Last week, a bunch of notifications greeted me in my various inboxes. “Squidmar is looking for you!” As it turns out, Squidmar had recently published a video called “The most CURSED miniature in Warhammer history!” and that video included a miniature owned by yours truly. So, what is the most cursed miniature in Warhammer history? It’s the large-scale Eldar Bright Stallion, and it’s even more cursed than Squidmar might have expected.
And I own parts of it.
What even is a Bright Stallion?
A bit of background first. Back in 1988, Games Workshop released the first edition of Epic, a small scale tabletop game. And when I say small scale, I mean it: your average space marine was only 6 mm tall. That’s tiny, but it allowed for knights and titans to easily show up on the tabletop – and show up they did.
1990 brought us a host of metal miniatures, depiciting various war machines of both Space Marines and the Eldar. White Dwarf 126, released in june of that year, gives us some nice background lore.
Eldar Knights were associated with the Exodite Eldar, who used them to herd giant, genetically engineered beasts called Megasaurs. Each warsuit came with a spirit stone, allowing the pilot to psychically bond with the souls of his ancestors contained within. Most of the suits were bipedal, but one of the designs wasn’t. The Bright Stallion gave us a sleek, Eldar-inspired take on a centaur, accompanying the brontosaurid herds through their harsh surroundings.
Okay! And what about Armorcast?
Armorcast is a company originally founded in Santa Rosa in 1995. It was one of four companies in the San Francisco Bay Area to acquire a license from Games Workshop to reproduce some of these Epic vehicles in a 28mm scale, together with Mike Biasi Studios, Epicast and Forge World Models. If we look at the Collecting Citadel Miniatures Wiki, we see that there were various unlicensed aftermarket pieces produced at the time as well.
Both Armorcast and Epicast made various Eldar Knight Titans, and when the contract with Games Workshop ended, some of these remained unreleased. And then, this model pops up.
From the looks of it, it’s easy to assume this is an Armorcast or Epicast model. It’s a scaled up sculpt of an existing Epic Knight, it fits right in with the other Eldar Knights, and the resin is the right colour. It’s also incredibly rare, so surely, this must be one of the unreleased models?
A model truly cursed
Back in 2016, I purchased a lot of old miniatures and leftover bits and pieces from a collector in my old university town. He lived a five minute walk away, had sold most of his collection already, and was happy to be rid of the boxes. To my surprise, I found some old Armorcast and Epicast pieces inside… together with the Eldar Bright Stallion.
As Squidmar discovered, I posted on a few forums to try and find out exactly what I owned now. One of these posts was on the Oldhammer forums, and to my pleasant surprise I got an answer by Tim DuPertuis, the former owner of Armorcast.
Turns out, the model wasn’t theirs after all. The cast was made by someone called David Hildebrand, someone local to them in the San Francisco Bay Area.
There are two or three casts of the model around that I am aware of. Tim DuPertuis photographed one, shown on the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki, which appears to be lacking its base. Axiom at Magpie and Lead showed us a cast that’s been assembled and primed, base included. It’s possible these two are the same miniature, but I’m not sure.
And then there’s mine. While I do own the base (which has been primed before), I unfortunately lack the weapons. Mine comes in two different resins, including two additional hooves and an additional leg. The head comes with some bits of the mould stuck to it as well. And as the final nail in the Bright Stallion’s coffin, there is no copyright information or casting mark on any of the pieces.
While a truly unique piece, it turns out the Bright Stallion is an unlicensed aftermarket piece after all.
Talk about an anti-climax.