From PeteF: Horde of Fiends - Klendathu's Finest (40points)

"This Place Crawls, Sir!"

These gribbley horrors are the second unit in my Nightstalkers Army. Each stand will reference a movie that has some horror or phobic element.  The idea is that people can try and guess all the movies in the army.

The miniatures are from the discontinued Starship Troopers Miniatures game by Mongoose publishing. It's a shame this game is out of print as the minis are rather good - although quite big. I was lucky enough to pick up the whole starter game (which contains another 20 of the warrior bugs) on EBay this week - still in shrink wrap so I'm not sure if I'll open it or do the right thing and resell it because I don't need more minis.

I got the basic idea for colours from clips of the movie - the carapaces were originally black, which I had drybrushed with some light grey highlights. I didn't like how this looked so I washed it over with contrast shyish purple - which gave the dark bits a nice purpley sheen and mauve tinted the grey highlights. I was happy that it came out a little glossy - like an ant's body.

"Their evolution stretches over millions of years."

The smaller bugs are "firefries" and featured in a Starship Troopers spinoff, not the original movie. The models were very basic metal casts - they are somewhat rare. Their colour scheme is from an online wiki. Kings of War "large cavalry hordes" are supposed to be 6 to a 150mmx100mm base - by using a couple of the smaller bugs I managed to squeeze five in. If I had the dismembered body of a mobile infantryman I'd add it to the base.

"Oh, come on, it's just a bug!"

Starship Troopers is a great movie - based on a great book. Although noteworthy for attractive actors meeting their ends with spectacular violence it also does a good job of portraying a brutal militaristic society in a way that may leave a small part of you hoping the bugs win.

Kings of War welcomes proxied units so these bugs stand in nicely for fiends, a type of heavy cavalry. The 3 arachnid warriors are about 60mm tall - the bodies are 65mm long including the mandibles. The 2 firefries are around the size of a 28mm horse. Say 10 points for each big bug and 5 for each small one for a total of 40?

“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part...and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”

Pete, these are fantatic. You have really nailed the colours and they look suitably nasty. The scoring is about right

Martin