Steel Legion Army Thus Far

As I mentioned yesterday in the Tau post, I had a few minutes to myself, and some light, so I set out my "army" and took some pictures.  In this case "army" means a full platoon  of four squads, heavy weapons squad, and an attached regimental support unit in the shape of some storm troopers.

A, B, C, D Squads, Command Squad, Heavy weapons to the rear, and then the Storm Troopers

Command squad and Commissar 

Storm troopers all in environmental suits

Heavy bolter squad with a spare auto cannon team (replaces medic and anti tank specialist in the command squad as needed)

Still forthcoming, some sentinels, heavy mortar, heavy stubber, and sniper. Some time later I would like to build a second platoon, scout squad,  and a company command squad, but we will see.

Tau Army Thus Far

This weekend past I had a few bits of time, and a little bit of light, and took a picture of my Tau army. Well, not really so much an "army" as a reinforced platoon.

Stealth suits, command squad, and two pulse rifle squads

Pulse rifle squad A (with attached ion blaster)

Pulse rifle squad B (with attached burst cannon)

Command squad

Forthcoming, first battle-suit and sometime further along pathfinders, breachers, drones, and some specialists.

3d Printing

A while back, I got on a Star Trek kick, and built a bunch of ships from Micromachines and home cast resin parts.  At the time, I was thinking about what the Cardassians would look like in the TOS era, and kicked around some ideas with the folks on the StarShipModeler forums.  My idea was that the Cardassians would be a cruiser heavy force, with their cruisers relatively scaled to the Enterprise of the era (small). As with the Enterprise to Enterprise D transition, the over all shape would be similar. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or skill to make anything of my ideas.

Fast forward 10+ years, and I started to play around with TinkerCAD (since that is what the local library's 3D printer lab recommends).  After quite a few building facades, I started to think about those TOS Era Cardassians again, and after mulling it over a bit, went ahead and sketched out a design, which gradually grew into a finished model.

I uploaded the model to Shapeways, and used their tools to figure out where the model needed additional support or filling.  I then ordered it in "white strong and flexible" material, which is very light and grainy (but very cheap).

A week or so later, a very light box turned up in the mail with this inside:

As provided from Shapeways

On a standard GW flight base

3D model for comparison

As compared to a Micromachine Connie

Quite pleased with how this turned out, both in terms of the reproduction of my design, and in terms
of meeting my design goals.

I think I could paint this pretty much as is, or finish it with putty etc and cast a few copies... although considering the ease and relatively low cost of this process, I am not sure how much sense casting would make as compared to ordering higher quality prints (or just more of these)

It is possible that I may have gone a bit overboard with making more designs.

Rogue One

As I mentioned in my holiday report, like most of you I saw Rogue One over the holidays (which now seem long gone).  When I was back at a computer the following week, I perused the local library's collection of Rogue One books, and ordered up the lot of them.  The novels have not turned up yet, but I have read both the Star Wars: Rogue One: Ultimate Visual Guide [Subtitle: the search for more colons] and the Art of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  Both are lovely as you would expect in the Lucasarts/Disney tradition, and are very well made books (as they ought to be for the cover price!)  However, I was a little disappointed that neither book had much in the way of set design/photographs which is what I really wanted to see, nor much detailed costuming. I suppose that there may be a future book that will cover the costuming and locations, but it seems like content that could have been included here, and neither book had much of anything anything about Cassian at the Rings of Kaferne, which I suppose is because that scene was added very late in production.

Here are some inspiring sample pictures from them. (click to enlarge)

Imperial Tank officer

Jedha Street Patrol

Jedha Bounty Hunter

Jedha pilgrims

Chirrut costume variation

LA apparently made over 500 pieces of space ship art to settle on the U-Wing

Jedha characters

Stormtrooper confrontation

Loyalist Primarch... in 40k

For some people, one of the most interesting parts of the Warhammer 40k universe is the Primarchs, the giant genetic forefathers of the Space Marines.  There has long be interest in using them in Warhammer 40k games, particularly after their introduction as playable figures in the Horus Heresy (30k) game.  Most point to how they would be completely over powered, and take the "special character" problem to 11.  Which I guess for some people is the whole allure!

Something that has been rumored for a while is the return of a Loyalist Primarch to the 40k game.  This rumor was coupled with the introduction of a plastic Daemon Primarch (which happened with Magnus the Red)

Looks like the rumors were true:

Cypher,  Roboute Gulliman, and some random Grey Knight

This figure is not my cup of tea in the slightest (and I even like ol'Rowboat the character), and I am not a fan of how it changes the game setting, but I do like that Cypher... might have to get him just to paint.  Hooded marines always look cool (even if it is a bit daft).

Anyway, what do you think?

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