They lied to us!!!!

 

So what was the lie they told us? Well in total the cards showed 210 miniatures and as can be seen in the sheet that was included “All the models on the Combat Cards are available from your local Games Workshop Store”.

To be fair the majority of the miniatures were available however as any collector knows there are a couple that are almost impossible to get hold of, why, because they were never released.

First is, possibly one of the most expensive and sought after miniatures, comes from the Dwarfs set. Harrig the Wise.

The second miniature is from the Monster set, the Plaguebearer.

The final unreleased miniature was from the Warrior set, Umberto Calavani.

If you manage to find the above three unreleased miniatures then your next challenge is to 

get hold of the uncatalogued Marauder Miniature that also appeared on the cards and then 

carry out the numerous conversions.

Unfortunately due to the rarity of these figures there are a number of recasts out there. There are also a couple of fan sculpts of Harrig. Fan sculpts differ from recasts as they are not designed to fool the buyer. To this end the sculptor makes changes to them that allows identification as a fan sculpt rather than being passed off as an original. These days the fan sculpts can go for a reasonable amount of money.

If you are looking to purchase one of these figures from eBay, or anywhere else, and want the genuine article I would recommend joining some of the Oldhammer Facebook groups as a way to seek verification that what you are being sold is genuine.

There are a couple of things to watch out for:

Miniature is painted or undercoated - usually done badly to cover up the quality of casting or mould marks that shouldn’t be there.

Quality of the metal or casting.

Seller becomes aggressive when challenged on authenticity.

Seller has a lot of rare miniatures for sale.

Seller has more than one of the same miniature.

Too good to be true?

None of the above definitively means that it is a recast but raises suspicion. Caveat Emptor!

If you are interested in collecting the miniatures from the Combat Cards there is a group on Facebook.