SW Legion Rebel Troopers Upgrade Exp.

Finished this pack of plastic Rebel Troopers Upgrade Expansion. Quick and easy to paint up. These are figs from Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Legion range.

That should knock off that 2021 New Years resolution. Right now I'm assembling some Ashigaru figs and with a little luck I might get a base of Teppo done before the end of the year. And I've got the Analogue Hobbies Paint Challenge starting on the 20th.

Terrain Pieces

Been a slow month, what with real life, heat, and other stuff. So what I've completed, I've piled into this one post and it's all terrain. First up is group of computer screens/consoles that Terry had 3D printed off for me.

Next up is a pair of guns that Terry had picked up at a garage sale. These will find use in Star Wars Legion. They're a little bigger than the correct scale but perfectly serviceable.

And finally are the pieces that should definitely find use in Stargrave. These are old GW 40K terrain pieces.

I'm starting to mass a decent collection of these. If only I could find more.

On my paint table right now are some more terrain pieces and I've got a pile of the Mantic terrain kits that I need to assemble and paint. I might be able to stick in a figure or two into the queue and it will probably be creatures for use in Stargrave.

Star Wars Legion Vehicles

Finished a pair of Star Wars Legion vehicles on Saturday. Both of these vehicles are from Fantasy Flight Games. First up is the AT-RT.

You may notice the right handlebar is missing. My set was missing that piece for some reason. Oh well. The rider is carrying his blaster rifle in his right hand so it's not like he was using the handlebar anyway.

And finally is the T-47 Airspeeder.

Nice and quite easy to paint up. I haven't mastered the ability to paint decent windows yet so I'm not particularly thrilled with how they turned out. I'll have to find a decent tutorial that doesn't require 30 steps.

This actually was the last of the Star Wars Legion pieces I had. My SW:L paint pile has been completely eliminated. There's still a few things I'd like to get and it would be nice if FFG built their line intelligently. I'd like to see some Imperial army troopers and maybe some other vehicles without having to pay an arm, leg, lung and kidney for some 3D prints. Evidently the actual development of all the Star Wars miniature lines was handed off to another company as Asmodee is in the process of destroying FFG. Yeah, I have an opinion on that.

Rebels, A Monster & Books

Been a while since I've posted. The figures I eluded to in my last post took a long time. These are the Rebel half of the Star Wars Legion core box. 

There's 7 different poses with 3 of each pose. So a nice variety of figures. 

Next up is a lone monster. This figure is an Adult Remorhaz from Wizkids D&D miniatures line.

I went with a purple colour. It's actually a little darker in person. 

The Analogue Hobbies Paint Challenge starts tomorrow so I'll probably have 1 or 2 more posts before the end of the year. 

Lately I've been watching a number of book videos on Youtube. One of them had mentioned the SF Masterworks collection done by some publisher a number of years ago. The entire list of books is on Wikipedia SF Masterworks. There's 203 books in total and I've decided to read them all. Prior to deciding to read all of these, I've read 10 of them. Since I started a couple weeks ago, I've completed an additional four more. So only 190 more to go! Edited to add the book covers of the ones I've read so far.

Speeder Bikes and a Gun

Just finished up a trio more figs. First up is a pair of Imperial Speeder Bikes from Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Legion game.

Nice and simple figs with a fair bit of character.

Next up is a World War 2 French 25mm anti-tank gun. This metal fig is from Army Group North Miniatures.

On my paint table right now is a pair of French tanks and a bunch of Counterblast figs.

Star Wars Legion Stormtroopers

Finished a batch of Star Wars Legion Stormtroopers recently. These nice figs are from Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Legion line.

This large batch of troopers is comprised of 3 commanders, 3 rocket launchers equipped figs, 3 figs with repeating blaster rifle and 12 guys with blasters. I could probably use a few more basic troopers with blasters and maybe a heavy repeating blaster (which unfortunately only comes with Snow Troopers. Argh FFG, why??)

With the completion of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, my posts will probably slow down, although there is talk of an Analogue Hobbies Quarantine Challenge maybe taking place. So we shall see.

Regardless, I need to clean off the figs that are on my table that are in various stages of painting.

Rebels, Rocket bike and Ladies

Finished some more figs recently. This is a bit of a mish-mash of figs. First up is a group of Rebel Fleet Troopers for Star Wars Legion.

Nice and simple figs to paint. Too bad they didn't come in a bigger group than seven?!? Bit of a rant, but I really wish Fantasy Flight would come out with the Imperial Navy Troopers and Army Troopers. Unfortunately they only seem to release something if there's a release for the other side. So who knows if we'll ever get them. And it would be nice if they came out with some assorted figs for pilots, crew and maybe some civilians but that doesn't really fit into their tournament play figure scheme. I'll probably have to get figures from Shapeways, which will cost me a pretty penny. Argh!

Next up is a Barracuda Rocket Bike from Bombshell Miniatures. This resin fig is for their Counterblast line and is from the Lancer faction.

And finally is a pair of ladies from Sash & Saber. These are from their French & Indian War line and are part of the Female Civilians pack.

'Til next time.

Star Wars Legion Specialists & some Boardgames!

So I've been participating in the Analogue Hobbies Paint Challenge for the past couple months. Right before the Challenge began I started on the Imperial and Rebel Specialists packs for Star Wars Legion. And after a few months I've finally completed them. So first up are the terrorist, err, Rebel specialists.

From left to right: Comms Technician, 2-1B Medical Droid, Rebel officer and an R5 Astromech Droid. Next are the Imperial specialists.

From left to right: Imperial officer, R4 Astromech Droid, Comms Technician and a FX-9 Medical Droid.

I really like the Star Wars Legion sculpts, they have nice strong detail and you don't need to be a Golden Demon painter to get them to turn out nicely.

I've had a request to get beck to doing reviews of boardgames that I play. So I'll go over a couple we've played recently. First is the new version of Dune from Gale Force Nine.

I've never played the original Avalon Hill version, but it's my understanding that GF9 changed almost nothing rulewise from the original. The box is quite small and the components are decent and perfectly functional. The only thing I'd improve on would be to have a bigger board. There's territories that span multiple sectors and you could have troops in that territory but also in each individual sector. This is important when the storm moves into a sector. See the image below. 

Each of the red arrows is pointing to the same territory: Imperial Basin. The dotted lines are sector borders. As you can see the Imperial Basin spans 3 sectors. That's all fine and dandy, but if you're placing troops in one of the side areas of the Imperial Basin it's kind of tight. The counters will overlap into a neighbouring territory. It's a minor quibble but it could be a problem if that area got busy with multiple troops from multiple factions. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if GF9 actually came out with a nice big mat like they did with Firefly.

So there's 6 factions in the game: Atreides, Harkonnen, Fremen, Spacing Guild, Emperor and the Bene Gesserit. There was only 5 of us so the Bene Gesserit faction wasn't used. Each faction has their own special abilities and some of them have their own special victory conditions. The faction I had was the Spacing Guild. Everybody has the same number of troop counters, so outright crushing everyone with one faction can't happen.

You attack something and usually one side gets completely wiped out, so you spend time slowly building up. I could see it being a bit tedious. In our game the control of key territories didn't sway much back and forth until late in the game. And we went the full 10 turns. In the end no faction or alliance had the requisite number of territories. My faction did have a special victory condition and that was at the end of the game if no one has done their victory condition, then I (the Spacing Guild) and my ally win. And that's what happened. I was allied with the Atreides and we won.

In this game you have to ally with someone if you plan to take objectives or it's pretty much impossible to win (unless you're the Spacing Guild of course). I could definitely see this game going the full 10 turns every time and it coming down to no one winning (well except you-know-who). GF9 has already announced an expansion containing the Ixians and Tleilaxu. I'd definitely like to play it again but I wouldn't want to play this often as it could get dull after a number of plays.

The next game is Nations.

This is the third time we've played this and I'd gladly play this game many more times. I love this game. This game is a good, simple civilization building and managing game. The premise is you have a nation with it's own special ablilities, units and/or buildings. Every turn you can purchase cards to improve your structures and military units, build wonders, acquire leaders and colonies and wage battles and wars. At the end of each turn you 'harvest' resources from your structures, wonders, colonies and leaders. And depending on the size of your nation, you may have to pay out resources. At the end or every year you have to also deal with any war that takes place and the two random events that occur.

To reflect an expanding nation you pull meeples from a pool. When you pull a meeple from the pool and add it to your active meeples you increase the amount or food you have to pay out or lower your stability. It's a nice simple mechanic to control the expansion of your nation. You don't want to keep pulling meeples from your pool if you can't provide for them.

As the game goes on you can get better of everything. Each improvement with usually provide more resources but will require more resources to put into action. At the end of the game victory points are added up and whoever has the most wins.

A couple points about this game:
1. There is no actual map. This is a nice mechanic as it saves you having to worry about front lines and where exactly your military units are.
2. Wars can be devastating. Only 1 war can be 'purchased' a turn. At the end of the turn if your military value is equal to or above the threshold set when it is bought, then you're safe. If you're below, ouch! Early on I was hit with a war and it beat me up but I was able to cope. One of the other players got hit by a war reasonably late in the game and it completely trashed him. As one player put it "he was reduced to caveman status". And he pretty much was. He ended up coming dead last by a substantial margin. There's definitely strategy around purchasing wars and when to do it.

I like this game because you've got lots of choices and it's actually quite hard to directly effect another player. Managing your civilization is relatively simple and you don't have to spend a ton of time micromanaging everything.

The base game has only the 5 civilizations but there is an expansion, but for some reason no one has it. I looked on the manufacturer's website and they will only ship to Europe. Not sure how I'm going to get a copy as I'd really like to pick it up.

Till next time!