A Quick Update

Not a whole lot of gaming going on here lately, but it's ramping up a bit. I got in two games of X-Wing with Zig today, trying out some new ships and generally having a good time. He used Imperials for both games - centered around the new Alpha-class Starwing. It's powerful and a real pain to fight. In the first game I used Scum - a pair of Starvipers, a Quadjumper and a Z-95. It was a fun group but the QJ just seemed "lacking," but for under 20 points, I guess that's to be expected.

I won by a hair. Flew the blasted QJ off the map accidentally.

After dinner I put together a new list entirely and Ziggy modified his a bit. I went with Rebels, wanting to fly the bomber once again and excited to try out Sabine's TIE. They were joined by a very basic B-Wing and a souped-up A-Wing.

Again, the game was very tight. I got a couple of very fortunate double-damage crits on him early. My bomber and TIE went down, though I was quite happy with the performance of both.

The Starwing about to end Sabine's day.

Another tight game but I did end up victorious!

I painted up some Arab Israeli pico armor during the week and based them up as command stands for CWC.

Four for the Israelis and three for the Egyptians. It's a good use for the "leftovers." Maybe they'll get on the table top for a game one of these days. I have some more incoming - I've been in a painting funk recently and these are good models to break the jinx with.

X-Wing Tournament Results

I've been on vacation for the last week. We went up to Helen in north Georgia and had a rather nice time just bumming around. I was very excited to come home to an X-Wing tournament to top it off! The tournament was at Savannah Lions in Pooler. There were eight players including me and David. I took a group of Rebels including Chewbacca in the Falcon, and ARC-170 and a Y-Wing.

My first game was against a fellow named Chris who was flying the Imperial Pizza Delivery Service, featuring three shuttles - the Lambda, Upsilon and Reaper.

He turned my Y-Wing into dust pretty quickly when I goofed and parked it in front of his full gunline. I continued to work on the Upsilon and managed to take it out, followed quickly by the Lambda which had been engaged in self-harm - Darth Vader had been throwing damage markers on my ships which damages his own ship in the process. In the end, the ARC and Reaper were left in a dogfight with a single hull point each. My ARC got the first shot opportunity and I won the game. Although it was a very tight and enjoyable game, my opponent couldn't bring himself to congratulate me, but rather simply blamed his loss on his own mistakes and poor rolls. What a pill.

My next opponent was Connor, flying the bizarre three U-Wing swarm. We gave each other fits early and the game turned into a real brawl. My ARC170 was his initial target and quickly succumbed to the massed firepower of his U-Wings. While he was doing that  though, I managed to get a couple of Ion tokens on one of his ships, forcing it to fly off the table. WINNING!

I managed to kill a second U-Wing before being wiped out. At least I made a respectable showing against a very tough opponent.

My third game was against Matt who was pushing around a Shadowcaster and a Punishing One. I didn't get any pictures but had a great time. I had his Punishing One down to a single hull point before my group was wiped out. Matt had one of those magical games where everything he tried worked exactly as intended.

David, who had lost his first two games flying a seven-TIE swarm, won his final game of the day, so he left on a positive note and I was happy to just have gotten a win.

I thought the force composition among the players was unusual - there were no bombers whatsoever and the highly cheesy auto-damage systems were non-existent. Only one player took the Expertise card - probably the shadiest card in the game.

Merry July 4th

It's Independence Day, woo hoo! A day off in the middle of the week is kind of ridiculous really but hey, a day off is a day off. Any excuse to burn burgers and have a brew is a good one.

I've actually done a fair amount of gaming the last couple of weekend, it's gone undocumented here but I'm about to rectify that. The day after Zig and I played Firestorm a couple of weeks ago, I met David up at Morningstar Games for a Dystopian Wars Fleet Action battle.

I used a fun pairing of Prussians and Eclipse Company mercenaries. David brought along his Blazing Sun Japanese.

So the general setup was that I was defending a channel and the EBS forces were trying to clear me out and capture the large building in the center (next to the robot).

By turn two, it seemed that David wasn't moving quickly enough towards the objective building. I was fine with this.

My swarm of little boats and subs drew a massive amount attention and really helped the Prussian cause. While David was expending considerable resources killing the hard-to-hit little guys, I was knocking on his larger, more threatening units.

Ol' Stampy gets up close and personal with the Blazing Sun sky fortress. Sadly, I completely botched the attack and did not crush the thing mercilessly.

In the end, it was a solid Prussian victory. My aggressive defense paid off - I took the battle to the enemy a long way from their objective. It felt great to put the DW toys back on the table. They really are a lot of fun.

Last Sunday, Dave and I met again at Morningstar, this time for some X-Wing. David flew a by-the-book TIE swarm - 8 x 12-poit TIES, while I used a Rebel mix including Poe Dameron, and ARC170 and a new Resistance Bomber.

Early into the proceedings I just could make anything happen and I wasn't feeling good about it at all.

The shot of the week - Poe gathers the attention of seven TIEs. Poor shooting by the Imperials meant that Poe's luck held out.

The TIEs at the bottom had finished of the ARC170 while I'd managed to bump off three of the Imperials. Things were starting to fall into place for me.

An example of David's fine driving skills. Keeping it on the table like no one's business!

The final result. Poe kills yet another TIE - he turned out to be quite the killing machine - and the Bomber hangs on to its final two hull points. I had managed to kill seven TIE fighters and only lost the ARC170. The Bomber is very nice and a good pickup for the collection. I've been eyeing the Ghost for a while, but I'm glad I went with this ship.

I've been painting a bit recently and have finished up a few things.

Here's a fun little well / fountain with some creepy crawlies in it.

Another good pickup at Morningstar...

 I can't believe Jeff had one of these on the shelf. A very nice pickup for my Red Fleet for StarDust.

And they got painted up quickly. I haven't touched the fighters yet.

And lastly, some Malifaux minis.

 This is the "No Shelter Here" box set.

Creepy little girl and zombie baby

Three ghosts and a poltergeist

One of these days I'll put Malifaux on the table and try to learn the system, but until then, I just really love painting the models. Happy Fourth and stay safe!

Lost In Space

It's been some time (a month or so) since I put the big table up in my dining room for a proper game. Ziggy brought his Firestorm Armada ships over yesterday afternoon. It's been since last summer since FSA got any play in my house so it was way over due.I wanted to use as much Ryushi stuff as I could - they were the last FSA models I purchased and painted when Spartan announced they were closing up shop. This would be a bit of a "new paint curse" test since technically they have fresh paint job (from last September).

We set the points at 1000 and selected "Escalating Engagement" as the scenario. This would force us to leave our big ships off the table at the outset and wait for them to arrive as reinforcements.

The force deployment zones are in opposite corners, with the red and blue edges indicating where the reinforcements can arrive.

My Ryushi (white) and Xelocians deployed. In the distance is a combined Terran and Hawker force.

I was quite fortunate that my Battle Carrier, the RSS Frank Sulkowski, showed up on turn 2.

By the time it arrived, I was already one cruiser and one Xelocian frigate down. The long-ranged torpedo power of the human ships is nothing to sneeze at.

Not to be outdone, the close-range firepower also makes quite an impression. Two more Ryushi cruisers gone.

At least my little buddies were now out and on the loose. A fighter group catches a Hawker cruiser and does more than just scratch the paint.

It was cold comfort though, my fleet was in tatters, with just the Battle Carrier, a single weak cruiser, and two frigate squadrons still active. The frigates are fast and close-ranged, they had been "nipping the Terran cruisers' heels" and were doing a pretty decent job at it.

The Hawker carrier has now arrived and locks in on The Big Guy. You can see that the humies finally gave my frigates some attention and that last cruiser is now in pieces.

Artist's impression

Yay! The cavalry showed up. Late as hell, but whatever... I'll take it at this point. The RSS Manga Pop Extreme immediately sets upon the Hawker space blight.

I managed to kill off a second Hawker cruiser, finally scoring some points! I continue to play the "Power to Shields" card, giving Frank 4 shield dice and frustrating the hell out of the Terran commander.

At the end of six turns, Zig still hadn't managed to kill my Battle Carrier, so if nothing else, that was a bit of a win. It absorbed at least 12 attacks on the last turn and still had one hull point left. The Hawker carrier however was losing atmosphere at a terrific rate after being set upon by the remnants of the Ryushi battle group.

We called the game there. Ziggy had won handily and completely. It was still a lot of fun after I got past the initial frustration of watching my ships explode and my dice be terrible. The final score was Ziggy 12, me -1. Womp womp. We'll get 'em next time!

A Bit More Scenery

Most of my recent painting has been focused on terrain bits. I finished up a handful of pieces in the last week or so.

 28mm scatter terrain with a Guild Ball mini for scale.

Plastcraft Games graves. 

 And a Plastcraft Mausoleum.

The Plastcraft wasn't the pre-colored stuff  I'm used to, but painted up easily and nicely enough. One of these days I'll actually get to play a game - it feels like it's been ages.

Recent Painting

Yeah, I know this blog has been a ghost town lately. No good explanation other than a relative lack of productivity and gaming. Zig and I did get in a game of X-Wing last weekend but with only two pics, it didn't seem overly blogworthy. In the interest of "pics or it didn't happen..."

I have done a little bit of hobby-related painting and thing-making. First up was this bus stop shelter I made for the Batman game a few weeks ago.

It turned out nicely in my opinion. The gap between the roof and side, very evident in the third picwas just something I couldn't get around. Trying to get the clear plastic bent properly and then attaching it to the structure was not a simple ask.


Last weekend I got the itch (no not that itch!) to paint some tanks so I ordered and painted up some early WWII 1/72 models for Rate of Fire.

The models are from Pegasus. As usual with their sets, they went together easily and were an absolute joy to paint. They do not come with decals so I had to scrounge from my collection. Allied invasion stars were repainted as the red stars on the T-26es, thus the slightly weird appearance. Luckily, I have loads of balkenkreuz decals from my Flames of War days. One of these days, I should spend a few bucks on some red stars.