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!