Star Mogul: Bossman Salvage

 Hi!

I've got the week off work and have spent the last few days building and painting another salvage crew for Star Mogul in the form of Bossman Salvage:

Bossman Salvage

Bossman Salvage is an ex military outfit who appeared on the border some time ago and have made a name for themselves in the salvage industry for brutal efficiency. 

Power Armour

The crew chief and his unit all sport heavy URSA Major class power armour and the Bossman himself also wields a wrecking ball with brutal efficiency.

While the core crew are well armed and equipped, they make use of Salvage Rats, poorly trained and equipped men and women who are desperate to make a living in the rather lawless frontier of the Farpoint sector. These Salvage rats are usually sent forward to recover salvage under fire and guard it until the Bossman's Demo Bot turns up to recover it.

Salvage Rats

Unlike Farpoint Salvage who make use of a vehicle to transport scrap back to their dropzone, Bossman uses a Demo Bot:

Eddie the Demo Bot

Eddie is a U113 Class warbot built by Kalaxis Tech over a century ago but has been retrofitted by the talented techs of Robo Emporium and seems happy with his role as heavy lifter for the Bossman team. His programming does sometime glitch resulting in him rampaging into opposing salvage teams and pulverising them with his mighty fists but the air of slightly unhinged danger about him doesn't seem to perturb Bossman himself.

 

Base Details

Eddie is made from a selection of wooden beads for his main body and arms, some greenstuff rods for his legs and upper arms, EVA foam, thin card and a couple of sticky gemstones for his feet and hip light.

On a side note, I experimented with basing this time as I wanted him to fit in with the plain brown bases of the rest of the crew but wanted to add a bit of interest to him and with some static grass, card and a bit of sand I hope I gave a look of a long abandoned frontier settlement to the figure.

URSA Major class Power Armour

I'd been scratching my head for a while on how I'd make power armour and eventually settled on these rather bulbous looking figures made from two wooden beads, a couple of stick on gem stones and EVA foam for the armour, arms and legs. I'm really pleased with how they turned out and the grubby, bashed and used finish turned out very satisfactorily. 

The Two Salvage Crews

Now I have two salvage crews built, I'll need to play a game or two to see how I get on with Star Mogul but I'm also needing more suitable scenery and salvage tokens which I aim to make over the next day or two and then I'll be able to actually get a game in!

Speaking of scenery, I made this little water tank thing from a Cava bottle top that I was gifted at work:

Water Tank

I glued it onto a 30mm wooden base to make it bottom heavy and just painted it up to look suitably grubby and worn and rather like how it turned out!

I'm also humming and hahing about making some more salvage crews as its been really enjoyable to construct and paint the little guys and am contemplating bringing in elements from other games such as Junkers from Void 1.1 and even some Orky types as I feel the setting works well with them too.

I've also been slowly painting my way through some tiny Crusader miniatures for a Dragon Rampant themed force which I'll show once I've got more of them done but they're a bit more labour intensive than the salvage crews so it may be a while before I get them completed.

Tiny Troops have been a bit of a revelation for me as I can make them quickly and easily, they don't take long to paint and I've found myself really enjoying working on them so I suspect there will be lots more of them in the coming months, along with scratch built vehicles and bead bots.

I'm also contemplating making some 40k forces using the techniques I've learned on this project but I think I'm going to try and finish my Salvage team obsession first!

In the meantime, All the best!

Star Mogul: Farpoint Salvage

 Hi!

A day later than promised but here's my completed salvage crew for Star Mogul!

Farpoint Salvage

The infantry are made from Sculpey and a bit of EVA foam and mounted on 12mm buttons so are pretty tiny but have enough individual character to be identifiable for skirmish gaming.

The Truck

The truck has a sculpey cab, EVA foam and cardboard body and details, while the wheels are wooden beads. I must admit that I had rather a lot of fun making this tiny truck and weathering the daylights out of it. While in real life the big bubble tires would probably be a bit useless they looked cool!

Infantry

I've made ten tiny troopers for my starting salvage team but re-reading the Star Mogul rules, I suspect that I'll be adding another 4-5 to their numbers after my first game or two. I like how their little baseball caps turned out and was surprised by just how much character I managed to get with just a bit of paint.

The Crew in Action

My next task will be to build a rival salvage company and try out the game and possibly play a mini campaign out! I'll post my progress up here as always and if folks are interested, I can put together a tutorial for how to make the tiny guys as it's very easy and rather fun!

VW inspired Hab Buildings

Finally I've also been making some tiny scenery as I need enough stuff to cover my small table. These Hab buildings are made from some capsule toy boxes that my wife got for her Christmas so I got for nothing! I'm hoping to eventually have enough scenery to represent several different types of world to make things more interesting but we'll see how I get on!

In the meantime, All the best!

Star Mogul: Ruins of an Empire

Hi!

I've found myself with a little bit of enforced free time due to coming down with the lurgy and having to take a couple of days off work. 

While I'm feeling entirely too grotty with the man flu to do much hobby related stuff, I did sit and begin to read my way through my copy of Star Mogul: Ruins of an Empire by Alphaforge Games.

Released back in 2006 it was a really interesting game featuring rival salvage teams of blue collar types duking it out on the frontier of space and I was quite a fan of it back in the day and it's been a long time member of my Forgotten Games collection and I've posted about it before, even posting a battle report way back in the day.

What has got me thinking is my decision to try and play more games in 2026 than in the last few years and while I'd love to collect and paint up all the original stuff, for many games in my collection, its either difficult, impossible or ruinously expensive so I've had to do a bit of head scratching and have settled on a rather cheap and affordable alternative:

Tiny Troops!

I know from experience that I can churn out a few small warbands of scratch built miniatures in a relatively short time and with a microscopic budget too and I figure that this will allow me to try out a lot of games in my collection over the course of a year without breaking the bank and if I do find myself enjoying said games, I can then focus on them with proper miniatures in the future.

With that in mind, I have a weeks holiday coming up at the end of the month and I hope to be able to get two rival Salvage Crews built up along with stompy robots, vehicles and even some small terrain features between now and then so my holiday week will hopefully see a few battle reports as I reacquaint myself with the rules and how the game plays.

I'll also be posting progress up here as I go and hopefully it will inspire folks to have a try at something similar and if it goes well, I've got a host of other games I'm itching to try out!

My next update will be on the 14th where I hope to have a bit of a tutorial on how to make the figures and a bit of background to the setting as well as introducing the crews I've made...

In the meantime, I'll be consuming vast amounts of Lemsip and trying to not cough up a lung. 

All the best!

Spruequest: The Greyguard of Herakium

Hi!

So here we are in 2026 and I've finished my first Spruequest project in the form of a warband of guards made from a mixture of Frostgrave soldiers and some Gripping Beast Dark Age Saxon gubbins as well as a pair of Vikings from Victrix that I had lying around.

The Greyguard of Herakium

To make things a bit more interesting, I used some of my Rory's Story dice and an Ultimate RPG worldbuilding deck that I picked up at work to give me some prompts. I also used some Pokemon energy cards to give me the colour palette that I'd be working with.

I must admit that I'd not happened across the RPG worldbuilding deck before and hadn't been sure to expect when I ordered it but its quite an interesting concept. Essentially there are five different themes to give you everything from peoples to institutions, place to history and even rumours. Each card has further prompts and suggestions which actually give some interesting combinations and my initial draw gave me the following:

I have a security force who is after an assassin who committed a crime in a place of rest and they are superstitious bunch. The Pokemon card gave me a grey palette and I rolled a happy, a sad and tome dice.

Thus the grey wardens of lost and forgotten Harakium were born!

The Greyguard are an organisation tasked with defending the once great city of Herakium. This coastal city was flooded and partially destroyed during the catastrophic events of The Death and much of the inhabitants lost their lives or fled east towards the Dwarven holds in the Axeblade mountains but some remained bound by vows to their ancestors or simply because they had nowhere else to go.

The Greyguard, though much reduced still hold to these vows to keep the assorted cults, grave robbers or forces of the Fallen from the ancient subterranean tombs of the Elven Dragonlords. Fearless and used to navigating the endless grey depths beneath the sundered city, they fight a grim and possibly futile war against the Fallen and their servants.

Of late, they have run into a cult of assassins who seek to loot the vaults beneath the city in search of cursed weapons, rare spell ingredients or other valuable and arcane gear. 

The Greyguard have girded themselves for battle once again and armed with cold steel, defensive magical tags and spell lanterns and descend into the depths to defeat this latest incursion.

Herakium Arcane Statue

As part of the Spruequest project I also needed to make some suitable scenic elements to give each warband I create something to tie them into the terrain. Handily my wife is collecting Naruto figures and had some doubles that she didn't need os I've painted up one as an arcane statue. I added a little bit of chipping to the soft PVC sculpt before priming black and then drybrushing vigorously. I also added some arcane tags using some scraps of card and greenstuff nails to add a bit of interest to the statue.

I plan on adding to the statue after each game the Greyguard plays with small trophies, shields of defeated foes or memorials for lost colleagues.

I also recently finished some other bits and bobs that were considerably less fun to paint than my Greyguard:

First up there's a chaos sorcerer type who has been sitting half painted for at least five or six years and I figured I'd best finish it off.

Not only is it a pig to paint, it appears to be a pig to photograph too! I don't know what it it is about this figure but it was absolutely horrid to paint and I almost gave up on it but persevered and finally finished it. I'm not really happy with the finish but it's done and can get bunged in the cabinet!

I also painted up some Temu sourced mushroom figures. They cost about £3.00 and as my Arcadian adventurers turned out surprisingly nicely I decided to order them in. When they arrived I discovered they were very cheaply 3d printed and had very visible print lines too. Lesson learned, I then primed them and slapped some paint on and figured they'd do for scenic additions, even if they're not great.

I'm quite pleased that I've got off to a good start with painting in 2026 as well as painting up my first Spruequest project successfully and will see what I can get done next!

In the meantime, All the best!