Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Crom's hairy nutsack, I miss Humbrol enamels. They seemed to change their formula in the late 70s or early 80s, but the early 70s stuff I got from "La Belle Alliance," before there even WAS a "Little Tin Soldier Shop" -- man, that was some of the nicest paint I EVER used. Excellent coverage, even light over dark, smooth finish, went on like a dream, uniform color from tin to tin, excellent consistency... sigh.

My dear wife made me promise to stick to acrylics some years ago. They've gotten much better, though. Some of the Badger model railroad colors are astounding... you can airbrush them and then hand brush them and not tell where the spray stops and the brush starts.

Agreed. That wonderful velvety 'Ancient Purple' in their wargame line was exquisite; Phil used it for his Priests of Hry'y. I finally found an acrylic that matches it.

Hey - maybe I should do a paint chart or something, that gives phil's old coors and the modern paints that match them... ?

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

So, I recently was at a game store and I picked up some GW miniatures (Vampire Counts Grave Guard) which looked perfect for the Temple of Sarku's undead troops. The armour and weaponry have a real Tekumel aesthetic to me. I also had some ancient GW Tomb Kings bits that I found in the shed and between the two I came up with a result that I am quite happy with.
Now, I know that the Temple of Sarku and its clergy tend to favour brown, black and copper colours, but would any of these undead be wearing Tsolyani blue armour? Actually, where do the temple get their undead from? Are they dawn exclusively from Sarku worshippers, or would any corpse be used? I am referring to lesser undead like Mr'ur, as I can't see Jajgi being anything but devotees of the Worm Lord.
Also, what colour was Engsvanyali armour? Was there a national colour, or did each legion have a unique scheme?

A lot of the GW figures have that 'Phil' look to them; design-wise, you can trace the design elements from the Ral Partha - Citadel connection on through the earlier plastics. I use a lot of these - the one-part with maybe a separate shield - in my models; the Glorious General's Legion, Mnashu of Thri'il, is a block of eighty GW elves with different (Foundry) shields. The Tomb Kings are also very, very useful - they have that 'Hollywood Aegyptian' look to them that Phil loved.

Crocodile Games is also a very good source of figures for Tekumel, too. The various Asar figures are useful, as are their mummys. can't ever have enough Undead, says I s a GM...

Yes - you would see Tsolyani undead with some blue on them - it's a national thing.

They get them from the 'in-house' sources; they generally don't even think of 'outsourcing the supply', as the consequences would be pretty dire if they got caught.

White and gold, with trims for individual units and temples. Individual units had individual uniforms - Phil did some drawings for me - but were usually in the white and gold scheme. For example, Nyelmu's Pale Legion is in white and steel, with purple trim - I did some for Phil.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Those Vampire Count's Grave Guard look like a good proxy for The Legion of Despairing Dead...Srukarum would be proud!!!

Welcome by the way!!! Keep those questions coming, it's Uncle's lifeblood!!! I myself will be traveling the planes. I will be away till late Trantor(a hero's work is never done). So please keep this thread alive. I shall return...

H:0)

We'll be here!

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

This post was from a little while ago, but I always thought they looked like some kind of angular ziggurat, not so rounded. Who knew?:idunno:

Shemek

Oh, right; I had to go back and look in the Sourcebook, myself.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Believe it or not I have a couple of bottles of Testors from the 70's, copper and gold. Still good. In fact, I'll probably use the copper on my Sarku troops. You can still get them at many hobby stores, at least the ones here. I know they used to make them in Ontario, but since they moved production down to the States the formulation changed and I find that they are not as good as they were before. They just don't want to mix with other colours. As an aside, the Testors OD Green, Olive Green, and Flat Black is an exact match to the CF camo on the old Leos, Cougars, Grizzlies, Deuces/Deuce and a Halfs, (ML's), HL's, Iltis', etc... In fact, I'm pretty sure that the newer kit uses the same camo colours.
I remember the Ral Partha paints. I had a few of them. They were my first attempt at using acrylics. Unfortunately, they all dried up rather quickly, and I found them too chalky. Probably because I was so used to the Testors and didn't know how to properly use the acrylics. I went back to enamels until at least the mid 90's or so when started using Vallejo and Citadel. My two favourite colour names from RP were Bullywug Belly Green, and Mindflayer Mauve. Don't think I have used Army Painters, but I may have an Ink from them. Wow, if the Sentry has them in stock surely they must be ancient? Were they purchased by the Lords of the Latter Times and forgotten about? Are you sure you're not going to Gidj and Sons? When did Ral Partha stop making paints?

Shemek

Same here - a lot of mine just needed a drop of paint thinner to get them to come back to life. Kinda scary to see bottles marked with 25 cents on them!

I got started with Liquitex acrylics; they are great, especially in the older lines. I use the 'Basics' tubes for scenery, and the 'artists colors' for the miniatures.

Still got some Parthas, too; I use an eye dropper to put a bit of water in them when I use them, and it seems to keep them going pretty well.

Sentry box is wonderful - take a look at their website, and marvel...!

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Phil once reamed my ass out royally for using lacquer thinner on Humbrol instead of turpentine or mineral spirits; Humbrol is an enamel, not a lacquer. Not the same thing.

Floquil paints are(were?) lacquers and they're even worse. I was painting with Floquil in high school once and my older brother, who was taking organic chem, walked in, picked up the can of Dio-Sol, and read the label. Tolulene and xylene. He put the can down and said "Little brother, you do not want this shit anywhere near you."

Agreed! I still think that this is what hastened the passing of so many of the people we knew - especially the Napoleonics guys.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

What Undead are made from also depends on if it's one of the big temples in a big city or someplace out in the boonies.

Yep; clan, too.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Makes sense. Just out of curiosity, would they use the remains of another temple's followers? Would the Worm Lord's priest reanimate a dead warrior of Lord Karakan? I'm sure that would cheese off some folks if it got out that they were doing this.

I very strongly doubt it. It'd be a violation of the Great Concordat, and the Imperium - as well as the higher-up in both temples - would come down really, really hard on whomever was doing this. Player-characters would be hired to go out and exterminate the culprit...

(Says the Imperium's usual hatchet-man...)

I think I'm all caught up... :thanx:

All this talk about miniatures has reminded me to get back into the shop and get the paints & brushes out. I have a huge backlog of stuff to do; would there be any interest in my commenting on useful figures for Tekumel someplace?

Ooops! Almost forgot! Here's a selection of the First of the First for you; this is some of the figures that have been produced by first Ral Partha, then by me and Gronan, and then by PHD. The darker red tunics on the left are the first Mu'uglavyani that I painted with Phil, long before the 'official' color scheme was published, and the rank on the right is in the "Armies" color scheme. The pikes are from North Star, and I think they really look great!