Thursday 10 November 2016

Sam & Rico - Maniax For Hire

We're now four weeks in to our Helsreach / campaign, and although I painted up the final two members of my Maniac Mercenary crew accompanying my water seller, I haven't had chance to post up any pics.
 
The figures are from a pretty diverse pair of sources (in as far as 28mm space punks can be!). One the left is Psycho Sam, toting his shotgun and rockstar pose. Sam was sculpted by Mark Copplestone for the 2015 Oldhammer USA weekend. The fantastic guys in the US shipped over a box of the figures to be liberally distributed at the UK equivalent event - Bring Out Your Lead 2015, held at Wargames Foundry. I was lucky enough to be there and to get a copy.
 
The figure on the right is Little Rico -  a civilian from Metal Magic's Spacelords range, currently stocked by Moonraker Miniatures. I'm particularly fond of his little space monkey!
 

 
Psycho Sam has been painted pretty widely before (just do a google search), but I couldn't recall him being done with white trousers. It suits the rockstar image I think! The sculpt is really excellent - very crisp and fun to paint, just like you'd expect a Copplestone figure to be.
 


Little Rico is a much more textural sculpt - plenty of creases and folds in the cloth, and a more exaggerated face. I attempted to give him a denim waistcoat by using a bit of stippling. I'm not sure the effect was entirely successful, but he'll do!


I decided that the space monkey should be an utterly alien colour, so he got a nice eye-catching jade green for the fur, with a subtly striped tail.

The completed starting Maniax gang.
 
A couple of folks have asked for some in-game shots of the campaign. It's a bonkers set of gangs - my crawler is going up against skimmers, dinosaurs, ramshackle buses, ork trukks, bizarre walkers and more! Here's a selection of dodgy phone pics from the last couple of weeks:
 

Crawler and salvage vehicle stay close for support.

The number 99 bus passes by after a less than successful t-boning!
 
Orks race over the ash wastes.

Bikers attempt a flanking manoeuvre.

Dinosaurs!

More dinosaurs!!

21 comments:

  1. Splendid gang really, I hadn't noticed the orange lining on Sam's trousers, real nice touch.

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    1. I wanted to get orange in there. I like orange ;) His goggles have orange lenses too ;)

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  2. The new figures are great Axiom, but the in game photos win out.

    Those games look like a lot of fun.

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    1. It's predictably chaotic, but there's been a real enthusiasm to make fun looking vehicles. It's been great to see what people have produced.

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  3. This whole thing is just jolly spectacular, and I love that lineup of mohawks, it's just rad :D give us more! More vehicles! More water drums! More painstakingly styled hair!

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    1. I have a bowser that I plan to paint up. Does that count as both a vehicle and a water drum? It doesn't have any hair though...

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  4. Great work on a wonderful, characterful gang. Those in-game shots, wowsers that looks like all the funs.

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    1. Thanks Mr Saturday!

      The game mechanics have been a bit of a work in progress - we scaled back the Ash Wastes rules to be a sort of Gorkamorka / Ash Waste hybrid. It's a lot slicker as a result, more unpredictable, and more fun!

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  5. Rico is a cracking fig Jon and you've weaved your usual magic on it well. Gangs are all about character and the right figure selection.

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    1. Thanks Ed! Rico has a real character about him - I like the fact he's more concerned about the space monkey than anything else!

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  6. Awesome looking campaign! I'm really liking this version of Sam. ;)

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    1. Thanks buddy! Thanks to you guys for enabling me to paint one up this side of the pond :)

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  7. Sam and Rico are great additions. So many mohawks really makes the old Punk rocker in me very happy. :)

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  8. Cracking job mate! I'm a big fan of the Moonraker minis, and really enjoyed painting Rico myself, but I really love what you did with him! How cool is that little space monkey? :-)

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    1. Yeah, your redskinned version is fab! I do love that space monkey :)

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  9. Man, you got me with the minis, but the gaming pics have me hypnotised. Wow!

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    1. Its a lot of fun. Wait till you see pics of the floating building pulled by sentinels ;)

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  10. All the photos look good but that group shot is awesome on all levels in every way! :)

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    1. Thanks! Its good to pull them all together I think :)

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