Space Infantry - Rogue Trader Grunts

Back in 2017 I painted up a little display base for the retinue of one of the most infamous Inquisitors in the the 40k canon; Inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock Clousseau. I gave the Stetson-wearing Inquisitor an ecclectic group of companions, comprising his pilot, navigator, psyker and ratling chef. 

Inquisitor Clousseau and his trusted companions.

Like all projects, I guess they're never completely closed, and I fancied adding a small group of troopers supplement the group. To that end I picked out a quartet of Rogue Trader figures that I hoped might hang together as a relatively coherent set of figures given the right colour scheme.

The four troopers come from a couple of different sources. On the left of the photo is Breakout Con from the Rogue Trader mercenaries range. He's rocking a sleeveless biker jacket, some funky snow-goggles and what looks like some sort of brain modification with the wiring on his cranium! Second from left and far right are a pair of Imperial Guardsmen that as far as I know only appear in the 1991 catalogue. Stylistically they are oddities - they don't match the neat and compact Perry sculpts, the skinny-legged Aly Morrison sculpts, or the crisp and clean Guardsmen from Mark Copplestone. I would bet on them being from the hands of Bob Naismith, but quite why they exist and why there aren't any others in the same style, I don't know. The other figure is one of the hunched Rogue Trader space pirates who seemed to fit rather nicely.

I painted the fatigues on all the troopers in a similar yellow-brown to that which I used on the Inquisitor and his companions. The white armour borrowed from the pilot's white helmet, whilst the blue was used as a spot colour across all the figures. Each of the troopers also has a blue star on their gear somewhere - on this pair it appears on their right shoulder pads (note, the pilot also has a blue star on his right shoulder pad).

Given the slightly less uniform gear of the other pair, I tried to be consistent with colour to tie them in (yellow trousers, black boots, white armour, blue spot colour). The grey is the same grey that I used on Inquisitor Clousseau's hat and gaiters.

A small squad of troopers recces a salvage yard.

Fast forward a week and I was looking at the 4 troopers thinking it would be nice if I could round them out to a squad of 5 by adding a special or heavy weapons trooper. I had a quick look in my boxes and turned up Ox, the heavy weapons trooper from the Last Chancers set. I added a shoulder pad and kneepads with greenstuff to help tie him to the other troopers, then it was a case of another matching paintjob.

Hopefully he's got he right kind of vibe! I think he fits in well enough, and we can claim that any scale difference is down to the fact that he's clearly a massive hulk of a man!

All in all, these five figures are a nice way to round out the Inquisitor's retinue into a more playable faction, and a good way to get another group painted and game-ready.