Author Archives: Alex

Stargrave Warband – part 4

06 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in Stargrave

≈ 14 Comments

Greetings Terrans, hope you’re all well. This is the last in this little sequence of posts as I put together the last elements of my Bob Olley inspired crew for Stargrave. We were almost complete on the last post, so it’s just a pair of troopers to share today – lil’ Wayne and Big Garth:

Lil’ Wayne is from the IC301 ‘Iron Claw Space Pirates’ from back in the day (better known as ‘Banzai Jones’). Meanwhile, Big Garth is an example of ‘Malig Infantry’ from the The Ion Age minis, still available on Alternative Armies. Neither of these guys needed any conversion work, and both were painted to fit in with the rest of the crew. Really the only thing to note is the yellow skin used on Garth. Because aliens.

.

So that’s it folks – a very enjoyable & self contained little project, all ready for a trip over the Oirish Sea next week! I’ll leave you with some shots of the whole crew – firstly with the Captain in his fancy combat armour:

.

And another one when my crew is skint & can’t pay the fee for fancy combat armour:

.

So that’s it folks – job done! Not sure when I’ll be back to hobbying & blogging, or what my next project will be – I have a few ideas, but I’ve got a very busy time coming up & my motivation for the hobby isn’t what it once was. That said, Bring Out Your Lead is just around the corner, so we’ll see :-)

Stargrave Warband – part 3

27 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by in OldHammer, Stargrave

≈ 16 Comments

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have some more Stargrave crew to share with you today, continuing the theme of using only Bob Olley sculpts. So far I have two versions of the Captain, a First Mate, a ‘Burner’ specialist and a Medic, so that’s the bulk of the heavy firepower and a bit of durability sorted out. The next thing I wanted to do was to make sure that I could contest loot – a vital component of any Joseph McCullough game! However, Stargrave loot differs from Frostgrave or Ghost Archipelago in a couple of significant ways. Firstly, you need to pass a ‘skill’ role to be able to nab any loot… this requires a roll of 14 or more on a D20, so not exactly easy, unless you have particular skills or equipment to access said loot… This is further complicated because loot can be either Physical or Data, so there are two different variables to consider, but both will come up in most scenarios. Luckily, you can hire crewmembers who specialise in either situation by granting +6 to their roll for accessing either Physical loot, (Chiselers or Casecrackers), or +6 for accessing Data, (Hackers or Codebreakers). Chiselers and Hackers are the pistol-packing bargain version of each, and I wanted to include two of each crew type into my starting warband.

First up the Chiselers, Lego-ass and Grimly:

This pair is comprised of an old GW Squat, along with an Alternative Armies ‘Sidhe Clan Female Warrior)’. The Squat (Grimly) is pretty much stock, but I did model a crowbar in his right hand. The female clan warrior was a more extensive conversion, with her shield getting turned into some kind of hand mounted drill thing, some techy doodabs round back, and her sling getting swapped for an old Autopistol. In terms of painting, this pair follow the scheme already laid down earlier in the project. One obvious variance is the blue skin tone used on Lego-Ass, no reason in particular, I just thought it’d be nice to have a more unusual looking crew member, be they mutant or alien.

.

Next we have a pair of Hackers – Blunder and Blix (with the cap):

This pair are both from the ‘Malig Goblinoid Infantry’ faction from ‘The Ion Age’ range. There wasn’t too much conversion work needed here, but I did sculpt on some data pads to suggest tools for hacking. Again, the painting really followed the same formula as the rest of the crew, though I did roll with the whole Goblinoid look here.

.

As a final note on this update, I also prepped some Physical and Data loot terrain:

.

And here they are being hacked and chiseled but our shifty crewmembers:

.

And that’s it for this update folks – next post will be a pair of Troopers to round out the crew, and some final crew shots!

Stargrave Warband – part 2

16 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by in Stargrave

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

,

Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you well. I have some updates to share on my Stargrave crew – full disclosure, I’ve actually completed the crew, but I’m spreading them over a few posts for the sake of content :-)

So, last time I introduced Capt. Zebulon Scoville in his Combat (i.e. Power) Armour. Problem is, in the Stargrave rules, you need to pay a fee to use Combat Armour… I’ve played enough of Joseph McCullough’s games to know that D20s absolutely hate me & that there will certainly be times where I don’t have the credits for this, so I wanted to do a version of Zebulon in heavy armour & packing a shotgun. This gave me a great opportunity to use one of my absolute favourite Olley minis:

I gave Zeb a holstered pistol, but otherwise this mini is unconverted. Paint job is as for the Power Armoured version – Mantis Warrior Green contrast paint & Red & Cream cheque detail.

.

Next I put together a 1st Mate for the crew – a combat Cyborg called ‘Borgan Freedman’. I imagine Borgan is an old combat servitor dating back to the Olleyan Expansionist Wars, and that he was found & freed by Zebulon before becoming his loyal and capable Number 2:

Borgan is big fella, and is packing an oversized ‘Rapid Fire’ weapon arm conversion from one of the AdMech kits, the size of which probably explains his phenomenal quads! This is another superb model, and I wanted to really lean in to all the gribbly bits on this sculpt & I picked out as many of the little wires and doodabs as I could find. I went with a dark skin tone for some variety,, but otherwise he was painted in the same palette as Zebulon.

.

Next up is BB-Q, a Burner Droid with code that is so corrupted that it actually seems to enjoy what it does:

BB has a simple conversion on the weapon to make it look more like a flame thrower / burner type weapon, but is otherwise unchanged. Nothing much else to add here, it’s a goofy sculpt but good fun, and looks decent in the crew colour scheme.

.

Last one for today is ‘Doc’ Legg:

Doc had some conversion work to give him a syringe-gun thingy in his right hand, but otherwise he’s a standard Olley Squat from back in the day. The palette is also consistent, but with a bit more white & a medic cross on the shoulder guard for easy gameplay.

.

And that’s all I want to share for now – more to come I promise :-)