Two more squads of troops for Xenos Rampant

These two squads are based on the Stargrave plastic Mercenaries II box with a few Crew II bodies added in;

Both sets are made up of female bodies and a huge variety of female heads, although I'm not sure that you could tell the difference between a bulbous blue female alien head and a male one. That doesn't really matter, though because with so much variety available, you'll easily end up with a force of troops that doesn't look much like anyone else's.

I think that in Xenos Rampant terms, both of these squads would best be used as Light Infantry, with the second one maybe being more suited to an Assault Doctrine role, perhaps with the Close Quarters Doctrine too. They could also be used as Militia Rabble if you just needs  couple of speed bumps on the table.

Having played a few games of XR now, it seems to me that Light Infantry need some very careful thought to really get much use out of them. They are pretty fragile and you really cannot get them involved in a firefight with Heavies or Elites, well not unless you can get them into heavy cover and keep them in a defensive role. The only other way is to try and get them to flank enemy Heavies who are already engaged with your own Heavies. If you spend points to improve their ability to survive, you'll end up with fewer points to spend on actual tough guys.

Of course, as everyone knows, getting nice-looking toys on the table is more important than winning. Isn't it?

If you suffer from arachnophobia ..................

 ........................ look away now! Lots and lots of spiders.

These are Wargames Atlantic's giant spiders with the sci fi add-ons of face visors, big guns and robotic legs (well, not all the legs). To give some idea of their size, they are based on 4cm circular MDF bases. I shall definitely be using these as Greater Xenomorphs for Xenos Rampant and they could aslo be used in lots of other settings.

In addition to the 12 giant spiders that are in the set, you also get 12 smaller spiders on the sprues. I've painted 10 of them to use as a Swarm in Xenos Rampant but they could obviously pop up anywhere.

I used some spare 3cm circular plastic bases which I didn't use when I made up 10 Space Marines recently. Waste not, want not, I say. These don't have any weapons, well apart from their teeth and poison stings.

I decided on a brown palette for all the spiders because I wanted them to look like an alien menace from a semi-arid environment. They were undercoated in Army Painter Leather Brown spray primer, drybrushed with Vallejo Orange Brown and then the little details were painted in. I gave the giant ones bronze weapons with green on the biological-looking parts, and I used red on the eyepieces of their face masks. The ones with visible eyes had them painted black, the same as on the smaller arachnids. Finally, they were given a wash of Winsor & Newton Peat Brown drawing ink.

All the tufts on the bases are from Gamer's Grass.

Two Bad Squiddo resin historical figures - Jeanne de Clisson and Mata Hari

I've had these two for absolutely ages, but I only got round to washing and cleaning them up when I started work on the North Star resin Necromancer and Apprentice in early March.   

First, Jeanne de Clisson, both front and back. Her white coif doesn't show up well in the first picture;

Jeanne de Clisson was born in the Vendée in 1300. She was a member of the noble Montaigu de Belleville family. She married four times, but it is her third marriage to Olivier IV de Clisson that led to her fame. Olivier was executed by the French King Philippe VI, le Fortuné. As a result, she took up arms against the French Crown. She sold off the Clisson lands and raised a force to fight French forces in Brittany. She later took to the sea as an English privateer with a fleet of three ships, attacking French vessels and killing the crews.

I've chosen to paint her in green because I like the colour and I didn't want to just do another standard Jeanne de Clisson figure. In green, she becomes a more flexible figure for all kinds of gaming.

Mata Hari, born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in 1876, is best known for having been executed as a German spy in 1917. She is portrayed as an archetypal femme fatale but her life was really terribly sad. Her marriage to Rudolf MacLeod, a Dutch officer serving in the Far East was a miserable thing. He was a brutal alcoholic infected with syphilis, which he passed on to his wife. Both their children were born with the disease, from which both of them later died. After divorcing MacLeod in 1903, Margaretha moved to Paris, becoming an artist's model and exotic dancer. She claimed to be a Javanese Hindu princess and became the mistress of a prominent French industrialist, Émile Guimet who was a devotée of Oriental Art. Mata Hari was a promiscuous woman and ended up as a courtesan rather than a performer. As a Dutch citizen, Mata Hari was able to cross borders freely during the war, the Netherlands being neutral, and she was recruited by the French Deuxième Bureau as an agent. She was charged with getting close to senior German military figures and she may, or may not have become a double agent.

In any case, the French government had her arrested, tried and executed as a German spy, although there doesn't appear to have been much in the way of evidence.

I've chosen to paint Mata Hari as a kind of generic femme fatale figure, who could quite easily be a Temptress in fantasy games, a seductive priestess, a mystic or something else.

I am pretty pleased with how she has come out, although I think that I could have done better with her face. I will have to do a spot of touching-up to improve that. I've stuck to green again but with lilac as a foil. Even her hair is lilac, which I think gives her an otherworldly feel.

Twenty Heavy Infantry for Xenos Rampant

I think that Heavy Infantry are an essential for most games of Xenos Rampant, especially if you are the kind of player who likes to stand back and shoot. I have finished two squads and each 10-man squad can be split into two 5-man fire teams;

The top two fire teams represent an Increased Size squad with Heavy Weapons and the lower two fire teams are an Increased Size squad who could be given Armour Piercing ammunition or some other useful characteristic. Each fire team (apart from the first) is led by a junior leader, marked by a yellow shoulder tab and the first team has a senior leader with two tabs. He's the guy with a pistol, talking on the communicator.

The first squad has one team with rocket launchers and a second team with one rocket launcher, three assault rifles and a junior leader with a flamer.

In the second squad, each fire team has two men with assault rifles, one with an LMG, one with a sniper rifle and a leader with a machine pistol-type weapon. 

To be honest though, the weapons are all assumed to do the same thing in the rules, it just appeals to me to make them look like they have different roles. 

They represent the kind of regular troops who make up the military of a typical planetary garrison, the marines of an attack ship or the dropship forces of the army of a Republic (Old or otherwise) or an Empire (maybe Evil, maybe not). They could also be the kind of grunts who are sent off to take on wave after wave of killer bugs, maybe even triumphing against all the odds.

My next figures will be various kinds of lighter-equipped squads, some looking more formal than others.

I've also finally got round to priming my spiders.

A Xenos Rampant Recon Team

One of the troop types for Xenos Rampant is Recon Infantry;

These come as a team of five troopers who have some useful skills and characteristics. They have no movement penalty in rough terrain and they can be classes as Snipers, which gives them a longer shooting range. They are also classed as Hard To Target, meaning that enemy troops have to be within 12" to target them.

These five were made using the Stargrave Mercenaries II plastic set. Although they aren't all wearing identical uniforms, I've painted them in a pretty standard palette and given them all sniper weapons.

I like that the Stargrave box sets have a huge variety of heads on the sprues. Some of the non-human ones are excellent.

I'm pretty pleased with the progress I'm making on my Xenos Rampant project. Next, I will have some "regular" infantry finished off.

Twenty more Xenos Rampant Cultists

Here are my next two groups of Cultists for my Xenos Rampant ongoing project;

I've tried to keep some colours common across all three units, hence the red hoods and purple trousers on this second group. These are armed for a more long range shooting role than the first set and are led by a figure without a hood and carrying a spear, as well as some kind of energy pistol. He also has a shield. My idea with him is that he represents a kind of Prophet/force commander for the cult, maybe even with psychic powers that he can transmit via his spear, which is really a kind of psychic energy weapon or beacon. I think that these are probably more suited to being a unit of Light Infantry, as they lack the armour of the previous lot. They probably ought to have the Guerillas characteristic to boost their armour value when in cover.

Now, my third unit;

These keep the overall "red hoods" theme but are mainly dressed in grey, again linking them to the unit above, colourwise. I think that these are also suited to a Light Infantry role, possibly with an upgrade to having Heavy Weapons, seeing as one has a rocket launcher and a couple have what look like heavier support weapons too. The guy on second front left with the backpack is wearing what looks like a pilot's helmet and is carrying a comms device. He is an alternative force commander figure if I decide I don't want a psychic force commander.

So, there we have it. Three units of Cultists who will form the core of a force which follows some strange occult belief system, perhaps worshipping strange Alien Gods or powerful xenomorphic beings, or maybe just dedicated to destruction and death for its own sake. Who knows?

Next, I'll be working on a couple of units of disciplined fighters who can represent the military of an Empire, Republic or Dictatorship or maybe just a well-armed and equipped Planetary Defence Force.

Some Cultists for Xenos Rampant

Here is my first group of 10 figures to use as Cultists in Xenos Rampant;

These are all based on the Frostgrave Cultists plastic box set with weapons from the Stargrave Troopers and Mercenaries boxes. I'm a big fan of the plastic cultists set and they work well as members of some kind of weird sci fi cult or as space pirates who want to keep their identities secret. This group are clearly wearing some kind of body armour and half of them have pistols and blades so could be used for troops with the Assault Doctrine characteristic or maybe as Berserk Troops. The flamer being carried by the guy on the front right seems well-suited to close combat and assaults.

I've given them a purple-based colour palette so they could be used with the Cultist figures I painted ages ago (back in 2019) for Saga: Age of Magic, who would definitely be Berserkers or Primitives as they have no shooting capability. I like the idea of a Xenos Rampant force that has fanatic troops who just want to get close up and personal with sharp or pointy objects. I could also use some of my daemonic figures, based on Ghost Archipelago Snake Men as Lesser Xenomorphs. They could be given a ranged attack based on spitting toxins. I've not played Saga: AoM in ages, so it would be nice to see them on the table again.

I've got 20 more of these guys to show you, but I'll put them up separately in two more posts, in a day or so.