Necromunda ’95! – My first pair of Delaque Gangers completed. (Alan Perry, 1995)

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Necromunda 1995, Delaque Gangers, Alan Perry

Yes, really. You guys know that a huge proportion of my collection is from the 1990’s, and I’m only now getting around to painting/completing a lot of it. What can I say? I’ve been slack until the past few years. It has meant a ton of Neglected Models to work through, though – hence why that particular challenge crops up so frequently. Anywho, these models are from the original Delaque range. I don’t think I ever got the boxed gang set, rather I picked up either a blister or two of the loose gangers or got these in a secondhand sale/trade from the others in the necro group back in the day. I do have the entire Heresy Miniatures set of Not-Delaque, though. So one day I’ll add to the painted numbers. These were both painted to be part of the Grendel gang that I ran (more on that in a future post), though neither of them were ever actually completed until this last month, more than a decade on.

Necromunda 1995, Delaque Gangers, Alan Perry

The fellow on the left has what some reader may recognise as the flag of Cameroon on his back, with the Grendel-eye pattern overlaid. This is because I started painting this guy while watching Cameroon play in the 1998 World Cup, and liking their team and flag, so decided to incorporate it into the model. So… 20 years almost to the month for this one from start to finish. As a July 2019 model, he’s also got a little Contast Paint on him as well. I went over the mid and light-browns of his torso leathers and his shotgun’s wooden furniture with one of the contrast paints to see what would happen. It looks alright, and shows that they can be used similarly to washes over colours, with a slightly more subtle shading effect than the usual Agrax/Strong Tone.

That’s it for today!

Star Wars Imperial Assault: Jabba The Hutt (Jewel of July ’19)

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Star Wars Imperial Assault Jabba The Hutt

Ahhhh Jabba the Hutt. A character that goes back to my childhood, the excitement of seeing previews of Return of the Jedi and then finally seeing it in the cinema. So when I started to expand my Imperial Assault collection, how could I skip the most notorious crimelord of Tattooine?

One thing that was never apparent for many, many years was the fact that a lot of Jabba is actually green. Why? Well, when seen in the film, he’s always in dim surroundings and the main angles that he’s lit and filmed from highlight his sandy-yellow coloured face and underside. The “green” areas always looked to me like they were prdominantly a shadowed effect.

This was further reinforced by the oringinal Kenner toy. I never had it myself as a kid, but a friend did, and the thing was basically desert yellow in its entirety.

So then the remastered, butchered “Special Edition” Original Trilogy films came out, and what the actual fuck was going on here? Unconvinging, cartoony-faced CGI, a vastly smaller Jabba, a silly “comedy” spot where Han steps on Jabba tail, and much more green, to boot! Messed up on a variety of levels to the point where it looked (to me) like they’d just changed Jabba’s colour. In the same way that they changed his face, his size… you get the idea.

Star Wars Imperial Assault Jabba The Hutt

So it wasn’t until years later – sometime after the Internet became a thing I spent time on – when I finally saw and understood that Jabba was in fact, actually mostly green the entire time. So.. okay. So then that was how I finally painted the model, despite my instincts wanting to make him entirely made up of shades of yellow, tan and ochre. Finally complete (he’s a Neglected one, too!) It’s a pretty nice model, though it does have a few flaws.

Star Wars Imperial Assault Jabba The Hutt

So wild tangent aside, the main flaw with the model is basically the size. As you can see from this triad of “Scum and Villany” types, the scale used by FFG for Imeprial Assault is one that gives a lot of priority for the models being boardgame pieces first, and miniatures a (distant) second. People familiar with Star Wars will know that the droid, IG-88 is super tall, the Jawa is tiny, and Jabba is a huge, bulky slug. For scale, Jabba should be so big that the Jawa is about the size of Salcious Crumb (the bird-faced fellow sitting under his bong in the above film still).

Ah well, boardgame miniatures, eh? Whaddayagonnado?