Junker Update and Tiny Troops How to Guide

 Hi!

I've finished my Junkers for the time being and am busily working on and have completed my Exo Armour squad:

Junker Exo Armour Squad

Built from engineering rigs and armed with Grape Guns and Cestus fists, Exo Armour squads are the brutal close combat specialists that the Junker legions deploy into the thickest of combats.

Junker Exo Armour Detail

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and they've painted up really nicely too with just enough of the original vibe to be recognisable as the unit types they're supposed to be!

Junkers of the XVII legion

Here's what they looked like without a coat of paint:

Exo Armour Unpainted

As they only stand about 15mm tall, there's no need to go full on adding lots of little fiddly details, just the basic shapes. Compare the early 3d sprites for computer games compared to now!

Also the coat of paint makes a massive difference as its easy to paint in panel lines, small bits and bobs such as armour plates, etc that bring the models to life. They're going to be viewed at arms length after all so there's quite a few little cheats that can be done during painting .

So without further ado, here's the tutorial!

Supplies you'll need:

Some Sculpey or Fimo clay.

A sheet of EVA foam.

Superglue, Scissors and a knife.

The first step is to make the bodies and heads.

Roll out a block of sculpey and with a sharp knife, cut it into small cubes which will form the main body of all the infantry I make. For the heads, it possible to use beads but I tend to just roll out some sculpey or Fimo into small balls as I prefer not to have to fill the holes that beads tend to have in them.

Once the bodies and heads have been cooked, its time to start construction! I cut a thin piece of EVA foam into long batons about 4-5mm wide then cut them into small rectangles. I tend to just use scissors for this and aren't too particular about making sure everything is perfectly sized.

Once the heads have been glued on I add a small rectangle of EVA foam to the bottom to represent legs. I only use one but its easy enough to use two pieces one on top of the other to make the figure taller. Next add two small pieces of EVA foam to represent shoulders and voila, the figure is pretty much made. After this its just a case of adding details to give the figure definition.

Once the figure has been built, I glue them onto small buttons which have a slip of paper glued over the buttonholes as it makes basing look a bit better.

Small pieces of foam can then be used to add armour, backpacks, helmets, hats and uncounted other bits and bobs to make them look like a proper little person. Guns, swords, shields and whatnot are also made from EVA foam. I had been concerned about the durability of such little fellows, especially as they're made of foam and a bit of glue but I've dropped them repeatedly and they just seem to bounce!

Androsynths

It's very easy to substitute different shaped objects for heads, such as the Androsynths above with their larger cube heads or the knights I've made which have cylinder heads made from cut up sausages of sculpey.

The most important part of the build process it so get the general look and feel of the original figure and with a bit of experimentation and bodging, they are remarkably effective to represent whatever army you want

So there you are! Tiny troops can be made quick, cheaply and very easily for the fraction of a cost of actual miniatures. They've been a bit of a revelation for me as I've really enjoyed making all the tiny figures and am very happy with how they are turning out and indeed what a boon its been for my hobby!

My next unit is built and ready to prime and while I'm meandering through different projects there's a sense of industry and achievement to working on them all, no matter the subject. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up the momentum over the course of the year and build and paint enough bits and bobs to play all manner of interesting games as the weather improves.

Junkers vs Farpoint Salvage

Hopefully, I'll have another update later this week with the next handful of painted odds and ends but in the meantime, All the best!

Junkers in Star Mogul

 Hi!

So with my freshly finished salvage crews for Star Mogul, I got to thinking about some crossover forces from other settings which would fit in nicely with the wild frontier of Farpoint and have decided to have a bash at making some Junkers.

Junkers from Void 1.1 are a militaristic faction that are a cross between the Harkonnen from Dune and the Roman Empire and their use of convict troops combined with their tendency to salvage gear as well as ruthlessness fits in quite nicely in Star Mogul where I plan on making them one of the regional powers.

Junker battle gear is usually simple to operate such as shotguns and combat shields and swords but they also make use of other short range weaponry such as flame throwers, chainguns and explosive lancers which further lends itself to the industrial aesthetic that I'm going for in the setting.

Coupled with their exo-suits, retrofitted industrial booster rigs with guns and a bit of armour strapped on and their use of buggys and so on, I think I could port them into the setting and games with ease!

Back in 2022, I made a Junker force using my tiny troop method for games of Void 1.1 and rather liked how they turned out for the most part, but they were multi based for larger skirmishes so I'll be going back to the drawing board for the next batch I make.

Junkers vs Colonial Defence troopers and vehicles.

I'll need to have a think about what I'm going to make but I reckon a few convict salvage rats backed up by legionnaires, an enforcer and maybe a couple of exo armored rigs, I'll be ready to go!

Junker Infantry Squads

As folks have said they'd like to see how I make the tiny fellows, I think I'll also post a how to of the project with a step by step guide and will see about making a vehicle for them to ride around in too!

Sadly I'm back at work tomorrow so doubt I'll get much chance to work on them until the weekend but fingers crossed, I'll keep the momentum going and get the core done in a couple of hours cutting and gluing.

In the meantime, All the best!

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!

2025 Review

 Hi!

Well it's been a bit of a year of it with all sorts of real life shenanigans taking centre stage and my hobby being very much crushed into the dirt beneath it for most of 2025 but I seem to be ending on a bit of a high so I thought I'd post my year in review and ponder on some possible challenges for the new year to get my back on track again!

Figures Painted

First up, I managed to paint 116 things ranging from 2mm up to 1:32 and everything from fantasy to Sci-Fi to Historical and Steampunk which is actually surprising considering how naff of a year it's been hobby wise.

While I got stuck in the doldrums in the middle of the year, the last month or so has seen more enthusiasm and success with painting than I've had in ages, even if I've not had much chance post about it so I'm going to take it as a bit of a win.

I've begun my Spruequest challenge and have rather enjoyed putting together the first little warband which seems to have had another figure added to it which had sat unpainted but built in a box for at least the last 12 months! I'll post a complete breakdown of the project as I get the chance as well as the thinking and process behind it but that's a post for another day!

Looking at the painted total, a fair whack of them are small scale but I'll take it as a win none the less at this point so won't complain. Sadly quite a few of the bits and bobs I've painted thus far haven't made it to the point of being photographed but hopefully I'll get chance to remedy this in the new year as I crack on.

Speaking of the new year, I have a few bits and bobs sitting that I'm keen to try painting up but I need to finish my last two Frostrgave soldiers first before I embark on getting them painted up.

Games Played

Sadly I only managed a piddly seven games from three systems this year and they were very hurried sorts of affairs that I threw together on the occasions I had a moment to spare but they're an improvement on 2024 so Huzzah for small wins!

A large part of the problem has been that our spare room has been out of action for a mancave over the year with the spare bed meaning my gaming table was unavailable for extended periods but we have a plan that should see the room emptied and turned into a more usable space in the new year which is very exciting and will hopefully allow me to keep my table up all year and play a lot more games too!

We've also reorganised our living room fairly drastically this year which has allowed me to finally get a small painting desk up and it's been really making its impact known as I can now get up and paint with a proper light first thing for an hour before work rather than while trying to sit on our sofa in the evenings too.

I've also begun working on organising my rulebooks and having a look through the dauntingly large collection of old and largely forgotten games and plan on doing something about breathing some life into them in the new year too with some possibly daft but also fun ideas!

Plans for 2026

Now I had hoped to make a go of 2025 for the year of Leviathan and various other obsessions but it turned out to be a year of not much at all so I'm not wanting to make too much of a fuss about planning ahead but will just potter on painting whatever I find interesting and trying to get back into the swing of things rather than having any great plan and then not managing to make it turn into anything!

Instead I think I'm going to try to just have a bit of fun and paint what I want and aim to beat this year's miniatures painted and games played total and will take it as a win if I do.

In the meantime, thank you to the 178 blog followers, occasional visitors and random passers by who have taken time to read my nonsense! Its lovely to hear from you and thank you for all the support and kind words over a challenging 2025!

All the best!

Richard