Stargrave - Skaven are even out here?!

On the galactic highway that is outer space the crews of various ships and cruisers seek adventure, loot and a snazzy stone for warp travel, maybe.

Veer-Myn artwork from the Deadzone game.

Oh my how long has it been since I updated this blog!! what have I been up to? Well summer never lends itself to painting for me, to much to do outside and other activities. Have I painted anything you may ask, and the answer is yes but it hasn't been overly oldhammer. The most recent off the paint table are the miniatures from The Thing Board Game and Cosmic Frog but I'll save those for another day. In the meantime...

Welcome to Stargrave and my crew. A game of mercenary bands or group of disparate folk trying to get by in the unfriendly cosmos. As you can see my crew is a morphed conversion of genestealer cultists and skaven minatures.

The crew line up, loot maybe nearby to steal!

I love the whole ethos of Skaven and there culture, but I can never bring myself to paint an army of them too many models and as an ork player it's just not something I want to do again. Yet Stargrave gave me the perfect opportunity to create a small band of the murderous humanoid rodents.

Two space-rat grunts ready to lay down some firepower!

In one way orks influenced this as I was on the hunt for a Battlewagon and one solution I tried was getting a Goliath Rockgrinder, this didn't really pan out (subsequently acquired an actual Rogue Trader Ork Battlewagon) and the Rockgrinder is now in the WIP pile of shame. The Genestealer cultists bits however got used with some skaven sprue and three space skaven emerged before I'd even heard of Stargrave.

The commando and the gunner, got a job for them.

Naturally I need a bit of variety for Stargrave, so I have managed to assemble more than just a few rat soldiers with guns. I have a Hacker and a Chiseler for grabbing that loot (below) and a gunner for bigger problems (above).

Chiseler and Hacker, solving the tech problems for the crew.

The Chiseler was fun as I wanted to go a bit steampunk and/or Secret of NIMH with his face. That red glow on his mechanical eye giving an otherworldly vibe. The actual painting of this crew was fairly straightforward and was an opportunity to try out some colours I don't normally delve into purple and orange.

First Mate "Lotso Ratz" being instructed by the Captain.

The First-mate and Captain are the key to any Stargrave crew as they get all the fun little powers and bring the band together as a whole. I always had the skaven with the pointing hand and ring of warpstone down as the Captain, barking orders as a veteran of many a campaign. 

The First-mate was up in the air for a while. Originally the thought had been a poison-wind globadier or maybe a grey seer model, but none really screamed sci-fi to me. Then on a trip to Salute 2021 I stumbled onto Bad Squiddo games. Amongst there range are the Peeg miniatures and this mimic was perfect. Originally they are supposed to be Guinea-pigs but they could also be giant rats. Thus my first-mate biomorph was created, struggling to stay in disguise as a member of society, rather than a gestalt horde of rats in humanoid shape.

Got a job for us? will work for scraps!

The final two here are a simple runner and recruit to round out the crew. These will be an expendable  distraction while the rest of the crew get on with things.

Until next time, watch the skies! ... SQUEEK!!