This week's round up.

o/

Fuck the opening crawl, we're attacking! 

I got another game of Star Wars Legion in, with my Separatist Alliance making its battlefield debut. It was my opponent's 3rd game, none of which involved droids. As such he was not able to correct me if I did anything wrong. Being my first time using said army, I am sure that I made plenty of mistakes.

My opponent was also strecthing for points and apologized for having both Vader & an AT-ST in a recon mission list. Next time I'll see if he wants to borrow my small Imperial contingent. 

I was stretching for points, so I had unit upgrades everywhere and forgot about most of them. Darth Vader killed most of my army single handedly forcing me to concede that while I don't like force users, I probably need to field one, even if only to tie up the opposing force user.

At one point, my Super Tactical Droid charged Vader, hoping to tie him up for a bit. That was an unwise decision...

I prefer more of the Rogue One/Andor type of army of average Joes (or in this case, droids) fighting the battles. However, it is Star Wars and so like the game of War Machine, the same half dozen characters don their plot armor before leading every...single...battle. 

The Dwarf Spider's 'wicked kick' attack was brushed off by a bemused Darth Vader. 

Anyways, despite heavy losses, I held a slim edge in VPs throughout the game. That is, until about midway thru the final turn when my my army finally crumbled leaving me with nothing more than my T-series command droid and one of the Dwarf Spider droids, remaining. At that point I ran up the white flag. Overall it was an enjoyable game though. 

Next up: The State of my 40k. 

In short, it is rapidly declining. I donated the vast majority (say, 95%-ish) of my spare bitz and terrain to the FLGS for use as a community resource. I have a very limited amount of space to store gaming stuff at my new house in SC. Those two tubs of plastic were taking up a lot of room in my miniatures storage closet while not being used. Nor did they possess any prospect of being needed at any time in the foreseeable future. 

Just another unfullfilled prophecy...

As for my 40K armies, the PHIGs (minus the squad siphoned off for Trench Crusade) are boxed up and will be shipping out today to a very excited buyer in California. The PHIGs will join his WWI styled Iggy army. It is exceptionally rare to get such enthusiasm from an eBay buyer. They may have have sold for less than I wanted them to, but knowing that they are going to someone who cannot wait to get them makes up for that in my opinion.

What little remains of the unpainted portions of my Smurfs, Orks & Tau are likely to be next in line for eBay. I have decided to hang on to the painted portions of my 40k armies for the time being. 

Now where did I put those Ork & Imperium styled Christmas trees that I got from Kromlech last year? 

Lastly,  this weekend I finished up these Christmas bots that I bought from Bombshell miniatures last year. These will be distributed too friends and family who neither read, nor are even aware of this blog's existance. As such, I can post them here without spoiling the surprise for anyone. 

Heading underground again...

 o/

These are the coolest gaming pieces that I have never used.

After painting the last couple of cavern tiles that Nick printed for me, I thought I'd take the whole collection out of the box and see just how big of  a tunnel system I could create. As you can see it is fairly substantial. I forgot how much of a puzzle these are to assemble without leaving any gaping holes without a finished edge. 

Same as the above, just a different angle. 

I have 4 total entrances, and did my best to spread them out towards the four corners. 

All of the painted tiles by themselves. 

They never go together the same way twice, but as of today they cover somewhere between half to two thirds of my gaming table. I still have 25 or so pieces left to paint. However being a quick case of drybrushing followed by a few random tufts representing alien plants/molds/mosses  (presumably there are openings in the roof to let in sunlight pollen and seeds. 

My 20mm Starship Troopers patrolling the depths, in search of the little gribblies. 

Not that I have any little Gribblies. I suppose I need to get some Tyranid Rippers and put on individual 20mm bases. While a nuisance in 40k, they would be terrifying to some 20mm scaled infantry!

I still do not know what game system to use with these, but Nick said that they are nothing to print and was quite impressed with the above photos. So hopefully, one day I will be able to achieve my goal of having enough cave hexes to fill my entire table. 

Dual caverns, one painted & one not. 

These are not the droids that they were looking for.

 o/

Beep Boop.

Just a quick post to show that I am still alive. I've been on a bit of a battletech kick here again of late, though am looking to get in a game of Star Wars Legion this week. So hopefully I'll have a bettle report, or at least a highlight reel of that game some time soon. 

In all honesty, decorating the base takes longer than painting the droid istelf.

With this second assembled and painted Dwarf Spider Droid, I can now field a 600 point recon list for the separatist alliance. By themselves these two aren't much, but in support of the usual zerg swarm of Roger Roger bots, hopefully they will do alright. We will see I guess...

They're not quite twins, but close...

The Empire is taking hold...

o/

I have only the best backdrops for The Empire...

I painted this squad up this week and am fairly pleased with them. I  didn't like the rocket launcher, so converted that guy to have the left over RT-97C from the Dewback I used to have. 

He looked good...until paint was added.

However after the application of contrast paint & sepia wash, he was looking pretty rough in the areas that got chopped. As such I used him for a guinea pig for my usual slathering of AK streaking grime and he ended up looking worse than a remnant trooper from the Mandalorian series. So he isn't included in the squad above. I have another type of AK Grime that I have yet to try, so his base will be the test subject for that. 

The photo is straight from the eBay auction!

I picked up these two Speeder Bikes off of eBay for a bargain and they're nice enough that I'll leave them as is for the foreseeable future. I may hit them with a light sepia wash to blend them in with the squad above at some point, but can't see myself doing anymore than that. 

Plot armor for the win?

 

Uti...nn...(gulp). 

I played Jake at the FLGS (The Gamer's Guild SC) this past week in another recon sized game, which is all I can muster currently. The mission was close the pocket, surface scan and we didn't add any advantages.

My army with Juan Solo & the speeder just out of frame. 

My Rebels were lead once again by Juan Solo. I also had two super squads of rebel troopers with Z-6 gunners, The Jawas (Ewok slingers), the AT-RT with a laser cannon and my new T47 Landspeeder.

The FLGS owner in his natural habitat.

Jake had Vader, two squads of Stormtoopers, one with Del Miko, a squad of Scouts plus a sniper team, and the AT-ST with mortars. 

Here is how the game went to the best of my recollection:

The battlefield with my Jawas already on the board.

Even with low profile, cover, a dodge and surge tokens, the arrival of the AT-ST killed two of the little guys!

Jake's scouts moved up aggressively, and my first rebel squad to arrived, rolled a bucket of dice and deleted the scouts out of existance!

The AT-RT & T-47 meanwhile took a good chunk out of the AT-ST, forcing Del Meeko's squad to move up allowing him to repair 2 of the walker's wounds. 

Juan along with my second squad of Rebel troopers overload the right flank...

Rolling the same bucket o' dice as their sister squad and they wiped out the Scout sniper team. 

...and things were going so well. 

My Rebels dumped into Vader inflicting a few wounds. The T-47 hammered Vader as well, but he shrugged off all of the speeder's shots. 

Vader moves into engage the Rebels, killing about half of them. 

As Vader mauls the one squad, the other hoses down the Stormtroopers on the other side of the wrecked AT-AT, reducing the squad to two. 

Who are summarily finished of by the Jawas!

Vader uses the Force to pick up & slam down the first Rebel squad, killing one. He then moves into engage both squads. 

The AT-RT whiffs when shooting the AT-ST which returns fire, crippling the little walker. Del Meeko & friends meanwhile wipe out the infernal Jawas. 

Juan moves up to get into potential scoring position while Vader continues to grind thru Rebel troopers. Meanwhile the Speeder bootlegs around and finishes off the AT-ST. With only 3 models still alive (while reaping an awful toll, Vader was down to 2 wounds remaining), Jake ran up the white flag and the Rebels win!

*****

Well that was fun, if a bit lopsided. The 10-strong trooper squads, even without aim tokens were brutal. Rolling 15 dice each due to the Z-6, left Jake's smaller squads with little hope of survival in the face of such onslaughts. The T-47 did well, and probably deserves to be painted, having almost single handedly taken down the AT-ST. We didn't do a great job of scoring the mission. 

On turn 2, I think it was 4-3 in my favor. Jake lost both of his scanners, and...well, with both of us being newer players we focused more on killing each other rather than scoring. 

My post game impulse buy. 

20mm gaming and more cavern terrain

o/

They're a little bobbleheadish, but still pretty cool looking.

A few years back I looked into 15mm scale 40K due to the ever increasing costs of 40K minis and...I literally got laughed at. Skipping forward to the present and I have zero interest in playing anything GW as the costs of fielding something competitive are simply astronomical ($45 for a Lysander resculpt, seriously?). 

No packs, just their body armor. These are simple enough for generic sci-fi/near future troopers.

Anyways, I stumbled across some 20mm 3D printed Starship trooper minis, and ordered 30 for $33 including shipping & tax. The Etsy seller instead sent me 55! They all have rifles only, a variety of heavy weapons troopers are available and I may order some of those as well. 

Heading underground and looking for trouble. The guy with the striped base is the squad leader.

They also make a variety of 40K armies so the small scale and (gasp: affordable) 40K option is still there. We haven't settled on a system to use these with yet, but we are looking (possibly Down Range). As I received double what I was expecting, I gave half of the minis to my buddy Nick. 

Speaking of Nick...

He 3D printed up some more cavern tiles for me. 

Back when I first started buying my caves terrain, 3D printers were still a fairly new thing, and had not proliferated as they have by this point in time. As such, my originally purchased cavern tiles cost me a pretty penny. That said, they were still quite reasonable given the number I had purchased, and especially in comparison to say, any GW terrain. 

The nook is clear, move out.

The site I had previously gotten my cave tiles from went out of business at some point and no longer exists. However, I found the cave STLs on thingverse and bought them for a mere $20. I passed them on to Nick who has a few 3D printers. He printed up a small test batch (now painted) that you see above. I told him that I wanted to be able to fill my whole game table with these and he thought that was a cool idea saying (quote): 'I'll start cranking them out.' 

So look for more on the caverns front here in the future. 

*****

In regards to my last post and the stupid number of page hits: by the time that this post publishes, it will have crested 3,000 'views'. 

Who is really reading this?

o/

Here's a preview of a new project.

Recently (as in the last two posts on both of my blogs), my page hits have gone thru the roof. My previous post on this blog crested 1000 views just this week! Yet no one comments. So where are these views coming from? Bots, Ai queries, or actual hobbyist views? I am sure that there are at least a few of the latter. 

Personally, I am thinking that this has something to do with blogger's new search link suggestions (which were declined for this post). According to my blog stats, a large chunk of views are coming from google as always, yet an extraordinary number of views are coming from a non-descript 'other' that is primarily US based (or so their VPNs say) and using the Microsoft operating system. 

Curiously, the old Faeit 212 is still a strong contributor of what I would call legitimate page views, but those are a mere pittance compared to this recent onslaught. So please, comment below and let me know:

Who are you?