2nd Rebel Trooper Squad is Complete!

 

Out of patrol of the steppes(?) of...Endor?

Seriously what the hell? Eleven minis, all painted for the same faction, in a little over a week's time. You'd think this blog was hacked or something...

Yet painted they are! Due to this ungodly heat wave, I haven't been going outside as often as I normally do, and as such I knocked this group out in 2 evenings. Which leaves me just the cannon left to do (well, at least until the third 3D printed squad arrives in the mail). 

I had to have at least one Gamorrean, since they're basically the Orks of the Star Wars universe. Given that this one is armed with a Z-6, he's of the dakka variety. Anyways, not much else to say I suppose, so I'll just show 'em off instead:

Amongst  FFG's actual rebel trooper minis, the guy in the middle is my favorite sculpt. Also, it wasn't until I was inking the squad that I realized belatedly that the trooper on the right is female.

Shit! They're behind us! Oh wait, it's just the Ewoks again.

The Twi'lek is the squad leader and is seen both here and below giving his squad's Gamorrean gunner some in depth instruction. 

I love how the Gamorrean is (sorta) stuffed into the body armor of a (presumably) deceased Imperial Officer.

You Rebel Scum...

Here we have a generic Mon Calamari rebel officer and my first painted squad of rebel troopers all looking fit, and ready for battle.

Whereas here is the side the Imperial troops most often see, the backsides of their retreating foe...lol.

I have several gaming friends and acquaintances who insist that Star Wars Legion is the BEST GAME EVAR!!! As for me however, whilst I do enjoy painting the minis for it...I honestly have no real want to actually try and play the game. Oh I might try it...maybe, but meh, I'm not really looking to. 

I was tempted to paint their skin grey, as they look like the stereotypical 'greys', but the blue provided I nice contrast to the otherwise very drab uniforms and kit.

They do paint up quickly, and fairly easily lacking GW's skull and/or oath parchment on every surface design philosophy. Both Mon Calamari as well as the Duro standing straight up are 3D printed, whereas the rest are *official* models. One gripe with SWL is the lack of miniature variety. 

The core game gives you 2 IDENTICAL squads of rebels troopers. In a rebel alliance of a myriad of alien races, that's just kinda boring to me. Endless repetition amongst Clones, Storm Troopers and droids? Sure, no problem, but a mismatched collection of rebels? Not so much..

The eyes on these two were a bitch to paint, and honestly I still don't like 'em after several tries...

That's why in my small collection, about half of the minis are 3D printed, so that no 2 models are the same. A rare feat in this game it seems to me. Also I have a generic commander as much like Warmahordes, I'm tired of seeing the same dozen or so characters lead every battle (which is also why I almost never field special characters in 40k). Were I to actually play this game though, I'd need a named character as the generic ones look to be substantially weaker than their unique counterparts. 

 The trooper one on the left has an ion gun, whereas the guy on the right is the squad leader. Speaking of, the Ubese helm on his base came from a 3D printed sculpt of Leia in her Return of the Jedi bounty hunter disguise that I didn't like. That mini's legs were way, waaaay too long. 

After taking these pics I did go back and reflock the bases of all but the Mon Calamari. I think they look much better now. My second squad is now primed and after I finish painting them, I have a 1.4fd P-Tower team to finish out this little force (I'm saving that for last as an incentive to paint the other 5 grunts first). 

"UNLEASH THE (Red) KRAKEN!!'

Hey! You! Yeah you! Stop humming the A-Team TV show theme!!

As mentioned in my prior post, Frankie has dubbed his YT-1300 the Red Kraken. Originally, its name was to be based on/named after the starter world Bracca from the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Looking for variations thereof, I mentioned the mythical Kraken and shortly thereafter Frankie arrived at the name: The Braccin. 

Not sure if he really wanted a dirty ship, though he was quite impressed with the initial drybrushing layer. 

Frankie rather likes my Scarlet Harlot as well as the pics of both Ol' Ironsides and especially the Blue Waffle (no, he DOES NOT know what that actually is!). As such I was thinking he'd want me to convert his YT, most likely to the central cockpit variety of the Waffle. However with blade in hand he stopped me and requested only a repaint. 

My instructions were as follows:

I have a few more of these coloring sheets, and may color some myself...just for the hell of it.

Skip forward to our game last week, and quoting Liam Neeson from some movie I didn't like, I said: 'UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!' (whilst he proceeded to kill one of my TIE fighters). However he corrected me calling it the Red Kraken. Thus his ship was officially named. 

Oddly, the engine looks kinda like a toothy grin to me.

Like most of my rebel ship repaints (and my paint jobs in general), this ship looks weather beaten and worn. She's clearly been around the block galaxy a few times, but is nonetheless ready for combat! I did however explain to him new model syndrome and how it also applies to painted minis. Nonetheless he's looking forward to using again soon. 

Not sure when we'll have the opportunity to play X-Wing again, but regardless he'll (I'm sure happliy) take possession of the ship this evening. 

The rarely seen underside. 

Another round of X-Wing

 o/

Been quiet here of late, due to a bit of family vacationing in Chicago. It was HOT! Expensive...but a hellova lot of fun. We really needed it and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Following that was a week of catching back up to reality...and finally this past Saturday evening, a 2nd game of X-Wing with Frankie. He's asked me to play close to a half dozen times since our last game, and he wanted to play a 'real game' this time, not a super simplified starter game. 

So we played the standard 100 points, though I still left out rockets, missiles, torps, bombs, mines and ion. We also fielded what would be Neverness approved lists of all canon to the original trilogy ships, with the only named pilot being Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon Red Kraken (once it is painted). There's a bit of an evolution in that name, but I'll explain that in a later post. 

As usual it was turn 2 or 3 when both sides finally met and the general scrum began in earnest.

Despite having a YT-1300 flown by Chewbacca, he was a bit intimidated by the 6-strong TIE swarm.

Or at least he was until he realized just how fragile they are...

Despite the deep space map, we were clearly close to a nearby star, and it blinded me for a good part of the game.

Two TIEs down for no losses, Frankie was feeling a bit confident with his prospects of victory...

The board has thinned out a bit, with me having him once again outnumbered in terms of ships, if not hit points remaining. 

Eventually if came down to my TIE shuttle veteran leader and the Kraken in a 1 v. 1 duel of attrition that I was slowly losing. In this pic, the YT is parked on an asteroid. Despite explaining asteroids thoroughly, Frankie missed few opportunities to crash into them.

My wounded pilot (reduced to PS:0 due to a crit.) has had enough of the circling and sniping and goes into a (fatal) suicide charge, ending the game. 

So I lost again. However this was still a learning game and thus I made him pick another maneuver when half way thru Chewbacca tried to K-Turn right off of the map. Indeed several turns later I let him shimmy the Kraken over a smidge after it technically flew slightly off of the opposite side of the map. So the loss is technically kindova moot point, but whatever.

Those two glitches aside, he's really catching on quickly and we had a whole lot of fun! Also this was the first time I ever had good success with the TIE shuttle. Using the veteran pilot, Push the limit and having a recon specialist crew upgrade really worked out well!

Adeptus Mechanicus Vanguard test model is complete

 o/

Many sacred unguents and oils will be needed after this dusty campaign...

No idea with what's up with that 'splash' of wash on the right bottom of his coat. No amount of scrubbing would remove it (unless I wanted to take the paint with it, and I didn't...).

I've decided that this icon is a Forgeworld marking. However as to which Forgeworld....? 

Looks decent enough, despite some weird pooling effects of the dust wash on the back of his coat. One complaint that I've had with my Coyotes is that their bases didn't match the dust wash. Thus I based this guy differently and I think it works nicely (meaning my lone painted squad of Coyotes will need to be rebased to match). 

I added some brown as well as greenish brown tufts to simulate the local grasses quickly dying due to being irradiated by this guy. Very much in keeping with the Vanguard's fluff I think. 

My generic flocking is an equal mix of sandbox sand, green flock and railroad train ballast or some such that I've used for years. As always, nothing fancy but it works I think. The bleached bone base shows thru just enough to blend in with the wash, making the light dusting much more plausible.

As my first Admech model completed, I'm tempted to do a Star Trek cross over and name him 1 of 9 as that's just how many admech minis I have, lol.