Those Who Work: Droids

Robots are workers too! Synth rights!

these aren't produced by no STC I seen

A while ago, I was invited into an old school gaming group on Facebook, basically a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have painting extremely cool shit, but without the seventeen mechadendrites and three-different-browns palette of the INQ28 crowd. (Who, to be clear are also a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have. I can like two things.)

One of the admins of the group had made these little droids, and just after I joined he was selling the last few from his limited run. I hadn't yet figured out how I was going to do terrain and civilians, but I definitely had to have them.

I then picked up the Jackobot, from Citadel's long lost Paranoia range. A few other #oldhammer types have also painted up this model, and I struggled with how to do a colour scheme for him for a while. A mishap with undercoating meant that he had a kind of blotchy, uneven undercoat, which presented a perfect opportunity to practice chipping and weathering.

Under the cut, we have many, many more photos.

Gnome-pril

Febru-gnome

March of the Gnomes

I haven't mentioned here, but the Old World Army Challenge is still going strong! My gnomes now consist of several regiments of infantry, some fox-riding cavalry, and an artillery battery.

Gnome-pril

Check out the project as a whole and see the absolutely stunning array of talent on display. The rest of the folks are bloody incredible.

Project: (Rogue) Traders

..an infinite deal of nothing...

Full Thrust civilian spacecraft 

Miniature games need objectives, and spaceship miniature games more so than most! Otherwise why are your trillion-dollar warships shooting space lasers at each other in the vast emptiness of space? So I got together some of Ground Zero Games's selection of civilian craft and painted them up.

Like the other Full Thrust things I've shared, these are 'finished', although I may expand on them in future, especially if I get any other fleets...

Merchant shipping

Old closeup photos below the cut!

Project: Strike Force Wollondilly

Remember one of my first posts, when I talked about Full Thrust? I mentioned that I had two fleets. The alien Sa'Vasku with their bioships, and the Oceanic Union - Space Australia (and friends).

Oceanic Union Strike Force Wollondilly

Here they are! I finally got around to getting some photos taken.

The Oceanic Union are a federation consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and a host of Pacific nations - Tuvalu, Vanuatu, &c. Given the balkanisation of the former United States in the setting, I like to think that Hawai'i was a late joiner. This also handily explains why the New Anglian Confederation and the Oceanic Union aren't as close as the modern UK-USA-AU alliance. As we'll see, I've also included Timor-Leste as a member, although the former Portuguese Timor had yet to succesfully leave Indonesia when Jon wrote his timeline.

Jon never really detailed the minor factions, but the Full Thrust community has agglutinated a kind of quasi-canon. One such detail is that Oceanic Union Defence Force ships (OUDFS; 'oddfuss') are usually painted in designs indigenous to the regions of the Federation. When combined with the flat, panelled surfaces of OUDFS ships, this gives a great deal of freedom for striking freehand designs.

This project was actually finished in May 2018; you can see the project unfold in real-time on the old Tumblr.

Below the cut for more individual photos!

Those Who Rule

Sometimes a family is a lord, a lady, their baby, their homonculus, and their other... baby.

Lord Greiss, Lord-Governor of Colony 87, and family

Last time, the civilians were the intelligentsia; scholars, priests, adeptus administatrum. I've split my civilians into class-based groups (sort of, as we'll see) to create batches that are easier to manage. This week was the aristocracy.

(Well, and last week. It's been a bit of a tough fortnight.)

Let's take a closer look below the cut.

Those Who Study, Those Who Pray

Back in February, I rambled excessively about old-school terrain and old-school wargaming aesthetics. It was a bit much.

a Moebius scene from La Cité Feu, 1985

I'm still working on how I'll put together a table of terrain to match my big mouth, but I've also been working on some people to populate it. I've gone a bit off doing big, tedious army-scale projects at the moment (aside from my ongoing work with the Old World Army Challenge), but doing small-scale projects like Kill Teams or Blood Bowl teams are definitely juicy and fun.

Last year, I backed a Colony 87 kickstarter to get myself a huge range of Science Fiction civilians. The range was originally conceived by noted #oldhammer luminary axiom, who has since passed the governorship of Colony 87 to Crooked Dice Miniatures. The range is a beautiful set of space folks with old-school aesthetics, and I've been keen to paint them since I got them.

I also have a handful of Rogue Trader-era sculpts and some sundries I've picked up along the way. I'm sure I'll add more as well. I will split them all into rough categories (workers, aristocracy, bourgeois, intelligentsia, &c), and paint them in lil' groups.

I am trying to steer clear of the 'browns and grey' #grimdark aesthetic and toward something brighter and more old-school. I would like to think these would fit as easily into Rogue Trader-era Warhammer 40K as a Moebius crowd scene as anything in Modernhammer. We'll see.

Here are the first few I finished. They are administrative workers, priests, scholars and the like:

Chamber Secretary Felix Saponya, Administratum

Botanist Hereward Osman, Mechanicus

High Priestess Cardinia, Ministorum

Recordist Junger, Administratum

Wandering Alexei, (poss. Mechanicus)

And this fellow is a Rogue Trader-era sculpt (whose hand seems to be slightly miscast):

Astropath Yerl, Astra Telepathica

Tranquility

One of the better things about the Rogue Trader-era of marines was the camouflague.

It gave a real sense that each engagement by a Chapter was its own setting, that every Chapter - while broadly similar - would engage with its enemies in a different way. Some of that is coming across in the modern rules, where each First Founding family has its own codex (/supplement), but a lot of modern stuff makes everything the same. Nearly all equipment is used by every Chapter. Somehow every tiny skirmish involves three Captains and the Chapter Master (and the three Captains all have thunder hammers and jetpacks).

Tranquility Veterans

One of the things I absolutely had to have in my Mantis Warriors project was a squad of snipers in Tranquility Campaign camouflage. They are a mix of different pieces - five Forgeworld Recon Marines, a Vigilator for the sergeant, three kit-bashed snipers, and the Rogue Trader-era Brother Gorshin with his needler.

RT01 Space Marines, from White Dwarf 99 (March 1988)
Courtesy of The Stuff of Legends

I finally got the bits to finish the last member of the squad - actually armed with a combi-grav gun instead of a sniper rifle - a few weeks ago. He's also a member of Kill Team: Renegade.

my painting desk lights are not great

combat shotgun as sidearm

no stripes on this chainblade; just a brutal weapon

die

Kill Team: Renegade

I keep forgetting to update the blog!

Kill Team: Renegade

In my defence, the past couple of months have been crazy.

One thing I have finished is my Mantis Warriors Kill Team, Kill Team: Renegade. In consists of a demi-squad of Rogue Trader miniatures, a few Tranquility snipers, a handful of scouts and several veterans in custom-built armour. I'm also using the models for Lieutenant Commander Gwak Chae'u and Brother-Swordmaster Mifune as their weapons work as relic blades.

the fury of the righteous makes worlds tremble

These four were finished in early March. We have a sternguard gunner with a missile launcher, a company veteran with flamer and chainsword, a veteran sergeant with storm shield, chainsword and storm bolter, and a veteran with bolter and storm shield.

The veteran sergeant is a former member of the Deathwatch, although his shield is the worse for wear.

The basic list for Kill Team is below the cut. It probably has some errors, as I've not actually played a game with these goons.