So It Begins!

 Security Briefing - Top Secret - 

With the identification of the unlawful activities of James Bolivar diGriz, AKA Slippery Jim in the Beta Cygnus system, the Special Corps has dedicated an extortionate amount of our budget to set a stainless steel trap for the stainless steel rat.

Wanted in multiple systems, diGriz has been identified as a perfect candidate to join the Corps as an agent, once his larcenous ways have been curtailed and as such, considerable assets are being put into play in an effort to snare the man.

As per usual with Corps procedure, local law enforcement have been told the bare minimum and Corps agents are at work collating information and gently nudging the yokels in the correct direction that will set off a chain of events which will result in the suspects eventual capture.

While the bean counters are wailing about the expenses, as director of the Corps, I am fully aware that we will have one chance to catch the man or he will vanish so completely that we will have to spend even greater effort to catch his scent.

MESSAGE ENDS...

So I've been rummaging my 15mm scale collection for suitable stuff and have discovered I have got quite a lot of what I need already painted or at languishing in my leadpile.

On top of that, I've also purchased the Laserburn starter set from Alternative Armies who currently have the collection on 10% discount as well as a store wide 20% discount mega event. While it is somewhat more than the hobby budget for this project would normally allow, I feel that the big stack of gubbins will make completing the project incredibly handy and at a discount I doubt we'll see for some time.

Not only does the collection include the classic Laserburn rulebook, it has sixty four miniatures, two bikes and four vehicles which will five me plenty of goons, denizens and hapless bystanders to mix it up in games.

With this purchase, I am setting myself the proviso that I cannot get anything else until all this is painted so we shall see how I get on with blasting through all this stuff!

I'm also slowly but surely painting some military types to give the Special Corps some muscle when it comes to capturing Jim and I hope to get some pictures of them in my next post alongside a bit of a roundup of what stuff I currently have painted alongside further plans of my gaming shenanigans and how the project will develop.

Until then, All the best!

Introduction

This site has been created to chronicle the Special Corps investigations. First off I have asked our research department to compile a report on our current target of investigation: "Slippery" Jim diGriz aka The Stainless Steel Rat, De rat van roestvrij staal, die Edelstahlratte, El Escurridizo un criminale al nichelcromo and a host of other aliases.

The Arch Reprobate Slippery Jim diGriz

A career criminal diGriz is responsible for countless robberies spanning half the galaxy and I have ordered the best the Corps can offer to come up with a way of catching this reprobate. His crimes are legendary and the Corps has decided that its long past time that we curtailed his felonious activities and he be either jailed or, preferably, recruited into the Corps.

Hence I, Harold Peters Inskipp as head of the Special Corps have decided to take personal charge of the investigation and have no doubt that the criminal diGriz will be captured like a rat in a trap!

MESSAGE ENDS...

Hi! 

Back in 2009 I put together a small 15mm scale project to chronicle my adventures collecting and painting a Stainless Steel Rat themed project while I was in 1st year of university in Worcester.

I had a fantastic time and Slippery Jim got involved in all sorts of shenanigans using Rogue Trader as my rulebook of choice but as uni got busier, I went off in another direction and even now, 15 years later it has taken a fairly major hobby slump to get me back to basics and re-explore the project.

Sadly my original Special Corps blog went the way of the dodo but I still have the individual posts over on my Tales From Farpoint blog. Similarly, the vast majority of my 15mm collection got sold off when times were tight but I have been re-reading both the exploits of The Stainless Steel Rat in the classic novels by Harry Harrison and my old project log and it got me to look back on this simple project and start it up again.

As with the original, my budget is £15.00 a month with a ban on buying anything new until I've painted everything from my previous purchase but I will be making a bit of a double purchase this month to give me enough to get going with.

 
As with the original project, the figures I will be using are Laserburn which were just about the only 15mm scale sci-fi figures that were available back then but I'll also be using Peter Pig figures too as I used quite a few of them back then too as they scaled perfectly with Laserburn miniatures and had lots of variety to portray the assorted weird and wonderful denizens of the galaxy that Jim regularly had to outwit.

Most posts will be told from the perspective of one of the characters from the books, be it Jim himself, Inskipp, boss of the Special Corps or Professor Coypu, scientific genius and maker of all gadgets, gizmos and whatnot that Jim uses as the series of books carries through.

Each part of the project will be intended to cover one book with the first having Jim on the run from the Law, the Special Corps and eventually his hunt for Angelica, the beautiful but deadly femme fatale who would eventually marry Jim. 

I will be playing around with the books a bit, using them as a reference and inspiration rather than slavishly copying it all so some of the villains who only appear in book one will be irregular arch enemies as the project develops.

I figure this approach will keep me engaged while keeping the projects scope doable on a small to tiny budget and allowing me to keep on top of the painting side of things.

We shall see how things go but I'm raring to go and really look forward to seeing how I get on.

All the best!