Painting roundup - finally finished all the current Sci Fi stuff

People may remember that I bought a box of GW Blackstone Fortress figures a while ago. I had most of them painted before the end of 2019, but there were a few left over.

Anyway, these are now done, because I buckled down and got on with them.

The first one is this chap, a Chaos Space Marine. He's obviously going to be a NPC in my home-brewed rules. I'm not bothered whether his colours match any of the GW Mythos Chaos Marine legions, but I reckon that he looks OK.

Next are these two odd-looking creations. They are supposed to be Negavolt Cultists, whatever they are, but I am going to use them as Cyborg NPCs.

Finally, here is a guy who simply can't keep his feet on the ground. He is labelled a Rogue Psyker, which seems OK, as he will fill that role as another NPC in my rules.

Well, they are done now. Hopefully, I will get my rules out again soon and get some sci fi skirmish action going. 

Painting - a few odds 'n' ends

The weather has been particularly horrible this week, so I have been painting a few figures, basically clearing space for getting some Napoleonic Portuguese infantry started.

Anyway, I've finished off four more figures from that GW Blackstone Fortress box set I mentioned previously.

According to the blurb on the box, the two blue guys are "Ur Ghuls" and the robot thingies are "Spindle Drones". According to me, the blue guys are Mutants and the robot thingies are potentially Sensor Droids, or maybe some other sort of droid, depending on the kind of game I am playing. Lazily, I have stuck pretty much to the box art regarding their painting schemes, because I rather like how they look. I am thinking that the blue guys will also make suitable Null Men figures for Frostgrave.

I've also been painting Monks. Surely, we all need a few monks? I am thinking that monks could crop up in all manner of games in many periods, right?

Specifically, I bought these because of a conversation I had at the club about taking part of the Magic rules from Sword and Spear Fantasy, specifically how magic can be used to boost the fighting ability of units and also to rally hits off of units. Our reasoning was that these aspects of Magic could be seen as being akin to religious figures boosting the fervour or morale of the troops, something that was a common feature of mediaeval warfare, as well as in earlier and later periods. Holy Men even have a role in Sharp Practice. As I have both FIW French and Napoleonic Anglo-Portuguese forces for SP in 28mm, a monk or two might come in handy.

Of course, monks can also feature in other settings, too. Saga immediately springs to mind, as well as Dux Britanniarum. Monks in a fantasy setting might also be possible. Who knows?

These four are rather nice figures, Foundry, I think, and I wasn't too concerned about which particular Order they might belong to,  so I painted three up as fairly generic monks. The fourth one I wanted to make a bit more colourful, as I am planning to add him to my Late Roman army, so I felt that a bit of an "imperial" habit might be appropriate.

Finally, I painted this chap;

He's a bit wizardy-looking and a bit like a Ranger for LOTR, but also a bit hermit-like. I really like him, and I can easily see him as a Christian Hermit supporting my Late Romans too.

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.