In preparing for Xenos Rampant with my son, I decided to make use of some boxes of Stargrave miniatures I had laying around to produce an army of ragtag desert folk.

My objective was to give the varying colors so they feel like a group of rebels. I think they came together well.

I love these kits. They have an old school feel and are fun to build as well as mix and match. I had a box of male crew, a box of male scavengers, and a sprue of female crew. All together it gave me great variety.

The main complaint I have is that there’s lots of bags and small things you can glue to the minis but they already have so many pockets and bags built in it’s actually hard to fit the extra stuff.

But with so many head options and small variations I feel like the resulting 40ish miniatures feel reasonably unique and present something that feels coherent while still being distinguishable.

Hidden among these are several units. I built out cards for them for Xenos Rampant. After a few games I’ll release the cards to the public for anyone to use.

My son and I have a bit of a world coming together. He named his units with Draconic theming and chose power armored soldiers as the bulk of his force. I went with a desert force of ragtag soldiers. Clearly, we’re resisting the dragon lords from our desert wastelands. I went with snake theming to name my infantry in an effort to feel like slippery guerrilla fighters and to contrast his dragon names (“Flame Drakes” being his main infantry).

Per painting: I tried a lot more than I had originally planned. I base coated, highlighted, and oil washed. For the bases I mixed sand, glue, and paint. After drying I oil washed (really, I did this before the oil wash so I could do it all at once) and dry brushed the bases. The little rocks and such I 3D printed.

Simple process, but time consuming. I spent about two weeks on it. I’m happy with the result and almost sad they’ll only immediately be used to play maybe 10 games with the kiddo. They’re cool minis, though, and I’ll find another use down the line.

Next up on my list is two vehicles to wrap this force and then some Napoleonics or possibly 15mm scifi I picked up at Historicon. Or maybe terrain. I feel like I’m 5 or 6 tables worth of terrain behind.

Ah well. 40 minis down. Several thousand to go.