Rogue Trader Revisited

As a university student I was suckered into the realm of Games Workshop. Initially with Bloodbowl, then with Warhammer 40,000 and finally with Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Whereas WHFB became my thing for the next 20 years and I built up a large collection of Bloodbowl teams, my dive into the 40K universe barely survived into 2nd edition.

So my collection of original 'Beakies', the marines from the 'Strike Force' box and assorted metal miniatures from the late 80s and early 90s, were packed away in crappy cardboard boxes. Over the years they have been bought out to amuse my 40K playing friends and as toys for my kids. They have been abused, busted, stuck back to together, lost and mostly found. But not received a lot of love.

The time has now come to bring them back to life and return them to their glory days.

Operation Salamander

Back in the day, Rogue Trader encouraged you to create your own Chapter which I did. It was also very early in my painting days and I was learning a lot. So bring on the Black Hearts in their multiple uniform iterations.

I pulled together a selection of the various miniatures from the different units I had collected and took them along to the 40K Meet and Greet day we had at Nunawading Wargames Association a few weeks ago. This was just the inspiration I needed to decide to strip and repaint them, hopefully bringing 30+ years of hobby experience to the table and bringing them back to life. Of all the chapter's the Salamanders have always peaked my interest. The original Tamiya dark green paint and Citadel Colour Salamander Green might have been the spark that ignited the ember, but I think it was the idea of lots of multi-meltas. My aim is to recreate the early Salamanders from the late Rogue Trader and early 2nd Edition period.

So the purpose of this series of blog posts is to track my progress and give me an incentive to keep at it.

Strip and Re-Paint aka Proof of Madness

The big question running through my mind was how to strip all these old plastic miniatures and plastic parts. Stripping and repainting was something I had done a few times before in the 90s and I learnt the perils of acetone and plastic. My research suggested pure Iso Propyl Alcohol was the way to go and I decided to use it with my ultrasonic cleaner. Bingo! It works a treat. No less smelly than acetone and you want to use disposable gloves, but 30min and a little toothbrush work returned the minis to almost new.

The superglue is brittle enough to flake off and the plastic on plastic parts are either still strong or come free. I then used a pin vice to drill out the glue or sandpaper to buff it off as required.