Vintage Miniatures - Ral Partha Arabian Wizard

Another vintage Ral Partha mini this week.

Unfortunately, I can find no information on this mini.  I think this is from one of the AD&D lines but I cannot be sure.  I have hunted through the Lost Minis Wiki and DnDLead with no luck.

If anyone out there can find a listing for this mini please leave a comment.

 

UPDATE: Thanks to the members of the lostminiswiki reddit group this mini was correctly identified as being from the All American range and specifically their 12-020 Wizards collection. 

Ral Partha Arabian Wizard
with Turban Staff and Scroll - RP-aa-12-020b

Vintage Miniatures - Ral Partha AD&D Ogre Mage

Last week I shared the oddity that is the Ral Partha AD&D 3 Stage Miniature Illusionist.

Ral Partha made some absolutely beautiful miniatures back in the day and one such mini is...

Ral Partha AD&D Ogre Mage 11-405

This is a hefty beast standing an impressive 50mm tall.  He is a multi-part mini with a seperate katana and  optional left hand with dagger or holding a female prisoner.  Lost Minis Wiki has a great archive of all the AD&D range and photos of both A & B configurations of this mini.   

Ral Partha AD&D Ogre Mage - Buy it on eBay

The Ogre Mage was lifted from Japanese mythology (along with the Oni) and appeared in Greyhawk supplement (1975) hence the attire. 

I decided to go a non traditional route with this mini and paint his face red as he has a very devlish grin.

Vintage Mini Ral Partha 3 Stage Illusionist

Back in the day Ral Partha had a line of PC Minis which depicted your character at 3 stages of levelling up.   This was a really neat, if a bit niche, concept and the full list of these minis can be found on the Lost Mini Wiki.  

In today's world of bespoke 3D printed minis from Hero Forge, this sounds incredibly antiquated, but remember kids, 40 years ago, there wasn't a thing called a 3D Printer unless you worked at Area 51!

01-331 Illusionist

He's a weird one.  I guess you have to be weird to want to play an Illusionist as they are "all show and no go".  Ral Partha captured that essence of weird perfectly in this mini with his stupid Fez, his stupid wand, the magic orb and his particularly stupid parachute pants.

Left to Right: Low, Mid and High Level Illusionist before repainting

I never liked the higher level version in this particular set and lord knows how I came to own it, I was probably thinking the low level character would make a good NPC mage in my Al-Qadim games.  The other 2 just look plain ridiculous.  As you can see stage one boy got a bit of a paint job courtesy of my step daughter when she was about 8 (many years ago).  Sadly she never completed it and I don't think she'll be too upset if I repaint it. 

These minis (and Ral Partha in general) don't command a particularly high price when you search for 3 Stage minis on eBay.  I'm not too gutted about repainting them and it's high time they got a refresh.

Primer and Zenithal Highlight

As with any mini I paint these days I prime in black and then a zenithal highight with white, both out of the rattlecan.  I find that even if I am not airbrushing the mini a zenithal highight serves a great purpose of both pre-shading and helping me to delineate areas of colour. 

3 Stage Illusionists Zenithal Highlighted

Glazing with the Wet Palette Technique

The wet palette is an often talked about next level painting technique which essentially is about using highly dilluted translucent layers of paint to gradually build up areas of colour and shading.  The preshading from the zenithal highlight is your biggest friend as it has already laid down the areas of deepest shadow and your translucent glases simply add the colour.

Blocking out the colours with glazes

Finished Paintjob

Ral Partha 3 Stage Illusionists Final (front view)

I think I have captured theabsurdity of this particular set.  The colour choices were intentionally very bold and ostentatious which only increases with level.  I also wanted to capture the ageing process in his beard and eyebrows. I'm happy with this sow's ear to silk purse transformation.

I am concious that I have never shown the back of these minis so here you go.

Ral Partha 3 Stage Illusionists Final (back view)

I could have spent much more time on these minis, but to be honest I got a bit bored with them.  As I mentioned earlier, I am not in love with them, I painted them out of morbid curiosity and I never expect them to see any tabletime. 

I might use the high level dude as some Grand Vizier in an Al-Qadim style game.

On The Workbench: Ral Partha Oni & Ogre Mage - Part 2

Last week I rediscovered a couple of mini's in an old toolbox

The Ral Partha Oni, being human sized, is finished.  Red is always such a difficult colour to paint, especially over my chosen black base coat, but I think this has come out okay, although my crap photos don't do it justice.

Oni (RP 53-908)

The Ogre Mage is about half painted...

Ogre Mage (RP 11-05)

The green Hakama look great, but the blue in the kimono is not what I'm after, it just looks too blue, rather than a bluey grey.  Still undecided what colour I'm going to do the arms, possibily a dark grey with dark red/gold armour plates. the cords will be picked out in a contrasting bright colour.

On The Workbench: Ral Partha Oni & Ogre Mage

Doing some tidying up round the house,  I uncovered one of my old painting toolboxes which had some really proper old school minis it it, one of which was this old part painted Ral Partha Oni from their "Bushido" range, (specifically a two mini blister pack 53-908).

Ral Partha Oni 53-908b

I've always loved the strangeness of oriental mythology and in particular I'm a big fan of the TV series "Monkey", a version of Wu Cheng En's 16th Century novel "Into the West", so I thought I'd have a go at rescuing this one from obscurity.

Oni are evil spirits, typically depicted in traditional Japanese folkart as Demons or Ogres, and share some of the etymology of other buddhist myths such as the Chinese Gaki (Hungry Ghosts) and Indian Rakshasa (evil tiger headed humanoids) and are often depicted wearing a tiger-skin loincloth.  Japanese parents sometimes say "oya ni ninu ko wa oni no ko" which means literally "a child that does not resemble its parents is the child of an oni"

Continuing the oriental theme, I've also dug out a Ral Partha Ogre Mage from their AD&D Monsters collection (specifically blister RP-11-405).

Ral Partha Ogre Mage (RP 11-405)

This is a beautiful sculpt, but struggling to understanding it's complex clothing has prevented me from ever painting it.  So I did a bit of research (see the pinterest board) and have come to the conclusion that, it's actually quite simple.  The base layer (red) is a pair of leather studded Kote arm bracers overwhich is worn a full length sleeveless Haori Kimono (blue).  The confusion arises from the addition of the Hakama trouser skirt (yellow) which has deep vents in the sides allowing the wearer to access the underlying kimono's pockets (or whatever passes for pockets).

Ogre Mage (clothing deciphered)

Before anyone comments, I know I've painted the ogre mage's face red and it should be blue, I'm going for the red oni look on this one.  Incidentally, I've mounted this to a 40mm Battlefield Debris resin base from ebay store Foundations of War.

On the Workbench: Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet Pt 3

Finally found some time to finish off the Djinn and Efreet miniatures and I'm pretty pleased with the results.  This is by far the best paintjob that these two minis have ever had and I think this will be it for them. 

Ral Partha Djinn

Ral Partha Djinn

Previous parts to this series are available at:

• Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet Part 1
• Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet Part 2

On the Workbench: Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet Pt 2

A while back I posted some photos of a couple of old Ral Partha D&D miniatures that had made their way on to the workbench.  Sadly I managed to break the Efreet's scimitar in half, either because I'm immensely strong/ham-fisted or more likely because tin/lead alloy becomes quite brittle with age.

Well I'm glad to say he's on the mend as I cobbled together a new sword out of an old credit card and some wire from a mousetrap (who would've thunk it).

Efreet with new plastic sword of +5 Elemental Awesomeness

I know the sword is a bit on the ridiculous size, but what the heck if he's an Elemental and so's his sword!!  It also reminds me a lot of Voss's character mini (Magmar Teufel Schlager) in the RPG romcom Unicorn City.  Which incidentally is currently playing on Netflix.

Magmar Teufel Schlager (please correct me if I got this wrong)

Tune in later for an update on the painting of both the Djinn and Efreet miniatures.

On the Workbench: Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet

One of my favourite AD&D campaign settings is Al-Quadim: The Land of Fate and I've used the odd scenario or module on numerous occasions in my own campaign world.  I picked up these two Ral Partha minis as a blister pair at least 20 years ago and I've had several abortive attempts at painting the Djinn (the turban wearing guy on the left) but never touched the Efreet.  Hopefully this time (with an audience) I can push myself all the way to the finish.

Ral Partha (ES69) Djinn (left) and Efreet (right)

Here's an updated shot after the efreet had a little accident. His blade bent and snapped off... Guess I'll have to do some sort of fix, but not sure what yet, the blade is too thin to pin so perhaps I'll have to build something up in milliput as a replacement. I do however like how the skin and face came out.  I'm also trying to work out how to blend from red to white on his trousers to make it look like he's rising out of a pool of smoke.

Unworked Blue Djinn and Battle damaged Efreet