The Effigy Corporation

The question you should ask yourself is not whether we will get the job done, but whether you can afford us.  

Dannon Trace,  Effigy Corporation CEO

These are dangerous times. Ruined husks of starships litter the solar systems and renegade pirates fight for whatever precious resources can be found on the savage surfaces of the inner planets. Powerful corporations wage constant industrial wars for control of the galaxy's resources and have learned to now heavily rely on hired guns and professionals to do their dirty work. The Effigy Corporation is one of those professionals and is widely considered to be one of the best mercenary outfits money can buy. The Corporation specializes in space travel protection, search and rescue operations, industrial espionage and sabotage.

Effigy's famous Havoc Squads, small teams of highly trained ex-military soldiers and specialists, are equipped with the finest equipment and weaponry currently available in the galaxy. Supported by droids and small specialist teams, the Squads have an extremely high success rate.

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The "Effigy Corporation" is to be the first outfit for a Sci-Fi skirmish project I just started.

I found these figures by accident on the website of a friend who used to distribute the range in North America (sadly the range is not available anymore). I just got them on impulse and figured one day I'd find a use for them. And now is that day...

The range, started through a Kickstarter, was very small  and unfortunately only a few figures were made; 5 squad members, two civilians and 3 specialists, along with some recon robots which I do not own. But since I intend on building factions of between 10 and 30 figures, it's not really a problem, although some heavy support soldiers would've been fun!

I find the figures would fit equally well in some Space Pulp, Cyberpunk or distant future Sci-Fi setting and that suits my plans very well. The sculpts were lovely although I found the very realistic proportions were a little bit challenging after all that time working on Oldhammer models!

The outfit is made up of 2 Havoc Squads, Blue Squad and Green Squad, as well as a Yellow Squad (specialists), the CEO Dannon Trace and a demolition droid. I'm missing a droid and another civilian, in boxes somewhere, but other than that this bunch is complete.

Havoc Green Squad

The first figures I painted for the project. The photography doesn't do justice to the dark green however. I love the presence of a couple of female soldiers in the squads (some seriously awesome figures) and that First Sargent pose is perfect. He screams Alpha Male ;-)

Havoc Blue Squad 

After the dark green I went with a brighter colour for the blue squad and I'm very happy with the result. It's exactly the style I wanted to give to the force.

Yellow Squad, "The Techno Girls"

I quite like the middle one, a lovely figure.

Havoc-TT-4, Demolition Droid 

This droid figure is not part of the original range, and was sculpted by Drew Williams from the Oldhammer Facebook page, and he graciously made it available for a limited time to the whole group. Obviously I couldn't resist! The figure was actually based of a drawing in the original Rogue Trader rulebook! Also an impulse buy from a couple of months ago and I was looking for a way to use him.

Dannon Trace,  Effigy Corporation CEO

Doesn't he look like the perfect Corporate CEO?! You can just smell the 1%!

So yeah, my first painted Sci-Fi force since 1993!

Sci-Fi?

I hinted at doing just that recently, and yes it's happening. My plan was to start the project next year, but circumstances have changed that. It so happens that my (meagre) Sci-Fi collection has not found it's way to boxes yet, and so I figured it was as good a time as any to start this.

I start this project not knowing what ruleset I will use, nor in exactly which galaxy I will play on any given gameday! In fact, even the style of Sci-Fi is subject to debate. I got the urge to start some Sci-Fi last spring, after buying, on impulse, the Battle System Sci-Fi terrain (so no, people, it's not because of Star Wars!).

I just thought it was so cool, and the gaming possibilities just screamed to me. Playing Sci-Fi skirmishes in abandonned vessels or space stations just strikes my fancy a lot more than W40K tank battles! I need to build and play in this thing!

While I haven't gamed the genre in a long time, I do like my Sci-Fi. A lot. My favourite novel is Dune and Aliens has to be top 5 of my favourite movies. I also like many styles, from the dark Aliens to Space Opera to Cyberpunk to everything in the middle. So I'm not limiting myself in style, but rather in size. My initial plan is to build many small 15 to 30 figures forces and just go with the flow. In that I was a bit influenced by the way JB (from the Leadplague blog) does thing.

Now some will mix, some will not. And while not all of them will be Oldhammer, be assured there will be some love for the nostalgic fans among you!

I'd probably like to try some Rogue Traders game, after more than 20 years since my last game, but I'm also intrigued by the Osprey Sci-Fi game coming up in the Fall :

But when it comes to rules, my logic is simple; build the forces you want, and make the ruleset adapt. Not the other way around.

So yeah, it's my new small project for this year. I'm usually more of a big army type guy, but building small forces will create nice diversions in between unit painting. I expect it will be an ongoing project for years to come.

Valent Uuthizar, Champion of Tzeentch

And we finish the new year celebrations with another classic, a sorcerer of Tzeentch from the Lost and the Damned days. I've had this figure for 25 years but never painted it. It used to come with a Disk and a flying stem but those were lost a long time ago. Fortunately he doesn't look out of place on his two feet.

The figure was also a test for future colour schemes for my Tzeentch forces; I find my orange recipe will need a bit more work but I'm quite happy with the turquoise and the yellow. He's another figure I intend to use in my second chaos army but who I can use in RoC warbands. I now have at least a champion for each of the chaos gods.

And here is a family portrait of the three classic Champions I recently painted. They were submitted in the Analogue Hobby Painting Challenge "Nostalgia" bonus round.

Doras Varn, Champion of Slaanesh

Another classic today! Crazy, I know. And this one might just be the most iconic of all Chaos Champions, he's like the poster child for fantastic imaginative sculpting of the 80s.

I really went with an Old Scool Slaanesh colour scheme for him. Nowadays, it seems that Slaanesh = black and pink, but it should be so much more. Slaanesh was, in the RoC days, all about pastel colours, not just pink and purple, but also garish combinations and just an abundance of tones and colours. I figured the addition of yellow on his tail and glove would really make him stand-out and it was also something I've yet to see on this particular figure. 

For now I can use him for Warband games in RoC, but of course he will eventually fit into my "crazy colourful" Chaos army. It gives you a taste of what I'm aiming for! 

Burgold Festus, Champion of Nurgle

Today, an iconic sculpt from Jes Goodwin, and possibly my favourite Nurgle champion of them all.

I used browns and sickly greens for him rather than the black and green I used with the rest of my army, but I managed to include just a touch of my "poison Green" (eyes and axe symbols) to tie him up. Those old sculpts are so much fun to paint. In fact it's one of the figures I enjoyed most painting in years. I'll have to paint the other Nurgle champions now, probably sooner than later. A unit of them? Would that be too much?

Nothing starts a new year with more style than a classic figure from the 80s, am I right?!