A Brief Diversion to a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Waaaaaay back in May last year, I backed my first Kickstarter, details of which can be found in this post.

It was supposed to ship around September 2021, but various issues led to delays, but finally my pledge arrived last Monday! Yay!

However, I wasn’t in when the postie turned up, so had to wait until last night to collect my goodies. I pledged £30 ($40) for a squad of 28mm Astroguards cast in white metal, which would have been 8 Astroguards, so £3.75 a figure. However, due to the success of the campaign, I ended up with the bonus add-ons, so ended up with 22 figures, which works out as £1.36 a figure. Result!

Here is the Astroguard squad, with two female Astroguards swapped out for the duplicate sculpts from the original squad, along with two of the bonus figures, armed with heavy weapons – a light repeating laser on the left and a meson blaster on the left.

They kind of remind me of the cloud car pilots from The Empire Strikes Back, so I may very well paint them to resemble that uniform.

Next, more bonus figures. These are, left to right, top to bottom, “cantina celebration” aka party walrus-man, Gary, Beefhead Elder, Rod Roebuck, Space Cadet, Ensign Packman and Man Hunter.

Obviously, you can see these were inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but all will join my Distant Stars project.

Finally, we have the droids…er…bots. A Power Bot at the top, with a selection of arms and four Scouter Bots, all with a different head. I may add the two spare arms to one of the Scouter Bots, if I feel inclined.

Nice clean sculpts, although some flash on a couple of the figures, but nothing major. Strangely, they were supplied with 20mm slotta bases, rather than 25mm, which is fine for the Bots, but look too small for the others, so these may have to get swapped out.

These were just the figures from the basic pledge, so there are more in the range. Should you be interested in getting some for yourself, this is what the Kickstarter page has to say;

“Missed the campaign? Don’t worry, there’s still an opportunity to pick up figures from the Star Schlock Astroguards Kickstarter. 

Visit starschlock.com for info!“

That’s all for this brief diversion, as I still have a giant made from Shredded Wheat to paint up before the end of the month – then we’re in to Forgotten Heroes territory!

God knows what I’m going to do for that… I’m not quite as organised as I was last year. I have a vague idea, but we’ll have to see if if will work.

New Year, New (ish) Project

If you’ve been regularly checking in here to see if I’ve been actially doing anything, you will have been a little disappointed, as it has been quite a while since I’ve been anywhere near anything hobby-related.

However, with the imminent (hopefully) arrival of my Kickstarter goodies and a financial windfall in the shape of some Christmas money, I decided to splash out a little on some hobby stuff.

Way back in 2015, Michael Awdry of the 28mm Victorian Warfare blog posted about a game called Space Cadets. Now, whilst I quite liked the idea of the game and the way it utilised hexagonal tiles to represent the exploration of a derelict spacecraft, the price point was above my available funds and I was only really interested in the tiles.

This had been on the back burner for the last 6 years, and with the Distant Stars project, I decided that I would still like to do something of this ilk, but using my existing figures from that project.

As Kallistra produce a range of interlocking plastic hexagonal tiles, 100mm across the flats AND do packs of ten individual hex tiles in black, for a very reasonable £7.50, I ordered a set, to see if they could be used for this.

They arrived yesterday, so out came the camera and some figures, so I could see whether my nascent idea had any legs.

As you can see, you get ten hexagonal tiles, hollow on the underside and 20 clips, which allow you to clip the tiles together.

The edges of each tile have a recess, so that when the clips are attached, the tiles sit flush with the table and are a pretty tight fit, so they won’t become detached during play.

They can be attached along each flat edge, so if you have a tile attached to every edge, you’d need 6 clips, hence why you get 20 in the pack. I’d not realised this when I ordered, so had ordered a further pack of 50 clips, in case I needed anymore – which I didn’t.

Using all 10 tiles, I set them up as a random complex of corridors. The initial idea was to spray them with a metallic dark grey, and use thin card or plastic card between the tiles, held in place with the clips, to represent walls. However, the clips are designed to hold the tiles quite tightly together, so this won’t work.

However, as the tiles are designed to be be stacked when not in use, they do have a recessed edge, so when clipped together, there is a recessed channel around each tile edge, so I might be able to slot a suitable ‘wall’ into these.

Now, whilst I’ve given a measurement across the flats, this doesn’t really help with working out whether they’re any good for 28mm figures, so let’s dump some miniatures on them and see what it looks like…

A couple of Protectorate Outriders, accompanied by a Androne, explore an abandoned facility…

However, it would appear that the facility is not as abandoned as they believe.

“Danger! Danger! Hostile entites approaching…”

We shall leave the brave folk of the Protectorate to their potentially grisly fate.

So, I’m pretty happy with both the size and price for these and think they should work pretty well, but feel I may need at least another pack. As they’re only £7.50 a pack, this isn’t a great expense, but bear in mind that the minimum order quantity is £10.00 before postage, so you might want to have a look at some of the other stuff on the site before ordering.

They do single hex terrain features which sit on top of the standard hex tiles, including craters, hills, broken ground, etc. which are only advertised in the standard brown colouring, but I did query this with Kallistra and they would make them in the other two colours (black and blue). However, as this would be a special order, it would take longer to produce.

If you’re planning on spraying them anyway, that probably doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know that the option is available.

That’s all for now, but rest assured that the Crow is on the wing once more, so expect more regular posts.

Especially since I’ve now seen the new Ghostbusters movie (which is what the 2016 one should have been, but wasn’t) and I feel that the Rookhaven Ghostbusters franchise needs to have their uniforms completed and be sent out to bust some heads…in a spiritual sense.

“What a Piece of Junk!”

Due to my current shift pattern, I work one Saturday in every three, meaning I get a day off in the week in lieu. Usually, this ‘day off’ gets eaten up by a list (lovingly prepared by my wife) of jobs for me to do.

However, yesterday’s list was quite short, so was completed in good time leaving me with some free time…so, out came the paints.

First up, my APC;

Black gloss enamel was used on the skirt and windscreen, GW Chainmail on the front nozzles and turret gun and Docrafts Noir on the side panels and turret.

I noted that every picture I took of this vehicle didn’t really highlight the sloped nature of its shape, so took so lower down photos to show this.

Looks a bit like Maximillian from The Black Hole movie – which although it was a bit naff, did have some cool robots.

Speaking of cool robots, I next went to work on my drone cargo sled, but I won’t bore you with the exact colours I used, just show you some pictures;

Just a little bit more detailing and I think it’ll be done. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out.

Just goes to show that a little bit of creativity with stuff you’d normally throw out can produce a pretty cool model.

This Is The Way…To Save Money

Regular visitors to this humble blog will know that whilst I enjoy my gaming, I tend to balk at some of the prices charged by certain companies for the “necessary” components for <insert game of the month here>.

So, when inspired to try a new genre or game, I will tend to look for inexpensive options, rather than go for the official figure lines.

Such is the case with my Distant Stars project, which is my alternate reality Star Wars-inspired project, the last piece of kit I built for this being my scratch-built drone operated cargo sled, in this post.

Well, since last time, I have managed to slap some paint on it and it now looks like this:

The model was undercoated with Wilko Taupe spray paint on the top and Wilko Gunmetal spray underneath, which gave it a nice two-tone look. The drone ‘pilot’, terminal, thrusters and cargo bed were given a coat of GW Chainmal, with the cargo bed getting a wash of GW Brown Ink, to make it look oily.

The main body got a couple of coats of GW Orc Brown, which is a nice dark yellow, as you can see from the picture above.

Now that it’s got some paint on, it’s starting to look a bit more like an actual vehicle, rather than a conglomeration of bits.

Of course, whilst it’s nice to have some background vehicles, as the Dominion is a military force, it would be good if they had some war machines, right?

I knew roughly what sort of look I wanted and ideally would have gone for the latest iteration of the GW Land Raider – but wasn’t prepared to drop £60.00 on a single plastic kit. (NB: It was the Land Raider Crusader I craved…)

As with most things I do, I spend a fair bit of time trawling the Internet trying to find some thing suitable at a price I’m prepared to pay, before realising my time and money would be better spent just MAKING what I want myself.

So, after finally managing to secure an empty margarine tub (as I kept putting them next to the sink to wash up and my wife KEPT throwing them away), we were ready to begin.

I’s settled on this particular receptacle as a base for a tank/APC for two reasons; firstly, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as single use plastics and, secondly, when you turn it upside down, it looks like an armoured hovercraft:-

The next stage was to dress it up, with suitable “armoured panelling” and weapon mounts.

Two oblong panels of transparent plastic, scored and with portions cut out, were glued to the front and rear of my vehicle, to represent the cockpit and rear access door.

Two of the remains of the plastic ‘bulbs’ I used to make my Sontaran soldiers helmets were glued as forward-mounted weapons on the front, two GW cavalry bases were glued to either side to act as armoured panels and a turret was constructed from various plastic bits I had.

And to give a better sense of scale;

Unfortunately, as with my previous model, the use of transparent plastic means that some of the detail is not evident, so rather than leave it at that, I gave it an undercoat of Wilko Taupe spray, as this is the main vehicle colour of the Dominion.

And the rear;

A fairly substantial and imposing looking model, for very little outlay. And it actually looks like it could fit a squad of troops in, unlike some of the sci-fi vehicles out there.

Now, to fully justify my use of the above title, we have to mention The Mandalorian at least once.

Should you wish to add the title character of the above show to your tabletop games, a search of the internet gives you a few options, ranging in price from £10.00 to £15.00. However, all of these figures are 3D printed and whilst some are resin printed, the majority are not, meaning the quality of the figures are variable.

So, how about a METAL figure to represent Din Djarin for £6.00?

This is Brando from Diehard Miniatures. It comes with a resin base and alternate head, should you wish to have a bare-headed version.

And if you want to add some of Clan Wren to your games, but don’t want the full compliment from Legion’s £28 boxed set, then Diehard has you covered there to.

I mean, who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Katee Sackoff?

“This is the Way.”

If, like me, you are regularly clean-shaven then you will need some kind of device to remove your facial hair. And if, like me, you are somewhat wary of electric razors, you will wet shave with a manual razor.

Now, as the particular brand of razor I use has disposable heads, these come in a transparent plastic tray, which I squirrelled away for potential future use. And this is what the tray looks like;

Now, whilst I haven’t had much hobby time, I did manage to squeeze in episodes of the first season of The Mandalorian during the last couple of months…

Two things struck me from watching this – firstly, it is PROPER Star Wars, so if you’re a fan and you’ve got access to Disney+, watch it. Actually, if you like sci-fi Westerns, watch it. Even if you only sign up for the free period, it’s certainly worth a watch.

Secondly, there are a couple of episodes where vehicles with built-in droids – one a taxi, the other a cargo sled – which do look a little bit like my plastic tray above…

So, based on this (and the fact that during the period of non-lockdown, I finally relented and bought myself a cheap hot glue gun), I’ve decided to see if I can replicate this type of vehicle for my Distant Stars project. I’ve been collecting various bits for this, so it will (hopefully) be just a case of assembling the bits and then giving it a lick of paint. Let us begin!

So, having raided my bits box, I ended up with, for want of a better term, a pile of crap…

So, the tray itself, a couple of ink cartridges, some textured wallpaper, block of foam, cut down pen lid (that looks remarkably like a R2 unit), expired plastic gift card, empty shampoo bottle and some random plastic greeblies.

The cheapass hot glue gun I’d bought proved to be more of a hindrance than a help, so the DIY grab adhesive was duly…erm…grabbed and after much measuring, cutting, dry-fitting, trimming, filing, gluing and generally making a mess – we end up with something like this;

In the realms of Star Wars, this would be a droid-operated cargo skiff. In Distant Stars, this is a cargo drone. Same principal, different Universe.

Emptied ink cartridges as thrusters, textured wallpaper as the metal treadplate in the cargo area. Plastic greebly as operating screen, pen lid as drone ‘driver’ and the rest of the bits to make up the fuselage. A GW cavalry base was glued upside down to the base, to give the impression it’s floating.

And to give an idea of scale, here’s a Dominion Outrider cadging a ride.

Once the rain has stopped lashing down, I’ll be taking this outside to give it an spray paint undercoat. But what should the overall colour scheme be? Similar to Luke’s Landspeeder or, as it’s a cargo drone, more yellowish, like a taxicab? I wil have to give it some thought.

A Perfect Ten?

A recent poll of Doctor Who “fans” (and you’ll see why I’ve referred to them as such shortly) organised by the Radio Times was run to find the most popular incarnation of our favourite Time Lord. When the 50,000 votes were counted it was discovered that said “fans” had voted David Tennant as the most popular Doctor with 21% of the votes.

However, Jodie Whittaker came in a very close second, having only been beaten by Tennant by about 100 votes.  Which, based on who organised the poll (i.e. the Radio Times, traditionally a mouthpiece for the BBC) and that the REAL fans, such as myself, didn’t know about the poll until AFTER the results had been announced strongly suggests that these results should be taken with a bag of salt…

Anyway, this announcement and the fact that I’d not been motivated hobby-wise for a couple of weeks encouraged me to order some stuff online from eM4 Miniatures. Further incentive was that browsing their site showed that they have more ‘Sold Out’ items than ‘in stock’ items, so this might be my last chance to get my hands on certain figures.

First up, this chap;



This figure is 0057 Suit Shades SMG Hand Gun at £1.75, part of their Future Skirmish range, which were sculpted by Mark Copplestone for Grenadier way back in the murky past. In fact, this particular figure does have the stylised G on its tab, showing it came from the original molds.

My intention with this figure is to do something similar to how I created my version of the 8th Doctor, but this will be MY version of the 10th Doctor, based on his outfit from the Battle of Canary Wharf – including 3D glasses!

All I need to do is alter the pistol into his sonic screwdriver and redo the hair. The rest will just be painting.

After this is complete, that will just leave me two Doctors short – the Ninth and the War Doctors.

Next we have this;


This is one of the five multi-part (and by multi-part I mean three pieces) plastic Space Rangers sold by eM4 at £2.99. That works out at about 60p a figure – Bargain!

As I said above it comes in three pieces – main body, hands holding a weapon and the backpack. You get four of this pose, one squad leader/sergeant armed with a pistol and sword and a sprue of three heavy weapons. So you could have four rangers with the standard gun, or three with standard and one heavy weapon of your choice, or any combination of the above. Very similar to the Space Marines that came with the Space Crusade boxed game from GW – which they were probably based on.

Now, the idea with these was to add to ranks of the Dominion from my Distant Stars project, by making these the ‘heavy’ troops of the Dominion, with the Outriders being the light troops and the Legionnaires being the medium troops.

However, whilst the backpack doesn’t look too obtrusive from the front, it is a big hunk of plastic, as you can see below;


TOO big, in my opinion, so off it came, which gives us a more streamlined, but still imposing figure.


For comparison, here it is compared to the figures I’m using for my Outriders and Legionnaires.


As the ‘ribbing’ on the armour joints matches of the Legionnaire figure in the centre, I think that with an appropriate matching colour scheme, I can tie all three troops together as part of the same organisation, so the Outriders and Legionnaires will be joined by the newest Dominion troop type – the Siegebreaker.

Now there is one slight problem with not using the backpacks, which is this…


A big freakin’ hole in the back of the figure, which the backpack clips in to.
However, this is ME, so no doubt I’ll come up with a cunning plan to get around this.

I hope everyone is keeping safe and well in these uncertain times, but rest assured, I’M still here and will continue to do what I do, for both my and your entertainment.

Until next time…

 

Distant Stars – Air Support

Before I launch into the content of this post, to all those whose blogs I follow, please accept my apologies. I have been SO busy with one thing and another (which I won’t bore you with) that whilst I have read your recent posts, I haven’t really had a chance to comment on them.

Recently, the EuroMillions Lottery prize had reached a staggering £1.7 Million and they had stated that someone had to win it, so along with every other bugger in the UK, I bought a ticket.

And won! Yay!!!

But only £2.90. Boo….

However, as these were MY winnings (according to my wife), I was allowed to spend them on whatever I wanted…

So I bought a Snowspeeder – specifically the Revell 1:52 ‘Easy-Click’ model (the one that comes in a bag), because it was only £5.00 in Hobbycraft.

“Oooo, shiny!!!”

Now, I had broached this subject in a previous post, as I had read online that this model had been used as a proxy T-47 Airspeeder for Star Wars Legion, as it was roughly the same size AND Michael Awdry of 28mm Victorian Warfare had used one for a Star Wars inspired diorama and I wondered how it would scale in with my 28mm figures, as Legion’s figures are somewhat larger. I was assured that it should work fine and it kind of does – but took some Carrion Crow ingenuity to “make it so”, as you will see.

So, if you plan on getting one to use for YOUR Star Wars gaming, if you’re intending on using it as a crashed terrain piece or aerial support, you will have to paint over the cockpit glass, as the pilot and gunner figures clearly indicate that the speeder is too small.

To demonstrate this, the picture below shows a 28mm Future Skirmish figure from Moonraker Miniatures and next to it the Rebel pilot from the model kit – who I’ve just noticed seems to be grinning inanely…perhaps he’s soiled his flight suit like deformed Jelly Baby he is.

As my initial plan was to “just” replace the heads of the pilot with a suitable head from my multi-part “Dominion” figures, this clearly would not work.

However, after offering up one of my previously built Outrider figures to the model’s fuselage and the cockpit, I came up with a cunning plan…

The ‘speeder’ was obviously too small to be a two man craft, but could become a one-man “assault skimmer”, as the only thing that really scaled it was the pilots and the rear gun. As my Void Junker figures were multi-part, surely one could be adapted so he could fit within the cockpit? After some cutting, filing and gluing, I ended up with this first stage.

The control column is actually one of the backpacks from the Junker sprue, cut down to fit. As this looked like it was going to work, I continued with the build.

As you can see from the above picture, the craft looks more rounded than in the first picture. This is because as this model comes in a bag, rather than a box, the top part of the fuselage was a little warped, which was rectified when the underside was glued in place.

And almost done – including the flight stand.

On which it does balance very well.

However, the issue I had now was that the transparent canopy, which comes in one piece, wouldn’t fit  – as my Outrider was sitting too high. I could have just left it as it was, as it does look pretty cool already… but that’s NOT how I roll, is it? So, some scoring, snipping, cutting and filing later, the canopy was re-purposed as a rear and front screen, like so.

“Eat hot plasma, Union scum!”

These have not yet been glued in place, as the intention is to undercoat the whole model in black spray first, carefully paint the other transparent bits to match the overall paint job, then attach them. But before all that, I have to remove a few gluey fingerprints that I managed to get on the model – C.S.I. Hoth, anyone?

And as you may have gathered from the title, my alternate Star Wars project will now go by the name of Distant Stars – as in “a galaxy, far, far away.”

Join me next time – which will hopefully be before the end of the month – for more Distant Stars fun, after which I will be celebrating 50 years on this planet by saying things like “I remember when wargames was all cardboard chits, rather than your fancy 3D printed bollocks…”

Jez

“These ARE the Droids I’m Looking For…”

Regular visitors to this site may have noted that I haven’t been particularly active over the past few weeks.

Well, gaming-wise, at least…

I have been busy doing other stuff. Like making my first visit to Scotland and the town of Edinburgh. This was a planned trip, probably the last holiday I’ll have with my entire family, as my oldest has now moved out and my daughter has just started university.

So, four days in Edinburgh, during which I climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat (251m) getting to the top before every member of my family…

“Smug? Me? Naahhh…”

And on the suggestion of Stevie, booked an excursion BELOW Edinburgh, into one of their famous underground vaults, which was very atmospheric and mildly spooky, as you can see from the picture below:

I also took a fair few photos, mainly for reference purposes, but shan’t bore you with lots of pictures of interesting buildings, bits of Edinburgh Castle and Potter-eque alleyways, until such time as they become ideal for whatever tale I’m telling. However, this warrants showing – a genuine hexagonal Victorian postbox:

Not only did I have a nice break in Edinburgh, this was followed by moving my daughter into her halls of residence down in Portsmouth, which was a full-on busy day, so you can understand why I may not have been particularly active hobby-wise.

However, I have managed to get a few bits done on my ongoing alternate Star Wars project.

I realised that whilst I had my Dominion and Union troops, I needed a few characters to make my universe more rounded. So, looking through what multi=part plastic figures I did have, I created a ‘Protocol Droid’ by taking off the distinctive handlebar from one a Warlord Games Cyberman, combined various components from both a Void 1.1 Viridian Marine and a Junker with a few other bits to make a ‘bounty hunter’ and put together my free Legion of the Black Sun Necromancer to be a corrupted ‘adept of the Dark Side’. Once these have been fully painted, they will receive full in-universe designations, but for now this gives an idea of where I’m going with them;

But wait, there’s more!!!

Having found myself with an unexpected free evening, rather than waste it trying to find something specific for this project online (which I finally managed to do – see later in this post), I bit the bullet, got the paints out and sat down for a bit of an undercoating session – and achieved a fair bit.

The Union Militia were all undercoated in Docrafts Linen, their weapons in Docrafts Noir and a couple of them had their armour painted in Docrafts Jungle Green, as I’d decided that the Militia colour scheme would be predominantly tan and dark green, so inspired by the Rebel Commandoes, but not an exact copy. Skulking in the background is a GW Adeptus Arbites, which I intend on becoming another ‘bounty hunter’ for this universe.

My Dominion Legionnaires had an undercoat of Docrafts Noir, then were spirited off into my garage and were sprayed with some Poundland Gloss White, to try and give a bit of fast shading – which kind of worked. It does give a better indication of how they will end up – and yes, there are a couple more than there were last time. Remember, the Dominion IS Legion…

Incidentally, the ‘corridor’ I’m using as my backdrop is the free sample of the Dungeons & Lasers modular scenery that I mentioned in my previous post. I decided to de-sprue it and have a bit of a play. It’s good stuff solid, robust, well-detailed and how it goes together is really clever and simple. I’ll definitely be getting some of this stuff when it’s released, but if anyone wants to ‘late pledge’ for the Kickstarter, go here.

My Dominion Outriders were also given a similar treatment to their more heavily armoured brethren. I also shortened the Sharpshooter’s rifle, as once it had a lick of paint, it was obvious that it was too long. I still think they’re pretty cool and am looking forward to painting them, although for a full squad, I need to build three more Outriders, as the Sharpshooter doesn’t count.

Finally, I added some paint to my character models, although things did not go quite according to plan with some of them.

My ‘bounty hunter’ got an undercoat of Docrafts Dark Grey with his gun then being painted Docrafts Noir. The ‘protocol droid’ I had issues with – it had an undercoat of Docrafts Bronze, then a coat of Docrafts Shining Gold. However, for some reason the silver-grey plastic it was made from was still showing through the paint, so I then undercoated it again with Docrafts Noir and it now is the dirty brass colour you can see below. Archon Corax, my Vader surrogate, I tried to be clever with, by undercoating him with Gunmetal spray.

This was NOT a good idea, as this type of metallic paint relies on small particles to reflect the light and whilst this works fine on a larger model, like the bunker, it obscures the detail on figures, so I had to get out the nail polish remover and cotton buds to remove most of the spray paint. I left it on the lightsabre blade, as I thought this would help making it ‘shiny’. However, the rest of the figure got an undercoat of Docrafts Noir.

The final figure was the corrupted ‘Dark Side Adept’, who got an undercoat of Docrafts Dark Grey (which is actually quite light, as you can see from the pictures) and his pistol painted in Docrafts Noir.

Having read this far, you might be wondering how the title of this post relates to any of the preceding subject matter.

It doesn’t.

However, I will now explain. As this project progresses, I find myself populating my Star Wars-inspired universe with various figures to serve as proxies for the various troop types and ancillary characters. I have my Rebel trooper proxies and I have my Imperial Stormtrooper and Scout Trooper proxies. I also have Jedi proxies, both Dark and Light (although you haven’t seen the light one yet) and a couple of bounty hunters. I also have my first droid, but this was, up until recently, a bit of a stumbling block.

Humanoid robots are relatively common from several manufacturers, so finding figures for protocol, assassin or combat droids is quite easy. However, if you want proxy Astromech-style droids, you would have to buy either Fantasy Flight Games or the old Star Wars Miniatures game ones – which could prove a bit pricey, or make your own – which could prove to be a bit fiddly. I did find and download a template to make 1:50 scale papercraft R2 Units is a variety of colours, but this looked like it would try the patience of a saint – which I am not.

But Master Crow’s Web-Fu is strong…

Way back in May of 2018 Michael Awdry, of 28mm Victorian Warfare fame, was painting up some of his Imperial Assault figures and happened to mention a company called Combatzone Scenery, who made/make resin-infused plaster scenery for Imperial Assault, with which you can replace the cardboard tokens that come with this game. As I was not involved in a Star Wars-y project and did not own the game, I didn’t pay this much attention at the time.

However, my extensive practising of my Web-Fu in search of suitable proxy Astromech droids flagged up this picture:

Following the link back, I found that this was the Robot Accessory Set from, you guessed it, Combatzone Scenery, in which you get 14 robots cast in resin “compatible with 28mm skirmish games such as Star Wars Legion, Warhammer 40,000 or Infinity”, available to purchase for £15.00. That works out at about £1.07 per robot. The cheapest official Star Wars Miniatures Astromech droid (R5-D4) I could find was £2.99. Okay, so they’re not exactly right if you’re a Star Wars purist – the MSE droids are too big, the GNK droids have their legs in the wrong place and the R5 units have the wrong number of eyes – but for my purposes, they’re ideal. They look close enough to the source material that you will be thinking Star Wars, but fit in with my slight tweaking of the universe. And they’re £1.07 each…

Incidentally, if you play Imperial Assault, Legion, X-Wing or Armada, check out Combatzone Scenery, as they have a wide selection of products that will enhance your games. Similarly, if you play Super Dungeon Explore or other Chibi style games, they have a whole section devoted to this genre too, so well worth a look and very reasonable too, compared to the cost of the actual official game components.

Join me next time for more Star Wars inspired fun and remember, just because you happen to bump into me at a wargames show, doesn’t mean I’ll let you take my photo…

Never Break the Chain

One of the problems with being a wargamer is that you can be influenced by other gamers, be it in person  – at your FLGS or local club – or online – in a forum or on a blog such as this.

Whilst the majority of the time, this can be a positive experience, where you gain insight into a new painting style or have a manufacturer brought to your attention that you weren’t aware of, who stocks items that fulfill a specific need in your current project, there are times when something catches your eye or imagination and you suddenly find yourself having shelled out for a new game or figures from a new genre or scale, which are sufficiently different from your normal wargaming fare that you either put them to one side and promise you’ll look at them “later” or you stutter to a halt, as the overwhelming nature of the new project causes your brain to spasm

In other words, you broke the chain.

In my experience, in order to be successful and productive in our wonderful hobby, you do need to maintain momentum, as a two-week “break” from the hobby can easily slip in to a month or even a year if you’re not careful. This hobby momentum I refer to as the chain, so I can cheekily use lyrics from the Fleetwood Mac track of the same name for the post’s title, but also because is IS a chain – if you use it correctly.

Now, this is just MY theory on how to maintain momentum in your hobby pursuits, so feel free to disagree, but it works for me, so I’d thought I’d share it with you.

If you concentrate on a single genre or project for an extended period of time, unless it is something you are committed to or are extremely passionate about, you will experience burn-out. This can lead to a loss of momentum or, in the worse-case scenario, a loss of “love” for that particular project or genre.

Which is not good.

I find that having a small handful of different projects, which share a similar scale, means that I can easily transition from one to another when I start to become jaded with one particular project. It does help that the majority of my projects have an element of the macabre, so whilst I game Victorian Fantasy/Horror, Japanese Medieval Fantasy, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters and the current Alternate Star Wars project, some of the figures I use will turn up in multiple genres. And as Superhero gaming covers every possible permutation of genres and this was my first ‘love’ when I returned to gaming from the wilderness, it has kind of influenced the way I look at every other genre – so most of the projects I do are a blend of more than one thing.

Because there is this transition, this ‘sharing’ of resources and figures, I can easily slide from one project to another if I feel myself becoming “bored” with a particular project, so I don’t fall out of love with it, lose hobby momentum and break the chain, which, according to Fleetwood Mac, you should NEVER do.

Now, this transitioning can also be used in writing posts for your blogs. Sometimes, I’ll read a post which covers so many different projects or genres that it as though the author has just opened his head and spilled the contents on to the screen, without any concern or forethought as to how all these disparate parts come together. It can be somewhat jarring and reduces my enjoyment of reading that particular post. But, if there is some underlying theme or link between everything you’ve included in your post, then you can cover multiple genres or projects in one post without anyone even realising.

I’ll show you what I mean and you can judge for yourself how successful I’ve been…

So, way back in April of this year, I trotted off to the Excel Centre for the annual Salute wargaming convention and, being one of the first 5,000 through the doors, got my goodie bag with various freebies.

As a gamer with a limited budget, I am a fan of free wargaming stuff, although I sometimes can’t think of a particular use for the item when I first receive it. This happened with last year’s freebies, which ended up being sent to Stevie, as he’d missed on on Salute that year and was drooling over the free figures – and I had no use for them.

We’re gamers – that’s what we do.

Anyway, one of this year’s freebies was this;

This was a promo figure for Archon Studios new planned game Starcide, a sci-fi skirmish game, namely a Necromancer from the Legion of the Black Sun faction.

At the time, I had no real use for him. However, as I considered the various factions within my Star Wars-inspired project, I speculated on what would happen if a member of the Order of the Sentinels fell completely and started using their powers to siphon off the life-force of others to prolong their own life. I think they’d end up looking like a Legion of the Black Sun Necromancer…

Now, Archon Studios also had some promo examples and leaflets for their next project to be launched on Kickstarter at Salute, a hard plastic modular scenery system called ‘Dungeons & Lasers’, which allowed you to build either dungeons or sci-fi complexes out of set of interlocking components. Looked pretty cool and exactly the kind of thing I’d be interested in, so I grabbed a couple of leaflets to read up on it.

After the show, I visited their website and signed up for their email newsletter, so I could be kept in the loop. Prior to the launch of the Kickstarter for this new project, anyone who’d signed up for the newsletter received an email asking if they’d like a free sample of the new kit…

As I’ve stated before, I LIKE free wargaming stuff… so said yes.

This is what I got;

So, this sprue/frame contains enough components to create a small corridor with two walls… and an animal companion. It’s a fairly substantial bit of kit, as each floor section approximately 3mm thick and each wall section about 5mm thick. Floor sections are single-sided, with tabs that the rectangular connectors on the sprue clip on to, to ensure they don’t shift about. The wall sections are double-sided and in the production version will have different styles of either the fantasy or sci-fi decor on, so you can chooses which side you want showing. The way the bits clip together is really straightforward and the product is pretty robust.

The Kickstarter launched on 13th August 2019 and has now been successfully funded, but late pledges can still be made here. Lowest scenery pledge is $99, for which you get one base set of your preferred genre choice AND three extra rooms of your choice.

I know that I’ve previously stated that I’m not a fan of Kickstarters, but on this occasion, having seen the stuff in the…er…plastic AND if I had the cash, I would definitely buy in to this. Have a look yourself, as it might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

I also received another unexpected email recently, from Keith aka the Angry Piper from Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging. He’d sent me a photo of an item he thought I might like and asked if I wanted it.

Free wargaming stuff? Oooh, yes please…

Anyway, this is the item, which arrived yesterday morning.

Yeah Baby… you know who to call..

28mm Outrider figure for scale purposes, as my Ghostbusters are currently packed away… somewhere. (There was something else in the box, but the less said about the better, right Keith?) A very generous gift, especially when taking into account the shipping costs, and one that I am extremely grateful for.

Just need to find a way to pay him back somehow…

Right that’s all for this post, which not only had tied into my current project, but also a once and future project and was all linked together with a single theme.

It’s almost like I planned this…

“He says there’s a secret entrance… On the other side of the ridge.”

As the end of August can be seen lurking in the distance, creeping ever closer, and this is when The Angry Piper’s TerrainTime 2019 challenge finishes AND my Star Wars-inspired terrain piece was almost complete, I decided to crack on with the roof. Once this was completed, all I’d need to do was give it a couple of passes with some spray paint and job done.

So, first order of the day was deciding on what to use. Looking at the original inspiration for this terrain piece, the Endor Shield Generator Bunker;

the roof is pretty thick and also stepped, so the first order was to scout out some 5mm foamcore to make the lowest tier of the roof. As my intention was to use an aerosol spray paint on the entire model, the exposed foam along the edges would have to be masked, otherwise the spray paint would melt it. Potentially useful if trying to replicate a weird energy weapon attack, not so good when just attempting to undercoat a model.

A rectangle that matched the approximate footprint of the model was cut out, and the sides covered with clear sticky tape, angled at the corners to avoid overlap.

The next stage was to add an additional tier, slightly smaller, cut from mounting board and a third and final tier, the corners of which were trimmed, as were the centres, to give a bit more interest to the basic roof structure, before adding any external greeblies.

A quick raid of my box of bits and two end caps from flat pack furniture, two push pins, a plastic flanged nut of some description and a spare token from HeroScape (which has the HeroScape emblem on) were dry-fitted, then stuck in place, once I’d decided where they were going.

All well and good, but what did it look like in situ?

Not too bad…

Not too bad at all…

But obviously, as it stood at this point, all the disparate elements were clearly visible, so out into the garden it went and was given a liberal coat of matt black primer.

yes, I did say matt – the only reason this is looking shiny is that the picture was taken when the paint was still wet.

As I wanted a playable interior as well, the inside was given a coat too. The interior will gain some detail, possibly utilising some of the decals from Diorama Workshop. These are designed for 3.75″ actions figures, but re-scaling them and printing them out on sticky-backed paper and you’ve got instant Star Wars “wallpaper” for whatever environment you wish to re-create.

The next step was to use some Wilko Gunmetal Spray Paint, which gives a nice subdued dark grey-ish metallic effect. The idea was to try and utilise the technique known as zenithal shading, to try and create some simple highlights without too much effort. However, I don’t think I got it quite right, so my bunker model appears to be the same colour across its entirety, except for some possible darker shading in the doorway.

However, my Dominion troops seem to like it and for a relatively simple and inexpensive project, I think it’s come out looking pretty good.

If you’d seen the finished article prior to seeing how it was built, would you have guessed what it was made of? Or just assumed it was 3D printed or something?

That’s all for this build, but join me next time as this project continues. I think we may be off to the Droid workshop…

Jez