Great War of the Worlds meets Valley of the Four Winds - Minifigs style.....

Back in 1980 Games Workshop released a boxed game; Valley of the Four Winds.

 'An Epic Game of Sword & Sorcery', the background had been featured in White Dwarf magazine from issue 8 onwards......Miniature Figurines Ltd released a mind blowing array of Boschesque sculpts. They had suddenly moved away from a more staid wargaming style of sculpting into the forefront of fantasy. Some of my own favorites have always been the Swamp Lords - I even managed to half paint a set all those years back.....Minifigs are slowly re-releasing pieces from the range including a few of the Swamp Lords. They have a few other older ranges to pick from here.  Dave at Caliver Books who owns Minifigs now, has commissioned new sculpts in the same style for their new Great War of the Worlds range. 

These top 2 pics are directly off the Minifigs site, purely to lead you in.........

The rest of the Swamp Lords are below - excuse my unfinished 35 year old 

paint jobs......

  

As always contact me on enquiries@deartonyblair.co.uk regarding trades and such like....

Sculptors that have moved away from the fantasy market.................

2 of the industries' most well known sculptors from the early days are Andrew Chernak and Nick Bibby. Andrew Chernak founded Grenadier Models with Ray Rubin back in 1975, having been running a joint giftware company, Canterbury Pewter Ltd, since 1972. His sculpts are numerous and many examples can be found on the Grenadier section of the Lost Minis WIKI. He now sculpts larger scale figurines in bronze. Check out his website; http://www.andrewchernak.com/

Nick Bibby was an early stalwart of the Games Workshop heydays....many of his sculpts, including his excellent dragons, can be seen on the Collecting Citadel Miniatures WIKI. He is now sculpting and casting in bronze...check out his website....the latest 'Indominatable' is a lifesize Grizzly Bear....takes my breath away. The pic below is borrowed from his site....http://nickbibby.com/

As usual enquiries@deartonyblair.co.uk

Laughing at the 80s and this was me writing the music.........

I still have great memories of walking into my parents hallway and my mate Steve strumming 2 chords....I started humming a tune and then the words came flowing.......please bear in mind this was the 80s and pop was (and is) still a viable music culture....no, seriously......

We came close to Timmy Mallett picking the song up but it didn't happen...One Direction next......

enquiries@deartonyblair.co.uk

Wargames Foundry...catalogues and a veritable plethora of stuff.....

Had a quick search through the bookshelves and found a bunch of the above......this sort of catalogue has become a rarity in these days of internet access...more the shame. Many a time have I spent on the throne perusing these pages.......enjoy.

I never used this voucher for some reason....grrrrrr...

This was a full colour catalogue.....an absolute gem and signed by Shane Hoyle.....

The 5 below are A4 and A3 flyers

Some shots of the 'coming soon' pages...some of these have still not been released however Bryan, Marcus and the team are fighting through their dusty corridors of doom to bring them all back....

They had a free limited mini included with orders for a while....I think I managed to get them all over the months with carefully planned out orders....

Not sure where this pic came from.....not mine so apologies in advance....

and whatever happened to these guys? Wonderful sketches...blogged some in a previous post. All pics taken a few years back at an open day....maybe the greens are still to be found??

Some of the halflings have been released, sculpted by John Pickford and available here.