More Sci Fi figures

Yeah, I know I said I was finished with 28mm sci fi figures for a while, but I saw something to make me change my mind. Anyway, that was back in September. 

The thing that made me change my mind was me thinking that I needed some non-player characters and general purpose bad guys. Well, a box set from Games Workshop, a company that I haven't considered buying anything from for about 20 years, popped up on a post on Facebook and I had one of those "light bulb over the head moments".

The box in question is for something called Blackstone Fortress, apparently a new GW game. The thing that I liked though was that it offered up a range of figures that might usefully supply me with a few NPCs for my sci fi skirmish rules.

The figures themselves are plastic ones and claim to be snap together with no glue required. Well, they do snap together, but being a cautious type, I decided to use glue as well, just in case.

So far, I have made and painted two Chaos Beastmen and seven Traitor Guardsmen. 

Now, in the past I used to play a fair bit of 40K and I had an Imperial guard army, so these were an obvious place to start. However, these traitor guardsmen are festooned with spiky bits and blades sticking out all over the place, which I think look pretty silly. After all, you could have someone's eye out with an injudiciously-placed spiky bit, so I cut off the most obviously stupid ones.

As for the models themselves, I rather like them. The poses are quite dynamic and the figures appear to be based on the Cadians I used to own. Because they are the chaps who have gone bad, they look a bit ragged and that suits me fine. After all, these are going to be deserters, outcasts, scavengers and hired muscle. I wasn't too keen on a couple of them wearing furry cloaks, but I knew what to do about that.

I wanted these guys to look like a group of guns for hire, deserters from some local system war, but still military-looking. I gave them a combat-hardened look, with the tattered remains of camo ponchos on some figures and, using the unwanted furry cloaks, the remains of some leafy green camo garments on the other two. All of them have camo trousers and helmets. I wanted their body armour to look battered, so overbrushed some bare metal on the paintwork. I quite like their improvised look, which is helped by the curtains of chainmail a couple are wearing.

The two Beastmen are also deserter types. They are far more ragged, with battered armour and torn cut-down trousers, but that also looks good, I think.