Dwarf Spider Droid and Rebel Troopers

 o/

Awwww, isn't it cute?

This is my latest purchase for my Separatist army. I thought it would bring me up for 500 points, but then I remembered that you cannot have 2 commander choices in a skirmish army. Oh well,worst case I can proxy a suad of Rebel troopers as Pyke mercenaries, or just stick with Rebels for now.

Stepping off of the edge...

...or is it stepping into the future?

I like how colorful the base is.

Speaking of Rebels, I finished the last four original troopers. Meaning my army would have been fully painted were it not for the influx of new recruits, gifted to me by RJ. 

These were the Rebel Trooper Upgrades expansion where all four could be built with either support weapons or blaster rifles.

I'm not complaining though. These will be folded into one of the squads that RJ gave me to form a super squad of 10. That will also even out the human-to-alien ratio in said trooper squad. 

Clankers Update

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Making progress.

I've been moving right along on cleaning up & expanding my CIS force. I finished up the first squad of B1s, the blue squad as marked out by the tufts on their bases. 

Rather than Tufts, the specialists have cystals on their bases, whereas the Super Tactical droid's base looks like it is in a space ship or perhaps the under hive.

Wouldn't the binoculars just be hard wired in?

I also painted up a super tactical droid as well as a the four specialist droids: the repair droid (little blue bot), the medical droid (the ugly green one in the back), a recon droid (the mini Imperial Probe droid in OD green), and lastly a T-series command droid (in silver and red). 

Wat Tambor, Foreman of the Techno Union

(and also a model without any rules...)

Also as you can see I painted the Wat Tambor above. I'll likely just use him as a proxy for another T-series command droid. While the T-Series isn't all that stout of a character, neither are political leaders when on the battlefield. 

No, I didn't take these pics on the roof of my wife's white car in the garage. Why do you ask?

I also finished up some...uh...terrain pieces:

 Now those are some serious chicken legs!

I couldn't resist these goofy looking things. I was thinking maybe make them terrain that if you come into base contact with, will make a 1-white die attack and then make an immediate half range run away in the opposite direction. Or something like that. I probably ought to get the rules down before creating terrain with rules, but what can I say? My cart always leads the horse.

When exactly did the Rebellion start anyways?

 Someone is always fighting authority somewhere right? 

Is vehicular manslaughter a thing in Legion?

Hot of the heels of the arrival of my 2nd hand CIS horde from my last post, I got in another game of Star Wars Legion. My opponent was RJ whom I hadn't met in person up until he arrived for our game. Much to my surprise, he came in bearing a box of rebels for me. Screw the Darkside and their cookies! 

My new Rebel recruits are the unpainted minis in back: Luke Skywalker, (2) squads of Rebel troopers as well as a neither pictured nor assembled Rebel AT-RT. 

He had had them knocking around for awhile and said they needed a home and so they were mine. I found out later of that he was looking to get into Battletech, however didn't know where to start. Thus, I'll be passing some of my spare mechs off to him next time I see him. 

We played a 500 point skirmish/teaching game as this was only my 2nd game and I last played in November. Clones vs. Rebels (or perhaps just insurgent/dissidents at this point?). I had an officer, a mandalorian (but not the Madalorian), a 10-strong squad of rebels with a Z-6 gunner, another squad of 5 troopers, and a landspeeder with medium blaster and rocket launcher. 

RJ had Anakin Skywalker (who I simply referred to as 'the blender'), a single squad of Clone troopers and I think 4, 5-strong squads of ARC troopers. The primary mission was Bunker Assault I think, I have no idea what the secondaries were. 

The battlefield with my first squad of Rebels deployed behind a building. 

RJ deploying his first squad of ARCs. 

The rest of my army waiting in the wings. 

My landspeeder moves forward quickly, rounding a wrecked AT-AT and killing 2 ARC troopers

They took offense to that and inflicted 2 wounds to my speeder. 

And then the Blender did just that, destroying the speeder. 

The Mandalorian moves up taking long ranged potshots with his pistol. This guy has so many rules and upgrades that I forgot to use several during the game. 

A lone ARC disengages the Ewoks which speared most of his squad, leaving them open to the Clone troopers who did not believe in plot armor and shot them more or less to pieces.

The Mandalorian drops the retreating ARC trooper, making that the only enemy unit that I wiped out. 

Despite heavy casualties, my large blob of rebels had ground another squad of ARCs down to just the leader. Then Anakin arrived and that was that. 

On the other side of the board, the ARCs and my smaller squad of Troopers slugged it out for most of the game, with my troopers eventually getting wiped out. 

Way out on the flank, Anakin and the ARC Sgt. decide to BS for the rest of the game as there was no way to move in close enough to have anymore positive effect. 

The last Ewok makes a glorious (and futile) suicide charge!

Lt. Spike & the remaining ARCs that took out my small squad of troopers, would end the game locked in combat. 

My only other survivor, the Mandalorian would likewise end the game sniping back & forth with another ARC unit. 

In the end I think the final score was 13-5, resulting in a solid loss for me. That said I had more fun than the last time as I had a better understanding of what was actually going on. While Anakin was unharmed, I took out about half of RJ's clones, putting a good dent in his force. So was not a bad 2nd showing. 

Lookis like I need to get to painting on some more Rebels as my almost fully painted army is now a good distance from that point once again. 

The Roger Rogers are back

o/

Base rim colors denote the squad for now. 

Sure is a good thing that I bought more minis for a game that I've only ever played once, right? Right. Consider it a bit of seller's remorse, though that said my previous color scheme had some issues. Firstly, these frail little B1s don't do well when being drybrushed, secondly it took two layers of the pink flock to cover the base decently. Lastly, if I want to easily add some bulk B1 infantry to my army, bone colored B1s are a dime a dozen on eBay, rusty looking ones? Not so much. Droids are a horde army, I don't really have time or rather the will build a horde of these, so off to eBay's bargain auctions I went looking. 

The minis above were a couple of second hand lots bought for more or less 1/2 retail price. No cards which doesn't matter as that is all about to change, and with the advent of  just being able to print off a list with all upgrade on Tabletop Admiral, I don't see much use for those anyways. Eighty cards along the tableside & tokens galore following each unit around the table is a legacy of Fantasy Flight Games that should go away in my opinion.

A handful are unpainted such as this Super Tactical Droid who is the default Commander of this meager 360ish point force. I also have a box of CIS Specialists coming as well. 

These B1s look as though they were primed black, drybrushed in a bone color and then slathered or maybe just splattered with a sepia wash, depending on the individual mini (a few almost have a literal stripe of wash across the body). I am just drybrushing over again for a cleaner look (yes really), cleaning up the details and then will be calling it a day (20-30 minutes a model total including basing). With 36 B1s constituting just the core of the army, there's no realy need to get too detailed with them. Honestly I could probably leave 'em as is if I wanted to, but I have to tweak 'em at least a little bit.

Finished model is on the right, both of the blue squad.

Once I am good with the model, I'll rebase it with some purple sand (I have tons of the stuff) and then add tufts in the color of the unfinished models' rims. In the end the tuft colors will be used to tell the squads apart. I have them in blue, red, green & purple so that they will blend with the rim painted minis in the interim. The plan is to hopefully have all of these cleaned up by the time the new Legion 2.0 Starter forces arrive in stores. 

Trench Crusade

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I put the playtest rules on a flashdrive and took it to my local UPS store and had a book made. Not having a tablet, it is much easier to use than being just one more thing to read online. 

So this is building up considerable steam here locally. When I first heard of the game in Tennessee, I read some of the fluff, the grimmer & darker than 40K hype, then read that the Black Grail is essentially Nurgle and was like WTF? With no future in it  for the foreseeable future up there that I could see, I just ignored it. 

My test paint job for a Yeoman with semi-automatic rifle. Grimmer & darker than my painted Iggy PHIGs. 

Heraldic lion emblem on the shoulder pauldron & the 'CI' (Christian Infantry) badge on the pack, c/o the DKK decal sheet of all things. 

That cross barely fit so will have to find something else. The 19th decal probably denotes a squad or platoon designation. After 300+ years or trench warfare against literal Hell, I doubt there is a 19th anything left above that unit level that can claim the number 19. 

The FLGS has the STLs and is selling minis. I like the New Antioch faction but will likely only need to buy some of the Mechanized Heavy Infantry models (which look awesome). As you have already guessed for the bulk of my warband, I've been siphoning off models from my currently unused and largely unpainted PHIGs army. 

Weapon & equipment swap with an old (and now discarded) Warzone/Prodos miniature that had been knocking around in my minis cases for years. 

With the ornate trench shield and rare SMG, I am thinking that this guy will be my Lieutenant.

Indeed, those models are being marketed on Etsy more for Trench Crusade than they are for 40k now. I took a painted PHIG model to the FLGS to compare its size to an official STL printed mini, and was told by several folks that they would be just fine with me using my PHIGs. I have some 40k bits coming of imperial agent hand axes, truncheons and a few DKK shovels to add for close combat weapons. 

Yeomen with grenade launcher & shotgun. 

Is this the Ardennes? Or the Low Country?

 o/

Well, like everywhere else in the American Southeast, we got a snow yesterday! From what I've been told, it has been 7 years since the last time it has snowed in Charleston. While the city itself is all but shut down, I work remotely and thus it was just another Wednesday. 

Still looks like paradise, just a cold one.

Nonetheless, I joined all of the other local geeks in taking pics of their toys out in the snow because why not? I mean, its not like I've never done the same in Tennessee right? So here ya go:

Patrolling the mulch bed next to my house. 

Followed by a sweep and clear of the neighbor's frigid flower beds.

There were some tight spots so had to call in the troops.

BAR gunner in the brush!

Even with the brown coats they blend decently. 

Looks like we're in the clear boys, that's a Victory for Uncle Sam!

Grim Harvest

 o/ 

Wow!

While playing Battletech at the FLGS there other day, there was another game in progress that I could not  resist taking pics of. One of the guys there is a 'professional pirate' he even has business cards!

 Seriously, he travels up and down the eastern seaboard visiting historic sites, museums and schools giving talks on the life of a pirate in full costume. He told us that he will even appear in a forthcoming episode of Expedition Unknown later this spring on the Discovery channel!

Adam Marrow, the game's creator himself. Note, all of the unit cards, instruction booklets, were full color and high quality prints. 

Anyway, Adam is developing his own miniature game called Grim Harvest and the game these photos came from was 'playtest #22'. All of the minis & terrain were 3D printed at the FLGS, and painted in the 'past month or two' (seriously, wtf?). Jake (who co-owns the FLGS) said their first playtest game about a month ago used boxes and a 'janky looking house print' for terrain. In that short span of time  Adam's creation has progressed to this! 

Jake at the shop said (quote) I can't believe I printed that, it certainly didn't look like that when he  picked it up from me!

The game itself is a fantasy, cooperative survival game of some sort. I don't know anything beyond that other than to say that visually it looks amazing!!!

No Ewoks, I checked.

I thought the castle was from Tabletop World, but it was also 3D printed.

Mordheim anyone?

I really wanted to take this home, not that I have a place for it.

No idea who was NPC and who was a player character (if any).

Another badass looking mini.

 I believe he is aiming for Kickstarter, so I will be sure to post about it when it goes live. May try to get in a playtest game or two as well!