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'.