Stargrave – Mercenaries

The third plastic kit from the initial Stargrave release are the SG003 Mercenaries. Probably the most colourful from the trio, and certainly worth a look. So, let's upon up this box.

Where the Troopers are the uniform wearing military force of a corporation or government, these mercenaries are coming along still as veterans of their trade, but a lot more specialised and unique. You get troops in once again heavy armour, but with more humanoid (and less humanoid) variation in terms of face and a wilder mix of their gear / weaponry.

Once more, North Star and Osprey packed 20 miniatures in a box for 20 GBP. All of them multi-part hard plastic and of course compatible with the Crew and Troopers. As any other box, four sprues with five miniatures each and a double pack of a 10-base sprue with flat round 25mm bases.

No issues with the casting here. Minor mould lines, well casted details and good use of the available space in terms of sprue layout.

The head count went up to 22 on this sprue, and we have a lot more aliens in here, with Reptiloids, a monkey, a racoon, a squid and various helmets with and without face masks / visor. And what is neat, the weaponry shows a bit more flexible rifle discipline, so you have them waving those around with one hand / arm, using the other to carry gear or other options.

Content of each sprue:

• 5 Bodies
• 22 Heads
• 3 arms with pistols
• 1 arm with missile launcher
• 2 arms with shotguns
• 1 arm with a sniper rifle
• 1 arm with a machine gun
• 3 left arms with data-pad, briefcase and ammunition crate
• A lot of rifle arms
• 12 items of gear like bags, ammunition and pouches

As you can see the Mercenaries come in heavy armour, but in a different design compared to the Troopers. They have smaller ammunition bags directly sculpted on their bodies, so this underlines this special operations nature of the unit. And like the others, they don't have a small base or tab on their feet. They are just glued onto the base of your choice.

Due to the variation of weapons, and that they are hold in different ways compared to the more uniform style of the Troopers, you benefit from taking a look at the numbers on the arms to see, which left and right arm goes together. After assembling the crew and troopers, I went full in with the hardened Mercenaries, so gave them a bit more variation in their gear to build up more character.

After choosing the weapons, next up would be to decide which 5 heads would fit those, and I went with this mixture of human and very noticeable non-human heads.

Next and final step are the little pieces of gear, that are added to the miniatures. As mentioned further above, each sprue covers more than 10 items that can be added to them. So as a mercenary would carry his equipment with him, as he can't rely on the same supply chain as organised "official" military, I gave them a bit to show that.

A few of the Stargrave plastic models we've build from the different sets side by side. These are from the Crew, Troopers and Mercenaries kit. Scale shows it, we have a good 28mm scale, with slightly overdrawn proportions, that make it heroic scale.

We can't leave you here without showing the Stargrave models next to some of the other miniatures on the market. Something most people have at home, a regular (now First Born) Space Marine from Warhammer 40k, and as we have modular plastic kits here, it makes sense to show which one would probably work as part donors, like the Bolt Action range. And for the Star Wars people out there, the 35+ mm scaled Star Wars Legions is obviously too large.

There are a lot of miniature companies out there, producing "generic" sci-fi kits like Wargames Factory, Wargames Atlantic, or Maelstrom ranges, so we want to include these as well. But from my point of view, Stargrave offers the sharpest details on those. The last picture covers a bit taller Dreamforge Eisernkern, the more true-scaled Antares range and last but not least, a T'Au warrior from the late 00s Warhammer range.

It was a bit tricky to match those soldiers afterwards to the Stargrave archetypes, but this seems like a reasonable matchup.

Runner (Pistol, Knife), Sniper, Sentry, Armoured Trooper, Gunner.

Conclusion

Proper setup with these three boxes. I guess most people who go for an independent crew, would be best of by mixing the Crew and Mercenary kit, and maybe use the troopers as mobs or enemy forces. As these are modular und compatible with the Frostgrave range and many other plastic kits by Gripping Beast, Warlord and so on, you can really go all the way here. With some future cultist in worn down rags (using Frostgrave Cultists bodies) or building strongly around the Ghost Archipelago Crewmen kit but using weaponry from Stargrave for a more Freebooter look, or mix these with the Dead Man's Hand Gunfighters for the long awaited Starstarr / Bravegrave setup.

Whereas the Troopers could be used as corporate or government military force for larger games, you could use these for a rebel army of the same conflict or use the more advanced gear and mix a veteran unit from it.

1 GBP per miniature is really reasonable and once again, if you get all three boxes, split them or make use of the individual sprue sales by North Star, you can build a really nice variety for your crew and sci-fi skirmish setups. With the open framework of Stargrave you can build a lot of themed crews, as mentioned in the initial review on the rulebook itself. The racoon head in here just screams Guardians of the Galaxy, the Squid-head could be used for a Zoidberg or Mon Calamari and so on. Mix in some of the metal miniatures from the Stargrave range itself, or use bits and pieces (especially heads) from your bitbox and you can go a long way.

Happy that we have this product. Back last year, when it was released via Nickstarter we went for the pledge with the three plastic kits and split it three ways (I kept two sprues from each box and Gregor and Florian got one from each boxed set) and I think it is very neat, what you can do with the content of these. Didn't regret pledging and think it is a useful base for a lot of project ideas.

Stargrave is a brand of North Star Figures and Osprey Games.