Everything Five Parsecs From Home and eventually Stargrave.

I recently got my pledge rewards from the Heresy Miniatures Kickstarter, which was the Komodo mech suit and its rider.
Upon first seeing this mech I immediately loved it and thought it would work very well for the armoured trooper in Stargrave.

The miniature comes as a resin kit with numerous weapon options for the arms but I just chose something that I think looks good rather than a specific load out or worry about using magnets to swap weapons as I never feel like the miniature is finished if it’s all still in separate pieces, even when all painted.

In the game, you are required to pay 50 credits in order to use the mech for a game, otherwise you can use the pilot without. I thought I’d paint the rider in similar colours to the mech suit to match.

For the base I tried something new. I normally just go with a few tufts and call it done but I recently picked up some ground up corse foliage to use as a moss and I really like the effect.

I liked this mech so much, that while I waited for the miniatures to arrive I looked up some old drawings on the web to fuel my imagination.

In fact during the Kickstarter I couldn’t resist adding a second, all metal one to my pledge. This one I painted up red. I also used some wire mesh I got from Halfords for the base.

For its pilot I decided to use a Void miniature I’d already painted up for Space Station Zero as the miniature had a similar tight fitting suit with armour plates on and it was of similar build to the Heresy Miniature pilot so it would look like she would fit inside the mech. Also I’ve painted her up in red to match the colour of the second mech.

The bases don’t match for the reds but oh well. If I can find a more appropriate miniature later on I’ll do them on similar base to the mech and the Void miniature can go back to her squad on Space Station Zero.

As for Five Parsecs From Home there currently are no rules for mechs in the game, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with some. Already since sharing a picture of the mech several people have suggested ways in which the mech could be used, such as either using it as something already in the game like a security bot, or coming up with brand new rules.

I’d heard interesting things about the card terrain sets from Corvus Belli for their Infinity game. When I looked into it a few years ago I discovered it that quite thing a saggy cardboard which really needed strengthening to be able to support metal models. I dismissed it at the time but recently I heard they are making new sets in 3mm cardboard so I decided to order a pack to see what it’s like.

The contents, lots of sheets of thick card and a paper map. I may use the map but really I’ll probably stick with my neoprene mats.

The terrain was easy enough to assemble and sometimes care had to be taken to prevent damage to the card. I assembled the whole things without glue.

Also each building comes with different images on each side allowing a choice of build options and appearance. You could buy a second identical set and how two different looking sets once assembled.

Here’s what it looks like, including miniatures for scale.

I’m really happy with this terrain. It’s relatively inexpensive, I payed around £25 for it, and it’s very sturdy and  gameable with plenty of room for miniatures to stand on the roofs and walkways and even the individual steps.

In fact I liked it so much I decided to get the other set in this series.

So with both sets together here’s some pics.

So with two sets I’ve got a full table of terrain complete with building, walkways and barricades.

I love this and will certainly be keeping an eye on what terrain Corvus Belli will be releasing in future.

In my opinion if I was planning on starting a game like Stargrave from scratch now I’d get the book, a box of miniatures and these two sets of terrain and I’d be ready to go. 

Here’s a few more pics where I’ve used a 3×3 mat to simulate a table for Stargrave.

It’s been sometime since I’ve posted anything here as I’ve been mostly working on Fantasy projects this year. But now I’m wanting to delve more into science fiction so I hope to post here more often.

Here’s the finished landing pad. I’m reasonably happy with my hazard strips on the stairs and adding some weathering certainly helped in their look.

For the price (TTCombat £12) I’m really happy with this.

More miniatures from Warlord Games’s Gates of Antares, this time a Hükk Bounty Hunter and his hunting angriz.

I wanted a miniature to represent an alien bounty hunter, particularly since Stargrave offers some solo rules for going up against a bounty hunter. I liked the look of this one and the fact that he came with some alien beats was cool too as I can use them as beasts or monsters in various games.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on science fiction miniatures but I got these Misgenic rejects from Warlord Games for their Gates of Antares game. I thought they’d be great for either space zombies in Stargrave or Converted in Five Parsecs From Home, which are humans that have been altered by an expanding alien race.

I’ve also picked up some of the laser cut plans from Gamer Grass and I thought these alien Venus fly traps would look good. They seem very big in the pack but once you fold and bend them into shape they fit quite well.

I’ve got a few more from the Gates of Antares line of miniatures as I quite like them. I hope to paint them soon and post them in this project, not to mention play more games.

Just a small update as I’ve been working on other things.

I’ve had my eye on this Reaper Bones figure for a while but it’s often out of stock in the UK.
Finally I bought it and although I really like the model it’s bigger than I thought it would. I certainly think it’ll still work for both Stargrave and Frostgrave.

See post above this one.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted here and if I don’t post soon I’ll start to forget what I’ve done and where I’m up to, so time for an update.

I’ve haven’t done as much as I’ve been working on a few other projects not relevant here.

Those resin pieces I got from TTCombat are finally painted. Rather than using a specialist rust paint I thought I’d try using a mix of brown and orange paint to get a similar effect. Seems to work fine.

I’ve been eying these ships from Mantic for some time now as well as their landing pad and a few other Mantic terrain pieces. But then TTCombat have just released their new landing pad and Octo Pod Consortium, both of which looked like a great deal, so I went for these instead. Of course with buying a landing pad triggered my purchase of both the Mantic ships as well.

So this is what I’ve assembled so far. Although the Mantic ships didn’t include any assembly instructions they went together fairly easily, with only a few stray components left where I had to look up online. I also assembled both ships in their landing configuration as they will be mostly terrain pieces. I plan on doing a clean up to remove some of the join lines before priming.

I’ve included my shuttle from Core Space in the photos, which I think fits scale wise quite well with the Mantic ships. There’s a scenario in Stargrave which asks for 5 ships, and with another shuttle coming in Core Space Kickstarter (hopefully later this year), I’ll just need one more ship to be able to play it.

I’ve only assembled and primed the landing pad so far but I really like it. It’s quite large and pretty simple to assemble, and, most importantly, it’s large enough for the ships. Not bad for just over £12.

See post above this one.

As my previous crew member died in my Five Parsecs game I needed a replacement. I rolled randomly and got a K’Erin, a combat oriented alien. I didn’t have much in the way of miniatures that could represent that so I looked online for something.
I liked the look of this Infinity model and had had my eyes on this building for a while so I combined my order. I was my intention to finish up what I was painting before these arrived then assemble and paint both of these in time for a battle on Monday (ie today).

The next scenario for 5 Parsecs included 5 Mercenaries, one a leader with a pistol and blade and a specialist with a rattle gun so this is what I chose to paint up first from the Mantic enforcers box.
I did find these miniatures a little difficult to paint as some of the details were a little softer than I was used to, but I’m reasonably happy with the results. I need more shades of blue paint I think. I felt limited with what I had.

I’m really happy with this miniature. It’s my first Infinity model and one of the best metal models I’ve seen. The detail is amazing and it fitted together really easily.
Assembling and painting this model put me in mind of the Confrontation models by Rackham. The quality is one par and the overall feel of the model is similar to their stuff. I can see me getting more Infinity models in the future.

This kit was fairly simple to build but very tight fitting, to an extent that I didn’t glue most of it, it’s mainly friction fitted.
I primed it Halford’s grey and painted the whole thing blue with cheap acrylics before spraying it lightly with white primer. I like the effect and may add little details, particularly on the windows later.

New planet, new mat. Two of the crew were still out of action so I had 4 members for the battle, since we had recruited a K’Erin by the name of Sassa Marr to replace the dead crew member from the last game. We had to secure the centre, which meant a model had to be within 6 inches of the centre of the table for two turns without an enemy.

We were facing 5 mercenaries, one specialist with a 3 shot rattle gun and a leader with a hand cannon and a hand to hand weapon. This was going to be tough.

I didn’t split the crew up this time, I moved all 4 to the south of the table using the building to stay hidden from that deadly rattle gun. The leader and his companion moved towards us to try to get a shot off. Hobbs managed to hit the leader then kill him on the second turn thanks to his tracker sight on his gun. This resulted in a merc running off the table after failing his moral.

Just three left. That was really good going.

As I was staying hidden the specialist with the rattle gun and his team moved off the roof of their building to try to get closer and shoot us, as their AI was tactical.

One of the mercs managed to stun Hobbs pushing him from cover and into full sight of that rattle gun. He was taken out, nasty.

As the enemy AI was tactical it meant the mercs who where on their own would try to get within 3 inches of another friendly. This caused the lone merc who was with the, now dead, leader to retreat a little to join up with the others. 

Sassa Marr really wanted to get into combat, and took the rage out combat drugs to give extra move and brawl, and since she was a K’Erin it meant the drugs worked until the end of the game rather than the next round. She pushed forwards but couldn’t quite get into range for hand to hand.

I got lucky again with Beck, (the one in Orange) who shot and killed the specialist with the rattle gun and I breathed a big sigh of relief. This caused another merc to run off. Just one enemy left and she didn’t last long in the next turn, thanks to Sassa Marr’s shotgun. I had the field and could fulfil the objective and grab the loot at my leisure.

I think with a mix of better tactics and some good luck this was a much easier game. Also buying and painting a new miniature helped as well.

I spent some XP to increase the toughness of two of the crew and Becks combat stat. 

Rolling for Hobbs on the injury table resulted in “school of hard knocks” result which gave him an extra XP, and made me laugh.

It all assembled very easily apart from the red barrels which where’s royal pain. According to the assembly pictures you were supposed to fit 9 discs into each barrel but that was pretty much impossible. In the end it went with 5 discs and now the barrels are just some industrial junk store instead.

Here’s a picture showing a few of the Mantic Enforcer models with a Core Space model and two Citadel miniature. You can see that the Mantic models are quite a bit taller. I don’t really think this will be a major problem, especially for a science fiction game as peoples heigh would vary according to the gravity they grew up on.

This is what I’ve assembled so far. I’m not going to assemble any more for the time being, I’ll keep them for later until I need a model with a certain load out as the rest can be assembled with a variety of weapons.

The models are a mix of hard plastic and soft pvc plastic, the latter which in some cases was a pain to fit together, with parts needing the hot water treatment. Once assembled the models are looking pretty cool.

So far I’ve been playing my Five Parsecs games on a 2’x2’ mat from Battle Systems. I think this is a really good size so I went ahead and ordered most of their other mats for a variety of worlds. I already owned the Core Space mat. They weren’t a bad price either, and one of them will really suit a lot of the upcoming scenarios for My Rangers of Shadow Deep games.

This one took place in a hyper-train station so I tried to mirror that with the terrain I had available.

The yellow markers represented building I had to patrol in order to win the game. I had to end a turn within 2 inches of each building to successfully patrol that part of the station.

I had to watch out for isolationists who were threatening to cause trouble.

I only had four crew members for this game as one was healing up in sickbay and another got himself lost and wasn’t able to make it to the mission in time.

The first building was an easy start. The team split into two around this building but I think this was a mistake and I should have kept them together.

For the team on the right of the building both sides were pinned down early on exchanging shots but neither could make progress. The extra number of shots that the enemy was able to put on us made their mark and took down both Ooma and Treva. I think I should have withdrawn from this but I thought the others on the left side of the table could get into position faster and offer support. They had their own troubles however.

Things initially went much better on the other side with P22 killing the specialist with the autorifle and causing one of the Isolationists to run away. Beck managed to get into position to take on the enemy leader but was taken down thanks to her hand cannon while P22 lost out to the last Isolationist. All of my crew was down.

To make matters worse Treva died, I had to spend more credits for Beck’s injury and P22 will be out of action for 6 turns.

To make it even worse Beck and Hobbs got into a fight resulting in Beck in sickbay for 2 turns. Presumably the fight was over why Hobbs didn’t turn up for the mission and he blames Hobbs over Treva’s death.

I removed the hand to hand weapons from these Citadel cultists models to make them look less eager and a little more generic. I then give them a very rough and ready paint job. They’ll be used as ruffians in Stargrave, generic gangers or some other low level scum, same for Five Parsecs. They are the bottom rung of criminals.

I can always to with more scatter terrain and in skirmish games it makes for a better game, especially in Five Parsecs as it seems cover is very important, both for you and the enemy.
I’ve only assembled a small amount so far but it’s a new experience for me dealing with cardboard in an mdf kit. I sprayed the flat boards as shown in an earlier entry to at least not have bare wood coloured scenery on the table for now. The cardboard sheet did warp ever so slightly but it wasn’t too much of a problem.

I mentioned these in my last post as a possible upgrade to use as Pirate Shock Troopers. I found a great deal on these and scooped them up.
After some thought I’m not going to replace these just Pirate shock troopers exclusively, but as a bit of everything to add variety. After all I’ll be fighting across different worlds with different people and civilisations.
They’ll also work really well with the large amount to different enemies in Five Parsecs, as specialists and as bounty hunters in Stargrave. Some of them might make some great additions to the crew, maybe that robot dog will become someone’s best friend.
I’ve yet to build any of the models but I’m looking forward to it.

I played another small game of Five Parsecs From Home. It was the second battle from the tutorial campaign in the pdf supplement in which I had to kill 4 hacked robots that were shooting anything that moved, with a fifth on showing up on turn three.

This time the AI was defensive rather than aggressive as in the previous game which meant they’d try to stay in cover as much as possible and shoot.

The game started with everyone rushing for cover and slowly making their way forward to the enemy.  These robots were much tougher than the enemies in the previous game and it took quite a bit of shooting and luck to get anything done. I found I needed to set up crossfires and good positions to overcome my enemies defensive nature. I did loose 3 of my team but eventually I managed to corner the remains two robots and take them down. Thinking back I really should of tried to force melee as I had two crew with suitable weapons but this game seems so dangerous I find I’m playing very cautiously. Still it was great fun.

Old citadel chaos cultists armed with rifles painted up to be used as Pirate Troopers for Stargrave. I really wanted to try painting orange rubber hence the boots and masks (remain indoors).

I’ve been hearing about this game for awhile now. After reading through this project – https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1654082/ I went ahead and got myself a copy.

Hobby wise this is a great game to play alongside Stargrave and both the same terrain and miniatures will work very well in both games. Five Parsecs for solo and Stargrave for multiplayer (and the occasional solo as well I guess).

So after only one week since starting this project I guess it will now over both systems. Last night I rolled up my crew and earlier today I played a starter battle from the add on pdf The Trailblazer’s toolkit which contains an introductory campaign.

Below follows a battle report of that game.

Your First Fight

A straight up fight against an enemy gang consisting of 4 starport scum armed with a handgun and a specialist armed with a shotgun.

None of the campaign rules are used, it’s purely a way of learning how a battle works.

These are the end game elite bad guys from the unwanted attention chart. The longer the game continues the better the chance that these guys will turn up to see what all of the noise is about.
I was going to use the two Purge Devastator models from Core Space but it looks like I’ll need a lot more than just two models. The miniatures I did use were scavenged from my original copy of Kill Team. I got the box set when it first came out mainly for the terrain, I never even touched the miniatures, they were still on the sprues. I used the bodies and weapons of the genestealer cult and the heads of the Mechanicus models. I removed a few marks here and there and drilled out the occasional hand as some of them were claws rather than fingers.

I’m pretty happy with the result. The entry in the Stargrave book calls for combat armour which I imagine to be quite bulky. I think these models just about do but I think long term plans would be to demote these models to regular pirate troopers with heavy armour when I get something even heavier looking maybe like the Enforcers from Mantic Games Deadzone https://www.manticgames.com/games/deadzone/enforcers/

Next I plan to paint some old Citadel chaos cultist models armed with rifles as my Pirate Troopers.

This is a really useful terrain crate for Stargrave. I got more than enough objective markers (see two posts ago) and a whole set of scatter furniture. It paints up nicely also. It is that softer plastic so clean up is a little more difficult and I had to use hot water to fix a few bends but the pieces feel quite nice to handle as they are a heavier plastic than you would expect.

With the comms tower finished I’m really happy with what I have now for Stargrave. Along with a mix of 40k & Corespace I can do a good variety of tables. These pods will also work very well in rural tables.

That’s enough terrain for now next I’ll get back to miniatures and start on some Pirate Shock Troopers.

–

Here I’m playing with the connectivity of the pods. The roofs can be removed for internal excess. This will be great for Stargrave as objectives can be placed inside, as well as putting snipers on the roof.

Here’s a larger setup using aquarium gravel filters for flooring, which is just the right height for the pod doors. You can see some of the internal wall dividers to creat rooms inside.

The gantry steps don’t really fit with the pods on their own. At the time of purchase I didn’t know that I got side ladders with the kit.

I have one more separate building to paint and assemble, as well as some terrain crate furniture to paint. After that I plan on painting more miniatures for Stargrave (including the two shown in these picture).

I’m pretty happy with the result. There’s a few places I didn’t spray or didn’t bother to mask as I thought it would be hidden in the final build, mainly inside the pod itself and the inside edges at the two ends. I’ll know better for the next ones. There’s also one tiny smudge where I was a little careless when taking the masking tape off while the paint was still wet.

I’m pretty happy with the result. Obviously there’s more work to be done such as dirtying down, painting the edges of the mdf etc, but it looks much better like this than not at all, especially for the time spent. If this works well enough for the rest of the kits the table won’t look too bad with this basic stage of painting.