The Citadel Giant Saga- Part II: The Citadel Giant That Shouldn’t Have Been Found

 

Every collector knows the feeling:
“If I’d been five minutes later, it would’ve been gone.”

This was not that.

What happened with the Citadel Giant wasn’t a near miss, or good timing, or even great luck. It was a sequence of events that—taken together—should not realistically occur in the normal life cycle of a collecting hobby.

Here’s why.

THE Citadel Giant after the first pass of paint removal.

 

Not One Improbability — A Chain of Them

Most rare finds hinge on one unlikely thing going right.

This required many, and every one of them had to succeed for the outcome to happen at all. Miss any step, and the chain collapses. 

Think of them as “gates.” If even one stays closed, the Giant is never found.

I should add I was doing these in real time in about 20 minutes start to finish. Checking and referencing sites, is this a legitimate sale? What should I offer? All the while what amount I should offer as I raced the clock knowing that someone else might find it and get a claim in before me.

Primary Seller Gates (Shipment 1)

These gates describe everything that had to go right before the Giant was ever discovered.

Gate 1 — The Giant Had to Exist in the Wild

This was not a standard retail Citadel Giant. It was an internal-cast example pulled from legacy molds—never sold through normal channels and almost never seen publicly. Most collectors will never encounter one at all.

Gate 2 — The Owner Had to Let It Go

Owners of items this rare typically keep them, trade privately, or pass them quietly to other collectors. In this case, the owner chose to sell it openly instead.

Gate 3 — It Had to Be Listed in the "Wrong" Place

Rather than appearing on eBay or a specialist forum, the Giant was listed on Bonanza, a low-traffic marketplace that most collectors do not actively monitor.

Gate 4 — The Search Had to Use the “Wrong” Engine

The discovery depended on using DuckDuckGo instead of Google. DuckDuckGo indexes and ranks obscure listings differently, often surfacing results Google suppresses or ignores.

Gate 5 — The Listing Had to Sit Unnoticed

The Giant needed to remain unsold long enough to be discovered — not snapped up immediately, but not hidden forever either.

Gate 6 — DuckDuckGo Had to Index It at All

Low-authority marketplaces are not always indexed consistently. DuckDuckGo had to successfully ingest and surface the Bonanza listing.

Gate 7 — The Result Had to Appear in a Narrow Visibility Band

The listing landed deep in the results — far enough down to avoid early interception by other collectors, but not so deep that it was functionally invisible.

Gate 8 — A Nonstandard Search Phrase Had to Work

The search phrase used (“The Warhammer Giant 1983”) was conversational and imprecise. It did not match catalog-standard naming and would normally fail to surface an obscure Bonanza listing.

Yet it worked.

Gate 9 — The Timing Had to Be Right

The discovery happened late on a Friday night — a low-competition window when fewer collectors are actively searching.

Gate 10 — The Search Had to Be on Mobile

DuckDuckGo’s mobile search behaves differently from desktop, favoring natural-language phrasing and long-tail results. The search was performed on mobile, not desktop.

Gate 11 — A Deep Scroll Had to Happen

The listing appeared several pages down. Most users never scroll that far, but in this case, it happened.

 

Interlocking Market Gate

Gate 12 — No One Else Could Find It First

During the narrow window when the listing was discoverable, no other collector ran the same search, using the same engine, at the same time, and scrolled deep enough to see it.

If anyone had, the story ends there.

THE Citadel Giant, stripped down of paint.

Secondary Seller Gates (Shipment 2 — The Parts That Shouldn’t Have Appeared 

Together)

After the Giant was secured, a second, unrelated sequence unfolded — one that depended entirely on the first.

Gate 13 — Another Seller Had to Have Loose Giant Parts

A separate seller happened to possess multiple loose components from the same rare kit — something that is itself uncommon.

Gate 14 — A Casual Purchase Had to Spark a Question

A non-rare head variant was purchased, which prompted a simple follow-up inquiry: “Do you happen to have any other Giant parts?”

Gate 15 — The Rarest Head Had to Be There

The seller’s unlisted inventory included the Feral Beard head, the rarest of all Giant head variants.

Gate 16 — Multiple Rare Hands Had to Be There Too

That same unlisted inventory also contained both rare non-club right-hand variants — parts that almost never appear together.

Gate 17 — The Seller Had to Respond and Agree

The seller replied, confirmed the parts, and agreed to sell them — rather than ignoring the message or declining.

Gate 18 — All of This Had to Happen Quickly

The entire secondary sequence unfolded within six days of the original acquisition, before circumstances, attention, or availability changed.

And if this weren't enough? Two different sellers, two different locations and shipping methods. Two separate paths through customs and two different sets of delays in shipping? Both arrived at my door within hours of each other on the same day.

Why This Matters

Any one of these gates opening would be unremarkable. All of them opening? In order is not.

Add to this all of the gates are not weighed evenly. Some like 6,7,8,10 and 11 are beyond absurd that they worked out that way. Gate 6 in particular? I found the giant on page 5 of my search results. DuckDuckGo had indexed it just enough, but not too much to get to a "Goldilocks" zone for me to find it after being diligent enough to drill down.

This is why the story of the Citadel Giant isn’t just about finding a rare miniature. It’s about a fragile chain of conditions that almost never align, aligning once.

And then closing behind it.

Part III will deal with the math behind such an unlikely turn of events. When I said at the onset this "should not realistically occur in the normal life cycle of a collecting hobby?" 

That's not even close to the true. You could run this time after time and the numbers become astronomically rare. I lived it and I still don't believe it really happened.

Note: His restoration progress will be taking place at Oldhammer.org for updates. 

The Citadel Giant Saga- Part I: Or, How Probability, Patience, and USPS Collided

There are purchases, and then there are events.

This was the latter.

"The BIG Giant!"

What began in late November 2025 as a straightforward (if ambitious) acquisition of a 1983 Citadel Giant turned into a multi-week exercise in probability theory, logistics archaeology, and patience-testing uncertainty, capped off by an ending so absurd that it deserves to be documented properly.

This post is that documentation. A follow-up post will contain the mind bending series of improbabilities that led to me finding the giant, but that is for a last day.

Now, because the story needs embellishment, it really doesn’t, but because it illustrates something collectors understand instinctively and outsiders rarely see: the journey matters almost as much as the object.

The Find

The giant itself needs little introduction to Oldhammer collectors. Early Citadel giants are iconic, heavy, and un-apologetically of their era: full of character, strange proportions, and sculptural craziness.

 

What made this one unusual wasn’t just condition or completeness, but the seller’s claim of provenance:

• Cast directly from original Citadel molds

• Not a retail release

• Produced long after normal production had ended

• Originating from a former Games Workshop staff member

That combination alone put this piece firmly outside the normal collecting pipeline.

I made an offer.

It was accepted.

And then… shipping in late November/early December “happened.”

The Waiting Begins

Once the package actually entered the shipping system, things accelerated — and then immediately became opaque.

There were two shipments tied to the giant:

• Shipment 1: The giant itself

• Shipment 2: A secondary shipment containing rare hands and two heads including

the feral bearded head; the most difficult of the five to acquire.

 

Tracking information oscillated between “in customs,” “shipping,” and “somewhere that definitely exists, trust us.”

At various points, both packages appeared to be:

• in New York,

• not in New York,

• cleared customs,

• not cleared customs,

• and possibly sitting on a pallet that both existed and did not exist simultaneously.

Schrödinger’s pallet, if you will.

The Absurd Resolution

Then, on a quiet Saturday morning, reality intervened.

At 9:19 AM, right within my normal USPS delivery window, the giant arrived.

No warning.

No accurate tracking update.

Just… there.

A fleeting phone notification earlier that morning hinted at something “giant”-related, then vanished. The databases hadn’t caught up, but the truck had.

Later that same day — while we were out shopping — Shipment 2 arrived as well.

Both shipments.

Same day.

After weeks of uncertainty.

The system didn’t announce victory.

It simply delivered the boxes and pretended nothing unusual had happened.

Perspective

The giant is really cool. The heads and hands are fantastic. The odds involved were absurd enough to be memorable. But in the end, this was a good problem to have, and one that resolved without loss.

Before paint removal but having safely arrived.

Actually when I say the odds were absurd? That’s an understatement. Part 2 of this story will contain the roughly 18 steps of improbability that I successfully navigated to come out the other side with a complete giant…in six days. This shouldn’t have happened even once, but it did.

Epilogue: The Name

The giant has been named:

Duncan the Drunken.

He currently resides downstairs in the man cave, awaiting his turn on the painting table. There will be tartan. There will be red hair. There will be decisions made slowly and deliberately.

For now, though, the saga is complete.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s a simple one: Tracking is advisory. Reality does what it wants. And sometimes… it’s just Saturday and an ultra rare citadel miniature shows up at your front door.

Oh Yeah, that other area of Wargaming- Terrain

(Grrrrrr.... Once again my love/hate relationship with Blogger continues as this hosting platform ate a large portions of my changes to this post and for whatever reason auto-save did not work....)

As summer turns to early Fall here in North America I take a pause from my intensive construction of my Warhammer Nippon Castle and the start of Castle Von Wittgenstein. (as well as numerous Warhammer Fantasy Battle units for various armies) I got to thinking about the overall amount of time that I and I suspect others engage in when it comes to terrain. It is my contention that there probably isn't as much compared to actual painting and assembly of miniatures which is to be expected.This in a way is a sad thing because one of the most rewarding areas of the game in my mind and in way one of the cheapest is terrain. Certainly when one considers the cost of Oldhammer; i.e that almost any miniatures have to be purchased off of eBay and not so nice prices, terrain is cheap in comparison.

When I say lack of terrain, I'm not saying there was none in our games, but rather a decided lack of attention to it  to a large degree. By this I mean buildings, forests/woods, rivers etc,were present, but not large scale projects I mentioned above. Even back in the day when 3rd Edition was the current edition of the game, I don't recall creating as much terrain compared to the gold standard of what we saw in White White Dwarf. Sure, in my gaming group we had the main board (cut into 12x12 sections for ease of transport), some trees, hedges and fences but not much else. Buildings were taken care of by the Warhammer Townscape book, but none of us attempted to create more elaborate pieces.

As an aside: over time I purchased another Warhammer Townscapes Book years ago and since I inherited our old terrain as a gaming group I reckon I have about 1.5 sets of buildings from the two books. I say 1.5 because despite this I don't have all of the buildings due to various moves and some being destroyed over said time-frame.For those not in the know, Warhammer Townscape was a book of card-stock buildings that one folded and glued, looking like this =>

For me the lack of terrain is odd when you consider the totality of the hobby. Even though I saw some of the excellent buildings created by Dave Andrews in various White Dwarf articles, it wasn't until after the heyday of 3rd that I really started constructing my own buildings. But a funny thing happened when I did I start creating them, I did so in a style very akin to 3rd Edition. This is probably not as "funny" when I think about it, for example (Willmark's Homemade Warhammer terrain)

Now, I posted these years ago on Chaos Dwarfs Online and are a slection of some of my terrain and the the style is distinctive, atat the same time familiar. But even with these I still wasn't doing anything too new, as a lot of the pieces were right from White Dwarf (not that its a bad thing).

I guess when you put it all together, terrain is one of the most under represented parts of the hobby (to a degree) but one of the most universally praised? Or put another way, gamers love terrain, but usually the last thing created. This in and of itself is surprising for another reason when one considers terrain is actually one of the cheaper areas of the hobby.

3rd Edition Warhammer Chaos Dwarf Army list

Special thanks to orlygg for the scan and the ones that appear in the "army book" below.

Being the Mad Hatter that I am I decided a while back to post my "back-port" of a Chaos Dwarf Army list to 3rd Edition rules. I've been on the periphery of the Oldhammer movement, but felt compelled to give back by standing on the shoulders of those who got the ball rolling as it were.

For those not in the know, back in the 3rd Edition days the Chaos Dwarfs only appeared in two sections in terms of armies in the game and then not even in their own army. They appeared in Warhammer Armies: as part of the Chaos Ally contingent and as part of the Khornate army listed in Realm of Chaos- Slaves to Darkness. Even then, the Chaos Dwarfs were different than what would appear in the 4th Edition rules in their own "Army Book". From there there, the uncertainly of 5th through 7th editions until Chaos Dwarfs Online spearheaded a resurgence and brought them back from the brink of disappearing.

So with this in mind I attempted to create an army listing in the same vein as how they were presented in 3rd Edition, but using the organizing concepts of 4th Edition and beyond. That is to say I combined orcs and goblins into the list, even though in 3rd Edition they are listed as hating all dwarfs including Chaos Dwarfs. Oldhammer is what you make it and I'm not too worried about the 3rd Edition Warhammer police breaking down my door by breaking a rule. Then again, with Games Workshop Legal? Who knows...

Knowing a fair amount about graphic design and having produced both the Word of Hashut and Gold and Glory ezines it was a fairly easy task to replicate the look at feel of Warhammer Armies. The problem wasn't the design but rather it is my illustration skills which have atrophied over the years. Sot it was a lot of scans were in order, namely from White Dwarf, Realms of Chaos- Slaves to Darkness and Warhammer Armies.

Be warned, this has NOT been play tested so who knows how it will work! You'll also note that there is space for adding rules for the Chaos Dwarf Juggernaut. Strangely, Games Workshop created the model back in the 80s, but never created rules for it. The production run of the mini was limited and goes for quite a bit on eBay. At some point I'll add rules for the miniature and its accompanying crew.

For more details on Chaos Dwarfs in the 80s and early 90s, be sure to check the excellent site Realm of Chaos, a leading light in the Oldhammer movement.

The 3rd Edition Chaos Dwarf Army list can be downloaded here, let me know what you think.

Nippon Castle for Warhammer- Part IV

Wow, the Nippon castle has been garnering a lot of attention on the web, keep up the comments guys and many thanks; especially the shout out here, thanks Scot!

I've stepped back and taken stock of where I am with the project at this point which is to say a lot further along then when I really picked it back up in October. Overall I'm pleased with the pace I've been on and have been enjoying the whole project. I've even found time to work on other projects like the siege equipment, paint a few units and other things that strike my fancy.

But, the title of this post says Part III so what am I working on right now in relation to the Nippon castle you ask: As I mentioned in Part II I've been re-reading my stack of White Dwarf magazines from the range of #220-235. In particular, in #225, Nick Davis' "Jungle Fever - Part 2" where he covers the creation of his Lizardman Castle has been of particular interest. #224 is where the rules appeared for 5th Edition Siege rules for moats which I'm drawing on as well, so here is the point of this post, moats.

As you can see, I've started on the beginnings of a moat for the castle. The moat will obviously surround the entire castle to simulate a Nippon fortress situated on the lowlands of Nippon (or Nihon?) near rice patties perhaps? I deliberately started at the most difficult part of the moats, the corner towers knowing the wall sections would be far easier. I also took inspiration from the corner board sections of 3rd Edition Talisman.

From there, once finished I also have been formulating ideas to create a way to raise up the entire thing so it will sit on a series of cliff walls to simulate a mountain top type of castle. That is further off and I will be using fair amount of paper-mache to make the mountainside.  In this, the 6th Edition High Elf Army Book has some interesting photos of minis and mountains so we'll see.

Note- my overall progress of my Nippon Army is tracked over here at Dogs of War Online.

Speaking of paper-mache, I took a brief side track to work a tomb/barrow, first seen in the 6th Edition General's Compendium on page 52. I started out when I looked at a barrow I created about 15 years ago. I was going to pull that apart but just decided to create something from scratch. Then remembered the barrow in the a fore mentioned General's Compendium. You'll have to excuse this photo as I remembered to take it as I was applying the paper-mache. But I digress, here is the barrow:

As you can see, the top will be removable because I'm insane apparently and need to add all kinds of stuff to the interior..

And if the barrow/tomb were not enough of a bonus, I've also been working on redoing the river pieces of the terrain that Jeff and Dave created 25+ years ago! I widened them a few years back but now I've added gravel to the river edges and will be painting them shortly. Need to add a few more bends and another river crossing part. You'll have to excuse the quick photo on this one too, I only remembered to take a picture after I had already started on it and undercoated one.

I think that's all for now. Good gaming in the new year everyone.

WM

Part VI- Repainting the Wood Elf Force- The Dragon Rider

Back after a ton of summer activities with the kids. While all those activities were going on I wasn't complacent in terms of painting. In fact for summertime painting I got quite a bit done.

This next guy, the ever cool Dragon Master from the Citadel range (notes here). Like the rest of the Wood Elf force this particular model was purchased not for a Wood Elves per say, but yes, you guessed it: an ally for my Empire force in 3rd edition. This purchase represented the start of my High Elf force  which in years would number 14,000 pts. I quickly painted the model up and his debut was against Jeff and Dave's forces (Orc and Goblins/Skaven respectively) during the Ice Storm of 1991 at Dave's house. Since it was just me on the other side I played a combined Empire, Wood Elf and High Elf force. I don't remember too much other than we setup the board on the front living room floor as the power was still out, nor who won. I do recall however they were conspiring to knock him out early, as in like round 1. So against all odds I won initiative and charged across the board and got him into hand-to-hand combat. Don't remember what happened after that, but pretty sure I spoiled their casting of Windblast or Hurricane.

After that Jeff more or less stopped playing so Dave and I played a lot more. This particular dragon would end up as a general for my High Elf force, joined by another Dragon Master model as the army standard bearer and 4 more dragons. The cool thing about the High Elf force in 3rd edition is you could field a force made entirely of dragons which I did a few times. The downside was at 315 points the +4 Shock Elite Dragonkin riders only had 1 Wound...

After moving to 4th and 5th the model sat for a bit until I stripped it of paint and redid it into the form you see now. I made the butterfly wings from regular painting canvas that I cut out to the right shapes and stiffened with successive coats of a watery glue. A small wire forms the leading wing edge to give it additional support. The odd thing was that I modeled a saddle and plunked a 4th edition Empire Rieksguard knight on it  Not sure if the mini ever saw combat in that form.

Since getting back to Oldhammer I've been reassigning models to their proper place in the army lists and it just didn't really fit with the Empire, but I didn't want to trash the dragon. So I touched up the paint job and put the original elf warrior and saddle back on. Upgraded the base to a 50mm base and Bam, done. Moral of the story? Never throw anything away!

So with all that he really wouldn't fit into my High Elf force either with its blue and white paint jobs. What better place to assign then my reborn Wood Elves? Adding fall foliage and once again ties it all back in. 

Next up? I'm still looking for 9 more wood elves from the plastic Warhammer Regiments set for two more archer units (I have 31 now, so two units of 20 is the goal). I did pick up 2 more 4th edition Glade Guard models which I'm using for my Kinband Warriors. I don;t know why but I like these models a lot. They might very well be next as I now have 2 archer units, 1 wardancer unit, a wizard, general, treeman and now dragon rider painted. the force continues to be reborn!

Adding to all of this I'm also working on my reborn 3rd edition Dark elf force and have just finishes a unit of 10 Dark Elf Dark riders. (and yes, you can see some "under the brush" Cold One Knights in the background).

So stay tuned.

Part V- Repainting the Wood Elf Force- The General

Thanks PhotoBucket.

Like a lot of hobbyists I imagine, I have spent the last week and half migrating everything off of PhotoBucket due to their new Terms and Conditions. So that means not much time for actual hobby work. In my case I had most everything backed up, but the Mac that had the photos got damaged in a flood due to an errant sump pump malfunction. So in a few short months it was: lose the local copies of the photos and then the online ones (in a sense). Fortunately, for the Wood Elf thread I chose to place it online here at Blogger (until this too closes- many years from now, right google?)

Anyways, onto the thread: since the Wood Elf host has been growing in size I figured it was time to pause in the rank and file units and give them a leader. For my general I utilized the Ashen Peacemaker miniature that I had procured years ago sans horse and then proceeded to cut apart for a ill-advised attempt at a conversion. What possessed me to do that I have no idea. Fortunately I cut him apart at the points where he was easy to reassemble.

Like the rest of the army he is on a brown base (not the sides obviously) with fall foliage and with the rest of the army I went for a more subdued color scheme. To me this makes sense the Wood Elves are not High Elves; they are not about flash and style, but more rustic and "natural" in their finery.

The horse is actually from another 3rd Edition mini from the Elf6 Cavalry range. The general model it came with is (so far) assigned to the Elven Lord unit im assmebling (see below), but remains to be seen if that is where he stays. I think the crown throws the whole look off for a Wood Elf army to be honest.

As far as my general (I still need to think up a name) there is still a bit of touch up to go on the base and a few other spots. Why is I only notice these after I take photos and prepare the blog post???

I still have not decided whether he will accompany a unit of (so far) 6 Elven Lords or if he will be independent. Of course a lot of this is predicated on what happens with the battle standard bearer of which I'll have mounted as well.

Next up to blog about is my mounted wizard "Milambar Ice Blade". I actually took photos of him too, but noticed that I still need to paint the "ramage" (he has a saddle bag with scrolls). Also the Dragomaster (DRAG7) which I converted years ago with his remounted rider is almost complete too. If that were not enough I have another unmodified dragon that is stripped of its old paint job and primed. As to which army it will go I'm not sure yet, perhaps it will be painted in a high elf scheme...

And further: I still have another mounted elf wizard and a unicorn in need of a mounted female elf wizard.... an elf kin warrior band, two more 20 strong elf archer units, another Treeman, another war dancer troupe, and a scratch built chariot... So plenty of stuff to do with this army to say the least.

I'm still tinkering with the light box (I know, I know, I've been saying this for a while) but have come up with a few good ideas while I get some more lights this week. These photos are a bit better than as of late. I also have been re-reading about it in the web. Seems like that information I knew at one point, but I must have purged from my memory over the last few years.


In any event let me know what you think of the paint job or any other questions or comments. 
 

Warhammer 3rd edition, back to the best edition- Part II

As I outlined here I've really returned to my roots as it were in regards to Warhammer. Unlike the ass-hats of the OSR movement on the D&D side however I bear no malice or ill-will towards anyone who plays a different version of Warhammer than I do. I find their "your fun is wrong" statements amusing if nothing else. And with the demise of the traditional rule-set of Warhammer Fantasy Battle this is more pronounced with folks going either the Age of Sigmar route, 9th Age or Return of Kings.

For me its why bother? Yes its cumbersome, but with the good olde' orange rule book and Warhammer Armies you have all you need to play a great game.

Talk about value on this thing: It has 11 of the 12 armies contained within (Norse appeared in White Dwarf #107). In addition there are new rules for war machines, and great rules in my opinion for allies and mercenaries which Warhammer always seemed to struggle with to find a good balance for.

So with that in my mind here is where I stand for each of the armies and potential future plans:

Dark Elves- When complete they will total around 4,000-5,000 points. Details on the progress of the army can be found here. For the most part I largely have all the minis needed and just need to round out a few here and there to fill up certain units rank and file. They also have 25 hobgoblins as allies which I'm looking forward to painting (see below).

Wood Elves- As I've been outlining here on the blog they will come in around 4,000 points when complete. Like Dark Elves these pointy ears are a repaint of my existing models. As I also noted, they originally served as allies for my Empire force, but over the years I collected enough to field a force in their own right.

Almost all the models are 3rd edition ones with a few 4th edition ones mixed in like the Glade Guard serving as Kin Band warriors. 

One of my most heavily converted dragons, circa 2006

High Elves- This will be tougher. Not because I don't have minis but because I have a force of at least 10,000 points of High Elves painted and another 4,000 points unpainted... But they are a 5th edition force in composition and models. This isn't a problem per say, but I'm not going to convert them back to 3rd, but rather leave them as is. Easy enough to play 3rd edition games with them, but unlikely to get a lot of the 3rd edition/4th edition range save for two: one being that ever elusive Elven Attack Chariot (for me).

The Empire- Actually my second army in 3rd Edition (more on that in a bit). Like my High Elves these guys are more configured for 4th-7th than 3rd edition. The good news its easy enough to use them in 3rd edition which I did in a battle around December.

Bretonnia- When I first played 3rd Edition I played my initial force as a Bretonnian force... Now I I can't stand Bretonnia due certain posters on a website that promotes them (you know the one). Ever wonder why the Word of Hashut #10 is the way it is? There you go. Right now I have a mixed force that is probably around 1,000 points. I don't really see my doing anything with them anytime soon.

I will be finishing up a Bretonnian canon however as it was one of my first mini purchases ever. Maybe even a small scenic base too. 

Chaos- My chaos force is largely done. it dates back to 1991 and sports a lot of original paint jobs from that time. As of late I've been splitting out the 5th/6th edition minis from the earlier ones. One "new" unit is a repaint of chaos warriors on foot. Right now I have 16 and have been scoping out the remaining 4. Highly unlikely to field 20 at once as the point cost would be over 1,000 points, but they will look cool none-the-less.

A unit of 25 Beastmen with some gors from 5th/6th and Talisman plastic Beastmen is also "under the brush", but back burner right now. 

Skaven- As my buddy Dave collected them way back when he got all of them from the joint plastic regiment boxes. As a result of this over they years they never had much appeal. I'd say I have 10-20 plastic ones. I could see a unit or two for allies, but I'm highly unlikely to gather a full force especially when one considers the amount of minis needed to field a Skaven force.

Orcs- From my Chaos Dwarfs force I've got more than enough to field a Orc and Goblin force but not too many in the way of 3rd edition minis. If I did I'd be looking for the orc and goblin war-machines to round it out. Hell I might just get them anyways as the minis are so cool.

Dwarfs- Like the Wood Elves the Dwarfs are an outgrowth of needing allies for my Empire force in larger battles (as I was the only one playing the "good armies".) The Dwarfs are the force I've changed the least over the years. What I have done is add more minis to them. The leftover from the Battle for Skull Pass box set have also made their way to the army. Right now I have four units to go with the 6,000 points of painted minis I already have. They were also the first force I thought of painting in a coherent scheme rather than individuals except for one unit where I purposely painted each mini different. As a result the unit is a miss mash of colors but the army is predominately green and yellow. All in all the force works.

Slann- Ahhh Slann. I have zero Slann minis unfortunately and I think I only ever actually saw a few in person painted (Dave had some). For some reason they were fairly hard to come by in the States in the late 80s and to try and collect them now? $$$

Undead- This will be a bit easier. Due to summoning spells in 3rd edition WFB everyone had a Undead plastic box set. Because of this I have one unit of cavalry, one unit of infantry and some extras. Coupled with the zombie plastic box set from 6th means I have the nucleus of a small force but needs some touching up on the first two. At some point I envision a small force along the lines of the ones presented around White Dwarf #142ish.

"Extras"
Norse- Only appeared in White Dwarf #107 and I have to say it let me with a meh feeling for the army. I have a few scattered Norse minis, but don't see myself undertaking this task for another human army largely composed of  infantry. Don't get me wrong the minis are cool, but where are the Norse riding war mammoths???

Nippon- My attempts at Nippon have been on again and off again as the mood strikes me. Now not a 3rd edition force the army list for 2nd could be modified to work with 3rd. I have a sizable force but its going to take a lot more time and a lot more lead. I do have almost every ninja model from the range which is kinda cool!

I think if I could get 1-4 of those damn Temple Dogs it would help!

Mercenaries and Allies- based on having so many armies I can usually field any allies needed. In terms of the mercs? I have the following:

• Chaos Allies- both chaos dwarf war machines, a mortar and multiple bazukas!
• Old Worlder Ally contingent- toyed with the idea of converting my Bret force to this contingent.
• Halflings- Got a fair amount of these for a small ally force. 
• Giants- Two giants, one old school.
• Ogres- Unit of 8 detailed here.
• Half-Orcs- this is going to be a quest. I want the 2nd edition range which goes for $$$ on eBay. 
• Hogoblins- 25 old school hobgoblins including Baron Brightgore on the painting table!

That about rounds out where I stand in Oldhammer, a lot done, quite a bit to go by that's the fun of it.