Stargrave – The Talons of Solubris

I have built this 2nd recruit, another runner, a grenadier or gunner and a Trooper. All using the Les Grognards Adrian helmeted heads. After those 4 there would definitely be enough for a campaign and plenty of options.

The head and body are from the NorthStar Stargrave Crew set. The blade hand is the bayonet from a Les Grognards carbine. The pistol hand is from my Gates of Antares Freeborn sprue.

This guy was a real joy to paint and the blade hand was just a Sci-Fi way of making him more wysiwyg. I think I run the risk of having a selection of dark age and WW2 blades as the “knife” in various soldier types and that will eventually look out of place. I also wanted to use as much of this cut up carbine after using the trigger and the right arm already for my first recruit.

This metal mini was part of the Nickstarter. I see that duel wielding guns seems to have no effect in-game, so decided that I want this alien to at least represent a specialist class of crewman.

I saw the Let’s Play at the start of Stargrave Week and saw how useful the Rapid Fire class of weapon could be.

The only crewman using those weapons appears to be a Gunner. The trouble is that the rapid fire rule is meant to represent lazer Gatling gun or multi mini rocket style weapons, but I love the idea of a gunslinger from an alien race that have amazing reactions, amazing eyesight and super human trigger finger speed to represent the multi targeting and firing of this class of specialist.

The other factors were needing the mini to have heavy armour and plus rapid fire weapons are meant to have a 24 inch range, which seems a bit off when pistols have far less.

I tried to give heavy armour a nod by attaching two plates of armour at his shoulders and wanted to attach a sight to one of the pistols. After finding a scope I was happy with (From a Lost Patrol scout pistol from a spare bits sprue) I realized it would ruin the aesthetic of the mini if added to either gun. I settled on adding it to his belt instead.

The heavy armour is the heavily cut down upper arm and forearm of a Gate of Antares C3 right arm, that I already hacked a weapon off of to make my Commando.

I am also going to make a human runner to wear my last remaining slouch hat. I imagine Runners and Recruits to be the only replacements I need regularly but I can still use my Skitarii to fill gaps too.

I had imagined building a random Skitarii and just adding a “deck” tablet thing from the Crew Sprue to fit at it’s waist.

When I looked at the build instructions for the sniper from the same GW Kill Team set I saw a Skitarii radio fella and felt this would work nicely as my Codebreaker. I can imagine him chatting away, whispering sweet binary nothings in the data ear of a digital loot token and getting it to open its secrets to him.

Skitarii Sniper from the GW Kill Team box set. No kitbash this time. The base is from Rubicon and has a fun texture, designed to help with people wanting to pin their minis to the base. I just used a piece of textured plastic like the other bases under his right foot, a piece of dried paint from the lid of a citadel pot under his left foot and the gun rest in a hole on the base.

I forgot the screaming eagle decal this time but will probably add one to the coat.

The clothing is all the same colours as with the rest of the crew. The metal is all Runestone Silver dry brush hit with a wash of Cryptek Armourshade Gloss and highlighted with Retributor Gold.

The purple on the hosing is all Shyish Purple Contrast Paint with a drybrush of Emperor’s Children Pink. The pipes were mostly just Emperor’s Children Pink.

Decided to use the last Solubrian head on my Pathfinder. I know there’s a danger I may confuse him with my First Mate, both having carbines from the NorthStar Stargrave Crew Sprue, but I did my best to mitigate this. They both have Les Grognards bodies, but this guy is covered in grenades and the base has some nice yellow floor markings.

I realised that when I was assembling ideas on kitbashes for my crew I had oversubscribed on the alien heads. The Les Grognard Adrian helmet and facemask seemed a nice solution to my alien heads blunder.

Commandos have heavy armour and grenades, so I stuck with my Gates of Antares C3 sprue for the armour. There are two grenade arms on my Les Grognards sprue so I used one for this build and one for my Pathfinder (Pathfinders are also prescribed to have grenades, but not heavy armour.)

The C3 rifle looked great, was easily cut from a hand, but obviously looked different to my other carbines. I accepted this change because cutting at the NorthStar carbines to fit felt like a lot of work and unlikely to end in a nice result. With the right hand busy throwing a grenade I had to work out how to have the carbine on show. One of my few remaining Grognard left arms was a rifle support arm. I snipped off the C3 hand and used the stock and grip of a WW2 Japanese LMG to drag the look slightly more in keeping with the other carbines. The gun rested neatly in the Grognard support arm across the model’s chest. I also visited the Japanese Warlord Games sprue for a light mortar round pouch to suggest some grenade storage.

The metal Hacker that came with the Nickstarter was a nice addition to the team. With no time spent on the build it was fun to spend some time of the base.

As you see from my base building post in this project it was just plastic texture glued to the base and sprayed black. I must have been a bit slapdash and this base had a gap and one side raised more than the other. I picked a spare piece of sprue and a piece of wire and poked them under one edge, squirted in some PVA, clamped with some clothes pegs to try to make the gaping less pronounced and left overnight.

The purple of the hair was achieved with Shyish Purple Contrast and Emperor’s Children Pink highlights.