Stargrave - The Talons of Solubris

Probably put too much effort into this free to purchase runner.

Started with a Gates of Antares Freeborn body and arms with Stargrave Crew alien head. The arms are meant to combine with a two handed rifle of some description. The runner class is meant to have no armour and a pistol and knife. I reached for an old Warlord Games Japanese army plastic sprue and used a grenade right hand and a painting left hand. I found what should probably be a communication device from a Epirian Handlers from a Maelstrom Games sprue I got free at Salute years ago. To me, laid flat on the pointing fist hand, looked like a Sci-Fi pistol to me. The grenade hand was meant to look like the hilt of a knife, but as I looked through sprues I wasn’t finding anything I really liked. So I turned to: a Gerry Can…

Gerry Can Show You How To Reuse Miniature Sprues

I had a red clear sprue that held Warlord Games pin markers that seemed perfect to give me a Lazer Stiletto (baby light saber) that would fill the sci-fi knife brief nicely.

The paint job was about playing down the armour, going away from the main Les Grognards uniform of the Captain and throwing down my obligatory dose of tartan. The alien head was always going to tie the body back into the rest of the warband so I didn’t need to make her grey and yellow to match the Captain.

I used Snakebite Leather Contrast Paint for the majority of the model, but left the right leg as the bare Halfords grey primer to give me some OSL effects. I built up this space with some Averland Sunset, Citadel Yellow wash, some Reikland Fleshshade wash, then a touch of watery Mephiston Red and Blood for the Blood God mix. I think it came out OK. The rest of the “armour” got a Steal Legion Drab highlight.

I used Black Templar Contrast for the webbing. The tartan started out with a Brown Violet base and a Athonian Camoshade wash. Then had Deathguard Green lines with parallel Mephiston Red lines either side. Then Orcflesh Green Contrast horizontal lines were added but these finished very glossy, so I hit it all with an Agrax Earthshade wash that kinda washed out a lot of my fairly subtle work. I built some of the lines back up with the original Deathguard and Mephiston. I really like the end look, but sadly the photos haven’t really captured what you get to see with the mini in hand.

The basing was kinda necessary after realising that the pose pitched the mini too far forward. I wanted it to look like a head long runner, but I glued the head too straight forward and it looked odd. I cut some neatly cut coffee stirrer pieces and spray painted the silver to be the steps. I didn’t just want them to be a straight staircase, so to add a Sci-Fi element I added a clear red support column from the pin markers sprue again, that I imagine can raise and maybe produce more stairs or something.