Orctober 2026 - A Glimpse Into The Past

To celebrate Orctober 2026 I wanted to take a trip down memory lane, showing you some of my favorite greenskins I have painted over the years, many of which receiving new studio photos, replacing the ones I took on my phone originally. Today I want to dial back to October 2021. I am maybe half a year into starting my oldhammer collection and have made connections with a seller in my city. Since it is October I am looking for Greenskins of any kind. My eyes halt on a trio of three fanatics, enamoured by their silly charmes. After picking out some more Greenskins(more on them soon) I biked back home and began putting paint on metal. 

This specific trio of Night Goblin Fanatics are part of a group of six released back in 1992 during the first year of Warhammer Fantasy 4th Edition. There were three different bodies, each with its own unique pose. Additionally you would get two different face versions of each pose, so despite looking similar you still had some variety among your fanatics. Unlike later or even earlier iterations, these fanatics had rather small iron balls on their chains making their weapons seem more like Meteor Hammers than the counterweight wrecking balls we are used to. These Fanatics are also distinctly less dynamic in their poses. While yes they seem mid swing, it looks more like they are swinging a weapon rather than being swung by the force of their ball and chain. Previous sculpts showed the goblins being swung around by their weapons making this trio seem a bit less flashy. Still if you compare these sculpts to the rest of the Goblin range at the time, they are considerably more dynamic still. 

At the time I thought these were the oldest Fanatics that existed, I had little knowledge of pre-4th Edition Warhammer and found the catalogues pre-1992 somewhat confusing to navigate. As such I stayed ignorant to a lot of wonderful models, especially from the pre-slotta era. I have since expanded my collection of Goblin Fanatics further back, stumbling upon the ones with puddle bases that have their names on them. Still I come back to these fellas quite often. Something about the Kev Adams range of Goblins is just so uniquely charming. The ranges following this would be bigger and 'smoother', more what we now think of as Night Goblins. Meanwhile the previous models all feel a lot more generic fantasy Goblin. Something straight out of a cartoon or comic. These little guys sit right at the point where the ideas and design language of the Night Goblins solidified, while still being charmingly proto in their design. 

Unrelated to the Fanatics themselves, I want to talk about my colour choices. Specifically the blue tongues. The idea came from White Dwarf Issue 338 in which Kirsten Williams showed how to paint a Mek with Shokk Attack Gun. The tutorial showed the Mek's gums being painted with turquoise paint to contrast the slightly pale green skin. For some reason that little detail stuck with me since and I have tried to give every single one of my Greenskins turquoise gums and tongues. I just find it to be a lovely little detail that seemingly makes people stop and wonder why. Aside from the blue tongues the colour scheme is inverted when compared to the studio paintjobs, with full yellow robes with black detailing. I do not remember why I chose this, but I think it had something to with me practicing painting yellow at the time. These Goblins stand as a lovely memento to my first few years of collecting old miniatures. They also show me how far I have come since, the painting is much rougher to what I am capable of these days and that makes me proud. If you enjoyed this little throwback, then I think you will like what comes next as I have more Greenskins to show from days past. Until next time!

Around this time I started practicing my yellow paintjobs, using Averland Sunset and Balor Brown to build up the necessary Opacity.