Stargrave – Trooper

The next two plastic kits for Stargrave after the crew are far more combat orientated, and we cover the SG002. To be honest, if you wouldn't know about Stargrave being a skirmish with role-play elements, you'd assume this is a generic Sci-Fi soldier kit.

The Troopers for Stargrave are an 28mm scaled multi-part plastic kit and has a RRP of 20 GBP for 20 miniatures. This kit is compatible with the other Stargrave kits of the Crew and Mercenaries. And its content is spread across four sprues of five miniatures each, along with two additional sprues covering the 25mm round bases.

Content of each sprue:

• 5 Bodies
• 19 Heads
• 9 arm pairs with rifles
• 1 right arm with pistol
• 1 arm pair with heavy rifle
• 1 arm pair with rocket launcher
• 1 left arm with knife
  
• 15 Bags, pouches, knives and holsters

Casting is well done and the sprues are put to a good use. I assume that you could have packed this tighter, but all in all there is enough content in those either way. Especially as you have a ratio of ~4 to 1 for the heads and bodies, as well as ~2 to 1 for the arms. Most of the heads wear helmets, with full sets of a specific style so you can build them in a uniform way.

The bodies come without smaller bases or tabs, so you can glue them directly to your base of choice. As the all poses stand very firm and shoulder wide, gluing them isn't a problem, just use a bit of super glue or plastic glue (depending on your bases material) and you're good to go. All of the bodies wear full body armour.

As were building troopers, I went for a small tactical squad. Less with Stargrave in mind, but the obvious other choice of building them like space grunts, sci-fi soldiers etc. So, I setup for a squad leader with a pistol, some regular riflemen and a heavy (or two if you count the heavier rifle as a heavy too). Pairing the arms isn't a problem, some of them are numbered when it matters, so that's working fine.

Next up, the heads. I used the two different types for the grunts, and a regular head without helmet for the squad leader. For the heavier troops, I chose the helmets with an aiming device, as I thought that would make sense. For my taste, the open helmets are a bit too wide, but as said above, you have a total option of 19 different heads per sprue, so you can work around if you want / need to. And beyond that, as this is plastic and a more heroic 28mm scale, you can obviously use those from other manufacturers as well, plastic kits, third party resin or home printed items. And as I have shown with the Oathmark Skeleton Infantry, heads make a different.

Now all that's left is adding some smaller details to the bodies, like small ammunition pouches, holsters and knives.

In the first scale comparison, we show the Stargrave plastic models from the different sets, so those are Crew members, Troopers and Mercenaries. As seen here, they are a proper 28mm, in a slightly heroic scale, so in overall very flexible towards both sides.

And they fit well, with a lot of the other sci-fi miniature range available. Of course, we have to do the comparison with a Pre-Primaris / First Born Space Marine from the Warhammer 40k range. And due to their proportion the Stargrave range can be mixed with Bolt Action and a lot of Gripping Beast kits, so especially with the troopers, I think the additional heads (in berets) you get from the British Paratroopers or Commandos (review to follow, I haven't forgotten you Thomas!) would be a great fit for some Spec-Ops or certain regiment. And just for the sake of completeness, the 35+ mm scaled Star Wars Legions, which is very noticeable bigger.

Stargrave fits in heights and proportions with a lot of the other sci-fi plastic kits out there, like Wargames Factory, Wargames Atlantic, or Maelstrom ranges. But from my personal opinion, the Stargrave models offer the sharpest details from that line-up. The Dreamforge Eisernkern is a bit taller than them, Antares is a bit more true-scaled in direct comparison and just to give you one more option from the Warhammer range before the scale creep an older T'Au.

The small squad of battle-experienced troopers would translate into the following classes with the Stargrave archetypes;

Gunner, (Armoured) Trooper, Commando, Armoured Trooper, Grenadier (the RPG counts as grenade launcher)

Conclusion

Once again, a very solid modular plastic kit. It boosts up the possibilities of Stargrave, that's for sure. Maybe a bit "generic" or too uniform for a Skirmish, to be honest. But very useful if you go for your own platoon sized combat system in the dark future. Don't fancy the Mantic range? Use these instead, maybe swap the heads with some bits from another kit, add a few vehicles from one of the other manufacturers and there you have your mid-sized wargaming project on a budget.

You could argue, that for skirmish, with individual characters, these are as mentioned above, are too uniform, but as soon as you mix in bits from the other two kits, you get a colourful motley crew. So, yes, you can surely build from these your unnamed, generic stormtroopers in a colour scheme of your choosing, but with a few bits - bam! That's your personal Bad Batch.

And of course, with Stargrave you might want your grunts, your nameless / endless foes, that are just numbers in uniform. One wave after another that your crew has to fight against. Just for that, this kit is great as you get a whole bunch of those for just 20 GBP. That's what it is, a reasonable priced plastic kit that is well made and without a doubt provides added value to the range and game.

Stargrave is a brand of North Star Figures and Osprey Games.