If you've been keeping an eye on the blog over the last month or so, you'll know that I've put together a 6-strong Five Parsecs From Home crew. I've also been using them to spark other sub-projects, with a 10-strong Stargrave crew foremost in my mind. The final addition to this project is my last Stargrave crew member in the form of a classic Bob Olley squat.
I'm always on the lookout for new scatter elements to add to my terrain collection. I recently painted up a dozen items or so in preparation for the Five Parsecs From Home weekend. No hero pieces here, but it's all useful nice stuff!
You may not have heard of it, but the Flight of the 'Tomorrow's World', is considered a modern sci-fi classic. Running for just a single pilot series of seven episodes between 1995-1996, 'Tomorrow's World' was a visually exciting and entertaining show. Sadly the show ran into difficulties when trying to commission a second series - networks felt that some elements were too adult for broad appeal, and the high cost of special effects made it a costly proposition. It was cancelled after just the pilot series.
Synopsis: A crew of misfits, aliens and robots led by dashing human rogue Rico 'AAA' DuBois and mystic empath Yan Tibbault journey through fringe space in search of wealth, fame and answers to mysteries they encounter.
 |
| The crew of the Tomorrow's World |
Set in the fringe space system of Golgotha, the series is full of exotic alien locations. Packed with high-energy action and a lot of laughs, Flight of the 'Tomorrow's World' was short-lived, but has become a science fiction TV classic! Rumours abound that a reboot is in the making - watch this space!
It was inevitable that after painting the four Confrontation psyker models I would want to add to the group. After all, four figures isn't a playable gang. ten or so certainly is. I've got a few WIP models that I will use to round out the gang, but I decided to focus on a leader first of all.
Technically this post is made up of a couple of spin-off projects from a spin-off project. I painted up the unreleased space slann to bulk up my Five Parsecs from Home crew into a Stargrave crew. Then the Colony 87 figure and terrain pieces just followed suit!
 |
| The rag-tag crew of the battered merchant cruiser Psephonie. |
The final(ish) chapter of this Five Parsecs from Home crew is the leader. I had originally intended the leader to be an Inquisitor, but I pulled out one of the brilliant Marauder Confrontation psykers and couldn't lose the thought of having a faintly ludicrous big-headed leader with a flamboyant fur-trimmed cloak!
Every crew should have a militaristic heavy. You know, they might be the silent hard-as-nails mercenary with loads of gear from a crack commando unit, or the over-confident arrogant muscle-head with an over-fondness for loud ballistic weapons. Someone who can bring some decent firepower to the party if it all starts to get a bit tasty!
*Asslessman maintains that these have no power source so must result in him walking like he's wearing ski boots.
When I was planning my Five Parsecs crew I was thinking along the lines of a group of Inquisitorial operatives, so an assassin was an obvious inclusion. I'm fond of the diminutive female assassin from the RT adventurers range, so it was a good opportunity to paint her up.
I was 100% certain that I wanted to include a robot in my Five Parsecs crew. The crew build system allows you to include up to 1 bot, so I rooted around in my boxes and turned up the fabulous Spacefarers S42 security robot.
A few weeks ago my good friend cheetor mentioned the Modiphius Five Parsecs from Home rules as something we ought to explore for future gaming sessions. The game requires a 6-strong starship crew for narrative solo or co-op skirmish gaming. The crew is mainly humans but with the option to sprinkle in some robots and aliens. Over the next few days my response was pretty much as follows:
 |
| My initial assemblage of miniatures for Five Parsecs (note, not all of these models made the cut!) |
Some members of a congregation like their priests to be sensitive and empathetic. In general though, the priests of the 41st millennium tend towards a more muscular style of religion!
For a whole host of reasons I'd never got round to painting up any Ministorum figures. A huge oversight really, and I would like to paint up some Adepta Sororitas squads at some future point. But for now I'm satisfying myself with a small group of high energy religious sorts with the aim of adding in a handful more to make a playable Inquisimunda / Necromunda / Stargrave group.
Back in 2014 my mind was blown when Steve Casey showcased the unreleased Rogue Trader Adeptus Mechanicus figure on his Eldritch Epistles blog. The figure was from the collection of Bryan Ansell and I instantly both desired it and resigned myself to never owning it.
Happily I was recently able to acquire my own copy of the figure and wasted no time in painting it up!
The best thing about joining in with online hobby initiatives is that they prompt you to do something you hadn't really planned to do, and in some instances they result in something you couldn't have even conceived of. The #JusticeForGary painting challenge over at the Oldhammer Facebook group is a simple concept - paint up a figure that was sculpted by Gary Morley and he will pick his favourite (still time to enter as the closing date is 30 June).
I knew I wanted to paint something for Necromunda, and was leaning towards one of Gary's bounty hunters, but then I decided to see if I could convert some unique figures using 100% Gary Morley parts. I ended up with a bounty hunter and his lucky caryatid companion - created completed from parts sourced from Gary's figures plus a little bit of greenstuff to hide the joins!
There are many thousands of bounty hunters operating on Necromunda. Some specialise in tracking down criminals, others hunt down up-hivers fleeing social embarrassment. Still others delve into stranger places, seeking out vampiric psykers with life-leeching powers, shape-shifting mutants and hideous eyeless ghouls. Abrym Shasta specialises in the tracking of the strange and unexplained, accompanied by the blue-skinned caryatid Sound-of-Memories. Shasta says little and is seen infrequently, only visiting major trading posts or settlements to collect bounties in return for the heads of his quarry.
I picked up a couple of pieces of area terrain from eBay recently. They're pretty basic - vaguely oval resin bases with a few rocks and some ground texture. The sort of thing I think I should be able to make in an afternoon with a few bits of MDF and some sand. Except I've not really been able to do it convincingly or robustly.
The two outcrop bases cost me less than £14 (eBay seller: dands-gaming) and took less than an hour to paint. I simply sprayed them with a stone colour over the undercoat, daubed some yellows and greys onto the rocks and added some washes on the ground. Everything was given a bone drybrush and then I added some tufts.
I have found it a bit tricky to get hobby time over the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to complete something to feel like I'm still actively hobbying! I figured the best option was to grab something quick and easy out of my WIP pile. The figure I selected was one I had converted in 2017 with the intention of using as a dwarf Blood Bowl coach. I never made or painted the team, but held onto the coach to repurpose as a squat storesman or similar.
Following on from my last post a couple of weeks ago, it was apparent that if I had some gates and entrances, I would also need some blank walls.
Once again, I roped in the talents of Graham at Grimsforge to make me some basic walls that I could put in between my other buildings. There are four walls - two long and two short. I painted one side with urban graffiti and posters, and the other side more neutrally to give me some backdrop flexibility.
The next evolution of Hyam's landing is to make sense of the spaces with dividers and connectors. No human settlement is comprised of a selection of completely separate buildings - there are walls and hedge, roads, alleys and fences. I got Graham at Grimsforge to make me a selection of structures that I can place against or inbetween my existing buildings to try and emulate that real urban feel.
The new structures are four walls with access points in them (solid walls to come at some future point. Like the rest of my Grimsforge terrain, I drew up what I hoped would look cool, and then Graham built them for me mainly from card.
Sometimes a syndicate boss might want to discover which of their rivals is having an affair with their closest lieutenant. Sometimes a grieving family might want a cold murder case resolved long after the official authorities have halted their enquiries. Cases such as these require an enquiring mind and delicate touch - they often fall into the hands of a private investigator.
At first glance it might seem odd that the settlement of Hyam's Landing was ever founded. It occupies a dusty patch of plain that is remote from any major starport or what passes for a city on backwater fringe worlds. Water is hard to come by and the gases in the local atmosphere begin to corrode any structure almost as soon as it is constructed. But Hyam's Landing is ideally placed as a staging post for the long trading caravans that wend their way deeper into the interior. Prospectors and miners from the adjacent lowhills come to town with their finds and to spend their cash. And in spite of the presence of a foreboding Imperial Blockhouse and its garrison, the facilities offered by the discrete starport are attractive to off-world traders looking to keep a low profile.
Illustrations of Imperial architecture are pretty rare in the Rogue Trader rulebook. Yes, there's the fantastic spread of Helsreach illustrations as well as the Emporer's Palace, but for the rest of the book we only see glimpes of background shapes, walls, ruins or ductwork.
I was delighted to see Tony Ackland's brilliant unpublished* Rogue Trader townscape when he put it up on Facebook a little while ago. The image shows a backwater frontier town complete with rickety shacks, landing pad and an imposing block house festooned with gibbet, observation cameras and spikes.
*correct me if I'm wrong.
 |
| Illustration by Tony Ackland. |
If the first part of a project involved some vendors and goods to sell, then the second part of the project needed to be a location for them to do some selling. It's not the fantastic Necromunda market (although I will get round to doing that at some point). It's another creation build for me by Graham at Grimsforge - a bazaar with some little commercial units for my vendors to occupy.
If you've read this blog for a while, you're probably aware that I like a nice sci-fi civilian model. It's been a little while since I last painted any, but over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a project to paint up some nice new bits of scenery and set dressing. The first part of this project is a trio of vendors and their goods. I settled on a carpet seller, a tech merchant and a general food seller based on the models I had to hand.
 |
| L-R: Astropolis, Crooked Dice (Colony 87), Crooked Dice (Colony 87) |
Before Christmas I asked Graham at Grimsforge to work on another couple of projects for me to round out the variety of buildings in my fringe-world setting. Along with some bigger pieces (more on those at a future date), I wanted a selection of smaller sheds and shacks that I could use as scatter or butt up against a larger structure to change its footprint.
 |
| Grouped together the sheds make a nice little homestead. |
