Rare Praetorian Guardsmen for sale

The blister pack for sale

A painted Praetorian from my collection

On Ebay I currently have a rare unopened blister pack of  2 40K Praetorian Guardsmen. This blister pack came from the Praetorian box set that was a limited edition release in the 1990's.

Its nice to have a whole regiment of them, but that would cost a fortune these days. However, they look great as part of a command squad along the lines of chosen men or hand picked elites who accompany the senior officer etc. The 2 figures have great poses. One has the rifle ready for close combat with a fairly serious bayonet fixed. The other has grenade launcher. Both have parade dress tunics with epaulettes and "tassels".....and of course the pith helmets!

Happy bidding.

Macro photography

I got a new camera. Its an Olympus SLR E420. Not leading edge, but certainly beyond my photographic talents and a step up from point and click digital cameras. Having said that, I got bored reading the instruction manual, and decided to do some point and click close-ups.

What I've learned is:

• I still have a lot to learn about photography
• macro photography can give great detail - which can be quite unforgiving to basic paint jobs

Be warned, some of the pictures below are very close-up for 28mm.

Brightorian Comms Trooper

I promised to post this for somebody, and forgot. So now I've remembered. Sadly, the picture only shows a glimpse of the large holster. Because the trooper is part of the command squad, he has a sword and pistol. However, the Brightorian guard have a command trait. They carry pistols in large rigid holsters. These holsters clip onto the handle of the pistol to form a stock, thus giving the trooper the range of a rifle, but still able to holster the weapon for hand-to-hand combat.

Brightorian troopers

The plan for this week was to build and paint a squad of 10 bog standard Cadian guardsmen, so that I could make some progress with my Brightorian Guard. What actually happened was 4 troopers were built and painted in different colour schemes, with 3 different types of heads!

In mitigation I ask is it possible to paint up a plain green squad when within arms reach I can see

• Dremmel tools and drills
• Westwind SRS heads (Indian and Paras!)
• 11 shades of green and blue paints (including jade green and ice blue)
• the tail end of my painting self discipline as it leaves the location

To say I am easily distracted would be an understatement. It might sound sad that I've made little progress with this army over the last 9 years, but I can assure you it's been 9 years of pure fun ;-)

Terminator Captain and Ratling Sniper

I think these were the first miniatures I ever painted. The termie captain won many games for me by teleporting into the heart of the enemy with a terminator squad. I used to do a lot of that until a game where I lost 2 squads to the perils of the warp by rolling double ones.

The ratlings have earned their keep over the years. The new Imperial Guard rules appear not to limit the ratlings to 10 snipers. I hope this is right as I've managed to accumulate 18 different ratling models across the different 40K versions (admittedly one is a Hasslefree model and 2 may be squats). For once, giving the eyes an excited gaze actually suit a miniature.

Brightorian Guard desert troops

Here is a typical progress report on my 40K Brightorian Guard army. I managed to paint up a second squad of desert troops (using GW Tallarn models). I've faithfully painted them to the scheme I settled on, which was based on some Indian troops I saw in the Rajasthan desert a couple of years ago.

However, I've taken longer than planned to do them and as a result have not completed a third squad that I was asked to supply to somebody else. I've done the honorable thing and said they can have their pick of the 2 completed squads, while I finish the 3rd squad off. So I've not made progress, but I've not gone backwards either.

I'm really pleased with these squads. I've not converted them in any way to look Indian, but I believe I've got the colours right for the Rajasthan desert (see 2nd pic of model superimposed onto photo of the desert). The bases might look a bit colourful for desert models, but from experience, I can say the Rajasthan desert has a lot of colourful plant life in some places, and sometimes the sand has areas of crushed rock almost like coloured gravel. Oh, and just like the major cities, there were cattle wandering about getting in the way of vehicles!

Sadly, the Indian troops would not let me take pictures of them or their vehicles, but I've managed to find a couple of officially released photos. These show that the Rajasthan desert lends itself well to military training exercises.

Brightorian standard

I've been using this design for the regimental standard for years. It is based on the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. It is a popular piece of imagery, and even looks quite cool in green (as used by Brighton and Hove council).

The 4 guardsmen are from the 40K Praetorian XXIV box set. The officer is the "disgraced commissar" from the Schaefer's last chancers box set, with the lasgun replaced by a close combat knife. The Chimera is actually a software CAD model that I rendered into the background.

Tales of the Brightorian Guard #1

These are some work-in-progress models for my 40K Imperial Guard army, the Brightorian Guard. I've been trying to put this army together for 9 years now! The trouble is I keep sodding about and changing them, usually as a result of watching bank holiday repeats of various war films on BBC. My latest distraction is a desire to give most of my miniatures calf or kid-skin boots.

Anyways....left to right is a commissar (lovely boots), a medic guardsman with his medical kit in some bags, a coms guard with bugle and storable lasgun, and a ghurka/gharka inspired officer. Next up will be some India themed guard squads, which no doubt will be altered as soon as I finished watching the Mangal Pandey film.