Wednesday 27 July 2016

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).

 
The Servitors are unmodified RT Citadel figures, sculpted by Bob Olley (and with all the attendant creases, folds and detail associated with Bob's sculpts). I didn't really enjoy painting these until the point where I painted the metal areas (pretty much the last thing I painted), and they suddenly started to look great.


The crate sports the Orange Star Line logo, and has been very quickly beaten up with basic weathering techniques.


The crate is just rather crudely built from two thicknesses of plasticard - a simple box with a few surface details for interest. I also added the little keypad thing from the RTB01 Space Marines sprue.


I also decided that I wanted my interstellar trading company to carry its own force of troopers (sort of like the East India Trading Company). I had a rummage around in my boxes for suitable figures, and found these three Pyrdian Planetary Militia from Alternative Armies / Ion Age. I picked them up second-hand ages ago, but have never found any use for them - until now.


The troopers got a similar colour scheme to the starship crewman. I think it's pretty effective looking as a non-military / non-policing uniform.


Of course, once I painted them, I realised that I've effectively created a new Action Force character to go with the Space Force range!

Action Force Space Patroller. Pic from Yojoe.com
 
 
All in all, I think the group hangs together pretty nicely as a starship trading crew, especially when you add in a leader in deep space salvage gear!
 

Crew of the Frontiersman, Exploratory ship of the Orange Star Line.

Servitors load up a valuable consignment of xenos artefacts.

Orange Star Line troopers carefully investigate a seemingly abandoned mining installation.

20 comments:

  1. Lovely!

    Starship and starport crew are so very much on my to do list..

    Brillaint work. I havent seen any photos of Grahams finsihed terrain, but the WIP looked amazing. Take lots of photos please!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I still need to work on the starport itself...like most of my terrain.

      Glad you like these. I sure will take pics at Graham's!

      Delete
  2. Fantastic crew, they really gave something going. This Will be an amazing Game without a doubt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm pretty pleased that I was able to turn them round relatively quickly - it's quite rewarding (and unusual) to have so many new figures in such a short space of time for me :)

      Delete
    2. There's also a couple of c87 figures That would fit Just right in here ;)

      Delete
    3. I really must get round to painting up some of those ;)

      Delete
  3. That crew looks really good. The figures are diverse, but make a coherent group. The security troopers really look the part.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I've tried to link them with the colours - particularly the blue which is the same on all the figures. The orange varies, but I think overall they hang together OK :)

      Delete
  4. Love them. The colour scheme you've chosen make them easily identifiable as a ship's crew or some scifi theme work-crew.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much. Orange and blue is my go-to colour scheme, but I think this one with the muted colours is my favourite :)

      Delete
  5. Great work, and the crew looks like, well, like a crew! So that is a good thing. The security forces are quite good, although I feel like they need a specialist weapon or NCO to complete them.

    And those servitors look like the most "Bob Olley" of all Bob Olley figures. Seriously, you could use them to create a checklist of Bob Olley sculpt features. (and like a lot of the RT era figures, much better painted up than in bare metal)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're absolutely right about the need for an NO. I've got a figure lined up that I'll get round to eventually.

      As for Bob's servitors...They do hit lots of the checklist don't they?!

      Delete
  6. Orange Star Line! Great touch. And I love the logo. That's a great crew you've thrown together there in short order. :) Well painted and quite lovely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I couldn't help myself with the name. The logo is entirely ripped off from Star Fleet, but that's OK I think!

      Glad you like them :)

      Delete
  7. A very cool side project; nice work!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Stirling work mate, great colour scheme, and I love those troopers! Bravo!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks mate, can't beat a bit of orange in a sci-fi colour scheme!

      Delete
  9. Orange and blue (and white) is a great colour combo! Whole squad looks awesome. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Orange, blue and white is my favourite combination - various incarnations of it appear regularly in my stuff!

      Glad you like them!

      Delete