PTS 80 + Grenadier Rhino Man + Vikings

Rhinshasa (Grenadier Monster Manuscript 73). 

Welcome to my humble contribution to edition 80 of Painting Table Saturday, the g+ miniature gaming community I joined 65 editions ago, with thanks to Sofie. Although I began posting photos of my miniature collection on Hits To Kill back in September 2012 (with a dozen Tharks and a Jeddak riding his Thoat), it's the Painting Table Saturday group that has kept me painting each week since February 2014. I've also discovered a great deal more about my boyhood hobby as I continue to enjoy painting miniatures from my youth.

Monster Manuscript 1509

So, how are the state of things in The Man Shed today? Well, I still have a mountain of unpainted lead! Here is the soul survivor from a Grenadier boxed set, Monster Manuscript 1509. I have a lot of these miniatures as they were available around the time I began playing Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't know that these weren't official D&D miniatures. Apparently the Monster Manuscript (and Fantasy Lords) line was Grenadier's one finger salute to TSR after they lost the AD&D miniatures license. 

TSR had decided to produce miniatures themselves. After years of Grenadier creating miniatures from the Monster Manual, they made a selling point of producing "that's not in the books" miniatures for DMs who wanted something new to scare the players. Ten of the most-obviously AD&D monsters were eventually repackaged into a Dungeon Dwellers set.

Here is a complete list of the Monster Manuscript 12-box series courtesy of miniatures-workshop.com

1501 Volume 1   (A-B) 1502 Volume 2   (C-D) 1503 Volume 3   (E-F) 1504 Volume 4   (G-H) 1505 Volume 5   (I-J-K) 1506 Volume 6   (L-M)

1507 Volume 7    (N-O) 1508 Volume 8    (P-Q) 1509 Volume 9    (R-S) 1510 Volume 10   (T-U) 1511 Volume 11   (V-W) 1512 Volume 12   (X-Y-Z)

Fighting Fantasy Rhino Man

As I said earlier, I wasn't aware of this when I started collecting these miniatures. Many of the monsters had similar names to the AD&D Monster Manuals and D&D Basic & Expert sets. The few unique monsters reminded me of creatures from the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. There were even booklets available with the Grenadier catalogue that included stats not unlike AD&D monster descriptions, with HTK (Hits To Kill) instead of HP (hit points). The artwork was akin to what you might find in a White Dwarf magazine back then.

Here are some more photos of the Rhino Man, or Rhinshasa, taken with my Samsung S5 against a blue sky with the flash on. Simple but effective photography! All you need is a sunny day and a cloudless sky. 

He is on a 30mm base, to accommodate his size.

Otherwise, my painting table has the following works in progress; some Citadel Vikings, a Chaos Knight and a 1985 Eomer! A classic fighter by Mirliton Miniatures which had the Lord of the Ring rights with Citadel Miniatures back then.

Classic Warhammer and Lord of the Rings miniatures!

God bless you and have a great week!