New acquisitions and WIP

I went to EndGame, Oakland’s 2nd Annual Miniatures Bazaar on Saturday. It didn’t seem as varied as last year – perhaps everyone sold off a lot of stuff last go-round? Anyway, only Josh had any real variety (the rest being almost entirely GW stuff), and he had some good stuff!

The first good deal I got was these Old Crow Lancers. One assembled, the other still bagged, for $15 for both (they’re normally $32 each less shipping). These will definitely be making an appearance in our Stargrunt games!

Also from Josh, I picked up a boxed set of the old Starship Troopers Cougar Exosuits, which are now quite hard to find and expensive when you do find them. $10 for the set. Unfortunately, it had 5 right arms and 3 left arms (there are 4 exosuits). Mongoose quality control FAIL! I’ll figure something out though. I really like these minis – the exosuits are some of the best power armor in 28mm ever made, even if Mongoose did make them.

And now for something completely different – I am also an avid RPG player and I picked up some Hasegawa 1/48 scale pilot figures for a game called Godlike (it’s a WW2 game with super powers, kinda like X-Men meets Saving Private Ryan). I sometimes use minis for this game, and these figures will be used to represent player-characters in the game. I’ve stuck them on their bases and prepping them for priming.

That guy on the right there is obviously not part of the set. He’s U.S. Marine by Reaper Miniatures I believe, though I’ve forgotten the exact title.

All four of these guys will see some paint in the very near future.

Finally, I bummed a couple Cthulhu figurines off my friend Wayne. These dudes are made by FFG and I’m going to put the big one on top of my alien pyramid when I finish it. The smaller ones maybe go on the corners.

And finally, I’m working on a Spug warrior from Spriggan Miniatures. Just trying to get a color scheme down. No picture yet – I’ll post one when it’s done. Painting up a force of Spugs is going to be my next big project once I clean up all these little ones.

Stargrunt Battle Chronicle

I’ve made a list of all the Stargrunt battles we’ve played. Looking at them this way, you can see the story that is emerging from our games.

We’ve created a setting for our games that all the players have contributed to. Each of us has made a few factions, building and incorporating ideas from each other into the background. The big conflict is the one between the United Democratic Socialist Systems, an alliance of star systems that have broken away from the yoke of corporate oppression and Old Terra national entities, and the Interstellar Corporate Commission a huge conglomeration of colonial interests funded by Earth’s mega-corporations.

But there are other things going that we haven’t even touched on yet – pirates, frontier skirmishes, territorial power grabs, the death throes of old Terran national blocs, local civil wars. It’s a big setting and there is still lots of stuff we can do!

Here’s a list of all the SG battle reports that I have, in the order the games were played. Some are posts on TMP, with links to pics on Flickr, others are links to my minis blog.

For our very first game, my opponent Jonathan and I did a simple platoon vs. platoon fight to learn the rules. Minis are Pig Iron Heavy Infantry and FASA VOR Union (now available through Ironwind).

This was our second game. UDSS Militia vs. CEU Panzergrenadiers. It was a quick assault scenario and we tried out the sniper rules, which in SG are pretty interesting. Minis are Pig Iron’s Kolony Militia, FASA’s Vor Union, and Heavy Gear power suits.

In the next game, Altairian Regulars (UDSS) vs. Ramstar Mercs. The Ramstar troops were trying to rescue a kidnapped hostage. They failed and this set up a later game. Minis are once again Pig Iron and Vor Union. Of special interest are the Pig Iron APC and the paper dropship model.

Chris (Irate Squirrel) and Michael Miller were the players in the next game which I refereed. CEU Foreign Legion vs. UDSS Regulars. This was a supply convoy ambush scenario. Pig Iron minis on both sides, with an assortment of different vehicles.

Jonathan Breese and I played again when we did a big city fight game. UDSS Guards vs. Ramstar Mercs. Pig Iron minis again, plus powered armor from EM-4, with AT-43 Red Blok troopers.

And the most recent game, Operation Icepick, which was the follow-on to the first hostage rescue scenario above. Ramstar Strikers (Special Forces) vs. Altairian Nightshade Commandos (Special Forces). Minis are the old Metal Magic Spacelords Cybertech Bunkerbreakers from the 80’s, now available from EM-4, and Mongoose Starship Troopers M.I. This time, the Ramstar corporate mercs succeeded.

The next game we’re planning is a bug hunt! A research team in an alien jungle is about to make a very nasty discovery! The Arachnids from SST will make an appearance as “xenocrabs” trying to rip Chris’ planetary landing party (converted AT-43 Red Blok) into tiny bits. But the humans have a few surprises up their sleeves. Should be a hot one!

Starship Troopers – Marauder

Lazy me. I said I’d put pics up of the SST Maruader weeks ago. But, recently my urge to paint has rekindled fully and I’m forging ahead with new projects, of which the Marauder was the kickoff. I recently bought a squad of GW Space Marines off eBay (I got a deal – them plus a Rhino for about $35). I’ve started working on them but I’ll speak more about them and put some pics up in another post.

So, here’s the Marauder!

I lost the pilot figure somehow, but that’s okay ince you can’t really see it very well inside there. The cockpit canopy was originally clear, and since I liked the way the faceplates of the regular troopers were tinted, I wanted the same effect here. So, I used a thinned out wash of GW yellow ink applied to the inside of the canopy. Turned out pretty good. I find that I like the SST minis more than I thought. The only drawback is they don’t go together so well – the trooper models have a lot of fiddly bits some parts of the Marauder seemed to be slightly off. But, once past that, they’re all right.

Starship Troopers

A few years ago, I bought Mongoose’s Starship Troopers miniatures game from a friend. I still have yet to play the game (the rules do look pretty good) but I did manage to paint all the minis, both MI and Bugs. It took a long time. The MI troopers were multipart plastics (stress on multipart) and despite this, were very difficult to pose differently. I did a little cutting and repositioning of a few of them, just for some variety. The Bugs allowed for a bit more variation, though painting them was a but boring.

I also got a set of the Grizzly powered armor suits. These are some of the best powered armor minis I have seen and are among my favorite minis of all time. I took extra time and care painting them up. The color scheme isn’t exactly inspired but they did come out very nice.

I do apologize for my lousy camera skills (or lack thereof). So here we go:

Grizzly Squad – Heavy Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rotary Cannon

Squad Leader about to pitch a grenade

Troopers

Sniper – A bit of a conversion – I chopped up some of the weapons and put them back together to make a long-barreled rifle.

Grenade Launcher

I’ll get some pics of the bugs up later!