With a number of projects competing for my attention I’m enjoying how quick and straightforward to paint my Van Saar gang is proving to be. The irony that this is a small and elite force is not lost on me, especially compared to some of the veritable hordes that I find myself collecting with far trickier colour schemes. For now this gang is entering its final stages with my intention being to complete it in the near future. After that I’ll turn my attention to one of the more populous gangs, probably Cawdor, although I’ll probably turn my attention to some other projects first. First of all though let’s take a look at the latest two recruits.
The final rank-and-file ganger is Agent Bask. I do find the awkward crouched pose of some of the Van Saar a little hard to get used to, although it helps if you imagine them taking cover behind the ramshackle rusty terrain of the underhive. The Van Saar also appear more organised and military than many of the other gangs, something I’ve tried to emphasise with the pose as he takes cover and gestures to one of his squad mates for backup. A Goliath would probably just wade in shouting!
Alongside him we have the first gang champion, Agent Weyland, who brings a missile launcher to an underhive knife fight. The instructions which come with the models suggest equipping one of the running figures with the missile launcher but to my eye it looks too heavy, and the gangers of Van Saar are said to be too frail and weak, for such dynamic action. Instead I went for a power pose as he prepares to launch radioactive death into the upper gantries.
Lastly let’s take a quick look at how the whole group is progressing.
With them done I now only need to finish off the gang leader and the remaining champion and the project will be complete for the moment. On top of that I also need to write the background story which explains who they are and what has brought them out of their labs and tech-refineries and down into the grim depths of Ironhouse. With the end in sight I’ll aim to tackle that soon.
Convert or Die 
October 14th, 2019 at 5:52 am
Impressing me every single time Wudugast!
October 14th, 2019 at 8:47 am
Thanks very much Daax 🙂
October 14th, 2019 at 8:52 am
Anytime, keep up the great work!
October 14th, 2019 at 12:56 pm
Very cool – loving this colour scheme, and good call on the more static pose for the ML guy mate! I find figures running with heavy gear really jarring, so this is a great relief 🙂
October 14th, 2019 at 3:26 pm
I agree. Some non-enhanced-looking guy looking like he is running flat out with some anime-scaled weapon seems a bit jarring to me too; you choose rightly. 🙂 Nice little strike force you have there.
October 15th, 2019 at 7:09 am
Yup, couldn’t agree more (and it’s especially jarring with the Van Saar because they’re supposed to be constantly poorly and reliant on their tech to keep them alive). The Van Saar kit itself isn’t very forgiving of mixing and matching parts or deviating from the set designs but it can be done and to my mind it’s well worth it. Anyway, glad you like them – two more coming soon! 🙂
October 15th, 2019 at 7:05 am
Cheers mate! Aye, it always looks as though someone has handed them the fake rocket launcher they made out of cardboard as a practical joke. It’s especially odd when you look at the Goliaths lugging their heavy weapons around and everything looks, for what of a better word, heavy. You can see that they’re having to brace and take the load, strong as they are. Then some skinny little tech-nerd who needs his suit to keep him from dying on the spot chucks a rocket launcher over his shoulder and runs with it.
October 14th, 2019 at 4:02 pm
Very nicely done mate and as always I do love a group shot.
October 15th, 2019 at 7:11 am
Cheers mate – so do I, they’re a little more tricky to set up and photograph compared to single miniatures, but I’ll try to keep them coming as often as possible. 🙂
October 14th, 2019 at 4:47 pm
Wait, I can’t remember: Is there also an Agent Yutani?
There are a bunch of GW Models that I find the poses make sense in a very narrow set of circumstances. You could easily make a diorama with them where it looks perfect, but in a game, where they’re moving around and in different situations over the course of it (or when viewed purely on their own with no context), they end up looking somewhere between awkward and ridiculous. That said, I don’t mind the semi-crouched ones at all. I did martial arts for years, and that sort of “knees bent, weight on the balls of the foot” position is great for maneuverability and reaction speed.
I kind of assumed that the Van Saar weapons used bulky but light-weight materials, so they weren’t actually nearly as heavy as they might seem. Probably also have some mini-suspensors in there too. Not enough to get a Rules benefit, but enough to justify someone so scrawny holding a weapon like that.
October 17th, 2019 at 7:22 am
There we go – I knew someone would get the reference! 🙂 I’ve always felt there was a link between Alien and Necromunda so I had to sneak something in there somewhere. Haven’t used Yutani yet but I’ll find somewhere it fits.
I’m with you on the poses in game. The one that always gets me, although I think this is just a pet-peeve, is where the whole squad is posed as advancing slowly or standing guard, and then one guy is running hell for leather. It always looks as though he’s really enthusiastic and charging off ahead of everyone else or he stopped to tie his shoelaces and now he’s running to catch up.
I made the same assumption regarding the Van Saar weapons, although it still wasn’t enough to overcome the aesthetic oddness of it for me. It’s not a huge deal for me but I was glad to find a way to get around it all the same.
October 17th, 2019 at 6:34 pm
They both have a lot of the same poorly-lit, claustrophobic aesthetic, and as I noticed when I was reading some of the Warhammer Horror shorts, 40K is basically a horror setting anyhow. Throw in Genestealers and the connection with Alien seems pretty solid.
Also, the series has kind of been on my mind because I recently read Alien: Echo, a novella that just came out for the series, and it’s got me thinking about re-watching some of them.
October 17th, 2019 at 9:41 pm
Yeah, the first two films were great. It went downhill somewhat after that but for my money those two are still classics. I’ve got an itch to watch them again too now. Maybe I’ll justify it to myself as a way of inspiring me to paint more GSC! Was the novella any good? I haven’t read any of the books but I’ve heard some favourable comments on them.
October 17th, 2019 at 10:38 pm
I really liked it, but that was pretty much guaranteed because it’s by Mira Grant, and I’ve loved pretty much everything of hers I’ve read. YMMV.
Alien III is a weird one, because there are a couple of different Director’s Cut-type versions out there, and one of them (unfortunately, I can never recall which it was), I actually quite liked. Even Prometheus had its points. But Resurrection and Covenant were pretty much total shit.
October 14th, 2019 at 10:29 pm
I really like them- the Rad Cannon- even though it is not a great weapon in the rules- looks spot on.
Cheers,
Pete.
October 17th, 2019 at 7:32 am
Thanks Pete. Aye, I’ve heard it’s not amazing in game (or perhaps it’s better to say it’s not as amazing as it looks like it ought to be) but I don’t mind, I’m just looking for something that looks good and is fun to play with. 🙂
October 19th, 2019 at 1:12 pm
More it got changed to be less powerful. I still have one in my gang though…
Cheers,
Pete.