So it has been a while...

Hello blog followers.  Sorry that it has been so long since the last post.  I would give excuses about being busy with this, that, and the other, but really I was just not doing a lot of hobby, and for whatever reason did not want to blog about other things. 

I have been painting those Night Goblins from my prior post, and have them nearly finished.  Then again they have been nearly finished for a couple of months, so we will see how long it takes me to actually get them done done.

Even though I have not been hobbying that much, I have (as one does) been on Ebay, which is pretty dangerous.  I managed to lose a bunch of bids, which is good, if frustrating, but did win this WHFB dwarf lot...

 That is an old Marauder organ gun, a mostly complete bolt thrower, a steam 'coptor, a mess of crew dwarves, and some random warmachine pieces.  Plus eight monopose plastic dwarves and three newer dwarves that fit in with my army.  And Burlock Damminson.

Once I had bought something, it was easier for something else to fall into the cart...

 In this case a 210x150cm "tapestry" that will work very nicely as a play mat for space games, as seen in the next picture.

And finally, if various projects are stymied by having a lack of time, and you just unexpectedly bought some new miniatures for an old army, then naturally you should be starting a different and completely incompatible project...

I.e.  15mm WWII skirmish gaming.

So that is where I am at.  What about you?

Brigade Miniatures order

Midway through last month, I took advantage of the annual Brigade Miniatures holiday sale to order some bases and a few other things (it was pretty hard to resist testing out 15mm scifi, or getting a swath of space ships).  I ordered on the 14th, and it made it to my house on the 24th, which is pretty impressive for international shipping, particularly during the holiday season.

The main thrust of my purchase was to get these nifty bases that Brigade has for use with my Trek project.  I figure these bases will be great for tracking drones, missiles, plasma, fighters, and shuttles.  Each base is comprised of a metal hex with a die dock in the top, and a 3mm hole for a flight stem.  I got three varieties of micro dice to fit in the docks, and I will either use spare GW flight stems or buy some 3mm acrylic rod.

Shown with GW flight stem

I also bought a few packs of space fighters and other ships for multiple uses.  They could be used as fighters and shuttles in a Trek game, or on their own as micro fighters in a space game, such as 5150: Fighter Command by THW.  (which allows for solo play too)

Here is a sample of the fighters and other light craft.

Courier to fighters

 In addition to the "good guy" fighters, I got a transport and a corvette, as well as a pack of enemy fighters.

Anyway, a great buy from Brigade Miniatures, and inches me closer to having a complete Trek gaming set.  Now if only the magnets I ordered from China would show up.

Transport Plugs - a Tutorial

Bit of a departure from the usual fare here, as I have a short tutorial featuring a product that you can buy from my Shapeways store.

Every game can benefit from the involvement and distraction of civilians, and in a game featuring space ships, civilians are often represented by traders and freighters.  This allows for convoy action in scenarios, movable terrain, ragtag civilian fleets and so on.

What I designed was a sprue of ships designed to mate with a plastic tube to produce civilian trade ships carrying a standard cargo pod.  Happily at 1/3788 scale, a standard cargo pod is the diameter of a Bic stick type pen, which most people have in vast quantities, could "borrow" from work, or can buy for a nominal fee.  Each sprue contains five ships of five designs, which can be mixed and matched fore and aft to make more cargo ships than most will want!

What you get in Frosted Ultra Detail

What you need to make these ships: razor saw, sprue of ships, and a Bic type pen

Step one is to acquire an 8mm diameter tube from your Bic style pen. You may need to use a pair of pliers to remove the end cap if it is a new pen, but in older pens this tends to be looser.

Step two is to remove the ship portions from the sprue, which can be done with some gentle pressure as the plastic used in Smooth Fine Detail Plastic (formerly Frosted Ultra Detail) is brittle.

Step three is to use the sprue to measure your cargo pod, as I have designed it to be 52.8mm in length, which corresponds to the scale size of the cargo pod.  If you like, you could make your pod longer or shorter as desired.

Measuring the pod length

Step four is to cut your tube with the razor saw, or with a standard utility knife if you do not have the saw to hand.  If you use the utility knife, use a rocking motion to roll the pen body back and forth a bit to ensure that the cut is as even as possible.

Assembly

Step five is to select a fore and aft portion for this ship. Again, the plastic is brittle, so a gentle pressure should separate the two pieces, or you could use clippers to cut the connecting plastic rod.

Step six is to glue the two portions of the ship to the tube.  Your interpretation of how to place the drive section or fore section is just as valid as mine!

Step seven is to drill a hole in the center of mass.  Depending on the fore and aft portions that you chose, this should be around the letter O of the measuring sprue.

Step eight is to spray prime the ship(s).  I favor black for spaceships, but do what makes the most sense for you.

Step nine is to paint the ship.  Here I have gone with a standard off white color for the ships, and red and blue for the pods, but the sky is the limit as far as commercial paint jobs go in our real world, and I expect that to be so in the future too.

Step ten is to enjoy adding a new ship to your fleet!

Klingon ship comes in for the kill

This is really an easy way to bulk out your transport fleet.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Star Wars Armada

This being Gencon time, game companies need to have new games, and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is no exception to this rule:

And they seem to have a humdinger here with Star Wars Armada, a new fleet level Star Wars game.  Expected to ring in at $100 MSRP, this will have prepainted ships (Victory class, a Nebulon B, and a Corvette) with a wealth of accessories, chits, and cards.

So... tentatively excited about this, since big ship battles are even more interesting to me than fighter skirmishes, and it seems to have some interesting mechanics to make the ships seem slow and lumbering (stacked orders, slow movements with the ruler).  The components should be high quality, and may help with the "paperwork" of fleet battles with all the integrated little dials and stats.

However, the cost, and obvious scale issues are things to keep aware of, so let us wait and see what happens and what is released.

Very compelling indeed...

X-Wing Miniatures

This weekend we celebrated my birthday, and my lovely sister and her family gave me the X-wing Miniatures starter from Fantasy Flight Games.  This apparently wildly popular game uses 1/270 scale fighters, secret orders, and a whole host of chits, cards, and cardboard templates for movement to enact Star Wars fighter duels and skirmishes. [rulebook may be read here]

Picture from Wired Magazine

The basic box comes with three fighters, the various chits/cards/cardboard to get you started, and then you need to buy booster boxes that have additional fighters and cards.  Cards are used to have "upgrades" like famous pilots, torpedoes, extra shields and so on. Currently, you can get most of the fighters from the movies and a few bigger things like shuttles, Slave One, and the Millennium Falcon.

There is quite a lot of online interest in this game, and people have created Deathstar tiles, squadron builders, star field mats, plastic rulers, and much more to add on to this game, even rules for corvettes and similar sized ships. [the out-of-print Electronic Rebel Blockade Runner Ship can be had for $30 on eBay and is a pretty good size, even if not quite scale]

LucasArts long ago pre-programed me to be excited by this game, as I put in hundreds of hours playing X-wing, Tie Fighter, and X-wing vs Tie Fighter when I was younger.  As for actually playing the game, my son squealed "Tie Fighters!" when he saw the box, so apparently he is into it... but he is too small to play it yet.  So actual play may have to wait until I can muster up some friends for a couple of duels.

Christmas 2012

A belated Merry Christmas to you, dear readers.  I spent most of the holiday away in a mountain cabin, safe from shopping hordes and TV.  We played a couple of games of five player Settlers, and a ton of the new Mario for Wii U.

This year I got only a few gaming/modeling related items, although they were pretty great ones!

First, I got "The First Heretic" from my wife's cousins.  This is the next book for me in the Horus Heresy series, although at this point I believe that the series has devolved into more of a category, rather than a linear progression.  Looking forward to reading this one after I finish Embassytown.

Second, I got the AD&D dungeon master's guide from my wife, which was very cool and surprising.  I read this book for the first time last year, as you no doubt read here.  The particular copy that I got is in very good condition, was printed in 1979, and has a $10 price sticker on it from Toys R Us, clearly from the glory days when RPGs were stocked in what is now mostly a diaper and video game store.

The third modeling item I got is a Revell Republic Star Destroyer (Venator) from my sister and her family.  A kit I have long lusted over is at last mine!   Thank you Amazon lists!   At some point in the near future, I will have finally finished building the Baneblade, and will be able to move on to this kit as my "main" build. (Since the Baneblade took three years, I expect that this might take a while too).  I think that I will go big on this one, and try some super detailing, photo etch, and after market kit add-ons... maybe even light it!   So very excited about this, and expect to see more in the future.

Here is a pile of inspirational links for later:

Floating display base, not mine.

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Gal12/11801-11900/gal11875-Star-Destroyer-Westall/00.shtm
http://jenandjamesmcvay.blogspot.com/2012/01/james-republic-star-destroyer-detail.html
http://www.scalemodeladdict.com/index.php?topic=148.0
http://gillesv27.blogspot.com/search/label/%E3%83%AC%E3%83%99%E3%83%AB%20Republic%20Star%20Destroyer
http://dqscaleworks.blogspot.com/2012/11/venator-class-republic-star-destroyer.html
http://culttvman.com/main/?p=2809
http://culttvman.com/main/?p=2973
http://www.revell.de/manual/04860.PDF
http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=219632
http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=29975

More on FFG's X-Wing game

The Hopeless Gamer has some pictures of the prototypes for the new X-wing miniatures game from Fantasy Flight Games.  Seems to be using a pilot card and stats on the base and a damage dial and turn/movement templates. That is pretty component heavy for a miniatures game, and may lead to the table looking pretty cluttered. On the plus side, the components all look very good, as is expected from FFG.

New Star wars Games!

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) just announced that they are releasing games set in the Star Wars Universe.  Wizards of the Coast gave up the Star Wars Universe license last year, and there was much speculation that FFG had picked up the license. Two games have been announced, a Star Wars card game (is this the third one?), and more interestingly, a miniatures based dogfighting game called X-wing.  Figures for this game will be prepainted, but still, it should be interesting to see what comes out. 

More games will be announced in 2012, and the message specifically mentions a new RPG.  It will be interesting to see if it is compatible with the previous three versions of role playing games, or if it is completely new.  So watch for more exciting news!

TOS Destroyers

A few years ago, I became interested in gaming with Star Trek models, particularly those of the original series era (TOS). This interest was sparked by the humble Saladin class destroyer, created by Franz Joseph in the first "official" technical guide to starfleet forces, the Starfleet Technical Manual. Something about the single nacelle look. To game in this period, one is usualy directed to figures from Armadillo games, which produces both Starfleet Commander, and the infamous Starfleet Battles.

However, not liking the prices of the metal miniatures, I went another route, and bought many Micromachine sets instead. Micromachines used to sell space miniatures cast in vinyl, three to a package, and thanks to Ebay, I was able to acquire them well after they became OOP. Once I had a suitable set of TOS era ships, I was able to create a few destroyers, which are detailed below.

From Space Miniatures

Side view of the destroyer.

From Space Miniatures

As you can see here, the paint job is a bit rough, which caused some problems with the ink. I think of it as light battle damage. I may forgo the ink next time, or paint another coat on top of it to rehighlight the areas currently marred by the blotchy ink.

From Space Miniatures

All three destroyers en route to some battle or exercise.

I am also slowly working on a converted Federation Battle Cruiser (flat engine arrangement, more guns, less lab), and a Federation Dreadnought (three engines, larger engineering hull), but those will have to appear in the future. I have also repainted a Klingon D-7 Battle cruiser as a Romulan K-7, and a Romulan warbird to have more a accurate paint scheme. Unfortunately these too were afflicted by the blotchy ink, so do not quite look as nice as one might wish.