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...

Hear Ye! Fracas on the Fringes

 Out by the eastern gatehouses, some new bloods had come into town. The east gate's a shambles, see, an' it's easy to come in. Plenty of wyrdstone about, too, bein' as it's so close to the Pit. You'd think it'd all be scooped up by now, but the thing about a good entry means that there're always loads o' bands tryin' their luck...

skirmishin'

Mordheim! The City of the Damned! The Pit! The Maw-that-Ended-Ostermark! I haven't played in its grubby little environs in decades, but the two chums I played with at the end of August were very keen to have a jaunt down its storied streets, so we organised a match-up. I brought my Undead warband, while Mangs brought some mercenary scum; Jim had been putting together some horrible Beastmen.

The Crowgor's Herd

Kessler's Killers

Servants of the True Emperor

We played Treasure Hunt from the 2002 Annual to get us familiar with the rules. Below the cut for a pile of photos!

+ + + Gangs Grapple in Ghast Grove + + +

The hivequakes that have been causing the dustshowers in sector C8N-J017 have continued intermittently over the last few months. In the bowels of the sump, the shifting carcass of Hive Primus has caused microfractures to appear in the skin of the hive, allowing groups of wastelanders through. Unlike the nomads of the ash wastes, these snivelling bandits are scarcely more than rad-burned scavvies, stunted and sickly in the healthy phosphorescence of the hive.

Wastelanders by Jim

Their creepy witch, Moonchild, leads a tiny handful of the Wastelanders into the Underhive proper, sniffing out a local grove of Ghast-quality sporicles. Unfortunately for these interlopes into the outlands, the grove is sought after by several of the local gangs, including the Nightshade Crew of House Escher.

Nightshade Crew by Mangs

Of course, the grove is also infested with the skavvies that serve the Three-Eyed King. Glory to Him in Yellow! He infuses and blesses us! Hail!

Cult of the Three-Eyed King in Yellow by me
(missing Žuta!)

We played the mission Ghast Harvest. Being a straightforward 'loot the containers' scenario, this didn't really need much modification for three players beyond rotating priority among all three of us.

We randomly rolled up our gangers and got to work...

Oceanic Union ships at Star Ranger

 A short note today, friends.

Strike Force Wollondilly

The excellent Dean Gundberg, who manages the spaceship wargaming hub Star Ranger, contacted me a few weeks ago to use the photos of my Oceanic Union spaceships for his ship stats page. How could I not? Star Ranger is the first place to go for rules on Full Thrust ships that aren't part of the core books or from other fictional settings, as well as a generally neat place for starship combat games.

If you want to see my ships on the Oceanic Union Defence Force page, go here to see them.

Other Full Thrust resources are available on Star Ranger here.

Thanks again, Dean. A real pleasure to help out.

Gnome more Gnomes to paint

..lamented Alexgnomander, as he reached the limits of the gnome world.

i cast 'summon terrible wordplay'! ahaha

My project for the Old World Army Challenge is complete! OWAC is such a blast every year - I can't wait for 2021, which will see a different group of short, hirsute warriors...