LE24 Sleazy Rider

As with my Ork Warbuggy photographs, I recently found the original photograph of LE24 Sleazy Rider, so I decided to rescan them as I had only low-res ones on the site.

Sleazy Rider was a Citadel Limited Edition released in July 1987. At the time it was £1.95, which though appears cheap today, wasn’t then! 

This is Sleazy Rider the original Orc biker (at that time there were no Orks just Orcs).
This is Sleazy Rider the original Orc biker (at that time there were no Orks just Orcs).

Despite the bike, the hemet and the shotgun this was a fantasy model, Sleazy was an Orc not an Ork!

This is Sleazy Rider the original Orc biker (at that time there were no Orks just Orcs).
This is Sleazy Rider the original Orc biker (at that time there were no Orks just Orcs).

The advert from White Dwarf #91 has text talking about a fantasy ‘car’ race involving vehicles with steam boilers and Snotling Pump Wagons.

‘Dad was hero,’ gasped Mad Sid, ‘he died out on the track…’ A silence fell upon the tribe as their leader wiped a tear from a piggy little eye. ‘Dad was a real orc, an orc with a dream! All he ever wanted was to win the Undun Appoluz. It was neck and neck coming up to Death Pit Corner. Dad was on the inside with the Stunty Evulcan Evul on the outside. As they went into the bend, Dad opened up and went into the lead. For just one second he was in Evulcan’s sights…’ A lump came to Mad Sid’s throat, ‘the bolt hit the steam boiler. They never found Dad. It took three weeks to fill in the crater.

As Mad Sid bowed his head in memory of his sire, a tall, made-eyed and rather oily orc wheeled the new machine forwards. ‘She’s faster than the Borgheim Bersekers super-charged steam dragster. She’ll leave the Drastic Dik and the Snotling Pump Wagon on the grid. She’ll go like a Stunty rat-catcher with a red-hot poker up its…’

‘What are we waiting for!’ Bellowed Mad Sid. ‘Undun Apollouz Allcomers here we come!’

The bike rear was based on a Judge Dredd bike, but the front had a wooden wheel and an Evil Sunz glyph.

In the advert, the Citadel painted model had a US flag painted on the fuel tank, so when I painted mine I did the opposite and painted the Soviet flay on my model.

As I was writing this blog post I got thinking that maybe there was something here about a new game, a fantasy racing car game. Well Bloodbowl is fantasy football!

I have distant memories of playing a chariot race using the Warhammer rules, and we didn’t just have chariots either, there was probably a Snoting Pump Wagon in the midst as well.

Well that’s got me thinking…

Blood on the Streets

I have been gaming for a fair few years now, my first experience with Warhammer was the first edition when it came out.

There were so many releases back then that I wanted, but alas the pocket money only stretched so far and it never stretched as much as I wanted.

Across the pages of White Dwarf were adverts for lots of lovely models which I was never going to be able to afford to buy. Occasionally I would see something and I would send off for it.

One advert for a product that remains a strong memory for me was the one for the Blood on the Street Arcane Architecture Village Pack One. This was in the October 1985 edition of White Dwarf, issue number seventy.

After the wholesale slaughter and destruction at Orc’s Drift (Citadel’s latest Warhammer supplement) the time has come to rebuild! Now’s your chance with our first Arcane Architecture village pack. This pack heralds a series of card model buildings designed for the fantasy gamer, Village pack one contains 12 different full-colour building models designed by the award-winning and talented David Andrews. Also Included is a complete guide to The Riding – an out of the way part of the Warhammer World where out of the ordinary things are a part of every day life! The villages of The Riding are described In detail, together with their various Inhabitants. Card colour counters and Warhammer stilts are provided for all non-player characters. Background Information, local rumours, events of interest and scenario suggestions are all included – and can be readily adapted for use in a Warhammer game or fantasy role-playing adventure. An invaluable in any role-playing system. Available now at your local retailer – or post free direct from the Citadel Mail Order Trolls. 

Playing lots of Warhammer Fantasy Battle at the time, this seemed an ideal way to quickly create towns to fight in. 

Now buying stuff back in that day was nowhere as easy as it is now. I didn’t have a credit or debit card, I only had a savings account at the local bank. There wasn’t a world wide web to order form anyhow, and without a bank card I couldn’t phone the Citadel Mail Order Trolls. So I asked a parent to write a cheque which I dutifully sent off to Citadel Miniatures at Chewton Street in Nottinghamshire.

Now I know differently, but at the time I assumed somewhat naively that Citadel would have these in stock and I would get them by return of post. So I remember calculating in my head roughly when it would arrive. I would patiently as long as possible for the post to arrive before heading off to Sixth Form College and if it hadn’t come, rushing home afterwards to see if it had come later. It hadn’t…

In the end it took weeks to arrive. Either they had sold out their initial stock and did a reprint, or more likely they advertised the product before it was actually ready to release. Which it was I would never know. Though this experience did put me off mail order for a fair few years.

When it eventually arrived, I was amazed. I had spent £5.95 on a booklet and a load of card. That’s a little disingenuous, this was a fantastic product which had huge potential.

Knowing what I know now, I probably would have scanned all the card buildings into a computer or copied them onto card using a colour photo-copier. This wasn’t possible, as a) I didn’t have a computer let alone any kind of scanner (or colour scanner). I remember buying a black and white scanner in the mid-1990s for £500 or thereabouts. I don’t  think consumer scanners were even a thing in 1985! As for a colour photo-copier, well there was a black and white one at college, but colour, wasn’t that science fiction?

So despite not having a copy, I dutifully cut out all the card building pieces and glued them together. They were fantastic, Dave Andrews had done a magnificent job in designing these.

We used them a lot in too many games to mention. Any photographs you ask (knowing how many photographs I have on this blog)? Well as well as not owning a computer, a scanner or a colour printer, I also didn’t own a camera! I didn’t really start taking photographs of models until the late 1990s. So I have no visual record of these buildings. I am not sure exactly what happened to them in the end, as used them for a fair few years, but I think they may have either been left behind when I went off to university or they got crushed and binned after a move.

Whatever happened to them I have great memories of those buildings and the games we played in and around them. I was always disappointed with Village Pack Two, Terror of the Lichemaster, which wasn’t as good, but added to the building stock.

With the wealth of plastic scenery kits these days, these card buildings look a poor relation, but at the time they were so much better than anything around, and unless you were going to spend hours making your own scenery, they added much needed depth and excitement to games of Warhammer.

Ninja


This is a Ninja Assassin with pistol from Citadel Miniatures, circa 1990. I think I actually got him in the 1980s at some point. It was about this time that Citadel were selling various miniatures and not just those for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. It’s very much a Perry design. In terms of painting I was using a black undercoat.