Stargrave – Crew
As Stargrave was supported right away with three different plastic kits, there is no real "first" one - but we have to start somewhere, so we grab the Crew kit as it has the product number 001.
We have a 28mm scaled science-fiction kit, covering a total of 20 multi-part hard plastic miniatures for a RRP of 20 GBP. That goes for all of the three initial kits, the crew, the mercenaries and the troopers. The crew is the "core" of most warbands, not just armed up troops, but actually people who make up the crew of spaceship - thus the name.
The Crew box covers 4 sprues of 5 miniatures each, along with two stripes of 20 flat 25mm diameter round bases. Casting is properly done and on the same high level that you get from the Renedra, Plastic Soldier Miniatures or Warlord Games kits. Proper use of the available space, so you have a lot of options for the five bodies to add to, lots of heads, different arms and gear.
Stargrave – sci-fi wargames in the ravaged galaxy
From the gifted mind of Joseph A. McCullough comes another skirmish ruleset at Osprey Games - Stargrave. The sci-fi variant of the very successful Frostgrave was launched mid-2021 and gathered more than 115.000 GBP with its initial campaign.
The very broad pledges of the crowdfunding campaign supplied the new game right away with a hardcover rulebook of 176 pages (25 GBP RRP) with a lovely layout and a whooping three different plastic kits (which we will cover in the coming days) supported by a variety of metal miniatures (we'll cover parts of these as well) to build your own crew of space-faring adventurers.
June review
Managed to get some things going in June. Some new and final arrivals to my collection.
I am a huge fan of the work of Paul Hicks, and one of rarer miniatures (besides the event miniatures he sculpted) is this set of British Napoleonic soldiers, strongly influenced by Sean Bean in Sharpe. After looking for a trader in Europe and trying to get these second hand - but with no results for over almost a year, I decided to order directly with Brigade Games. Shipping wasn't cheap at 28 USD (for a total of ~50 USD worth of miniatures), but went incredibly fast, as these arrived within 10 days - incl. going through customs.
This isn't going to be some mass combat, but really a small skirmish setup around Sharpe's Rifles. So after looking at Osprey Games' Chosen Men, but putting that aside for it being far too large, as it is more like Saga at 40+ miniatures and not what I had in mind for the small battles, I went with Song of Drums & Shakos by Ganesha Games. Tabletop Stories has a review on the rule set. And if you're already there, give their Mecha-Spin off of What a tanker a go.
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 6
Kamoley, half a year has already passed! If the second half of the year is also coming up so fast, I really need to get busy to finish my Mortal Gods project this year.
Admittedly, this is difficult for me at the moment. No, that's not because of my motivation, in fact it's quite strong at the moment. However, my family's demand for time with dad is high right now, which is absolutely fine since I enjoy spending time with my kids very much, but the hobby therefore has to take a back seat for a while.
This is reflected in my painting output this month - three models have received a touch of color and perhaps this shows another reason for my poor progress - there are three models from three different systems. So the realization matures that you also need a certain discipline in the hobby and have to stick to one thing until you have at least one milestone completed.