Never tell me the odds!

 o/

No, this isn't another Star Wars Legion post. Rather for the second time now I've won an NOCF charity raffle! Ya know, I had been donating to these raffle for years to no avail. Only about $15-$20 at a time and win or not, its always for a good cause. 

After this, yes I will go into that asteroid field!

About a year and a half ago I won a pair of Iyanden Warlocks which now reside in my display case. This time around, I won a Salamanders Infernus marine. It's a great paint job, though I find it a bit curious that a Salamanders' Icon decal was not applied. Or painted on, given just how good the flames are freehand painted onto the other pauldron. 

The Mrs. rather liked the discolored metal of the pyreblaster.

The strangely blank pauldron.

This one however is just perfect!

Nice base too!

And he is off to scour Screech's display shelf of dust bunnies with extreme prejudice!

Nice as this is, I have no use for it other than to decorate my display case. As such I gifted it to Screech who is now the proud owner of his first painted Salamander! I told him that he ought to be a sergeant or something despite the green helmet, to which he replied: 'Like he's ever going to leave the shelf'. 

Can't be risking that pretty paint job with a potential fall from the table I guess. 

I finished my Star Wars Legion El Camino!

 o/

This may be the first time for this blog, where I have a painted model sitting in the snow. 

Before I talk about my latest project, I was hoping that maybe some of you would be able to help out my personal friend Neverness. Had his supervisor not decided to take him to the ER as a precaution last week, we might have lost him forever. While he's in much better shape at the moment, the both physical and financial ramifications of his sudden bad turn of health has turned his world upside down. As such, his family has created a GoFundMe for him and if you can help him out a bit we would all be grateful. Also a word of caution on GoFundMe: the 'suggested tip' at the end is both unnecessary, and does not go to Neverness' benefit. GoFundMe keeps that for themselves on top of the fees that they collect, the sneaky gits!

*****

This was one of the first minis I that I bought for Legion, and unlike the rest of my early models, this was the only one I didn't either sell or trade away. I'm glad I didn't as it is a really cool looking model, not quite sure if it qualifies as a proper tank though. 

Unfortunately the sponson guns are fixed forward, whereas I think they ought to be able to fire backwards as well. As for the chin mount, I don't think that would remain functional on anything but the smoothest of terrain! 

Kyber crystals all loaded up and ready to go. 

Or are they just boxes of ration packs?

In all likelihood, the containers will just be used as scatter terrain.

The Occupier is more of an armed transport in my opinion. Sure it has guns because what Imperial vehicle doesn't? The Mudtrooper crewman seems more appropriate as I see this as a second line unit as opposed to say an AT-ST.

About the only sort of cargo that this would likely carry in a game would be an infantry unit of some sort. I hear weapon emplacements are popular with these as it gives them some much needed mobility.

I swapped the stormtrooper crew out for a 3D printed Imperial army/Mudtrooper crewman, though I think he was supposed to be the guy that Chewbacca tossed off of the top of that AT-ST on Endor.

Hopefully I will get this dirty ol' rust bucket on the tabletop some time in the near future.

All in all I'm pretty happy with this model. This is the last of my unpainted Legion vehicles. Indeed, I think that I have little more than a dozen or so minis across all three of my factions left to paint!

B1 Battle Droids (and stuff)

 o/

Progress on my Star Wars Legion armies continue, this time with my third army entry: the Separatist Alliance. 

The yellow trimmed droid is the squad leader. I had to quickly snap these pics as there was a serious chance of a gust of wind blowing these off of the deck's railing!

Whilst this isn't this faction's first post on here, for a little while there it was in danger of being it's last. These fragile little fuckers aren't only a bitch to assemble, they're no picnic to paint either! Especially as I'm dry brushing these which puts a bit more stress on these spindly minis. 

This chunk of droid will decorate something's base.

Two broke during the painting process, one irreparably. This means my second, otherwise unpainted squad will include the backpackless OOM Security droid. Indeed, in a fit of nerd rage I almost boxed the whole lot of them up and posted them to eBay. Luckily for these infernal minis, I was too busy with the holidays and instead they just got shoved aside.

The little blue swatch on the back of their heads is my way to identify the different squads (assuming the other one ever gets painted). 

Speaking of this force, I had intended to use the Experimental Droids battleforce under the auspices of they're just old, somehow still functioning and thus rusty droids. However teh interwebz' meta gamers insist that that this battleforce list sucks! 

Whereas in my case, the Experimental Droids list is restricted from including spider droids. Spider droids are my favorite droid model, so I'm right there with the meta gamers, albeit for entirely different reasons. Thus I repainted the their guns to not look rusty, and these will instead run (theoretically someday) as a standard issue droid force. 

*****

In other Legion progress, I painted up the Speeder's unused Rodian rifle gunner. While I was tempted to make a card using him as a rookie bounty hunter or the like, I'll likely just use him as a grunt in my rebel trooper squad.

Online, Rodians seem to be one of the most hated of Star Wars alien species. I'm guessing its due to the seemingly useless suction cups on the ends of their fingers.

As you can see, I also painted up two barricades. These two are a different color than the rest which are grey. The reason for that is because they were used as stands for the X-34 in my last post, as it was receiving a second coat of primer. 

One of these barricades was blown off of the railing by the wind. Luckily they're both solid pieces and well varnished. Thus no chipping was incurred.

Star Wars Legion X-34 Rebel Landspeeder

 o/

This speeder may have dipped a bit low to dodge and incoming round (or tree branch?) and judging by the windscreen, went thru rather than over some muddy water!

Well this was both fun, and a relatively quick paint job! Now that I have new hobby lighting, I'm back in business when it comes to painting minis. We even had some warm-ish weather the other day enabling me to prime as much as I could (in between rain squalls). 

Visibility, who needs it? Also, in hindsight I ought to have put that fern to the left rather than under the speeder, but oh well. 

I've never liked the blaster cannon mounted on the hood and so opted to put it over the starboard 'wing'. Note, said wing and engine nacelle are mostly blue. Clearly this X-34 took some damage in a past engagement and another machine was cannibalized for parts. 

The blaster is glued in place, so no ion options for these Rebels.

Due to the blaster's position, the Rodian rifleman was omitted from this model. I had to have the Twi'lek gunner with the RPS-6 rocket launcher though! The Rodian will likely end up in a trooper squad or something.

The camouflage was created using some old stencils from Fallout Hobbies and two layers of primer.

Basically this is the Star Wars equivalent of the the modern day, insurgent technical. Fast, fragile and sort-of effective. I'm thinking that this will work as a high speed distraction, hopefully getting into the enemy backfield and causing problems.

'Look lady, I'm driving, so I get to pick the radio station!'

Hobby-wise, my 2024 is so far a bit of a mixed bag...

 o/

My previous Black Dragon pauldron icon decal sheet was down to less than a squad's worth!

On the upside, my Black Dragons army has been saved from certain doom due to a lack of decals. My remaining decals from the now defunct Silver Drakes turned out to be a hellova lot less than I had realized. As such I had stopped painting any more Black Dragons as I agonized over which eight infantry models would get the last of my precious decals. 

Fallout hobbies has stopped their completely custom decal service that I had used a few years back. I was fruitlessly searching for a replacement decal provider when an Etsy seller suggested Death Ray Designs. After asking the latter a few questions in regards to what I wanted, I received the sheet above. I highly recommend them! Now I have more Black Dragon icons than I'll ever need!

I rarely see this in online battle reports, but I opted for the 'rule of cool' and bought it anyways.

On the holiday acquisitions side of things, I bought a Rebel Landspeeder and some Legion barricades for some scatter terrain when visiting Knoxville last weekend, as Sci-Fi City was having their annual, end-of-the-year 30% off storewide sale. I also got a few random GW paints as stocking stuffers for Christmas, and Screech gave me a $40 Gift card to our local Hobbytown which was awesome. 

Trending downward however, I was looking on GW's website to see what I could buy for 40K for $40. Quickly, I changed to my search to what can I get a $40 discount on for 40K. Sheesh! The prices of minis for 40k are really just shocking! its no wonder that I buy most everything second hand or 3D printed these days!

So many projects, yet so little light...

As much as I would like to work on my new toys and previously on-going projects, all painting for me is currently on hold. After ordering a new LED bulb after I thought it blew, it seems that instead it was my hobby lamp that died. As such it is too dark in my office to paint anything (which is ironic considering my wife's vast, stained glass lamp collection) until the replacement lamp arrives this weekend. 

The first 6 PHIGs are complete.

o/

Their dirty uniforms go well with the rusty body armor and weapons. Clearly these guys aren't mere parade troops.

Despite a busy week, I've managed to make some progress on my new PHIGs army. That said, heading into the week leading up to Christmas, and a trip immediately following thereafter, I'm not likely to accomplish much more for this year in terms of hobbying. 

The squad insignia/number/name/something is visible on the left pauldrons.

The right side pauldron armor shows a squad color stripe for ease of identification, as well as a good view of their rifle grenades for use with that lovely 'Grenades' stratagem.

Some enterprisingly individual (probably in the propaganda division) decided to have their army icon added onto some of their backpacks. However the combination of daily use and/or grit has rendered several of these icons into little more than a unidentifiable mess.

I've been pondering a name for the army beyond merely PHIGs. Maybe the Pirate Heavy Interdiction Group, or perhaps the Palachian (P'Lachian?) Heavy Infantry Guards? Hrmmm...the search continues. Regardless, 'PHIGs' has stuck in my brain, so I'll need to utilize that acronym somehow. 

Neverness had asked for a size comparison pic, so here ya go! 

As you can see, this PHIG trooper's height is not quite on par with that of 808 Linum of the Admech, not to mention he/she's a tad more rotund. Were the primaris marine also standing up straight, he would likely be about eye level with the top of the PHIG trooper's pointy helm. 

Lastly I hope all of you have a fun, safe, & enjoyable Christmas and

New Year & I will see you all again on the other side!  

New Guard Army (WiP)

 o/

A few of the new recruits! 

Back in October, Zzzzz posted his belated entry for Nevereness' Inquisitorial conclave, and I immediately fell in love with the 3D printed minis in his post! A link shared later, three squads quickly ordered and I was off to the races! 

These guys will be accompanying my Whippet tanks (I now have three, though two will remain boxed up until after the holidays). Lacking a proper name for the army, I (currently) refer to them as the 'PHIGs' (Pointy Helmeted Imperial Guardsmen). 

No, they aren't pretty folks. Indeed I call this the 'ugly stage' of my painting process.  Next up is a million little touch ups and whatever I missed will hopefully be hidden under inking and later added grime. 

There are only a dozen individual poses for these guys which is a bit limiting, but I'm pretty sure I have 'em all worked out to where they'll work fine. After the holidays, when I'm not spending a shit-ton of $$$ on a daily basis, I'll order two more squads which will round out my force to a thousand points. 

Above and below are the first batch of ten that I'm working on:

Some basic grunts with autoguns. The bodies are 1-piece prints with only the heads being separate, plus whatever base you want to add.

As you can see, these guys are pretty heavily laden with gear. 

Squad sergeant and SAW gunner (more on the latter below). The sergeant is actually one of the superfluous standard bearers like the one seen in the first pic, just with a hand-swap.

The missile teams are currently on little bitty 20mm bases for ease of painting. Once they're ready to go, they'll be transferred to the new Iggy weapon teams' 50mm bases.

The Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner. 

In Zzzzz's linked post above, he was treating this model as a heavy stubber trooper, but to me that weapon didn't quite fit the bill. With only a small stock/barrel extension and a drum magazine a SAW seemed to be more appropriate. 

However while my opponents don't have any issues with my proxies (well, Hogzillaries aside), inventing new weapons will likely give them pause. However, if I just use the stats of the IG Grenade launcher while omitting the Krak round, it works out quite nicely actually. Also, no one ever complains when I make weapons worse to justify a proxy. 

Autogun:  R:24" A:1 BS:4+ S:3 AP:0 D:1 SP: Rapid Fire 1

SAW:        R:24" A:D3 BS:4+ S:4 AP:0 D:1 SP: Blast  

Slightly better, but not too far removed from the stock autogun. I'll retain the Blast ability not because it actually is a blast weapon, but rather the extra hit per 5 models in the target unit is akin to the gunner holding the trigger down for a longer burst of fire. 

Anyways, its on to the touch ups!