Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game Tournament - April 13

There was some hot Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game tournament action at Imagine Games & Hobbies last Sunday. I had 4 fun games against great opponents.

I ran a 7-ship TIE swarm, led by Soontir Fel:
Soontir Fel — TIE Interceptor =  27
6 x Academy Pilots — 6 TIE Fighters (6x12) = 72
Total = 99 points

From my practice games, my general plan was to set up 6 TIE Fighters in formation in whichever corner granted me the most maneuvering room, and to deploy Soontir Fel in the opposite corner, facing in diagonally.


Game 1

My TIE swarm is seen below deployed across the table from Jer's elite Darth Vader flight.



After a lot of maneuvering and dancing around, the swarm got Darth Vader in their sights and shot him down, garnering me a modified match win.




Game 2

I faced off against Ian's TIE swarm led by Darth Vader in a shuttle. As the game opened, I pushed Fel too far ahead of his squadron. Below, Ian's ships  blast Soontir Fel out of the sky.





The rest of my TIE swarm was a turn too late to help, but were in a good position to attack Vader's ship next turn.

Below, furious action as Darth Vader's shuttle finally goes down. That guy force-choked my pilots from his bridge!



The destruction of Darth Vader and some opposing TIE fighters was enough to grant me a modified match win.


Game 3

Matt's elite team of Soontir Fel and Darth Vader (armed with Assault Missiles!) forced me to spread out the TIE formation.



Matt's Soontir Fel (talk about Clone Wars!) was nailed by a lucky close range shot from one of my TIE Fighters.





Darth Vader never got off a shot. I shot down Matt's Fel; since my force lost only a TIE Fighter in return, I managed to eek out another modified match win


Game 4

Ty's fielded a cool Rebel flight: Blue Sqdn. B-Wing w/ Ion Cannon, Blue Sqdn. B-Wing, Gold Y-Wing w/ Ion Turret, and Jan Ors in a Hwk-290 with yet ANOTHER Ion Turret.



I made a fundamental error and moved towards the centre. I should have stayed on the left flank of the asteroid field and forced the Rebels to come to me.



I made another error by moving a couple of TIEs too fast and running into an asteroid! Below, Soontir Fel goes down to a 5-dice (!) volley from a B-Wing. Jan Ors granted the B-Wing an extra attack dice; it's a very good backfield ship and pilot.



I managed to nail the heavy-armed B-Wing, but it was too little, too late. Ian  ion-cannoned more of my TIE fighters into asteroids, granting him the match win!




Overall Result: 3-0-1 Win/Tie/Loss record (for 9 Tournament points)

Many thanks to Perry and Imagine Games and Hobbies for organizing and hosting the event. Congrats to Conscript Byron (fielding 2 B-Wings and 2 X-Wings) and to Chris (ETA: Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon w/ a Gunner, and 2 x Blue Sqdn.  B-Wings ea. w/ Fire Control Systems) for winning 1st and 2nd place!

Note: Chris posted his own report for the tournament, located here.

***

TIE Swarms and Firepower

I found running 7 ships mentally exhausting. However, the firepower of all those ships can be very effective. One objective seemed to be to keep them together as best as I could. Making the other guy move through the asteroid field is also key; in my last game the asteroids did as much damage to my ships as Ty's guns!

TheMetalBikini.com posted some very informative articles about moving in formation. It's a three-part series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

BoLS recently published a great article on ship placement, located here.

A few days after the tournament, FFG changed the tournament rules. Version 1.5.2 of these rules are posted here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/x-wing/support/faq/X-Wing-Tournament-Rules.pdf

Interestingly, the differential required for a full match win has been reduced from 33 points to only 12 points, the cost of a single Academy Pilot TIE Fighter. This could be both good and bad for the TIE swarm as a concept. Conscript Kevin has stated that firepower is important; he has been recently play-testing a swarm consisting of 6 named TIE Fighter pilots (Howlrunner, Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse, Backstabber, Winged Gundark, and Night Beast). At the tournament, IIRC I fielded the largest force, with 7 ships. The majority of the Galactic Empire players seemed to be running elite 4-ships lists.

I am jonesing to try out one of the following lists, since I am a big fan of both the Millennium Falcon (my all-time favourite sci-fi ship) and Chewbacca:

Chewbacca — YT-1300 (Determination, Gunner, Millennium Falcon) 49 pts. 
Rookie Pilot — X-Wing (R2 Astromech) 22 pts. 
Blue Squadron Pilot — B-Wing (Heavy Laser Cannon) 29 pts.
Total = 100 pts.

Chewbacca — YT-1300 (Determination, Cluster Missiles, Nien Nunb) 48 pts
Blue Squadron Pilot — B-Wing - 22 pts.
Jan Ors — HWK-290 (Ion Cannon Turret) 30 pts.
Total = 100 pts.

Legion Project - Sons of Horus Test Model

A Space Marine from the Sons of Horus Legion

Another small post with a bit more work on my Warhammer "30K" Legion Project - a test model for the Sons of Horus. This is a plain tactical marine, wearing Mark IV power armour and carrying a "Tigrus Pattern" bolter.

I am in love with the embossed shoulder pads...soooo much better than decals

While working on my World Eaters forces, I couldn't wait to work up a test paint job for the Sons of Horus.  As Horus' own legion, they are in many ways the ultimate "bad guys" in the Horus Heresy story and will fill the same role on the table top.

I found the colour of their armour to be a bit of a challenge - some sources speak of a rather plain forest-green, the paint jobs done in the Forge World studio and the pictures in the amazing Horus Heresy rulebooks show a near-seafoam green colour, almost a shade one would expect to see on a bridesmaid dress or something. I like the seafoam-ish green better, particularly mixed with gold highlights.

I practised with some different combinations of the GW colours when painting up the Knight Titan "El Booze", and then applied them to this figure. I thought the greens turned out well, but weathering a darker armour colour is a bit more challenging, so I still have to figure that out a bit. Once again the excellent GW washes - in this case, Nuln Oil and Biel-Tan Green - really came in handy.

One down...many, many more still to go...

I still have at least another 25 World Eater marines to finish painting, so this Son of Horus will be lonely for a while yet, but it will serve as inspiration to stay focused and keep painting on this project.  We have a long weekend ahead, and the NHL playoffs are on - can't wait to settle in for some hockey and some painting.

Legion Project - World Eaters Officer

A loyal servant of the emperor...for now...

 It's taking forever, but I am continuing to make some small progress on my Legion Project (aka "Legional Lunacy").  Here is a Legion officer and a couple more plain old tactical Marines.

At least he didn't forget his helmet at the office

Space Marine Legions are really huge forces - many, many times larger than a Space Marine Chapter of 40k.  This command figure is a "Centurion", although the titles used would vary throughout the different formations depending on their tradition etc.  He is essentially the same as a Captain in game terms, and will represent the overall commander for my World Eaters. He is wearing Mark IV power armour and carrying some manner of big frigging sword.  Some sort of spooky pistol is likely concealed under the cloak.

Who wears a cloak to a shooting war? But I still love it...

As with all of these Legion models from Forge World, the officer is a really, really nice casting. I have a pet peeve with Marine models not wearing their helmets. The Emperor spent a lot of money giving you fancy armour! You're in an intergalactic war zone! Wear your helmet! And who wears a cloak to a battle anyway?
But in this case, I think the sculptor did a great job, and I'm glad to see he is at least carrying his helmet.

The Forge World guys did a great job on this sculpt

I quite like the all-confident, almost overconfident air this figure exudes..."I'm a Space Marine Legion commander, and I have a big scary sword - what, me worry?" He will probably end up taking a direct hit from a battle cannon during one of our games...

"I have a sword - out of my way!"

This officer will be joined by a small command group, including a standard bearer that comes in the set with this officer - they are still in the painting queue, so stay tuned for more on those guys.

12th Legion grunts in Mark IV armour

I have also finished another pair of plain tactical Marines, as I slowly work towards getting the second 10-man tactical squad completed.

The embossed shoulder pads are pricey, but worth it...

So far I have only painted about 18 models out of a force of about 40 models...slow going.  But a long weekend is coming up, and it will still be f*cking snowing here as we continue with the winter-to-end-all-winters (incidentally, f*ck winter in the face with a hammer wrapped in barbed wire).  I won't be outside doing any yard work, so I'm hoping I can jump ahead with some painting progress.

You can see a bit of the weathering powder on the feet & armour joints

Byron's Death Guard are looking awesome, and Dallas has put together some amazing terrain.  Curt and Steve B have also caught the heresy bug - good to see the heresy spreading! I'm hoping we can play our first game before the end of May...we'll see - painting this white armour takes forever...

Terrain Project and GW Roughcoat

In these strange days of multi-hundred dollar plastic building kits, I always find it refreshing (and economical) to make something out of found objects. In this case, some very nice packing material from the LED TV set I bought my wife for Christmas this year.

One of the daunting things about these large terrain projects is how to paint them. Every hobbyist learns early in their career that regular spray pain dissolves foam, but brush painting these huge pieces is time consuming and takes a ton of paint.

In the past I've used "stone-effect" water-based spray paint to reasonable effect, but when I was in the GW store a couple weeks ago I spotted a can of something called "Roughcoat" in the paint lockup. When I asked Redshirt Mark about it he explained that it was textured spray paint and was supposedly safe for foam. After some Internet investigation ("trust... but verify") I decided to use it for this project.

It worked reasonably well. While the texturing effect was pretty minimal (I'd hoped for a rougher concrete effect) the spray didn't melt the foam, and was easy to use. I count that as a win, but at $20 a can, next time I'll hit Canadian Tire and pick up some stone effect stuff.

I drybrushed the piece with lighter grey using a large brush, and detailed the rather flat walls with some florist's wire sprayed black, painted GW Leadbelcher (dull silver) and treated with Rust Effects, which was also used on the walls. The roll-up door was made from corrugated plasticard with a spare handle from a Forgeworld kit. The large numeral "4" was freehanded and the small one is a decal from the decal folder.

More plasticard was used as floor sections in the upper levels.

Ladders conveniently came from Conscript Byron's shipping container kits.

Here's the other side of the piece, with a 28mm Citadel Spacefarer for scale.

Rhino shows the scale of the piece.

But wait, there's more! The other end of the TV had its own foam piece too. Identical to the first one, but with shallower indents on top. Again, perfect for 28mm figures.

More plasticard flooring and GW comms array. It's not glued down but is there merely for effect.

Both pieces pushed together cover about 4 feet - impressive eh? And just the thing for a massive game on an 8x5 table.

Imperial Bastion to show the scale.

...or an Imperial Knight?

Welcome to Planet Intermodal (28mm Shipping Containers Review)

Conscript Byron is a man of many talents. Ace gamer, talented painter, computer gamer extraordinaire, Ducatista... and as it turns out, a dab hand with a laser cutter as well!

Byron's new business enterprise located at http://sg2creations.shawwebspace.ca (fairly rolls off the tongue doesn't it??) produces all kinds of fun and funky laser-cut MDF terrain and accessories, as well as acrylic markers for all sorts of games.

As we all know, shipping containers are the kind of thing you can never have enough of. The AT-43 ones are great but now that the game is out of print, they're practically worth their weight in Forgeworld resin. You can get fold-up paper ones but who wants to use paper stuff on their table?

Enter Byron with the solution... laser-cut MDF shipping container kits. I bought some and they're great!

They assemble quickly and easily with just white glue - model clamps can be handy too but not necessary. Each container comes with an optional ladder piece as shown.

As you can see they look much cooler than paper and they're easy on the wallet as well. I undercoated mine with Krylon flat black spray and painted with GW Base paints (Khorne Red and Castellan Green). The branding was obtained via a most-excellent website called Brands of the World that has vectored logos for most world brands (and many fictional ones too, as you can see). I printed out the logos at an appropriate size on my colour printer, cut them out, and applied them with white glue.

The ends of the containers are nicely detailed with simulated doors. The containers are a perfect size for sneaking around too :-)

Great product Byron, and best wishes for your burgeoning business! Check Byron's laser-cut madness out at SG2 Creations.

Legion Project - Death Guard

As you all know by now, Greg got sucked into what he calls Legional Lunacy and is creating a Warhammer 30k army. As he mentioned in his post, insanity likes company, and so raving like a lunatic, I followed his decent into madness and placed a small order for some Forge World 30k marines. 

I say small, but really any Forge World order adds up way to fast, and sucks your wallet dry, so be warned!

My Death Guard force, minus the one painted squad shown below

All the warnings aside, the Warhammer 30,000 universe is amazing rich is history and feel.  Maybe even more importantly the Forge World models are AMAZING!!!!  You pay for that of course, but they are really really nice.  What is even scarier though, is that as expensive as they are, when you figure out the cost of GW plastic figure, the Forge World ones are really not that much more. Which is really scary for the detail difference.

A good example can be taken from the GW Chaos Terminators which are $60 while the resin 30k ones from Forge World come in at around $70 by the time you get them here.  I point this out only because at one point in time Forge World was so expensive compared to regular GW product.  It looks like GW figured that out and closed the gap, thinking if people would pay that much for Forge World they would pay it for GW plastic.  Now that they are so close, it's almost not worth buying the plastic.  Mind you both are priced about double what they should be, but that's a whole other story.

OK, back to the actual Legion Project....

Death Guard Tatical Squad

Since I have a Nurgle Chaos Space Marine army for Warhammer 40k, and really like how they play (even if they are not that competitive given the crazy meta of the tournament scene) I figured I would stick with their original pre-heresy chapter, the Death Guard.

The Death Guard are a staunch force that marches into battle in a direct and unforgiving way.  They ignore losses and march straight ahead having faith in their toughness and determination.  In the Horus Heresy books there is one Captain that loses a leg yet still tries to go ahead in the fight.  Now that's tough. 

I chose to go with a bone type colour with green should pads and
bronze trim, but other than that, they are very plain.

The Death Guard also do not believe in ornamentation and kept their armour almost entirely plain ceramite.  There are several different paint schemes out there for them that describe and show this.  They range from essentially white to grey to bone colour.  Some have only green trim around the shoulder pads, some have steel, some have brass.  Some show the shoulder pads white, some green. 

Besides the fact the Death Guard are not ornate, I also wanted to show the grittiness of the Horus period.  This is in fact shown for almost all of the Horus era stuff from Forge World in all of their paint schemes, which is awesome.  This was a period of war.  Marines went into battle and were stuck there for weeks at a time, the armour was not shiny and new, it was gouged, scratched, chipped, rusted, and worse.  This is completely counter to the normal shiny and new GW look of Space Marines in the 40k universe.

Lots of dust, rust, chipping, and scratching on the armour

That's all I have done so far, is a single 10 man Tactical squad, but I have more in the works as shown above.  I have a squad of Terminators, Typhus, some command figures, a second 10 man Tactical squad, and two 5 man Tactical support squads one with 4 plasma guns and the other with 4 melta guns.

As for Greg's comment and madness liking company, I fully support this idea and would like to help my infecting other members of the group with this lunacy.  If it helps, we fully plan on NOT using the currently very broken 40k rule set, and instead using the excellent Chain of Command rule set.  So, jump on in everyone, that water is fine!

In fact, I already have one convert.... my friend Steve Brown has joined in and has placed a small order for some leaders and a breacher squad.  He has also already completed one test model using some older looking plastic pieces, just to see how his colours work.  I am damn impressed!

So.... who else is going to jump in?