Zebraoutrider digs a Stargrave (Spring Clean Challenge 2022 – Part 2)
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About the Project
From the community that keeps giving… inspiration has arrived in the form of Joseph A. McCullough’s Stargrave. I’ve loads of sci-fi miniatures so as a second quick Spring Clean (2022) I’m creating a playable crew for Stargrave based on the rules and also clearing some of my pile of shame!
Related Game: Stargrave
Related Company: Diehard Miniatures
Related Genre: Science Fiction
Related Contest: Spring Cleaning Hobby Challenge
This Project is Active
Picking a crew…
When I say I’ve got a lot of Diehard miniatures, I mean I’VE REALLY GOT A LOT OF DIEHARD MINIATURES! Picking a crew was not easy as I thought and actually I could probably build at least three balanced crews if I thought about it. So, to follow the theme of Soolyn Viers being a biomorph, I selected the most alien-looking ‘heroes’…
Initially this is the crew, and one of the Snakemen could be the First Mate…
Actually, when sifting through the box of shame… I came across a fire Elementalist and thought if I add a GW space marine flame thrower to her back, she could be a Psionic First Mate? 
An undercoat using black spray, and they will be ready for painting! Note I prefer to use PlastiKote Matt Black spray (400ml) as it tends to be half the price of GW’s Chaos Black spray and does just as good a job. Captain Soolyn Viers
According to the Stargrave rules, you should select your Captain first and select a background characteristic to provide some context for your leader.
Selecting a miniature from the Diehard Pile of Shame was relatively easy. She was the first one that came out of the box (I’ve got most of the entire Diehard catalogue of minis via the five or six KSs that have been run over the last five years or so) and hence I had left it to random fate to create the backstory to this fantastically detailed miniature sculpted by Tim Prow. So the miniature inspired the start of this narrative campaign…
This is a white-metal casting in 28mm ‘scale’ and as with all Diehard Miniatures has an ‘Oldhammer’ style - a nostalgic throwback to the 1990s. She is a single piece casting and has very little flash requiring sanding down. I will mount her on a 30mm lipped base for painting and will decide later if I want to create a customised base or a pre-cast resin base. I came up with the name Soolyn Viers actually for a Star Wars inspired Hero Forge character in the May 4th Be With You competition on BoW/OTT, and I liked the name so that’s who my crew’s leader will be called.
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SUBJECT:
Soolyn Viers is a Biomorph – a human who is not quite human anymore due to genetic manipulation. She was ‘grown’ like a lab rat on Science Base 12-92-X using the DNA from Homo Sapiens subject F843766G and spliced with DNA from Furcifer Pardalis subject T971255K.
The genetic manipulation appeared to work in that the combined organic construct FT894713726565GK or affectionately known as ‘Soolyn’ by the technicians was grown to maturity through the “Prow-Elliot-Williams-Luong” cryogenic accelerated masturation process (PEWLCAMP), which creates a viable life form of an equivalent Human age of 21 within a rapid three month period, and ‘on birth’ Soolyn was able to demonstrate the chameleon-like qualities expected alongside the sentient, intellectual standard of a human.
What Soolyn lacked was experience of the world beyond the laboratory and with the natural curiosity of Homo Sapiens and the hunger pains of the Furcifer Pardalis, Soolyn used her unique skills to elude the laboratory staff, as she exploited a timeout in the inspection routine and went exploring around the facility…
Inspirational Artwork…
The internal artwork from the Stargrave Core Rulebook will give me added inspiration. Artwork is credited to Helge C. Balzer, Michele Giorgi, Sam Lamont and Paolo Puggioni.
In the beginning…
Heading towards the end of May comes the next KS from Diehard Miniatures. This will be sci-fi based, but I live in shame having box loads of unpainted Diehard Miniatures and will feel a tad guilty adding to this pile without reducing it first!
I was fascinated, intrigued and curious about all the positive promotions of Stargrave on BoW/OTT as a sci-fi equivalent to Frostgrave – a game I’d read about but not engaged with as I was preferring to remain loyal to the Mordheim environment.
I have become a tad disillusioned with GW’s Kill Team, on part by the price and redundancy of early additions that play on my FOMO, only for them to truly end up collecting dust on the shelf! Stargrave appears to provide me with that agnostic set up which will continue to ween me off GW and give meaning and value to the miniatures I’ve acquired over time from non-GW sources and encourage me to actually play with the finished models once painted.
So, I’ve acquired the core rule book from Osprey Games and have immersed myself into Stargrave and to create a fitting crew in the time left for the 2022 Spring Clean Challenge.
