Warming up the Brushes

In an effort to paint more and button-mash less I painted up these excellent Critical Mass mercenaries you see here.  A couple of months back I posted the Combined Army Infinity figs I whipped up, but those don't really count.  I kind of blacked out at the painting desk and when I came to they were already done.

These guys were different.  In an effort to both paint more and kind of revive the cold husk that was my starport project I dove right in.  Lots of ideas started cooking as soon as I got some paint on them, which is what I was hoping for!

This batch is the first half of a well equipped pirate crew that will be squared away solidly in the universe I've yet to build.  They'll have their own ship and everything.  Next up will be the rest of this crew.  After that I've got some great figs lined up sculpted by my buddy Eli over at I See Lead People.  Then I guess it's time to get into that massive starport queue I typed up so long ago!

Thanks for checking these out, they were a blast to paint up.  I should also point out that the Instagram feed was blowing up with WIP pics of these over the last week or so.  I'll try to get a post up with more details photos and angles, plus some fluff material to boot soon.  Until then, enjoy!

Fast Attack Rebels

Sometimes a new project just pops onto your plate by accident, as did this one. I'm sure I will tie it into the Starport series in some fashion, so let's see what we've got. I got my Armies Army ten man pack in the mail and they are very cool figs. If you haven't picked some up yet, I highly recommend that you do as soon as you can, plus, they're 10% off right now!

The details are crisp and the lines are clean on these figs, they are equipped with recognizable weapons but have cool, little extras that could easily plant them in a near-future setting, namely their full-face helmets. Holding figs in hand always lets you appreciate them even more.


There's a lot of personal favorites out there in Starportlandia, and when I think of the bigger picture I think of Ironworker's Station 42. He's got the Starport station itself, but he's also got designs on large chunks of the planet in general, like farming communities, outlying stations, junkyards, and more. I'll be taking a page from there and expanding the lands beyond just the station itself. Which brings in this little project.


Call them insurgents, rebels, guerrillas, or whatever, these figs will make for perfect "civil disobedience" fighters. With a handful of cool looking toy cars ripe for recruitment, these rebels now have fast attack capabilities too. I envision the planet being rocky and barren with isolated 'nourishment' zones. The troopers here (and now I'm really liking the term 'rebels') will have a hidden outpost somewhere deep in the badlands.

It lends itself well to a couple of linked scenario games taking it all in. Game one; rebels raid the starport, with the SPPD having to fend them off (and probably losing). Game two; Military PDF shows up to the firefight to save the SPPD and rebels have to escape being outnumbered. Game three; PDF tracks down rebels hideout in the badlands and you have the big, final battle. Sounds good to me, all you need are the figures, this stuff writes itself!

Science Teams Hit Dirtside

Got my Ground Zero Games stuff in and slapped some superglue on them to get an idea of what my Starport science teams are going to look like. I went with a single pack of eight vac-suited humans and another pack of six 'motion picture' robot helpers. And a couple of APC thingies.


I love the robot helpers pack, I forget what it is really called, but you have some classics in there; the ubiquitous astromech droid, the 'bots from Silent Running, and a Wal-E model. The science teams will be split into two groups of four each, and have one of each type of droid per group. Obviously the Phalanx APCs will house one team each.


Which brings us to the Phalanx APC itself. What a love/hate relationship I have for this model. On the one hand it looks great, it screams 'science rover' to me and works perfectly in this role. It's big and has a neat overall design, not unlike the Mako from Mass Effect. On the other hand this is a technical nightmare of a model and it doesn't seem very thought out in the construction department. The top and bottom halves are just heavy hunks of metal you slap together with epoxy, superglue won't cut it. There are zero tabs, nooks, seems, or connections between the top and bottom halves, just two smooth sided hunks of metal sliding around. After you do your best to guess how they should line up, and hope the bond holds, you have to assemble the wheels, axle by axle, hubcap by hubcap. Getting the axles to line up with one another underneath the chassis was a nightmare as well. Overall I love the design, hate the parts.

Well there you go, a couple of Starport Science Teams now officially in the queue.

Khurasan Order Arrives

As you may have noticed, my 'miniatures bought' tally to the right has jumped up from a mere seven to a whopping sixty-three. As I had mentioned to Blacksmith about the last HUD, it keeps me focused if nothing else. I placed a few orders, enough to fill in everything needed to tackle this year's HUD all in one shot. Above is the Khurasan bundle.


Starport PDF was on the HUD and here they are. Khurasan's Federal Defense Force are perfect matches for Colonial Marines, so I opted for two packs of them. Each pack will be further divided into three separate fire teams of three members each. Two of the fire teams with a SAW, the third with a Lieutenant and flamethrower. Of course to get around, each pack gets their own APC, or Heavy Attack Transport. I absolutely love the look of these vehicles, and you just don't realize how massive they really are until you see one in person. Longterm planning will have to include a garrison for the PDF including a hangar bay for both of these.


Another item on the HUD was Starport Security, or SPPD. The Federal Police are perfect for this. Shown behind them are a couple of sci-fi cars I got with the order for street decoration, but the SPPD will be riding around in these hover tanks I showed a while back. Each of the four hovers will have a pair of SPPD within. I am still looking for 15mm scaled police decals, I've found a lot of 28mm, but if anyone could point me in the right direction that would be cool.

So there you have it, two entries coinciding with the HUD; Military PDF and Starport Security.

Future Citizens of the Galaxy

Now we're getting on with the meat and potatoes of it, bring on the first wave of starport denizens! These are more from the SHM (Self Help Miniatures) line offered up by 15mm.co.uk and like the Uhul yesterday, these have all been sculpted by ISLP's wünderkind Eli. Whereas the Uhul however were a 'just because' groups of figs, these space guys, gals, and others are pretty much a must-have, especially with dreams of starports dancing in your head.

For the record, what I've shown here include a good number of non-released figs and only five of the above figures are currently available in 15mm.co.uk's online store. Of course, the rest you see here are slated to go into production, it's just a matter of time. I See Lead People has a good preview page here with most of these on it.


Not yet released...


Nope, not these either...


Burgansian (left) is available, Mr. Toad (right) not quite


The Fragalian (right) is available, Merc Trooper (left) not yet


The middle figure, the Horansi, is the only fig currently available but as I said up top, all of these will be making their way into the line eventually. As you can see from everything here there's loads of character and variety, not to mention plenty of alien goodness.

I can't help but think of the Mos Eisley cantina of course, but a lot of the activity taking place on the Citadel in the Mass Effect franchise also comes to mind. 15mm.co.uk have a lot more to offer than just the SHM line where you'll find these excellent figs, they've really got a huge selection overall. The best part is that these are all singles, no packs to buy, which is really nice if you're looking for just that right character or alien.

Though the HUD isn't exactly in chronological order, it does list 15mm Starport Denizens first however, and well here they are in the unpainted flesh. Hmm...

Where Have All the Starports Gone?

Usually when I ply the trade-lanes of all the blogs out there I see stuff that gets me excited or inspired. Sometimes someone is doing something so awesome I stop what I'm doing and try my own hand at it. More often than not however I just muse about how cool it would be if I did half the cool stuff I've been seeing (then I carry on with my own projects).

Well, lately I've really been taking notice of people's "starport" projects. It's not just terrain, it's not just a campaign, nor is it a set of rules, but a living, breathing combination of all the above. Now your games are going to take place there, sure, but the games can be as varied as the aliens who live there. Not only have I taken notice, but I've been jealous too!

It's a great way to get focused, but still have variety and scope in what you're doing. You're making terrain, that's obvious, and you're not just building and painting a single army. You've got dock workers, labor-robots, maintenance machines, police units, civilians, adventurers, and more. It's perfect for skirmish and narrative style games but there's no reason a few platoons of troops can't roll in and tackle the local PDF garrison either.


When I think of starport projects, a few jump to mind immediately. First off is Ironworker Miller's blog of the same title. His use of old toy ships for shuttles and spacecraft is great and you can tell he has a vision that he is building from the ground up. His physics are grounded in gritty sci-fi without too much techno-wizardry and games like AE Bounty (something I've pondered here) are a natural fit.


Next up is Chris from Chris' Miniature Woes (who I recently nominated). He's just now getting started on his starport project, but judging from the quality of work he puts out as well the amount he gets finished, I have a feeling it will up and running in no time. As you can see here, like Ironworker's blog, the focus is not just on armed troops (but they need to be in there!) but also on the mundane stuff you would find sitting around and performing day-to-day activities.


Starport 3030 is just one of the many, many projects Scott has going on over at Four Color Figs. Scott's gone in a slightly different route though and tackled the starport in 15mm scale, certainly an appealing idea there. 15mm means the bigger the table, even bigger the starport. You're able to add more denizens at a cheaper price and the vehicles might be easier to come by. It all comes down to your preference in scale and what you have the most on hand for. It also matters what scale you want to game in, as well as possibly storage space.

So this is all of the starport stuff I have to offer up for your perusal. I know there's more out there, and I'd love to hear about it, so leave me some links. You've seen my monster queue by now, and honestly there's a part of me that wants to sell it all off and just focus on my own starport. As you know, "focus" and "Mik" do not go together however!

[EDIT: It looks like great minds think alike! My buddy Eli has just posted this exact same thing over on his blog, I See Lead People! I'm sure he and I share a lot of readers, but if you don't follow his blog (you should!) you've got it here. If you do...well now you've got double the starport goodness!]