Category Archives: Sci-Fi

Painting Imperial Assault

I took a break from my Insanity Pile to start a new project: Fantasy Flight Games’s Imperial Assault. I knew once I bought this game that I would paint the miniatures, unlike the Space Hulk game I bought 3 years ago (I hate Blood Angels, and if I ever paint another Genestealer in my life, it will be too soon.)

Star-Wars-Assault

Imperial Assault comes with 33 miniatures, plus a bonus pack of Luke and Darth Vader for a total of 35 plastic 28mm Star Wars figures. The sculpts are pretty high quality, although there is no variation. For example, the 9 Stormtroopers that come in the box are all in the same pose. I haven’t played the game yet, but I’m told it’s a lot like Descent, only with Star Wars characters.

I’m not thrilled about that, to be honest. While both games have great-looking miniatures, I have played Descent a few times and haven’t exactly had fun. Usually my fellow dungeoneers and I would make it just far enough into the dungeon to feel like we were accomplishing something before the “overlord” would unleash a threat hand so ridiculous it would wipe us all out in one turn. Cheap deaths? Yes. Fun? No. Guess we’ll see how similar Imperial Assault is when we give it a whirl. But that won’t be until after I’m done painting the figures.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Cue the Imperial March! I decided to start with the Emperor’s Royal Guard. Not really much to say about the paint scheme as they’re overwhelmingly red. After I sprayed them with matte sealant, I decide to use a gloss varnish on the helmets to make them stand out a bit.

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I did the same with these Imperial officers’ boots. The officers were more fun to paint.

I think I’ll do the Stormtroopers next in one big lot, although I’m not looking forward to painting that much white.

Gentlemen… Behold!!

I just love Rattrap’s Professor Kroon. He reminds me of Dr. Weird from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Here is the old-style Professor Tobias Kroon with a small army of Kroonbots. I painted them up a while ago for use with .45 Adventure but I haven’t got around to playing any scenarios with them yet.

The Type II Robots are a personal favorite of mine, although they would have been a cast-iron bitch to put together with a pin vise instead of the Dremel I used. I bored a hole through the bodies of each robot and inserted a 3/64 mm brass rod through the body to pin the arms. Attempting to attach the arms without pinning would have been impossible.  I decided to go with the Cylon look for the optical sensors. The bases are from Micro Art Studios.

Rattrap recently released new miniatures for their most popular characters for the .45 Adventure 2nd Edition. Although I like the new Professor Kroon model, I didn’t feel the need to buy it as the old one is just as good, IMO. (I do like the new Jade Hood model much better that the old one, though.)

I have a scenario idea kicking around in my head for my players to attempt to thwart a nefarious alliance between Professor Kroon and Bob Murch’s Radon Zombies of the Ionosphere.

“Today New Commerce, tomorrow…THE WORLD!!!”

War Rocket Galacteers

The Galacteer Fleet

Here we have the noble defenders of Earth, the Galacteers. Once again it’s the starter fleet from Hydra Miniatures, with 3 Class 2 and 9 Class 1 rockets.

I went with a silver and blue theme for these ships after trying about 3 other color schemes. This one worked the best for me. It also gave me the chance to paint with metallics on a large scale, which is something I rarely do nowadays. The Galacteer Class 3 ships look very cool and I’m tempted to buy one just to have, but so far logic has prevailed and I will try the game out first before committing myself to any further purchases.

Close up of the ships

War Rocket Imperial Fleet

The Fleet

 

Finally painted up my starting War Rocket fleets. Above is the Imperial starter fleet, available from Hydra Miniatures. The Imperial Fleet is the military force of the evil cosmic overlord Marduk, and in my opinion, the coolest-looking of the fleets.

Starter fleets come with 9 Class 1 and 3 Class 2 Rockets, which is enough of a force to play a decent game.  Depending on whether or not I like the game, I may invest in more fleets, or at least some Class 3 and Class 4 ships. They certainly look cool.

Close-up of the Imperial Class 2 Rocket

 

ALL HAIL MARDUK!!!!