Firefly figures for Pulp Alley - Alliance Lt and new free trader crew.

More painted up firefly figures for the Pulp alley project. These were actually completed last month but have taken a while to make their way through to the camera.

I'm thinking of running a four player game for my girlfriend and housemates using these and a few of my Pulp figures (I reckon I can get away with using some of my 30s/40s gangster figures as 'space gangsters'). Just need to stat them up and choose a scenario. We've been playing a lot of D&D recently so I think a miniatures game would actually go down pretty well as there's not a huge different (except for PA having much smoother and more interesting mechanics than D&D combat).

The last four figures in this post form another rival free trader crew (like the Firefly crew). Who do you think should be the captain of the crew? I haven't decided yet so leave some thoughts.

The Lt to lead the Alliance Feds faction. Converted from Hasslfree's colonel Michaels with the head from an Artisan Nazi. The uniform is an approximate match to the series. 

I arsed up the piping by painting it straight...

I think this may be the best I've managed to paint a figure so far (bear in mind this image is about 2-3 times the size of the actual figure). I tried some new ideas with the white i.e really subtle highlights and transitions, using very thin layers. The face came out nice (good sculpting more than anything) and I managed to pull off some nice freehand on the armour and gun. There's some shine to kill with a varnish though. 

Another Hasslfree figure. Kev White (the sculptor for HF) is a genius. Easily my favourite sculptor. I tried to go for a high sheen faux leather jacket by painting it with extreme white highlights. Works slightly better IRL.  I found a good jeans colour on this figure so will no doubt use again. 

Heresy figure - shame its not a HF! Still not bad. 

I think the shiny black leather boots came out nicely. Getting the hang of this technique (painted this after the figure above). Sponge chipping effect on the kneepads. 

Skin's not bad either. Flesh and black are still my two big hurdles to overcome. I think, with trepidation, I can say I can paint white now though. 

I don't think the firefly universe has intelligent robots but when I saw this figure on the Lead Adventure forums I had to get a few! I figure its semi-intelligent (so not sentient like the Star Wars droids) and gives the mechanic (still to paint) some technical computing backup. 

More Firefly (pulp alley project)

I finished painting up Zoe over the weekend. I now have the core of the crew in terms of the 'away team' painted up (Mal, Jayne, Zoe) and some opposition - 8 Alliance troopers (I did 3 more at the same time as Zoe) with an Alliance officer well on the way.  This puts me in a good place to play a game once I've finished putting together a bit more of my battlesystems terrain (some of which you can see in the background to the shots).

I've used a Reaper fig. Its not a dead ringer for Zoe but its close enough in my book...

You'll notice that I've 'penned' the edges on my card terrain to help it blend - you can see this nicely on the air duct here. 

The place you don't want to be -  staring down the barrel of Zoe's gun!

The gang together. They scale well - no complaints from me. 

Traditional sepia shot...

Surrounded! but not cowed. 

You can't take the sky from me...

I've been a bit distracted from my pulp project by a certain space western that had an unfortunate case of Kurt Cobain syndrome...

Pulp Alley is a very flexible ruleset and I can see it fitting the firefly universe perfectly, so buckle in for some thrillin' heroics as I run through the first few characters I've painted up from the show. 

Mal and Jayne bite off more than they can chew as they go head to head with a heavily armed squad of Alliance Feds.

Malcolm Reynolds. Browncoat, captain and all round goddam hero. 

From Heresy,  not a bad sculpt but a bit of  shock after all the Copplestone and Hasslefree I've been panting recently. Its Malish but not a dead ringer and the boots for example are a bit crude. 

I went for colours reminiscent to those in the show but adapted for the scale.

Jayne Cobb. Foul mouthed mercenary looking for his cut. (Reaper)

Again, not the greatest sculpt in the world -  the face is pretty basic. But, then again, it exists, so yay!

The shirt is meant to say 'blue sun' as in the blue sun corporation but I think the e turned out looking more like an r. So, ironically, now its 'blur sun'! Not quite sure what happened to Jane's eyes either...

Alliance Feds aka 'Purple bellies'. The first 5. These are from Rebel minis (who I think has bought certain rights from Mongoose). As Firefly fans will know, the Alliance feds from the series used left over gear from the Starship Troopers movie. 

The sculpts are a little basic and a bit vague in places, especially the faces. I painted these using a different approach to usual (as they are goons I was less bothered that about them being neat) so used lots of drybrushing and a very limited palette to speed things up. 

Close-up of some of the little bits of detail I bothered to do on the feds. The upside to this approach is that these 5 took me about 3 hours, which is very fast for me. 

Mal posing in front of my new Battlesystems card terrain.  Should get some good use out of this to represent salvage missions, boarding actions etc. Looking forward to popping it all out at some point. 

The smell of cordite hangs heavy in the air. 'Get on the horn and call for reinforcements!'

I've become pretty fascinated by the new ruleset from Ivan Sorenson (five parsecs from home) which merges miniatures wargame and RPG. I'm not a huge fan of the 5 core system the supplement builds on, it looks a bit basic and the lack of stat lines is a big turn-off, but I really want to do some kind of mash-up of pulp alley, 5 parsecs, the firefly boardgame and then mix in RPG elements... just need to find the time to write it...

On the plus side my boardgame group just progressed to RPGs (first game of D&D last week -  which we thoroughly enjoyed) so I may be able to tempt them with the Firefly RPG in time.

Well, until next time - I'll be in my bunk.