Painting Update - North Star minis

Howdy folks,

Just putting up a quick post to show some progress from the beginning of the month. I bought this blister pack from the Sentry Box in Calgary quite some time ago, but I’m finally getting it off of the painting table. The pack is from Northstar miniatures, from their Frostgrave line And they figure that it should be able to work in almost any horror, setting or Stargrave or Scrapjacks or something like that. Like really, you can’t go on an adventure and not expect to bump into something that causes a horde of rats to chase you.

For your viewing pleasure, I present to you some medievally or science fictiony plague rats…depending on your genre of choice. They were a really quick paint, didn’t take too much time at all, and were actually a lot of fun.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         59

28mm+       36, +2

Terrain      +38

  

Bought       103

Progress    +30

02 Hundred - The Great Escape Expansion

Howdy everyone,

Continuing to work on the metal/plastic pile of”fame”…no shame here! Having just finished the last piece in the set, I thought I would post up the 02 Hundred expansion Escape from Stalag 3…or the Great Escape for those that remember the classic movie.

The figures look great and have a fabulous amount of detail…they are metal, not plastic. This is a portion of the figures that I picked up from Cangames this year. In addition to this expansion, I also picked up the blister pack of escaped prisoners wearing civvies. Again, these figures are metal, and while not as detailed as the prisoners themselves, they fit in really well and look really good.

As part of the expansion, you get a German army Military Policeman riding a BMW motorcycle. This figure and the bike site on a much larger base than the regular figures and makes a nice looking mini-diorama all on its own. 

Anywho, hope you enjoy the pics.

Group shot of the aircrew prisoners. Some great inspiration from the Great Escape movie and the figs do a great job of emulating some of the key characters from the movie. The overhead shot was an attempt to showcase the bases as I was particularly proud of how well they turned out.

Back and front shot of each of the characters…the leather jacket for the Cooler King was a lot of fun to paint up as well.

The other 3 characters…again, really great connections with the movie…I really enjoyed the paintwork and ended up mixing a few colours together to get the shade of blue that I was looking for. Really happy with how it turned out.

The civilian dressed escapees…again, my painting was heavily inspired by the movie characters. 

The MP sitting on his motorbike…really happy with the turnout and particularly the MP’s gorget around his neck.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         59

28mm+       34, +12

Terrain      +38

  

Bought       103

Progress    +28 

Painting Update - Misc + Team Yankee + Stargrave

Hello everyone,

I hope your July has been going well. Trying to capitalize on this months posting momentum, I thought I would post some painting progress. It’s a little bit across a few genres, but has been where my brain has been at over the past month or so. I definitely got some inspiration from getting some games in at Cangames, but also from where Duncan and Mike are focusing their painting at as well.

Trying something different, and because my painting was all over the place, I’ll drop some notes and commentary with the pics themselves this time.

Have a great rest of your month.

I honestly can’t remember when or where I got this pilot from…I want to say I got him as a freebie for a subscription or a miniatures order. I want to say it is either a limited Artizan or Pulp Figures model. It’s great WW1 or inter-wars period model. My main inspiration for this one came from some pics of WW1 and post-war Canadian Arctic pilots…I’m liking how the coat came out, different leather tone than what I normally do.

These Canadian Iltis jeeps were part of my buildup for Cangames as I needed a couple more TOW vehicles for the fun. Great vehicles that painted up really quickly. They’ll do well with any TeamYankee Canadian Airborne Regiment formation that I try running in the future.

Not that long ago, Duncan graciously gave me another 3 GAZ trucks that he had printed up to go along with the other 4 that he has given me. These remain a lot of fun to paint up, and google search gives you so many different options for paint schemes. These will do well in Cold War and Imagi-nations settings.

I broke out another pack of Northstar Figures Stargrave minis…this time it was the Marksmen pack with a humanoid and alien looking sniper dudes. I ended up going with the same scheme that Northstar used for the humanoid…but for the alien…I ended up changing my original colours and going with a light bright-ish green and tan brown complimentary tone. This was a real blast to work out and refine. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I ended up basing the figures like my last Stargrave figs…space station deck with trash and debris,

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         59, +15 (Iltis and Gaz)

28mm+       22, +3 (pilot and marksmen)

Terrain      +38

  

Bought       103

Progress    +16    

Accounting Catch-Up

Howdy folks.

I hope your week is going well comma and that your weather is letting it get outside and enjoy some time outdoors. Having taken stock this week of my Cangames activities and post Cangames reports, I thought it was high time To do some workstation cleanup and figure out where exactly I stood in terms of miniatures painted miniatures bought and overall progress as we’re roughly about half year complete or maybe I should say we’re grudgingly just over the half your mark this week.

To be honest, I have not been taken a very close look at what I was buying, but I know I had picked up a few things this year that I hadn’t encountered for yet. Anywho, I had picked up a few figures this year from local gaming stores and I had started to go down the rabbit hole of sci-fi and space gaming, which led me over to the Aliens franchise and then I got interested in seeing what I could find from the “Another Glorious Day in the Corps” game line from Gale Force 9, it is out of production now, so it’s a little challenging, but I figured that the miniatures would work well across a wide range of genres. 

Anyhow, having taken the time to do the review. My numbers are now up-to-date and I almost have a new challenge to see if I can paint through the small bump or foothill in my trek up shame mountain. We’ll see what the rest of the year brings and how much I can get through this collection on top of the objectives I had set in January.

I think this picture captures most of it, but I know I’m missing a bolt action book that I bought that came with a free figure a couple of Star Wars legions boxes (Bossk and the battlefield supplies scatter terrain), Oh, and a couple of used Marvel figures that I bought at Red Dragon (Captain America and Kraven).

Have a great weekend folks.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         44

28mm+       19

Terrain      +38

  

Bought       103, +103

Progress      -2

Painting Update - Stargrave

Hello everyone,

Here's hoping that you are having an excellent summer. On the heels of my Cangames posts, and actually on the heels of my attempt at Stargrave, I ended up putting some paint to a few figures that I had acquired a few years back. Coincidentally, I also happened to see a few posts from other Blogger on the game Scrapjacks and immediately became interested in that as well and thought, hey these figures should work for either one or the other game.

Starting with the Tekkers blister pack from NorthStar Minis, I also threw in a scatter terrain Starship Terminal from Reaper as well to get the sci-fi painting juices flowing. I enjoyed the different version of the tekker, and have to say that the full suited version screams old-school sci-fi and Scrapjacks. Whereas the helmetless tekker was a bit of a challenge on deciding how to paint up. In the end, I went with some Blade Runner 2049 inspiration (Dave Bautista’s Sapper character) and went with an orangey-brown color scheme. 

For the bases for both, I painted up ala starship, space station, along with some debris and trash kicking around. The starship terminal was fairly straightforward...and just tried some muted colours that would flow nicely.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         44

28mm+       19, +3

Terrain      +38

  

Bought        0

Progress   +101

Cangames - Stargrave - Battle Report

Howdy folks,

Welcome to the last installment of my Battle Reports for Cangames 2026, for this we will take a look at a classic Tod Creasey run game. Tod always puts a little extra work into the planning of his games, along with a bunch of tongue-in-cheek, and is known for big games with lots of players. This year was actually the first time I had a chance to try out one of Tod's games...I've bought a bunch of Stargrave minis and the books, but hadn't had a chance to try it out. Making it a Star Wars themed game...Tod left me little option but to try it out.

In terms of extras, Tod also made sure to tailor each Faction or team choice to the players that signed up for his game, and I even had a custom made Black Suns card complete with a suitably edited pic of me that Tod grabbed from social media.

As far as the game went, and unfortunately we are over a month since, so my memory is starting to fail, Tod's scenario was inspired heavily by the first couple of episodes from Andor Season 2. If you haven't seen Andor yet, you really must! It's a great view on some finer details within the Star Wars verse, and as Stellen Skarsgard says "Its Star Wars, but for adults." You get an excellent feel for the rebellion, the espionage elements that go into developing an insurgency as well as countering, and you get that feel while still having an individual story. Anywho, check it out if you can.

For this game, we had 3 main factions with 2-3 players per faction. The Empire of course, the Rebels also of course, and the Independents. In this case, I think the independents were Black Sun (me) and maybe some Mandalorian players. Each player had their victory conditions and objectives...each leader of the team had their special capabilities (ala the Stargrave crew Captain)...which I promptly forgot about. For me, my objective was to secure the debris of a crashed starcraft which was loaded with my "legitimate" cargo and get it off table. Other players were tasked with taking out team leaders or securing the pilot (Andor).

In the end, there was a lot of action going around, tough to log for each player...but I was able to get a large amount of 'product' off the table with my Captain taking a hit for the team and getting taken out by the Empire. I was able to use a LandRaam (ala old school Battlestar Galactica) and drove it off table, and taking out a droid crew that tried to bump me off along the way...I think they were liberating the machines or somesuch. 

All in all, a good intro to Stargrave...the mechanics were very Frostgrave'y...and the setting was fun.

Enjoy the pics.

Focusing on my part...the layout of the table is as such: random bits of terrain on the table, the spacecraft (looks very similar to a Colonial Raptor) is to the Black Suns 12 o'clock, there is an Imperial patrol over in that area as well, the red crates are the 'legitimate' cargo, and you can see a new TIE fighter to the top left of the pic (this is the fighter that Cassian liberated in Andor Season 2)

Better view of the left side of the field. You can see more Imperials, the TIE fighter, and some Mandalorian Clans, as well as an AirSpeeder at the lower end of the pic (think escape vehicle for Cassian). The coloured puffs are smoke grenades going off.

My crew slowly and deliberately making their way to the aircraft - making sure to stay in cover.

Overhead shot...Black Suns making their way to the cargo, Imperials chasing Rebel commandos.

Same sequence, but better view on the Speederbike chasing down the Rebels.

Black Suns get a Landram making its way onto the board. One of my guys jumps into the turret...which proved very helpful later on. Several others of my dudes are securing individual crates

There seems to be a ruckus around both the Airspeeder and the TIE fighter...and no, I cannot describe the ruckus, but they better watch it!

The Black Suns leader takes one for the team as an overly aggressive imperial speederbike gang jump an innocent legitimate business man on his way to his place of employment.

Cassian works hard and I think makes it into the cockpit of the speeder.

The Black Suns load up their goods and make their way out of another neighbourhood that has gone to pot thanks to gang violence.

Cangames - Trench Crusade - Batt Report

Howdy folks,

Another Cangames related post...I was really pumped when I saw a Trench Crusade game pop-up in the schedule that I immediately jumped all over it. Seeing that my buddy Mike was running the game, I also knew it was going to be a really good session.

So I have been seeing a lot of posts and comments regarding Trench Crusade for the past year or so, and like I said, when I saw it on the schedule, I was really pumped to give it a shot. In a nutshell, if you haven’t heard of it, Trench Crusade is the ongoing fight between heaven and hell with demons moving onto the earthly plane while also capturing the context or the setting of World War I. The battlefield has become this apocalyptic trench line and no-man’s land where religiously inspired factions can fight the armies of hell. Whatever your religious flavor is, that’s cool, my main focus on this has definitely been more so on the concept, art, the overall idea, and the setting of World War I feels very fitting.

Overall, each character/player has a variety of stats, kind of the normal ones…shoot, melee, health, and maybe a couple of others…the Classics. The main thing with each of the factions and the character types or leader type, is they have their own individual traits, specials, and accumulating a blood rating provides another potential modifier to the number of dice that you can use in your attacks and in your defense.

All that to say, I was looking forward to see how the models looked on the table and give this a shot. Now, admittedly, I think I have forgotten more than I remember about the game, but I do remember having a lot of fun so we’ll just have to go by the pictures and have some random comments there.

Enjoy the pics!

The overall battle. The shrine in the middle complete with skulls, and wall segments, and what not on the periphery. Each player started from their own corner and just slug-fested from there.

My army from hell, big ole demon on the left, the dapper looking lad next to him is my hell knight, and three pig looking things that I couldn’t remember what they were. But they are Piggly, Wiggly, and Fred.

The hell night took a step on the battlefield takes long range shot at one of the French looking figures, which I think were LDS.

Piggly jumps into the battlefield, and set up near one of the objectives (I guess I should’ve mentioned there were a number of objectives for each player to control gaining one victory point or per round objective).

You can see some movements around the table. Piggly gets knocked down bottom right part of the picture. The LDS Troops are moving to a corridor or walkway, squaring off against Piggly. At the top part of the picture you can see some Stosstruppen, can’t remember their faction, And at the top right of the picture, some very British inspired troops are slowly making their way into the field.

Youcan see the corridor where the walkway has become a very target rich environment Piggly‘s in their Wiggly’s in there and I think Fred is as well. Lotta back-and-forth between the demons and the LDS, and I think at one point one of the British players starts throwing grenades at us caue, well… we’re at target rich environment. My pig dudes are really good on the melee side of the action.

And around this time, I finally realized that my big ass Demon has a killer special action where I get to swing a couple of levers and cause a lot of chaos. It’s pretty awesome. So my demon flies over the wall and starts hacking the LDS to pieces

The demon does the devils work, and then heads over to the other side of the field to start dealing with the British type dudes.

And of course, the hell night is able to do double range attacks again, which is pretty awesome and he looks pretty gnarly.

Random action shot between the LDS and the stormtrooper type dudes, shooting through windows and what not.

All well, my hell knight and demon clean up the mess on the right side table.

Certainly by this point, the mechanics of the game are going pretty quick for us. And each faction is scoring hits on the other, victory points are being tallied up quickly. As it turns out the storm trooper dudes are getting about three points per round because they’ve been pretty free clear for most of the game. The next couple of rounds take us to the end of the game. The demons take some serious hits when all the pig dudes are gone and my big ass demon is killed, which ended up being really anticlimatic. But I think in the end I ended up with the second highest amount of victory, points, and the game was super enjoyable overall.