nipponese
~25x Handgunners - a mix of 10 Empire and 10 Tanegashima along with a few from the Footsore Sohei box - I’m hoping the scales will broadly match
~20x Sohei warrior monks - a mix of Footsore, Warlord and Northstar - unlikely these will match scale but I like them historically anyway so may just have these generally.
Arabyans
5x Al Mukhtar’s Desert Dogs
~12x Ghulam Cavalry
~20x Moorish Tribal Warriors
Warbeasts
6x Titan Gladiators - probably run these as K’Dai or greater daemons…
16x Cyclops of various types - would run these as Ogres if it was ever relevant (it won’t be)
1x Blackblood Goblin Myrmidon
1x Arachnarok Spider
so - what is this FOR?
Someday, I want to run a combined role-play/wargaming campaign set as a prequel to Among The Wicked Dawi. In the mean-time, I’ve not played a tabletop game since roughly 2004, so maybe I’ll dip my toes in. But first, I’ve got to learn how to paint!
Which… I am not going to be good at. At first. We’ll see where it leads, hey?
My best wishes both for your personal and hobby life! It is clear from your writing that there is a lot of creativity just waiting to be applied to your collection of miniatures. I am looking forward to following your progress up that mountain.
looking very good!
