Recruiting for the Orange Star Line

Back in 2015 I painted up a few starport type civilians, including a couple of mechanics by Four A Miniatures and a Spacelords pilot and crewman. It just so happened that my good friend Graham is hosting myself and a couple of others for a day of gaming later in August. Graham's providing an entirely virgin cityscape for an Inquisimunda campaign, and asked if I could help by providing some of the figures.

"No problem!" I said, I've got dozens of figures, perfect for Inquisimunda, "what do you need?".

"An Inquisitorial themed party, (easy!) and some sort of human non-Imperial independent type band."

"Like an interstellar trading company?"

"That would be perfect."

I told Graham this would be no problem, and then assembled some of my figures. The trouble was, I had plenty of individual mercenary types, but no real coherent band that looked like an interstellar trading company. So I just bit the bullet and decided some new figures were in order, to complement the starport civilians I painted last year.

First up were a pair of Servitors (to lug cargo and the like around).

 

Silwon Fisk - the Water Seller

With four of my Helsreach mercenaries painted up, I wanted to spend some time on the Water Seller they would be guarding. The Water Seller will be my Journeyman in the Ash Wastes rules - the leader of the gang, travelling across the wastes in his crawler, looking for previously untapped sources of water.

 

The Water Sellers in Carl Critchlow's Logan's World illustrations (Rogue Trader rulebook) have a very distinctive look. They are fat, and heavily tattooed, with baggy trousers and wide waist sashes:

 

 

Heavy Calibre Maniac with 'Auto Cannon'

I managed to find time to paint up another member of my Maniac Helsreach Mercenary gang this week - this time in the form of some heavy firepower.

 

RT era human models with heavy weapons are almost exclusively of the 'shoulder-mounted' school of design, but there is a nice Vasquez-style female Imperial Guard who totes a rather nice underslung heavy weapon:

 

 

Of course, "Auto Cannon" didn't have quite the right look for my Maniacs, so I rectified that by giving her a head swap from Venus Bluegenes from the Citadel Rogue Trooper range. A little bit of resculpting to the neck and back-pack, and she's good to go.

 



 

Teaching Myself to Sculpt - Embiggening a Spacefarer

Over the course of the last 10 years or so, I've done dozens of conversions. Some have required minor gap filling, whereas others have needed completely resculpted elements. But I've never considered myself to be able or willing to sculpt a full figure from scratch. But some taunting and encouragement (mainly from theottovonbismark) prompted me to at least give it a go.

 

Donated armature gratefully received

 

A kind person over at the Oldhammer Sculpting Facebook group donated an armature and some corks. I already had the requisite sculpting tools, clay shapers and a micro-scalpel, so all that was left to so was to decide on the subject matter.

 

After some deliberation, I elected to upscale a character from the old 25mm Citadel Spacefarers range - the Interplanetary Merchant. Why select the Interplanetary Merchant as my first sculpt?

 

1. I figured that I might be able to do an approximation of the character, being a relatively uncomplicated and forgiving shape.
2. I was frustrated that the excellent and characterful Spacefarers range is just a fraction too small to be compatible with Rogue Trader figures.
3. He's just the sort of character who might see use amongst my other Rogue Trader civilians.



The Interplanetary Merchant. Pics courtesy of David Wood.