From TeemuL: Iona Starkiller meets DAK halftracks [Sarah's Star Yacht] [Arrakis] (85 points)

After clearing Terra, we feel we have some unfinished businesses and decide to make a stop on Arrakis, a bit of desert spice to our journey.  We first climb up to the middle ring using the nearby Great Abyssal and then Iona Starkiller (moving away from the Challenge Star?) offers us ride on Sarah's Star Yacht.

Iona Starkiller is a metal 28mm miniature from Hasslefree, I got her through YourModelBox a year or two ago. She is a nice fit for Sarah's Star Yacht, but I could have used her on Lune as well. But Starpriest wouldn't have allowed me to use (maximize my points) Sarah's Yacht. I believe she could be a capable captain or first officer in a Stargrave crew, I just don't have the rules or the crew, but the possibility is here.

I decided to go with bright and nice, which was accomplished with a limited selection of Contrast paints. Jewels here and there are a nice touch, they break the areas and allowed me to go wild with colours. Bright and light blue looks very futuristic as a hair colour, so I chose it. She has an advanced hair dress, but I didn't want to paint it, I would have ruined it. In the far future you can buy hair dress thingies which match your hair colour, I think...

The base is simple sand glued on base, washed with Reikland Flesh Shade and drybrushed with light grey. Generic enough to fit various landscapes or more urbanic areas.

Arrakis is not what we hoped or dreamed, these DAK halftracks are not very welcome sight, so we don't stay for long.

This is another small entry to clear a box. Some time ago there was a discount in my FLGS (they have pretty much always something in discount, making room in the storage and so on) and I picked up these Sfd. Kz. 10/4s with no game purpose, I have found that I rather enjoy painting vehicles in this scale. They are, however, a great entry for desert planet, so I painted them for Arrakis. They are part resin, part metal with quite a lot of parts and no bases. Here they are on mdf base (not glued) to demonstrate their nice camouflage colour. My intensive research on correct colours was limited to box cover, but I'm pretty certain these look exactly the way they were  30th February 1942 just after sunrise, west of Cairo...

I sprayed them Army Painter Fur Brown, then quite heavy overbrush with Citadel XV-88 followed by a heavy drybrush of Kislev Flesh and softer drybrush of Zandri Dust before a final drybrush of Ushabti Bone. The original brown is barely seen, only little areas here and there. Uniforms on the box look greenish, but might be greenish grey. I decided to paint them green using Warboss Green with Moot Green highlights. Greys and black on tires, tracks, guns and windshields. They were painted almost in one evening, but I dropped two of them while painting, had to glue them and continue on next day. Like I said, I really like to paint vehicles in this scale, especially these which have no complex camo pattern. And when these are 8 point a piece, their ROI is rather high compared to 28mm vehicles.

I was thinking of basing them, but since there were no bases on the box, I did not. Scenery base, similar to motor torpedo boats earlier, popped in my mind, but I decided not - there was a small hint of some FoW enthusiasm in our small gaming group, but we of course need to figure out the rules, period, scale and other things, but if I'm lucky, I might be able to use these on games and then base them properly. We will see. They look rather good on that plain mdf...

The voyage so far

Iona is 28mm miniature, 5 points and 20 for the Star Yacht.

Halftracks are 15mm vehicles, so worth 8 points a piece, total of 32. There is also 8 crew members, but each of them is basically a half figure, so worth only 1 point per individual making it 8 points and total of 40, plus 20 for Arrakis.

Total of 85 points.

My personal Squirrel count: 11 or 12?

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

- 6mm Epic Imperial Fists

- 28mm ADD Boardgame

- 28mm Runewars Waiqar

- 28mm Blood Bowl

- 28mm Simians?

- 15mm Mid War Germans

From Millsy:

Another wonderful entry from you Teemu and a tribute to your ability to switch focus without sacrificing quality of the end result.

I love the dynamic pose of Iona Starkiller and the blue hair you've given her really makes her pop. I'm sure she will stand out in any crowd on the table. Great looking HTs too, the combo of XV-88 followed by Zandri Dust seems pretty popular amongst a lot of YouTube channels I watch and I can understand why.

Another 85 points well earned!