What happens when you put a teddy bear in a blender?

Well, let's just say that it does not end well for the teddy bear...

As you can see, I played my first ever game of Star Wars Legion. My little army got rave reviews from the folks at the shop as it was just 4 models shy of being fully painted. Indeed, one of the FLGS owners commented: So, you've clearly been buying and painting these for quite awhile, but you're only playing your first ever game now? Weird. 

The four unpainted minis were only acquired about a week or so ago. 

My opponent Jake (the FLGS' other co-owner) had only played a few games previously himself, so we were both more or less stumbling though the motions, though admittedly I was more than he. 

I fielded a generic Rebel officer, no upgrades

(2) Squads of Rebel Troopers, each with an extra trooper and a Z-6 gunner

A squad of Veterans with an extra veteran and an upgrade card that I totally forgot about, so isn't worth mentioning

A squad of Ewoks with 'Charge' and an Axe Ewok

AT-RT with a rotary blaster

Landspeeder with a refurbished Gonk droid, RPS-6 rocket gunner, hotshot pilot and a Mk II medium blaster

Jake had General Grievous

Cad Bane (he's as bad ass on the table as he is on screen)

(2) squads of 2 Droidekas

and a double squad of B-1 Battle droids with a special weapon of some sort. 

The scenario had 6 objectives which were quickly forgotten about (though they partly won me the game), secondary objectives were totally forgotten as well. 

Even though they were not on 40mm bases, the moisture evaporators were still the objectives.

B-1s suck, unless there are a lot of them...

With the B1's opening volley, they crippled the AT-RT despite having armor 2 (which cancels 2 hit outright). While it would move no further being reduced to 1 action per turn, it's rotary blaster exacted revenge, halving the B-1 squad!

Turn 2 and I got to go first with the Ambush command card. The Ewoks charged the Droidekas and a spectator asked how the Ewoks were going to kill Droidekas with sticks? My answer: PLOT ARMOR!

Not quite sure where the aim token came from, in hindsight that may have been issued erroneously...or maybe it was a command card?

The Rebel line advancing between the rocks and my fallen AT-AT.

The already wounded Doideka falls to the Teddy bears and they also wound the second one. 

Which promptly with draws from combat and the 2nd squad of Droidekas hose down the Ewoks. killing most of them!

A rebel squad and the AT-RT finish off the B1s. 

The Ewok leader tries to rally the Axe Ewok...

This looks like an epic fight.

It was not.

Air and orbital strikes dish out loads of suppression (vehicles don't suffer from suppression, another mistake). Unfortunately, Grievous found himself out in the open & the speeder hit him with everything it had, wounding him badly.

Cad Bane, taking out squads, and immobilizing more with frighteningly brutal efficiency! With only 1 action, and the rotary blaster out of arc, the AT-RT's pilot pulls out his rifle and one handedly puts 2 crits into Bane! That pilot is a Chiss you know...

No more pics were taken from this point forward, but the Rebel officer managed to put another wound on Cad Bane and also finished off the ailing (well, more than the usual) General Grievous. At that point, I was up by a point, and all Jake had left was the wounded Cad Bane and 2 Droidekas. I still had 1 or 2 of my veterans, the damaged AT-RT, the speeder, and unhurt officer. It was getting late and not seeing as path to victory he ran up the white flag. 

That was fun, I need a full hand of command cards though, I'll need to remedy that before my next game. I know we screwed up several things, but nothing really all that game changing. The Ewoks performed well, though were the glass cannon I expected them to be. Most of the rest performed decently and/or about as i had expected them to. The only exception being the Rebel officer who might deserve a name right out of the gate as he was quite the marksman. 

*****

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving! Frankie is up at his Dad's in Virginia for the holiday. As such, we have to come up and get him. I am not looking forward to a 12-14 hour round trip. It should be only 10-12 hours, but the holiday traffic, a blocked interstate due to this year's hurricanes, and a lousy weather forecast means it will be slower going. Nonetheless, we will be up in TN for a few days for Thanksgiving at my Aunt's house. The fam in Knoxville is mad at us again as a result, despite the reality that the aforementioned blocked interstate would add another 4-5ish hours round trip to go to see them (ah yes, the joy that the holidays bring...). 

I'll be packing light, but am planning on getting a small game of Battletech in with Screech at our Airbnb on Black Friday. My apologies to Neverness & the rest, no room in the car for a 40K army. I am already done Christmas shopping, so will not be partaking in the shopping madness, other than to swing by the old Hobbytown which will be right up the street from where we will be staying.

Soooo...what would you call this?

 

Cross contamination perhaps?

I just painted this as 1-off for my own amusement. That said, after looking back on this here blog, this is the first marine that I've painted since May, and the first here in South Carolina. Ironically, it is well camouflaged for the 'aquarium basing' as Neverness likes to call it. 

My next post ought to be about the learn-to-play game of Star Wars Legion that I am going to play this evening. I will be fielding my 500 points of Rebels using my own army which is a mere 4 infantry models short of being fully painted. Usually the first time I try to play a new game, I'm lucky to have 4 models with primer, much less paint on them. 

Trick or Treat!

I'll leave it up to you to decide just which this post is...

This distraction is the real culprit. 

Long time no post (well, on this blog anyways). The Buffet Assault Group however has been going strong in this blog's absence. Especially as Battletech is the only game I've been playing and painting minis for here of late. Nonetheless, hope for this blog may be on the horizon...

You find all sorts of forgotten purchases when you have to move your collection from one house to another.

First up, I finished reading thru the Bolt Action 3rd ed. rulebook, and have watched a few battle reports online. I recently got some OD green spray paint and primed the 3D printed Chaffee light tank above. Currently, this is the entirety of my Bolt Action 'army'.

The base is primed as well. 

I also recently primed my Star Wars Legion Dewback rider. I'm hoping this won't be too hard to paint. Indeed it looks to be more of an inking and dry brushing dream. I also recently acquired a pair of used and (decently) paint Imperial scout speeder bikes (plus another R4 droid just because).

Good enough for now, these may be touched up at some point in the future. 

Leaving the Occupier tank out, these bring me up to a mostly painted 500 point skirmish force. The FLGS has learn to play nights almost weekly, so I'll have to make it to one of those I guess to try and figure Legion out for myself. 

So that's all I have for now. It's not much but it is what it is, I'll see you all in November (at some point).

An Imperial Scout Disk Trooper

o/

No one questioned his willingness to take all of those solitary, perimeter foot patrols on the forest moon of Endor...

This post with be a short but fun one! A few months ago, while still living in Tennessee, I picked up a squad of Imperial Scout troopers for Star Wars Legion. Not ones riding on speeder bikes, but rather those of the foot slogging patrol type. From this set, I've only painted one mini thus far, the Saboteur-turned-Disc Golfer. 

He's knocked more than one Ewok off of it's tree top catwalk with a well thrown disc!

My uncle is an avid disc golfer, and that is exactly what this guy looked like to me. So I smoothed off the top of his bomb to look like a frisbee, and painted it as such. Of particular note is the trooper's bag which matches my uncle's disc bag in color almost exactly. As you can see from his photo below, he's really quite pleased with it. All the more so when I said 'yes of course you can keep it!'

Of course with a basket of that size, how could he miss?

Star Wars Legion Mudtroopers

 o/

My apologies for the crummy lighting & backdrop,

it is usually just about dark when I get home (or raining outside). 

This week I've been trying to finish off the menagerie of half painted minis that have been loitering on my desk for the past few weeks. I'm almost finished with a couple more PHIGs, but as that's an almost, I'll save those for my next post. Today I instead present to you another four Mudtroopers. 

Seriously Atomic Mass Games, why are there no official models for these guys yet? 

This bunch includes the blue squad leader, another grunt from the same squad, as well as a pair of specialists armed with a DLT-19 and a E-22. The latter isn't much of a support weapon (hell, Shoretroopers are armed with them as standard). But...those guys are kind of elite whereas Mudtroopers, are more like rookies. As such, its a support weapon. That said, its cost is only a single point more than a regular grunt.

This is the part where they run away!

The DLT-19 is your standard, issue Imperial long ranged anti-armor weapon for infantry. There's one mounted on my Occupier tank's pintle mount as well. I only have four Mudtroopers left to go, another E-22 gunner, a scatter gunner (same stats & cost as the Rebel Fleet Troopers upgrade), and a pair of Mortar emplacement troopers. 

This is the stat card that I made for the mud troopers. As you can see they're similar to that of the Stormtroopers, just crummier (the same can be said for their mortar emplacement Mudtrooper). There's no automatic point calculator for custom units, so I tend to aim high on my point costs. As such, I used the same point cost as standard stormtroopers. The mortar emplacement is the same cost to that of the Shoretooper variety as well. Such are the costs of proxies.  

I finished my Star Wars Legion El Camino!

 o/

This may be the first time for this blog, where I have a painted model sitting in the snow. 

Before I talk about my latest project, I was hoping that maybe some of you would be able to help out my personal friend Neverness. Had his supervisor not decided to take him to the ER as a precaution last week, we might have lost him forever. While he's in much better shape at the moment, the both physical and financial ramifications of his sudden bad turn of health has turned his world upside down. As such, his family has created a GoFundMe for him and if you can help him out a bit we would all be grateful. Also a word of caution on GoFundMe: the 'suggested tip' at the end is both unnecessary, and does not go to Neverness' benefit. GoFundMe keeps that for themselves on top of the fees that they collect, the sneaky gits!

*****

This was one of the first minis I that I bought for Legion, and unlike the rest of my early models, this was the only one I didn't either sell or trade away. I'm glad I didn't as it is a really cool looking model, not quite sure if it qualifies as a proper tank though. 

Unfortunately the sponson guns are fixed forward, whereas I think they ought to be able to fire backwards as well. As for the chin mount, I don't think that would remain functional on anything but the smoothest of terrain! 

Kyber crystals all loaded up and ready to go. 

Or are they just boxes of ration packs?

In all likelihood, the containers will just be used as scatter terrain.

The Occupier is more of an armed transport in my opinion. Sure it has guns because what Imperial vehicle doesn't? The Mudtrooper crewman seems more appropriate as I see this as a second line unit as opposed to say an AT-ST.

About the only sort of cargo that this would likely carry in a game would be an infantry unit of some sort. I hear weapon emplacements are popular with these as it gives them some much needed mobility.

I swapped the stormtrooper crew out for a 3D printed Imperial army/Mudtrooper crewman, though I think he was supposed to be the guy that Chewbacca tossed off of the top of that AT-ST on Endor.

Hopefully I will get this dirty ol' rust bucket on the tabletop some time in the near future.

All in all I'm pretty happy with this model. This is the last of my unpainted Legion vehicles. Indeed, I think that I have little more than a dozen or so minis across all three of my factions left to paint!

B1 Battle Droids (and stuff)

 o/

Progress on my Star Wars Legion armies continue, this time with my third army entry: the Separatist Alliance. 

The yellow trimmed droid is the squad leader. I had to quickly snap these pics as there was a serious chance of a gust of wind blowing these off of the deck's railing!

Whilst this isn't this faction's first post on here, for a little while there it was in danger of being it's last. These fragile little fuckers aren't only a bitch to assemble, they're no picnic to paint either! Especially as I'm dry brushing these which puts a bit more stress on these spindly minis. 

This chunk of droid will decorate something's base.

Two broke during the painting process, one irreparably. This means my second, otherwise unpainted squad will include the backpackless OOM Security droid. Indeed, in a fit of nerd rage I almost boxed the whole lot of them up and posted them to eBay. Luckily for these infernal minis, I was too busy with the holidays and instead they just got shoved aside.

The little blue swatch on the back of their heads is my way to identify the different squads (assuming the other one ever gets painted). 

Speaking of this force, I had intended to use the Experimental Droids battleforce under the auspices of they're just old, somehow still functioning and thus rusty droids. However teh interwebz' meta gamers insist that that this battleforce list sucks! 

Whereas in my case, the Experimental Droids list is restricted from including spider droids. Spider droids are my favorite droid model, so I'm right there with the meta gamers, albeit for entirely different reasons. Thus I repainted the their guns to not look rusty, and these will instead run (theoretically someday) as a standard issue droid force. 

*****

In other Legion progress, I painted up the Speeder's unused Rodian rifle gunner. While I was tempted to make a card using him as a rookie bounty hunter or the like, I'll likely just use him as a grunt in my rebel trooper squad.

Online, Rodians seem to be one of the most hated of Star Wars alien species. I'm guessing its due to the seemingly useless suction cups on the ends of their fingers.

As you can see, I also painted up two barricades. These two are a different color than the rest which are grey. The reason for that is because they were used as stands for the X-34 in my last post, as it was receiving a second coat of primer. 

One of these barricades was blown off of the railing by the wind. Luckily they're both solid pieces and well varnished. Thus no chipping was incurred.

Star Wars Legion X-34 Rebel Landspeeder

 o/

This speeder may have dipped a bit low to dodge and incoming round (or tree branch?) and judging by the windscreen, went thru rather than over some muddy water!

Well this was both fun, and a relatively quick paint job! Now that I have new hobby lighting, I'm back in business when it comes to painting minis. We even had some warm-ish weather the other day enabling me to prime as much as I could (in between rain squalls). 

Visibility, who needs it? Also, in hindsight I ought to have put that fern to the left rather than under the speeder, but oh well. 

I've never liked the blaster cannon mounted on the hood and so opted to put it over the starboard 'wing'. Note, said wing and engine nacelle are mostly blue. Clearly this X-34 took some damage in a past engagement and another machine was cannibalized for parts. 

The blaster is glued in place, so no ion options for these Rebels.

Due to the blaster's position, the Rodian rifleman was omitted from this model. I had to have the Twi'lek gunner with the RPS-6 rocket launcher though! The Rodian will likely end up in a trooper squad or something.

The camouflage was created using some old stencils from Fallout Hobbies and two layers of primer.

Basically this is the Star Wars equivalent of the the modern day, insurgent technical. Fast, fragile and sort-of effective. I'm thinking that this will work as a high speed distraction, hopefully getting into the enemy backfield and causing problems.

'Look lady, I'm driving, so I get to pick the radio station!'

Hobby-wise, my 2024 is so far a bit of a mixed bag...

 o/

My previous Black Dragon pauldron icon decal sheet was down to less than a squad's worth!

On the upside, my Black Dragons army has been saved from certain doom due to a lack of decals. My remaining decals from the now defunct Silver Drakes turned out to be a hellova lot less than I had realized. As such I had stopped painting any more Black Dragons as I agonized over which eight infantry models would get the last of my precious decals. 

Fallout hobbies has stopped their completely custom decal service that I had used a few years back. I was fruitlessly searching for a replacement decal provider when an Etsy seller suggested Death Ray Designs. After asking the latter a few questions in regards to what I wanted, I received the sheet above. I highly recommend them! Now I have more Black Dragon icons than I'll ever need!

I rarely see this in online battle reports, but I opted for the 'rule of cool' and bought it anyways.

On the holiday acquisitions side of things, I bought a Rebel Landspeeder and some Legion barricades for some scatter terrain when visiting Knoxville last weekend, as Sci-Fi City was having their annual, end-of-the-year 30% off storewide sale. I also got a few random GW paints as stocking stuffers for Christmas, and Screech gave me a $40 Gift card to our local Hobbytown which was awesome. 

Trending downward however, I was looking on GW's website to see what I could buy for 40K for $40. Quickly, I changed to my search to what can I get a $40 discount on for 40K. Sheesh! The prices of minis for 40k are really just shocking! its no wonder that I buy most everything second hand or 3D printed these days!

So many projects, yet so little light...

As much as I would like to work on my new toys and previously on-going projects, all painting for me is currently on hold. After ordering a new LED bulb after I thought it blew, it seems that instead it was my hobby lamp that died. As such it is too dark in my office to paint anything (which is ironic considering my wife's vast, stained glass lamp collection) until the replacement lamp arrives this weekend. 

The Roger Rogers

 o/

As fragile as B1s are on the table top, I have no idea how this OOM security droid survived that shot to the chest. 

Now...I don't know what horrible rumors that you've all heard about how hard it is to assemble B1 Battledroids, but rest assured when I tell you that they are not rumors! These spindly little guys are indeed nightmares to assemble and said assembly was done so with much cursing and swearing. 

Oh look, a cheap box o' droids! Then I got home and realized that they were all specialists for squads that I didn't yet have.

As such, after building the four that I have, I just went on eBay and found a reasonably priced auction containing a dozen pre-assembled B1s and promptly bought it. No more assembly required. 

I built them as three grunts and the OOM security droid, and with the aforementioned eBay auction will have enough for two regular squads with options.

As stated previously, these old, still activated droids are rusted all to hell, though somehow still functioning. They paint up quick and easy enough, and their basing is fairly easy as well. As you can see, I'm well on my way now to building a third army for this game that I don't actually play...

Had there been a 4th comms pack, I'd have built all four as regular grunts. The specialists kit however doesn't allow for that. Honestly, I was surprised that I could even build them as regular grunts!