The Vordania II Insurrectio

Freedom looks beautiful and inspiring to those who desire & seek it; but Freedom looks like rebellion to those who have become complacent in hiding.

Antin Sanu, ex-commissar of the Imperium, leader of the Vordania II Insurection

Vordiana II is a small planet on the outskirt of the Majorian System. Like most planets of the system, it exists under the Imperium's "protection". Such protection is of course very expensive and the planet's government must supply resources on an annual basis, both material and human, to support their benefactor. The constant state of war and conquests by the Imperium has put a severe burden on such small planets, and Vordiana II, stricken by a string of planetary water drought, has become a world devastated by famine and poverty. After years of such conditions, the recent "enrollment" of a large proportion of the male youth population of the planet has been the catalyst and the cause of a female-led, popular resistance movement amongst the lower and middle class of the planet. Led by Antin Sanu, a crafty ex-military commissar of the Imperium, the insurrection has been a thorn in the side of the pro-Imperium government of Vordiana II for more than a year now; raids, sabotage, and the assassination of Imperium embassy personnel have been the bread and butter of the operation. 

Mostly equipped with older weapons and equipments and whatever they can salvage, the Insurrectio has used the "maquis" example of organization, dividing itself into self-contained and independent rural guerrilla bands and can be best described as a paramilitary organization, although the government has labelled them a terrorist organization, "rebels" to be exterminated at all costs.

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The "Insurrectio" is my second Sci-Fi outfit, after the Effigy Corporation. It is meant as a small "spaceband", to play in various Sci-Fi skirmishes. I find the figures, just like the Effigy Corporation, would fit equally well in some Pulp, Cyberpunk or distant future Sci-Fi settings. They could also be used in a pinch as Imperial Guards in a Rogue Trader game. And of course, could be used as the small principled band of resistance fighters against the highly trained Havoc Teams of the Effigy Corporation! My intro above is one of many uses for these lovely figures!

Same as the other outfit, the project is largely an excuse for me to paint some lovely Sci-Fi figures I've been eying for a while and which don't neatly fit in any actual game system. They also make for easy "transportable forces" for games away from home.

This merry band of female fighters is from the "Resistance Fighters" range from Statuesque Miniatures and it is a lovely little range. The sculpts are truly fantastic and full of personality, and were a joy to paint. My only criticism would be that some delicate assembly is involved, and gluing small hands or arms is always annoying, even more so on delicate female sculpts. I believe this is my first ever all women outfit! It is made-up of 13 members, including a (sexy) Cyborg!

The "Vordania II Insurrectio" 

I tried to give the outfit a unified theme of green and purple while still giving each figure some personality.  I'm happy with the end result.

The bad ass girls of the Insurrectio

First up we have the Command group: Antin Sanu in her commissar uniform and her cadre of officers. The two middle figures are probably my favourites of the range, they have *loads* of attitude!

Next up the heavy weapons and communication specialist. I love the extra-sized Thompson-style heavy machine gun!

and then we have the regular Insurrectio fighters, with the Cyborg in the middle. Actually, the Cyborg was part of Statuesque's Pulp range, and is meant to be a Fembot of sort, but the addition of the cyborg head makes all the difference and I find the figure fits very well with the rest of the girls. I also wanted each of my Sci-Fi outfit to have a robot of some sort, and she fits the bill.

There's a few figures from the range I still haven't painted, as they were OOP when I made my purchase, so I might add a few extra girls to the band one day. Or not, as it is the right size for what I'm aiming for. 

I haven't decided (or bought) my next Sci-Fi oufit, but I'm thinking something "Imperial" in nature...

These gals are my second entry in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and will net me a total of 65 pts (13 28mm figures). Now, let's move to smaller things, like Halflings and Epic stuff...

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, Part VII - The Reckoning

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace

Yes, the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is back for it's 7th year (I know, time flies). Better and bigger than ever, with 100 participants!

And this time, I'm ready! No house move, no health issues, nothing to stop me from reaching my goal of having my best challenge to date. My target is 550pts, which is basically my record, but I really hope I can break that glass ceiling! And I'm paint starved, really, having spent most of the last few months working on the house and such.

I've always been a bit lazy in the Challenge preparation, doing some but never enough and preferring to keep painting like a dumbass while the Challenge start date loomed large. But this year I've really step up my prep game.

In the coming three months, on the Fantasy and Sc-Fi side of things, I've identified three main projects I want to work on.

1 - Finish my second 28mm Sci-fi outfit; it's a small project, around 13 figures so I can play some skirmish Sci-Fi games. I'd like to start with this and get it out of the way fast. I just finished gluing them and they are in the priming room. I'll show the complete force at the same time, and I'm not telling!

2 - The Halfling bonanza. In a fit of crazyness, I funded two Halfling projets this year! The Westfalia Halfmen army and Stonehaven's Halfling Adventurers Miniatures . I received Stonehaven offering first and most of them are reading for painting. I, ahem, bought the whole freakin' range, so that's a lot of little guys! Not sure I'll paint them all in the Challenge but I'd like to have enough of them to play some skirmish games. Should I have enough time (I doubt it very much) I'll start the Westfalia ones.

The first twenty odd StoneHaven Halflings; clean, glue sand, prime, repeat

3 - The 30K Epic project (and accompanying duel). Last year Greg from Fawcett  Avenue Conscripts used the challenge to start an Epic 30K project (and it was epic), and influenced me big time. I've been wanting to do Epic for quite a while and finally took the plunge and amass enough figures to keep me painting for a few months (I think). This should be my main project for the next three months. To keep things even more interesting, I entered into a 30K side Duel with four of the maniacs from the Challenge asylum;

Rules: Most points of painted miniatures in any scale 

Prize: A painted single 28mm 30k or small formation of 6mm 30k figures from the defeated participants

All the vehicles are primed, glued, based and ready to be painted.

Do I have a chance to win? No, I don't think so! But it's going to be a lot of fun nonetheless. Greg is a 30K freak as are the other guys, and it should be fun to see what they all come up with.

4 - There's a 4...kinda. I'm leaving room to add a few Oldhammer pieces to break things up. Probably some Chaos Knights and Nurgle Champions who've been sitting on my painting table for way too long.

And of course, I intend to participate in at least a few of the Bonus theme rounds...

January 8th - Armour

January 22nd - East

February 5th - Terrain: 'Home'

February 19th - West

March 5th - Character(s) and/or Scene from a Movie, TV program, Book or piece of Music

In the coming weeks I'll discuss my 30K and my "LeafGrave" projects in more depth. And then we are off to the races!

The Effigy Corporation

The question you should ask yourself is not whether we will get the job done, but whether you can afford us.  

Dannon Trace,  Effigy Corporation CEO

These are dangerous times. Ruined husks of starships litter the solar systems and renegade pirates fight for whatever precious resources can be found on the savage surfaces of the inner planets. Powerful corporations wage constant industrial wars for control of the galaxy's resources and have learned to now heavily rely on hired guns and professionals to do their dirty work. The Effigy Corporation is one of those professionals and is widely considered to be one of the best mercenary outfits money can buy. The Corporation specializes in space travel protection, search and rescue operations, industrial espionage and sabotage.

Effigy's famous Havoc Squads, small teams of highly trained ex-military soldiers and specialists, are equipped with the finest equipment and weaponry currently available in the galaxy. Supported by droids and small specialist teams, the Squads have an extremely high success rate.

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The "Effigy Corporation" is to be the first outfit for a Sci-Fi skirmish project I just started.

I found these figures by accident on the website of a friend who used to distribute the range in North America (sadly the range is not available anymore). I just got them on impulse and figured one day I'd find a use for them. And now is that day...

The range, started through a Kickstarter, was very small  and unfortunately only a few figures were made; 5 squad members, two civilians and 3 specialists, along with some recon robots which I do not own. But since I intend on building factions of between 10 and 30 figures, it's not really a problem, although some heavy support soldiers would've been fun!

I find the figures would fit equally well in some Space Pulp, Cyberpunk or distant future Sci-Fi setting and that suits my plans very well. The sculpts were lovely although I found the very realistic proportions were a little bit challenging after all that time working on Oldhammer models!

The outfit is made up of 2 Havoc Squads, Blue Squad and Green Squad, as well as a Yellow Squad (specialists), the CEO Dannon Trace and a demolition droid. I'm missing a droid and another civilian, in boxes somewhere, but other than that this bunch is complete.

Havoc Green Squad

The first figures I painted for the project. The photography doesn't do justice to the dark green however. I love the presence of a couple of female soldiers in the squads (some seriously awesome figures) and that First Sargent pose is perfect. He screams Alpha Male ;-)

Havoc Blue Squad 

After the dark green I went with a brighter colour for the blue squad and I'm very happy with the result. It's exactly the style I wanted to give to the force.

Yellow Squad, "The Techno Girls"

I quite like the middle one, a lovely figure.

Havoc-TT-4, Demolition Droid 

This droid figure is not part of the original range, and was sculpted by Drew Williams from the Oldhammer Facebook page, and he graciously made it available for a limited time to the whole group. Obviously I couldn't resist! The figure was actually based of a drawing in the original Rogue Trader rulebook! Also an impulse buy from a couple of months ago and I was looking for a way to use him.

Dannon Trace,  Effigy Corporation CEO

Doesn't he look like the perfect Corporate CEO?! You can just smell the 1%!

So yeah, my first painted Sci-Fi force since 1993!

Sci-Fi?

I hinted at doing just that recently, and yes it's happening. My plan was to start the project next year, but circumstances have changed that. It so happens that my (meagre) Sci-Fi collection has not found it's way to boxes yet, and so I figured it was as good a time as any to start this.

I start this project not knowing what ruleset I will use, nor in exactly which galaxy I will play on any given gameday! In fact, even the style of Sci-Fi is subject to debate. I got the urge to start some Sci-Fi last spring, after buying, on impulse, the Battle System Sci-Fi terrain (so no, people, it's not because of Star Wars!).

I just thought it was so cool, and the gaming possibilities just screamed to me. Playing Sci-Fi skirmishes in abandonned vessels or space stations just strikes my fancy a lot more than W40K tank battles! I need to build and play in this thing!

While I haven't gamed the genre in a long time, I do like my Sci-Fi. A lot. My favourite novel is Dune and Aliens has to be top 5 of my favourite movies. I also like many styles, from the dark Aliens to Space Opera to Cyberpunk to everything in the middle. So I'm not limiting myself in style, but rather in size. My initial plan is to build many small 15 to 30 figures forces and just go with the flow. In that I was a bit influenced by the way JB (from the Leadplague blog) does thing.

Now some will mix, some will not. And while not all of them will be Oldhammer, be assured there will be some love for the nostalgic fans among you!

I'd probably like to try some Rogue Traders game, after more than 20 years since my last game, but I'm also intrigued by the Osprey Sci-Fi game coming up in the Fall :

But when it comes to rules, my logic is simple; build the forces you want, and make the ruleset adapt. Not the other way around.

So yeah, it's my new small project for this year. I'm usually more of a big army type guy, but building small forces will create nice diversions in between unit painting. I expect it will be an ongoing project for years to come.