Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you all well. Wow, it has been over a month since I last posted, but honestly, I’ve had nothing to show you! I’ve been very slowly prepping a crew for a Stargrave weekender in Dublin next month, but I only just picked up the paintbrush the other day. Life is busier than ever at the moment- mostly in a good way I think, but hobby time is in short supply. I’ve also gotten a bit sick of the constant GW churn these days – I had a game of Cursed City and it was absolute dogshit, so I’m feeling pretty done with it all. So far this year, my GW spend is zero, and I want to really be strict with myself in that regard & paint what I already own as much as possible.

That said, there is no way I’m not putting together a new crew for Dublin though, so, as is usual for me, the first step in a new project is to decide my theme. In this case, I knew I wanted to go OldHammer, but given the caliber of OH Grandees at the Dublin event, I knew I wanted to do something a bit different to any of my previous projects… In the interest of painting what I already own, I went for a rummage & found a box of Bob Olley minis that I have been slowly accumulating since having so much fun painting the Iron Claw Pirates almost three years ago… I’ve been kicking around the idea of building an entire Rogue Trader army of Olley minis, and this seemed like a good opportunity to have a practice. So, the theme for the crew was decided – zero spend and Olley sculpts only!

Next I looked into the rules to sketch out a crew, but with a lot of back and forth to see what would work with the minis I had available. I settled on a Veteran Captain in combat (i.e. ‘power’) armour & grenade launcher, a cyborg first mate with a Rapid Fire gun, a ‘Burner’, a Medic, and two each of Troopers, Chiselers and Hackers. I also build an alternate version of the Captain because you can’t guarantee that your combat armour is always available in-game. Some converting was needed here & there, but nothing too hectic. I went with hex bases for a touch of whimsey & I cobbled together some loot tokens too. Building done, I just needed to wait for a warm enough day to get the crew primed – the Undercoat Gods duly granted my prayers late last week.

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The Combat Armoured Captain seemed like a good place to start, so start I did. Here is Captain Zebulon Scoville*, resplendent in his Ion pattern Combat Armour.

Zebulon is a veteran of the Olleyan Expansionist Wars, and he has been running his own crew of privateers (provisionally called ‘the UMF’) since demob:

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The base model is an old Ion Age ‘Retained Knight’ from Bob’s ‘Alternate Armies’ range – these minis have been kicking around since the late 80’s, but are still available for the princely sum of £3.50 on http://www.alternativearmies.com if you’re interested. They are a funny bunch with some strange poses & proportions, but honestly, they are a joy to paint.

He had some light conversion work to attach a combat blade to the weapon, and I glued on a Tau sidearm for his pistol, but otherwise he’s pretty much standard. I just went with the flow in terms of painting him up, with ‘Mantis Warrior Green’ as my main colour, and red & bone for the spot colour. Cheques were a must for that proper OldSkool flavour, and I do love the ridiculousness of hazard stripes on a chainsaw. Other than that, the only other thing to note is that I restrained myself on the weathering front, and I left out the skulls & other grim-dark GW guff, just to keep this project distinct from that whole vibe.

And that’s it folks, that’s as far as I’ve managed to get! I have the rest of the warband in various stages at the moment, so should have more to share soon :-)

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*Zebulon Scoville is a superb name, but is also an actual superb person too! He’s a NASA flight director who gets to drive the ISS… I read an article on him carrying out emergency maneuvers on the ISS back in 2021 & the name lodged in my brain to be used for just such an occasion.