Two different minis this week. One is a 28mm plastic mini from Stargrave (the lizard guy) and the other is a 28mm metal mini from Urban Mammoth.
Last time I labeled the upcoming post as “Copy-Cat” and that’s because I ripped off took inspiration from a couple characters when painting up these minis.
The first one was inspired by famous Star Wars Bounty Hunter “Bossk”.
Color choices were tricky, as different images online have different lighting/colors. But I guess this is my homage to Bossk, and about as close as I’m going to get using the Stargrave minis alone.
This mini reminded me of Shaggy from the cartoon Scooby-Doo. The mini first appeared partially painted in blog post: 1/2019 – Game Time: Necromunda Pt. 1. After we quit playing Necromunda he just sat around until I picked up Stargrave and figured I could repurpose the ‘Juve’ minis.
After googling Shaggy’s image, I can see that I didn’t quite remember how he looked. I should have gone for pea green on his shirt and even lighter on his pants. Plus he’s actually a blonde, but I always imagine him as a redhead for some reason.
The thing he’s holding reminded me of a radioactive waste container, so I added a “nuclear” symbol to it. Of course, with my freehand skills, it could also be a cat or any other wild guess! I’m not sure what he’s holding actually, I sort of imagine it’s his lunch box! 😀
Next Up: FIRE!
Double Down Dice 
Love your homage on both Brian, I think the colours you chose work well, and don’t forget there is a lot of variation between renditions, and great you’ve been able to utilise an old model for a new project.
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Thanks Dave! Yea, a lot of this was from my mental image of these characters. Since my day job is working with computers all day, I usually want to be far away from them when I sit down to paint. Unfortunately that doesn’t help with reference. Hmm, unless I used books…but then we’d probably need to add another room to the house, haha!
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I think adding another room to the house to put books in it is a better reason than most! 😉 Very nice minis! 🙂
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Cheers John! I’d agree, right after a second bathroom though! 😉
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These are nice and the free hand symbol looks good to me I could tell what it was at any rate!
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Thanks LCE! I miss seeing TIM’s freehand work. It was pretty inspiring and I hope someday mine can at least reach 10% of what he did. It takes a lot of practice, but I try to get some in when and where I can.
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TIMs was very special I too hope we see some more at some point from him, hope he is alright.
I also try occasionally but I often end up just block colouring it out as it looks so bad.
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Bossk and Shaggy!? I wasn’t ready for that at all. To be fair, when I saw the first one, I thought to myself, “That looks a lot like Bossk” so I’d say you did a great job on him. As for Shaggy, I thought that was his tongue sticking out until I really zoomed in. That is a wickedly pointy soul patch! 😀 Both minis came out well and I like the freehand quite a bit too. I would imagine these were a nice palette cleanser after the birds. And lastly, I didn’t realize you played Necromunda! If I had a group of people who wanted to play, I’m sure I’d do the same. It looks like a lot of fun.
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Well if you thought he looked like Bossk, then that makes my day! 😀 That’s funny about Shaggy’s soul patch looking like a tongue. Guess if I hadn’t been staring at him up close for so long, I might have thought the same. Cheers Jeff!
Necromunda…. *sits down and lights up his Gandalf pipe* … so I saw the original game in an article long, long ago and really, really wanted to play it! But it wasn’t available at any of the stores near me (we only had a comic store and a few book stores mostly). Fast forward many years later when Necromunda was rereleased and I got super excited about the chance to finally play it! I bought the box, the supplements, even some stuff off FW, etc. After spending lots of money, I finally painted enough minis to play…and sadly found I really didn’t like the game! The new rules were clunky, the rulebooks were a pile of dog poo with constant references to other pages. One time I remember flipping to three different sections and still not finding the freakin answer. So, I gave up and sold most of it off. I think they have reworked the rules (again), but I can’t even be bothered because it was such a letdown as a whole. Sure, the minis are cool, but if the game stinks that blows it for me. If I ever decide to play something like that down the road, I’ll just find a different ruleset. Till then I have plenty of D&D and boardgames to play.
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You’re welcome and that makes sense on Necromunda. From what I’ve seen, the rules are a bit old-fashioned and complicated. I’d like to see them modernize and simplify them a bit more for me to truly be interested in playing it. Warcry seems like the game I’d most likely be able to enjoy but even that doesn’t quite entice me as a solo gamer. I’m not sure I really have time for another game anyway though I imagine most of us are in that situation and it has never stopped us before! 🙂
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Some of the mechanics of Necromunda are simple enough, but others were a mess. Campaign stuff could get particularly challenging. Same goes with Blood Bowl too, keeping track of all the players and all the skill upgrades gets pretty tedious. Almost seems like there should be some standard grunts who never change stats and then 1-2 ‘heroes’ who you level up. Maybe that would simplify things? I guess Necromunda squads are only about 6 characters per side though. Whereas Blood Bowl has 11. Yea, as I get older, I’m much more comfortable with fewer games.
We have a lot of boardgames, but skirmish games I’m fine with just Stargrave and Frostgrave. And we’ve only had time (and barely that) to play D&D.
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I’ve heard the Blood Bowl is complicated and takes quite a lot longer than you would think to play. There’s something about it that sounds fun still though! Could you take Necromunda minis and gangs and bring them in to Stargrave? That would be a good way to get the best of both worlds, I reckon!
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Yep, you can use any minis in Stargrave. I like to use ones of the same scale though, and don’t think I have quite enough Necro minis for Stargrave. Blood Bowl takes some learning. Getting the PC game helps people to learn it pretty fast though. It will teach you the basics pretty quickly and you don’t have to worry about the calculations. I had already played the Blood Bowl boardgame before the PC game came out. But when I played the PC game it helped me with some of the rules I didn’t know very well and some things I had just wrong. Interestingly, when I ran a tourney with friends, I’d sometimes recall how the computer handles situations when we needed a particular ruling. Also Blitz Bowl is a decent entryway to the game and runs much faster. While a game of Blood Bowl could take us 3-4 hours, a game of Blitz Bowl could be as quick as 30 minutes!
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The scale thing is definitely tricky with mixing those two together. I didn’t think about that but I’d be reluctant to do that myself. That’s interesting about Blood Bowl and the video game. I’ve seen the video game out there but GW games have a mixed track record so I never considered buying it. I might have to rethink that. Blitz Bowl does sound good. I think 30-60 minutes is the ideal play time for that type of thing and my attention span 🙂
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There’s been a few versions of Blood Bowl. I think the second one is the one I played the most. I’m guessing it’s decent priced on Steam right now, since there is a new game.
The new game has met with some criticism, but same thing has happened with every version. Mostly due to people wanting different things. Either complaining about having money to buy teams, or something broken in the online tourney play, or the AI is no good (that’s been the case forever). But if you can get the game for cheap and just want to learn how to play, it’s a pretty good method. I’m sure there are also YouTube videos out there too, and I bet they are way better at teaching the strategy. Or simply start with Blitz Bowl to see if you even like it. You get two teams in the Blitz Bowl box, and you just need to buy a few more minis if you wanted to make a Blood Bowl team out of them.
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This is great info. Thank you for sharing it! I’ll do a bit more digging and see if I want to splash some cash 🙂
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Oh yea, there’s console and PC versions too. I’m mainly a PC gamer, so I always forget about the console stuff.
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A cool pair of models. I do especially like the homage to that nasty Trandoshan – always one of my favourite characters as a kid!
Necromunda was a ton of fun back in the day. I’ve picked up a lot of the modern stuff but am yet to play a single game of it. Maybe one day… possibly. 😮
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All the Bounty Hunters from that scene in Empire fascinated me for a long time. One, it was the first time I had heard of “bounty hunters” and there was something intriguing and menacing about a person who would hunt someone else for money. Then there was just the odd mix of characters and wondering what they might be like. My fave was IG-88 for some reason, and the inner child in me squealed (maybe a bit out loud too) during that scene from the Mandalorian!
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Brilliant! I’m not sure what I expected in this post but I think that it wasn’t a double bill of Bossk and Shaggy 🙂
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They really need to get over their differences and make a movie together. I mean c’mon, Bossk made an honest mistake eating Shaggy’s box of cereal! Could have happened to anyone!
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Yeah, I loved them all in ESB, though I liked Boba and Bossk the most with 4-LOM and Zuckuss as my seconds. I guess the Bounty Hunters took the “cool aliens” spot in ESB that the Cantina took care of in the original SW film when I think of it now…
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For me it was Boba, IG-88, and Bossk. 4-LOM and Zuckuss were just there and not much was done with them for years, I guess? Lastly was Dengar. Mr “I barely made the last 6 death saves!”.
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Well, nothing was done with any of them except for Boba, who managed to capture Han, look cool in Jabba’s palace and then die in the most disappointing way possible.
4-LOM and Zuckuss had better looking action figures than IG or Dengar! 🙂
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Haha, I disagree on IG-88’s action figure. I meant outside the movies, which I don’t know too much about. I did read part of the series where Boba crawls out of the sarlac pit though, and Dengar was in it. He was better written than I would have imagined. There was also some comic where Boba gets chased by 1 or more of the bounty hunters after he gets Han. I never found that comic(s) but it sounded interesting.
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We’ll just have to put it down to personal aesthetic preferences. 😄 For me the pair with cool insect heads beat out the tall druid and the guy with bandages. Not that I disliked either, but when it comes to tiers…
When I was playing with the toys there weren’t a lot of things for the EU, though there was a Star Wars comic from Marvel. I wasn’t reading any of those in the 80s, though…
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Tall Druid? IG-88. I’m confused on that one, as he was an “assassin droid”. The Star Wars comic actually has an interesting history. They needed money for the film, so they sold or leased publication rights to Marvel at the time. So without the comic, there might have never been a movie!
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Tall *droid* I meant. I know his canon background, (awful) EU backstory as well as the physical/prop origins of his head (nice nod to it in Mando S3). But as of the days of ESB, he was cool enough, but less so then the insect heads, the dino-head, and the guy with the exceedingly cool helmet.
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LOL! Ok, that makes way more sense…I thought there must be some Druid tie in or maybe you were referencing another bounty hunter. Good to know we’re not going crazy here! 😃
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Great painting on both, Brian, I recognized Bossk straight off! You got his yellow look down really well and the mini looks great. Shaggy looks great too. I painted a Hasslefree version a couple of years back and also had to google what he looks like, which is weird as I watched tons of Scooby Doo when I was a kid LOL!
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Cheers Matt! Glad Bossk has been recognizable. Jumpsuits also usually make me think of Star Wars, especially if they are orange! Hmm, wonder if Shaggy’s looks might have changed over the years? That would be a better explanation than us just getting old and having a hard time remembering stuff!! 😂
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