Quarantine 37 – Stargrave

The half-crews have found eachother. The brothers embrace and count their lucky stars. Mallardy the Chiseller rolled off high on the between game health table and I presume Captain Maughan Vars used his healing abilities to perk him back up.

They got 190 experience out of a potential 200 and only got one loot. The loot turned out to be an advanced handweapon giving a +1 Fight. So I awarded this to my commando Arnaldo, in way of reward for his pivotal head splitting crit just as the teams health had dropped to their most dire levels.

I think that a way of leveling up a team will not be to toy with bringing the standard level of stats up slowly, but to spike stats on certain characters already strong in one area. With the fairly spiky brutal swing of results I feel that one character going from a +1 to a +2 in the reality of game play won’t often translate to a success, but if you add someone with a Fight of +3 to a +4 I feel that they will make better use of that improvement as long as you play to that strength.

Mihaan Vars is now a level 1 First Mate with an improved activation number for his Remote fire ability and only needing 10 more XP to get to level 2 next time out.

Next the team get to unite but now face an alien threat. And need to board a train to escape. So now I need to try to cobble together the terrain for that, but at least I have the aliens ready to take the field when it comes to it.

Been hunting through my terrain ideas box and scrapped together some bits. This experiment chamber is a Cocktail sticks holder with a citadel paint lid glued to one end as an airlock. (There’s an irony there somewhere). The mini of the unfortunate test subject reduced to goo and blood is a Mantic Zombie torso from a bits box.

I also have an idea for an MRI type scanner from an old bike lock holder and a Sci-Fi walk through scanner of some kind. The lab is nearly ready.

I wanted to change a few things on the board to give it the trashed lab scene shared in the book. There are some StarSaga terrain tables in my collection. Some look like canteen tables and some look like lab tables, but none of them are painted well so you’ll only get to see them in passing when I do my battle report. I am happier with my Volvic water caps Sci-Fi storage efforts and the doors. The armoury racks and the lab furniture aren’t great, but just want to get through them. “What were they messing with in this lab that required guns?” Sadly I think they are going to find out the hard way.

The book says that decomposition gases as a by-product of the plague often just float away into filtration and out into space, but when they are trapped in clothing or armour than can build up and become explosive. I picked the poxwalkers because they are bloated. I painted up one ages ago and another today, but I think they are the only two I have. So as a nod back to the original story I made a bloater with a Crewman body a Plaguebearer arm, a Bolt Action arm and added green stuff for bloating. Maybe I should have gone bigger and bolder with the bloating, but I don’t mind the end result.

The next mission sounds like it wants a few bloaters, but I hope three will be good enough once I start exploding a few during the scenario.

As this is a mini campaign and half a crew the experience was capped at 200.

Wasn’t too tough getting there, but forgetting to roll on the encounter table every end of full turn was a mistake that probably taints the result.

Lifts opened – 20xp each = 40xp

Game completed = 30xp

Crew members surviving – 5x 15xp = 75xp

Loot tokens collected – 20xp each = 40xp

Creature kills – 5xp each, max of 20xp = 20xp

I could also have added 5 or 6 successful Powers being used worth 10xp each but that would take me over the 200.

The loot was rolled for and the Data was valuable info and netted me 100 credits.

The physical loot was an advanced weapon. So I rolled on the weapons chart and got a new pistol with an improved range of 14″ and a +1 Damage. I think that will go to my Captain, but not sure.

The experience helps the Captain level up and got spent on one stat improvement and one power activation roll improvement. I change my Heal power activation TN to +11 and a +1 to my shoot skill (up to 4)

The next mission is in a lab. I will need more exploding zombie bloaters and more terrain as Captain Vars’ brother and First Mate tries to escape the reanimated corpses in a biohazard lab with the other half of the crew.

At the start of turn two I realized I had placed my Captain in danger of getting mobbed and was only close enough to group activate one of my crew.

Wanted to make difficult terrain as variety for my games. The gross spill and the threat of that tentacle seems difficult enough to me.

Sprue for the tentacle, my standard flooring with strips of packing strapping, some flock hit with PVA and paint and a cap from something to act as the pipe. Nurgle’s Rot as slime and some Deathguard Green and Athonian Camoshade washes to give the slime effect I wanted. I also sprayed a touch of dunkelgelb yellow spray just off the far edge and added some drops of a deep green contrast paint here and there to keep it being just a uniform green puddle.

I suffer with diabetes. The devil tempted me with cakes and the god’s abandoned me to my sinful fate. Nurgle loves me though, he hit me with psoriasis for good measure. Lol.

But… The insulin caps are a great Sci-Fi shape.

This terrain was bought to you through the medium of diabetes insulin needle caps and something left over from an IKEA box (plastic leg, coaster, stopper of some kind?) making a fun piece of Sci-Fi terrain. Perhaps a generator, perhaps a substation, perhaps an art installation. I will let my opponent decide when I finally get playing.

There’s “Tabletop Ready” and there’s “Encounter Table-top Ready”.

I am happy with these even though they are not my best work. Not sure whether some will even see the table because beyond the odd scenario there’s no guarantee they will all be needed.

The warriors don’t look out of place with the rest of the “Nameless”? minis from StarSaga. They got a red Halfords spray over a bone white spray I had already used to prime them. I had a Lost Patrol scheme in mind, but I really don’t know how likely I am to complete that or play that. Far less likely than playing Stargrave. They then got the Dark Contrast Shyish Purple over everything but the head, but I brushed it thinnest over the arms. Then the army got a Fleshtearer Red Contrast over the arms and a Vallejo Royal Purple drybrush over the bone looking torso and back. The face is mostly Bugman’s Glow and Reikland Fleshshade wash, with dots of a Bugman’s Glow dappled across the back of the head afterwards. The claws are a Zandri Dust base with a Wraithbone highlight.

The acid spitters are fun. The “spit” is just the swarf from drilling into bits of sprue with my pin vice during some terrain building. Then coated with PVA and Nurgle’s Rot to give the slime acid effect.

The space zombies are the protagonists in only half of the game. There are alien bugs on the space station too.

There are 5 classes of bug and I was really struggling with what might fit the bill. Then I remembered there was a StarSaga bag that came as a Kickstarter extra through the post as I guess a wave 2 or late wave 1 addition I was entitled to as part of my pledge level.

The bags I got had some shooting aliens that weren’t going to fit the narrative, but these minis gave me enough variety to cover 4 of the 5 classes and the last “warrior” class will be represented with some Tyranids.

Not sure whether 3 of each will cover everything in game, but I am reluctant to spend too much more on this part of the project. I may just have to make encounters harder or easier by dragging in better or worse alien bugs depending on the shortfall in any given scenario.

The paint scheme is Black Primer with a Halfords Red Primer zenith. Then hit with a Wraithbone drybrush over everything. Then a Bugman’s Glow drybrush over the fleshier parts and a dark Purple Contrast Paint over the more armoured areas. Then a dry brush of Vallejo Royal Purple over all the armour.

I still need to pick out some details, maybe come up with something a bit bolder as an extra colour somewhere on some of the variants. Need to get this scheme down on some Tyranids to see how they look. Need to make the spitter aliens a bit gross. Need to base them all, but for an evenings work I think this is going great guns.

Pringle tub and apnea mask pipe industrial piece.
Cocktail stick containers becoming Sci-Fi silos or containers of some kind.
A sprue made lift platform.
StarSaga terrain pieces.
MDF TTCombat crates.

Sci-fi gantry.  Scratch built from cocktail sticks, chain and packing strapping flooring.

This game will have enough terrain to make it look good and get played if it kills me.

There was a lot a silver spray paint and some model mates spray making these looks. Some Nulin Oil here and there and some dry brushing of Vallejo Silver but nothing particularly clever.