Reptiliad Revolution

In 1987 Rick Priestly created something rather new. He gave us a book we know as Rogue Trader and inaugurated a game called Warhammer 40,000. This was a rich setting, with numerous aliens and hints of dark forces and occult practices in a sort of Holy Roman Empire in space. We, the gamers, were encouraged to create our own additions, converting miniatures from Citadel and other manufacturers or even making our own entirely from scratch. The setting was a sandbox we could sculpt to our liking. And while many things changed since then more than a few of us still inhabit that ancient and war weary world. Among the inhabitants is a gentleman who goes by Diego.

Diego has not abandoned that call to create. Recently he gave us a lovely reminder of what could have been and indeed what can be with a project he called Space Riders. The names have been changed, but the limb count remains the same. Green skins might lose their k, but not their teeth. The mermen of the outer reaches still have fins and gills, much as before. Tremendous insectile predators still drag their knuckles on alien worlds. And indeed, hexapodal reptiliads might have a new taxonomy, but they surely still blend the centaur and the crocodile as effectively as they ever did, with three toes to a foot and four fingers to a hand and weapons apparently grown as much as forged. It is with one of these reptiliads that I begin my foray into Diego's "Riders."

First, let me say that this is a positively lovely miniature. It's no mean copy of what came before, but a delicate and completely new sculpt of the finest quality. The details are crisp. The casting is clean. The pose is ever so slightly more dynamic than the originals without being incompatible. In short, this thing is first rate. Rather than being a labor of love from a dedicated fan these really ought to be official sculpts from the newest employee of the Nottinghamshire juggernaut. But I'll take it any way I can get it. This may be the only way I'll ever have a half decent squad of hexapodal reptiliads. For comparison here's the new fellow with one of the Citadel sculpts that inspired his heroic form.

And here he is from another angle with the entire squad. (Minus the one sculpt not yet in my private collection.)

I feel quite certain that this is destined to be a sought after, cherished, and surpassingly unusual casting and I feel deeply fortunate that I was there to witness its release into the wilds of space. Thank you sir. And thanks to all who helped make this possible.

Until the next time . . .

We ride!

. . . (in space.)

__________________________________________________

Addendum: For the interested inquries can be sent to To those interested send inquiries on Facebook to Diego Serrate. You can also find him on the Oldhammer Forum, where he goes by Obscure Creator. I think he'd be happy to sell them directly.

The Tartarus Gryffin

Given its uncanny similarity to the eponymous creature of Terran myth the Tartarus Gryffin is almost certainly a project of some long ago genetic engineering. There is some archaeological evidence that Anesidora was terraformed as a resort during the ancient Third Terran Republic. It may well be that the gryffin was created there and spread slowly with private collectors. The great avimamalian creatures are remarkably fearsome predators, well suited to their native environment using their keen sight to hunt and their sense of smell to locate carrion many miles distant.

Shocking Forces

In my slow quest to collect every piece of old lead I can get my hands on I've discovered a number of ranges I somehow missed back in the day. I've talked before about the Metal Magic Spacelords and Grenadier Future Warriors now available from Moonraker Miniatures. Unlike the imported German Phagons, I technically came across a few examples from the newest lead squeeze in the eighties when they were new, but not the particular sculpts that have drawn me to the line now. These fellows started life with a line that grew out of Grenadier's K-Force. Sometime later Demonblade Games bought them, expanded the range, and renamed them Shock Force. Later still Mega Miniatures came into them, but they have since sold them and I know not to whom, which is a shame, really. These are some great models. I picked up several examples in Demonblade blisters. Below you can see an "Org" called "The Bullet: Org Cleaner" and a "mutant" dubbed "Dominator."

Since their arrival on the Tartarus Rim they've become the security chiefs for the Rex-Avis clan. The fellow in the Italian suit goes by Eldovsky, or Ivan Grigorievitch to his friends. He's fond of subtle solutions to complex problems. His partner (both on and off the clock) is named Cookie Bernard. Cookie favors a more direct approach. The two of them have been traveling companions for quite a long time, but only managed to get officially hitched recently, thanks to a loosening of Imperial control in the sector. In spite of their differences they seem to make a remarkably good team.

Shock Force is truly a great source for interesting characters. Not only do they have sci-fi beastmen, satyrs, demons, mutants, and ambiguously vampiric sorts, but among their more distinctive bits are their space rats. They seem a little scarce at the moment, so I have only the example below, which was one of the heavies, but they had a full line with rats of all sorts and sizes. 

I've placed her with "Trooper Gaxt" for a size comparison. This boy is . . . large. I really should have put her on a square Ogryn grade base, but she came with the round slotta that I used. This is something of a problem, really, as she's so front heavy I had to add some honest to god lead to the back of the base to keep her upright. And that's not the only problem: She was also rather poorly cast, with several large voids that needed filling and a couple of large fractures. Further, the feet are rather too delicate for a miniature of such weight. They are extremely light and her pose puts her on the balls of her feet, placing a great deal of stress on the slender rat arches. Not a visual problem, mind. I think they look great. But they bend so easily that they ultimately broke under the strain of gravity and a paintbrush dumping her on the concrete floor. I solved the problem by adding in two wedges of greenstuff below his feet so that more surface area is in contact with the base, as you can see below.

For all the challenges, I must say I am fairly pleased with the result and I'm hoping I can pick up more of these rats, and more of Chaz Elliot's work in general. The details were quite compelling and characterful. This girl has a story to tell and I like having her in my world. And while this miniature had some casting problems, the others were absolutely fine. My hope is that she is the exception rather than the rule, and her unusual size and complexity masked the trouble allowing her to slip through. So far I've found no other problems in the dozen or so miniatures I picked up. On all the others the details are as crisp as any castings I've worked with; sharp, clean, and lovely. This gives me much hope.

As always, thank you for joining me. It's been a fun ride and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Enter the Rồng

Among the many sports found on the Tartarus Rim is the ancient game of Street Racing. Private parties maintain select roads especially for the purpose, though given the remoteness of the sites the tracks often serve several ends, simultaneously providing access to factories, mining compounds, or the private citadels of executives and government officials.

The car to beat in recent years has been Rồng-1, or "Dragon 1." Like all the vehicles of such races Rồng-1 is a restored and heavily modified twen-cen hydrocarbon burner. Replicas are legal, of course, so long as they follow the basic pattern, but the Dragon is an original (if any millennia old car with so many replacement parts can rightly be called original.) Her pedigree is beyond peer: a 1996 Shelby Viper with a McCullough 1710 flex-stage e-charger providing nearly optimal boost, coupled with a Christman supercooler that reduces thermal bleed and boost heat, even in hot conditions. The Dragon is currently in the stable of a Blake Walker, who makes his home near Lace Rock on Moab III.

Rồng 1 gained it's enigmatic name from an early owner, a gentleman of Asian ancestry in the ancient Earth state of Usa, where the car was built. In his native tongue rồng means dragon, and it was he that gave the car the first of it's many distinctive liveries. When absolutely correct, the name is pronounced approximately "raum", though opposing drivers generally prefer "wrong."

At the opposite end of today's lists can be seen Logansport A-1, often called "PTA" or "Smarty"

This vehicle belongs to a Logansport mining boss named Marcus Camber who has been collecting twen-cen guzzlers for many years. He has earned a rather unsavory reputation as a ruthless and remorseless competitor. Just what modifications Camber has made to his mount haven't been disclosed, but given his disregard for either courtesy or custom he is likely to be give Walker a real challenge, especially as he has had his sights on the Dragon for several years now.

Like the other cars mentioned before in Civil Transportation both Rồng-1 and LGPTA-1 are box scaled die cast toys, but they both work out well enough. Both are modified to some extent. Smarty got new interior colors, some weathering, and a coat of matte varnish to dull down the shine. The Dragon received a top to bottom repaint, with an added cowling for one of the assorted mysterious engine mods (perhaps the Christman supercooler.) All in all, I'm pleased enough. They're not perfect, but for such harsh conditions they don't really need to be. Both were the right price: free, but had I paid for them I doubt that they'd have been expensive. And they were fairly easy to break down, paint up, and bolt back together: all in all a win.

So now it's off to the races on distant Moab. As always, thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Alien Zoology

The Tartarus Rim, in spite of its remoteness, has become host to a wide variety of flora and fauna . . . which is another way of saying that I'd like to force my adventurers to deal with exotic creatures not previously familiar to them. To that end, we have some new creatures and alien races to share with you. First we have  a Ramshackle miniature which, for the purposes of our story, I have dubbed the Fell Worm in honor of its creator Curtis Fell.

The blind Fell Worm is a particularly adaptable species. Juvenile worms in early instars are quite small and often go undetected in spoiled meat and protein rich vegetable material. As a result, they have spread undetected on tramps and freighters throughout virtually all of human space. Any system with a sufficiently dry silicate rich environment is likely infested with these enormous scavengers.

Another type of miniature from Ramshackle is this lovely monkey . . .

Humans are but one variety of simianoid life found in the known galaxy. Many other intelligent (or at least marginally intelligent) species have evolved along similar lines. The alpha males of the Donald's Monkey can often be recognized by its distinctive blonde fringe, frequently combed over an otherwise bald head. While some believe these creatures distant relatives of the Jokaero they are much more aggressive and rather less analytical. So defensive are they of their territory that many believed that their faces always bore the rictus smile seen on these three individuals.

Next up we have a miniature originally from Grenadier, but available through one or two contemporary sources. I got mine from em4. You can find it in their aliens line, where they call it a "cockroach." If you have difficulty finding something there, you might also take a peak at Moonraker Miniatures, which seems to be collaborating with em4 and has much of their old stock. I'm calling these fellows the khepri, after the Egyptian scarab gods. (Any similarity to China Mieville's characters is strictly, well mostly coincidental, though I can't say as I dislike it.)

The khepri are rather unusual aliens. Their intelligence is the subject of some dispute. They appear to have complex language and craft great art, but they make no known tools and are not innately spacefaring, though they have befriended many other species and by this device spread far and wide, even though their numbers are small. They are believed to be native to the second planet in the Neith system, since their numbers are greatest there, though their presence in Khnum is nearly as great and they can be found throughout the Memphian and neighboring Tartarus sectors.

So as you can see, there's lots of interesting and dangerous animals out there. It's a big, lovely, scary universe. Keep your seatbelt fastened and your pistol handy. As always, thank you for reading along. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Civil Transportation for an Uncivil World

Your typical apocalyptic wasteland is never complete without a way to get around that requires the consumption of precious and rare resources which might well have precipitated the trouble in the first place. To that end I bring you vehicles of the unarmed sort. Our first example, El Burro Grande (which I can't help but call the burrito grande) is a small utility truck of uncertain ancestry. (Which is to say it was certainly not made by Imperial Motors.) The suspension is whacked all to heck. It's welded, bolted, riveted, and generally taped together from the pieces of a dozen donor vehicles. It's bullet scarred and battle bruised, but it runs when you can find fuel. And it's available for rent on a daily or even weekly basis (for those bigger jobs), and the owners don't tend to ask too many questions about new holes and burn marks that don't interfere with the machinery. This bright orange donkey of a cart may not win at the Derby, but he'll get you there. If you want fast, go get a red one. Logansport spacers are more concerned with payload and price.

Simple and reliable older vehicles are also quite popular, though they tend to be examples too heavily modified for the collector's market in the core worlds. The "Bummer" is one such. In this case passenger seating was sacrificed for cargo capacity. The weld jobs won't win any beauty contests, but they don't seem too likely to fall off in the wastes, which is something of a bonus. And it has enough ground clearance to get you through some of the sketchier boulder fields: a nice plus.

For those not familiar, the first truck is a more or less unmodified Gorka Morka "ork truk" acquired used on the bay. It was in rather brutal shape, missing parts, seemingly painted with housepaint, and held together (where applicable) with hot glue, but that just gives it more character to fit the scene. The second was an inexpensive die-cast Hummer given to me by a friend and quickly sent off to the chop shop for appropriate modifications and new paint. The scale is one of those arbitrary "box" scales you sometimes see where all models are about the same size, no matter how big the original was, but I figure there's a good deal of room for play. The landspeeder crew models I sometimes use to size these things fit, so it's all good.

There are several box scale die-cast jobs in the same odd-lot gift, so expect more vehicles to slowly pop up. Why there are so many vintage cars on this remote dust-bowl moon I'm not quite sure yet. Maybe there was a collector. Or maybe a couple of the designs just had legs and kept getting dredged back up for millennia. It's a strange and dark age and decent explanations are sometimes dearly bought, if you can get them at any price.

But anyway . . . as always thank you for reading. And stay tuned.

Sincerely,

The Composer

The Ramshackle Space Lords of the Tartarus Rim

Conspicuous among the families of the Tartarus Rim is the Rex-Avis clan. We have previously met several members, foremost among them Arthur Zanzibar Rex-Avis (in the tank chair) . . .

his mother and clan matriarch Livinia January "Colorado" Rex-Avis and her chief advisor and confidante Sir Stanley Ursaline-Drakemore, Royal Order of the Flowering Lamp . . .

and Colorado's younger sister Nepenthia Rex-Avis Wadsworth.

Today we meet the further clan offspring. First I bring you Olympia Sable Rex-Avis, the younger child of Colorado. She is a supreme negotiator and expert businesswoman. She is equally comfortable quietly retrieving family heirlooms from disreputable businessmen or convincing dubious creditors that forgiving family debts better suits their interests than  collecting them.

Olympia has a marked fondness for music and story, thus the rainbow chasing frogman Robin suits her twice. His skill on the banjo and his family histories and spectral quests are unrivaled in the Rim territories.

Adopted son Jasper Dysdeimos Rex-Avis completes the clan. His is the life of the fearless explorer, often far from home and hearth.

The natural son of a third sister, now deceased, Jasper's position in the clan was assured even before Colorado took him as her own some fifteen years prior.

Finally we see the entire clan together on a rare and celebrated occasion.

Apart from Colorado and Sir Stanley, who are from the Spacelords range, the clan members use miniatures from Ramshackle. This is a relatively new range of great character and potential. Some, like Nepenthia and Jasper, are cast in metal, but a great many others are made of a crisp and detailed, if somewhat brittle resin. (Nepenthia's ride, the Vole Light Tank, is made of the same resin by the same company.) All told I must say I very much like the line. They paint up better even than I might have guessed and I think they fit in quite well with both the Spacelords and the old Citadel miniatures that make up the bulk of my collection. Again, my hat is off to Mr. Fell and his cohorts at Ramshackle.

And my thanks goes also to you, gentle readers. I hope you find some use or enjoyment here.

Sincerely,

The Composer