Stargrave plastics

I must have been about eleven when I experienced my first multi part plastic kit from GW. I went to a friend's house after school, he was one of those kids that had every hobby indulged by his parents and he never kept at one for more than about five minutes. He had a box of Space Orks, there must of been enough parts to make at least 30 in that box. They had giant mohawks, shoulder missile launchers and the monster of all close combat weapons a power claw that looked pretty mean. That day we had great fun making all the combinations we could from those sprues, I remember my friend asking me to help him make them because he had got bored after about three of them. I have always since had a love of the putting together stage, clipping out parts, choosing which bits go together, swapping out other parts from the spare bitz box. (When I last moved house I condensed my bits box down to one 64 litre tub. Yep, condensed!) Don't get me wrong, I like painting, but the building is always my favourite bit. I think I would probably even offer to build for other people if they didn't want to do it themselves. The only issue is the toxic stench of poly cement, if someone could invent a more friendly product I think Mrs Lead would be happier.

So readers will know I had a giant pile of plastic sprues from the Stargrave Nickstarter just begging to be built. I have had to ration myself and not build the entire lot in one go, I would probably happily build the lot and fill my painting tray with them and then not paint them (bear in mind the same tray still has unpainted on it fully built plastic Zulu's and British.) Instead I would build around ten, then paint them before building more, much less intimidating. Combined with a box of Great Escape Games cowboys and the add on sprues from the kickstarter of cultists and gnolls I had great fun kitbashing.

First attempt was adding Stargrave guns to the Frostgrave cultists, simple paint job, done.

Next up Stargrave bodies with heads from the cowboys sprue on the left and Frostgrave barbarian on the right.

Then some made entirely of Stargrave bits.

These are mostly Stargrave parts, although I felt the medic needed a smaller gun from the cowboy sprue and the chap on the right has the body and legs of a cowboy.

I'm particularly proud of the chap on the left here. His backpack has as many pouches as I could squeeze on it plus a tiny missile launcher from my bits box. The chap on the right has a head from the cowboys sprue (in case you couldn't guess that.)

These two are both using gnoll heads but the one on the right has a gnoll body as well. For the chap on the left because the gnoll head connects from the rear normally I had to fuly construct the back of his head with green stuff. This inspired me to paint him with a green mohawk as well. The backpack on the right has an extra compartment on it made from green stuff and paperclip wire, just to make it not look like all the other backpacks. (Paperclips never survive long around my hobby desk.)

These two are from the cowboy sprue. I wanted to at least make a couple of them up for my Western town, although even the head on the left is an alternative. It is actually from the Warlord games Zulu British sprue that came free with Wargames Illustrated one month. 

Mainly here I wanted to paint something to not have the regular black boots that all models seem to have in my collection. Now I have a good wash from Coat D'arms I never fear painting white anymore.

Finally I had ordered some "Bounty Hunter" heads from Diehard Miniatures. I was under strict instructions from my youngest to paint them in different recognisable colour schemes. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to get myself another set of them to make it up to a squad of ten. Maybe try and use green stuff to give one a fur collar and arm her with a hammer and tongs. Plus I should really make an attempt at a graffiti style design on one set of armour.

My favourite currently is this one, complete with green stuff cloak over one shoulder which I have completely failed to get in the photo, guns and holsters taken from the cowboy sprue.

You can see I haven't fully flocked the base. It dawned on me that all my models lately I have been religiously putting down a textured layer of brown on the base and then covering it in flock and tufts. Noone will see that lovely textured base then, so for this one I decided to keep the flock minimal to see if I liked the style. I think it still works. I'm still refusing to stop giving bases a solid green trim around the edge. Deal with it.

 As a bonus dear reader for getting to the end, here is an image of those damned adorable Space Orks, enjoy the reminiscing. Now I wonder how hard it would be to find an untouched box of them now?