Those Guys

 Just some lads.

lads lads lads

I try to group the civilian posts by theme, but these lads (and the below robot) are all I've done in the past few months, so they can go up together. These four are available as Sailors at Crooked Dice.

yeah just headed to the space-pub for a space-schnitty

I randomly decided to make one chap a football fan because why not. The meaty bloke on the right is into the same punk band as one of my squats:

we ain't dead! say it a-fucken-gain!

bleep-blorp

Finally, we have the non-sentient P0-N3 bot, 'Bill', from Skull & Crown's Space Scrappers line. An absolute treat to paint up!

Those Scouts: Riders

Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse / to the old town road

Slann trading contingent, feat. Ometeotl the Outrider

wastelander horseman

Once again, these are hardly civilians, despite the fact that I continue to group these miniatures together under that tag. I suppose I will eventually call this setting something else - maybe if I finally paint any of the terrain I'm accumulating.

These two are mounted scouts; the one a baseline human, riding his actual horse across the desert sands. The other is as far as we can get from that, being a space frog riding a space velociraptor. 

Those Animals: Wild things

 A handful more critters for the desert.

small local fauna

I've painted a handful of small creatures to sprinkle around the gaming table. The lava dog thing comes from Northstar, the rest from an indie company the name of which I've misplaced. They sure are cute, though.

armadillo analogues

lizard analogues

thingies

some kind of heated-rock monster?

Those Mercenaries

 A collection of local guns.

not exactly civilians

Today we have a handful of armed figures for the civilian project. At this rate, I'm basically recreating Gorkamorka (and yes, that is a spoiler for something planned soon), albeit with fewer orks.

scout

A classic Rogue Trader adventurer sculpt and as such as been done by many many others, which is part of why I wanted to buy him. He's been on my table for ages, as I wasn't sure how I wanted him to come out. Some of the off-whites came off a bit too close, so I'm not totally happy with him, but still - he looks pretty good to me.

I like to think of him as the best of the scouts for hire, preferring to keep to himself in the deep desert. His use of a shuriken pistol and apparently uncanny insight into the trackless wastes gives him a reputation as half-Eldar, despite the genetics making that impossible. Right?

old bandit

Another RT adventurer! Jason has also painted him up, but I've gone for a weather-beaten old raider style for him and his weird pistol.

I think of him as old friends with the scout - not as good at guiding clients through the wastes, but way more vicious in a melee with the mutie raiders and slaver tribes that might waylay a caravan winding through the cacti-spheres.

Madeline and Maximillian

"Mad" Madeline and "Max" Maximillian are a couple of local gunslingers. Sometimes raiders, sometimes caravan guards, sometimes just mean bastards. Always hired as a pair.

These sculpts were from a Facebook group and I was able to get some of the initial run a little while back - but thankfully they're now available at Crooked Dice as the Mannix Twins. Real joys to paint, and a lovely classic vibe.

Lastly, and finished only a few minutes ago, we have Ms Lovely Day.

Ms Lovely Day

No need to point out her inspiration! You can also get her via Crooked Dice (can you tell I did an order recently?). I've painted her up as roughly inspired by her origin, but she fits in with the rest of these gunslingers although slimmer, possibly teenaged.

It's a beautiful sculpt and fun to paint.

I undercoated some more civilians today, but also go back to work tomorrow, so we'll see if my painting time shrinks substantially. Stay tuned, desert wanderers!

Those Renegades

 Just a couple of perfectly ordinary civilians...

Magos Biologis, Mechanicus

This is a medic from North Star Military Figures's Stargrave releases. I'm going to be putting together a different team to play the game, but this saturnine fellow is perfect for my civilian project, even if he's a little more armed than usual.

His weird tech greeble fits into the Rogue Trader aesthetic, and while the blue gloves hint at a different science fiction setting, marking him as an unpleasant sort of fellow. I see him as a low-ranking Adept Mechanicus who screens the citizens for genetic deviance, hence the red collar. He also works perfectly as a Rogue Doc in Necromunda. Multi-use!

Heretek, poss. former Mechanicus

Also from Stargrave, this I gave this hacker a goth aesthetic. I was tempted to freehand a cool skull on her jacket, but her cyberpunk tech greeble makes that too hard, and I'm very lazy.

I see her as a heretek,* running local hacking jobs for a reasonable price. They aren't all towering monstrosities of cybernetic cables and whirring gears, blaspheming with cogentities as scrapcode gods. Some of them are just folks who break open the cases and tinker without the proper rites.

I'm not sure if Necromunda18 has a specific role like this, but it would be easy to design scenarios around her! I wonder if her deck would let her hack Spyrer-style suits, or maybe even servitors.

That's it for this entry! I'm working on some more civilians and am very close to finishing an army for a different skirmish game...

Old World Army Challenge: Failure State

 Hello, friends. It's been a few months since I posted. This is partly because my non-hobby world has gotten real busy resulting in an absolute lack of hobby stuff. The other reason is that some of what I was working on was posted over at the Old World Army Challenge site.

a to-do list

Unfortunately, I have fallen and now lie in the Field of Bones. Quite the ignominious end to my third Challenge. I did manage to get some fellows finished though, which you can read about in detail at the OWAC site. I figure I might as well share them here!

mortem tyrannis: against death

Justice shall be delivered, and doom shall stalk a thousand worlds.

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman and his squad

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab and his six brothers-in-hell

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi and six Once-Men

The final part of the Death Guard showcase, the core of the army: infantry. Three squads of seven posthuman nightmares. This the core of the accidental army - I'd always loved the old monopose plastic plague marines and after winning a couple of accidental eBay auctions.... well.

Apparently the pathway to hell has seven steps. Below the cut for more photos and conversation.

mortem tyrannis: officers

 I've accidentally put together a fallen Death Guard force.

officer cadre

How do you 'accidentally' put together an entire army? Well, the same way any fall occurs: one step at a time.

At any rate, once I realised that the three squads of plague marines, mobs of cultists, and swarms of zombies basically constituted an army, I gradually put together an officer cadre. I've painted several of these grimy bastards this year as breaks between projects, so I might as well show 'em off.

sorcerer

This is the Forgeworld model Necrosius, although when I went to look him up to link him, it appears he's no longer produced. I intend to use him as a Malignant Plaguecaster (an idiotic name for 'plague-themed sorcerer' but whatever). I think he was the first of the officers I painted, some time last year.

The sculpt is great, with ritual bone skewering him, rotting pauldrons and a cool glaive-staff. I've given his back banner runes in the Dark Tongue and an old-school check pattern, but the paint scheme is otherwise the streaky white with yellow details that I use army wide.

surgeon

Plague Surgeon. I put this guy on a 32mm base without thinking; the Death Guard officers are all on 40mm bases, as they are huge. I don't like that officers are weirdly bigger than the regular soldiers, but it works okay in a chaos army so I'm happy to ignore it here. I should get him a base extender though.

This sculpt is also lovely, with a screaming daemon in one pauldron, all the tools of a healer and then a sick rotting sword, which I've painted up like corrupted bone. I also let him keep the white robe of a real doctor so that he didn't get mistaken for his yellow-robed magician pal, above.

brewer

Foul Blightspawn. I picked up this model and the Biologus Putrifier below in the second-hand section at CanCon 2020, intending for them to serve as painting palate cleansers. They are actually quite detailed and intricate sculpts, which proved a bit frustrating to paint. I eventually came to love them, as my Death Guard painting style really is a lot of fun.

alchemist. grenadier.

Biologus Putrifier. He has so very many vials and bottles, which made me put off painting him, but the design is actually cool as shit. He's an insect-faced parody of an angel, with the wings replaced with racks of alchemical nightmares. It's a great concept and very neatly fits into the concept of Chaos Space Marines being 'fallen' Angels of Death (with the obvious caveat that in rebelling against the fascist Imperium, they aren't so much evil as just completely fucked). I also wrote a lil' passage on the original instagram post for this guy:

"..and then descended the seventh part of a seventh part of the Great Horror; and in its vanguard were seven fiends, each cast in its own aspect of the Decay That Wastes Hope... and then the fourth was shaped like unto an angel of Order, but corrupted. In place of wings, it bore branches of bone, hung upon which were vials and alchemy, the rotted fruits of evil. In place of a halo, it bore a half-crown of broken bronze. In place of a face..."

-From the Seventh Prophecy of Šeru’a-eṭirat.

bannerman

Noxious Blightbringer. Mildly converted from the really excellent Blightkings kit for Age of Sigmar as the only way to get one of these bell-ringing maniacs is in the 8th edition starter box, Dark Imperium, and the resellers on ebay charge a surprising amount for them. Mostly I just love the conceit that his guts have been replaced by the dark gods with another, smaller bell. Hilarious.

I gave him an old marine right arm, replaced one leg with power armour, and gave him a Heresy-era Death Guard helmet to make sure he reads as a fallen space marine. I think it works. 

archivist

Tallyman. I joked on instagram that once I realised that Games Workshop had released a fat archivist model that I needed to buy one, so that I could have #representation on the tabletop. Because I am also an overweight archivist, you see. Do you get it?

(admittedly, I lack tentacles or an abacus made of tiny skulls)

He was fun to paint, especially adding some spare scrolls and book pieces to his base to make it look like he's standing in a ransacked, filth-soaked library. Note that his right arm is red, indicating that he was once a Dusk Raider.

captain

Chaos Lord. This creature has been fighting the Long War for many ages of man. Short even among his brethren in 1991, he is now completely dwarfed by the giant-sized modern sculpts of the other officers, as you saw in the first image. That's fine with me, as he's clearly been blessed by the deities and demi-deities of Plague and Despair: face of a Plaguebearer; Nurgling infestation; rotting skin; hooved feet; and fewer fingers, at the very least. Being made shorter is just one more way he is #blessed.

I agonised over how to paint the Nurgling, but eventually decided on the classic yellowish green, making him deliberately cartoony to contrast to the marginally more subdued murky greens and dirty creams of his armour.

He also has a red right hand. How low you have fallen, O son of Albia.

See more photos of all these grim gentlemen below this here cut.

Those Who Trade: Animals

 Here, at the end of all things the Colony 87 miniatures.

Julius Samarkan and his living goods behind some electro-barriers

This is it, folks! The last Colony 87 miniatures! Crooked Dice have also grouped some cyberpunk miniatures and added to the range since the Third Wave Kickstarter, but these are moving into a different aesthetic, so I didn't pick them up. I'm happy to say that this is more-or-less the whole range and move into new directions. For one thing, all my new civilians need somewhere to live...

For the final post, we have alien pet merchant Julius Samarkan and most of the Colony 87/Crooked Dice animals (except for the space cat from yesterday). These were a lot of fun to paint, although obviously a little fiddly in some cases. I don't think I'll keep them all as Samarkan's, but use them to liven up tables.

Anyway, below the cut!

Those Animals: Gyrinx

 Psychic feline-analogues from beyond the stars.

or, put another way: space kitties!

If I'm going to paint cats, I'm always going to call them Gyrinx. I know that the original Rogue Trader bestiary described them as orange, but that text is more what we traditionally call guidelines anyway, right? (For some great ones, by the way, check out Sho3box).

The kitten on the left is one of the handful of remaining Colony 87 sculpts (although Crooked Dice may have just put him in; I don't think he was part of Jon's brief). The other two are from Bad Squiddo Games, part of her Vikings range. I got them originally for my wood elves, but they don't work as hunting cats. They do work as weird alien cats, though.

Those Animals: Neo-Camels

 No desert setting is complete without them.

Pash Grolin brings a train of goods into town from the wasteland

Nothing like a good set of science fiction animals which are just regular animals with a weird skin colour. Put them next to some lobotomized cyborgs and it feels like Rogue Trader country. 

In my defence, I thought the coat was going to come out much yellower than it did; this is Aggaros Dunes applied straight over white. It's a great colour, but way more naturalistic than I expected.

Pink faces are fun, though.

These guys come from Copplestone Castings and are a real treat. I might pick up the Baggage Yaks and add them to the train.

More photos under the cut, but for once no more rambling.

Those Who Trade: Eldar

 Not the eldest.

Eldar trading contingent

Some really old-school sculpts here! The fellow with all the tubes is the Dark Elf Space Trooper from the March 1987 flyer; one of the very first Rogue Trader sculpts. It's a weird sculpt and pretty rare, but not as popular as the cool Piscean Warrior, so I was able to get it for a pretty reasonable price from an ebay oldhammer trader.

The master is the Eldar Trader from the famous Rogue Trader Adventurers from a few years later. Rogue Heresy has been going through the lot over the past few years; check out his take on the Eldar Trader here (he also did the Dark Elf, here). Others include Sho3box and Dale Hurst. 

It took me a while to decide on what to do with these two. The Dark Elf almost wound up part of my Dark Eldar project, the Kabal of the Sun Betrayed, but after deciding that the Slann traders would get an armed bodyguard, it made the most sense here.

Anyway, more photos below the cut.

Those Who Trade: Hospitality

Known for their hospitality, the O. tyrannus.

Narthoks, water vendor and bartender

Philip Hynes, the sculptor behind Bears Head Miniatures regularly does Kickstarters to fund the next production round of his sculpts. A little while ago, he ran one such campaign for Narthoks the Excellent, a terrifying criminal mastermind and adversary for fantasy RPGs. In the course of the campaign, a limited edition bartender version came up, who I bought for my planned civilian project.

Here he is! Look at his smug face.

Those Who Fly: Aliens

Short one today.

Freeman Liste and his navigator, Zee

I put these posts together around themed sets, but today's set consists of a single miniature: Freeman Liste.

Those Who Trade: Slann

 Space frogs: in space.

ready to drop some fresh tracks

I love Slann. Slann are easily one of the best parts of the #oldhammer movement. They exemplify that period of weird Warhammer, where things were sometimes just a little dumb but were stranger and more outside the norm of speculative fiction. Frogs who once ruled a mighty and magical empire, now collapsed into decadence and primitivism.* I especially love space Slann, because you get all that in space.

One of the things that first drew me to the Colony 87 range was the fact that it included a Slann. Jon called him an 'Amphiran', but we all knew what he was. When Crooked Dice took over the range, they included a new one. They knew what was up. Space frogs, man.

Those Who Work: More

 The average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.

by the sweat on their brow is an empire built

A few months ago, most of these weren't even on my list for this civilian project.  I had vaguely conceived of the water carrier (a Wave One Colony 87 sculpt) as a merchant, so I painted him with the last group, but after the paint hit the miniature, I realised that he was a labourer, not the capitalist.

The dwarf sculpt came in with a Kickstarter delivery, and I already have a duplicate of the sculpt earmarked for my Squats project, so he got folded into the project. I then managed to acquire the Bob Olley servitor sculpts from eBay, and before I knew it I had another four workers to go with the last two groups. 

Under the cut for more photos and conversation about the paint schemes.

Those Who Trade

Even a failing colony has a middle class.

get yer $small_good here

It feels like everyone else has entered a quarantine work-from-home hellscape that, while stressful, has at least allowed a lot more time to paint. In contrast, I have had a lot less time to paint or do basically any kind of hobby work.

It doesn't help that I have a new contract, which involves supervising my old team for the next twelve months and a lot more tedious meetings.

Anyway, I have finished these four members of Colony 87's limited middle class. Why don't we pop below the cut for a longer conversation...

Those Who Fly

Space. The #grimdark frontier.

two pilots and a navigator walk into a bar...

Thistle has meant that even when I am home and my partner is not, I am not able to get as much work done as I actually want. It's worth it, but a little frustrating. Now that the gnome project is wrapping up, I can concentrate on other projects. Although, having said that, I think I've started... three new ones this week? Don't look at me.

#maydur

Just some friendly Adeptus. Nothing to see here. Move along, citizen.

group shot came out a bit shadowy. appropriate.

I got into Warhammer in the late 90s. Like many of us from that era, I spent a percentage of my limited resources poring over White Dwarf each month. Many of those images and articles are burned into my memory, taking up space that I could otherwise use to learn Russian or Korean, develop project management skills, or figure out how to join gaming groups in my thirties.

Probably worth it, to be fair.

White Dwarf #224, August 1998, p.53.
Image © Games Workshop. Used without permission.

One of the images that I always vaguely remembered was Ed Spettigue's (mostly) Tallarn Imperial Guard army from White Dwarf #224. He'd gone with a striking white-and-bone scheme, including on his Sisters of Battle, assassins, and the Mordian Iron Guard he used for heavy weapons. It was cool as hell.

When it came to painting the handful of metal assassins I'd somehow acquired, I was stuck on a painting scheme. I also wasn't sure if I wanted to base them to match my Mantis Warriors, or the industrial setting of the Death Guard, or maybe do some generic basing - maybe even do something weird, like spaceship tiles or something. I then remembered Spettigue's Tallarn, and some thing clicked into place.

While my collection of White Dwarfs was apparently stolen from my father's garage a few years ago, that's not as much of a problem in the age of the internet as you might think, and I was able to dig up a copy. I took a slightly different approach, but am still pleased to have a pack of assassins that aren't the usual black-on-black.