New Batch of Sci-Fi Figs - Criminal Syndicate?

    Six new Sci-Fi minis from a variety of sources intended for my upcoming Star Wars skirmishes

In my upcoming Sci-Fi skirmish games, I plan to have my players take on the role of various factions in the Star Wars universe. I recently painted my Imperial Stormtroopers, and have plenty of miniatures I can use as either "Corporate Security" or "Mercenaries." However, nothing I have painted up jumps out at me as usable for a "Criminal Syndicate." for this faction, I'm envisioning a half dozen or so individuals with no uniforms, similar armament, or even race. So, I dug through my unpainted miniatures and found a half dozen that I thought might fit.

    Closeup of the riding beast of one of the Wiley Games resin miniatures, 'Rall'

Three of them are from Wiley Games resin miniatures line -- Lord Ordus, Slugrr, and Rall. One of the others was a freebie convention figure from Badger Games -- a very cool looking alien with an elongated head and three-toe, claw-like feet. The other two were also freebie convention figs, but "Pig-man" miniatures from my Cincycon attendance through the years. I think one is supposed to be a superhero Iron Man type, while the other is a 40K-ish pig-man in heavy armor. In the end, there's a chance some of these may end up being used for other factions or even not at all. Still, I want my players to have some variety to select from.

    This Wiley Games fig is very 'Dark Side of the Force' looking to me, and is one of my favorites

One of my favorite figures in this batch of six is the Lord Ordus from Wiley Games. I will probably kidnap him for the Empire, though, as he definitely has the air of the Dark Side about him. His opaque metallic mask, bright green bolts of energy building up in his hands, and dramatic cloak seems to just say "evil" to me. I painted him in suitably sinister colors. I gave him a dark red cloak with orange and yellow trim and decorations. His body suit underneath the robes is a dark, cherry brown. I painted his helmet the darkest metallic I had -- Iron Wind Metals Steel -- with dark metallic red trim. I'm not sure what the apparatus protruding from his back is supposed to be, but I painted it in sinister steel and bronze to match the rest of the figure. As I mentioned, Lord Ordus may end up being a leader for the Empire instead of a criminal, but we shall see...!

    At first I didn't like this 'Jabba the Hut' looking figure, but now I'm happy with how he turned out

Slugrr is an unusual, snail-like alien. The lower half of his body has a very "Jabba the Hut" slimey snail look about it. I painted his flesh a salmon color with pink highlighting. He had more equipment festooned onto him than any of the other miniatures. So, I decided to go with a desert military palette with khaki, tan, and olive drab. I like how Slugrr turned out, though I admit that after I bought him I was thinking to myself, "I will never paint this figure up...!" The pictures on their website don't show the lower half of the body (the snail or slug part). I honestly don't know what the rectangular boxlike thing slung over his shoulder is supposed to be. Maybe some sort of rocket or missile launcher? The four holes in the top look like exit ports for projectiles or missiles. All in all, I think he'll make a suitably...should I say it? Slimy character for the criminal syndicate!

    Too big to be a player character in a skirmish game? Maybe...but still a neat miniature

Rall is one I may never actually use a character for a player. Instead, he may simply be placed on the board as "eye candy." Doesn't just about every Star Wars film have some grotesque creature being ridden through the streets? This boar-like riding beast certainly fits the bill. Its heavy flaps of skin, horns and tusks protruding, and tiny piglike eyes fit the Star Wars creature look, I think. The alien riding him also looks sinister. His goblin-like pointed ears and bizarre goat-like legs make the opposite of "warm and cuddly." No Ewoks here! One of the things I regularly struggle with for my Sci-Fi games is deciding what color to make the skins for the aliens. I want them to be distinctive from each other -- not all green, blue, or whatever. Thus, Rall's almost "Avatar" blue skin, Slugrr's salmon, my Five Parsecs character Cephvarx Hul's lavendar, and the Valkeeri green. I really like how Rall's blue skin turned out, accentuating his goblin features, but not making him look like he is a fantasy character that wandered onto the wrong movie set! Anyway, this is a great model, if very large and somewhat impractical to use as character in a Sci-Fi skirmish. Hmm...if I'm kidnapping Lord Ordus for the Empire and jettisoning Rall to be simply an "eye candy" extra, that leaves me with only four figs from this batch to use as the syndicate. I may have to draft my Five Parsecs crew for criminals after all! 

    Quiddo is a freebie convention fig from Badger Games -- I really like his color scheme & alien look

The Badger Games alien figure (nicknamed 'Quiddo') is very nice, and I'm glad I finally got a chance to paint it up. I really don't remember which convention I was attending when I received the figure. It is a Sci-Fi figure, so I can't imagine it was Historicon. However, that's the only place I tend to see Badger Games have a booth. Anyway, I chose to paint the alien's skin reddish brown and dry brush it Middle East Flesh from Howard Hues. I decided to paint his jumpsuit light blue, then figured it might be cool to use my Turquoise Metallic Paint for the reinforced metal portions. I really like how the color combination worked out and will have to remember that pairing. There were some trim pieces done in various other colors, but all in all, I like how this alien trooper looks. I have to come up with a name for him, otherwise my friends will give him something like "Moe" or "Darrel"...!

    Foxhurst was a Cincycon freebie fig that I modified with a laser pistol and chest gem

The final two figures that were part of this batch were freebie figures I picked up at Cincycon. Some of the Cincinnati group that hosts the convention were (or are still?) part of Ral Partha Miniatures. So, they know sculptors who each year design a new pig-man figure for them. The pig has been the emblem of Cincycon, through the years, so why not a pig-man miniature as a freebie? This is quite possibly the first two pig-men that I have painted up from all those years of freebies, though! I believe the first one is supposed to be an Iron Man style, superhero pig-man. His armor looks very futuristic, of course. It is very cleanly cast with great definition. You can see where each piece connects to its neighbor and was a snap to paint up. I did the entire figure in Iron Wind Metals Steel, then painted each piece metallic Chocolate Brown. I left the seams between the pieces Steel, though. Next, I added a bright gold highlight to each piece of armor. Once I put the black wash over it all, the blending of the three metallic colors looked great, I feel. I ended up going with a yellowish-tan skin color for his head (the only place you can see the skin). I gave him green eyes, black gloves, and once I was completely done flocking and sealing it, I glued on the yellow craft store gem onto his chest armor. One other modification to the figure was I added a laser pistol in his hand from one of my Stargrave sets. 

    'Trooper Rimlee' is a very 40K looking freebie figure from Cincycon who finally got painted up

The final pig-man is probably my least favorite figure of the batch. He was easy to paint up in his 40K-ish armor. I gave him a base of Iron Wind Metals steel and highlights of bright bronze. I think one reason I don't like him much is because I have never caught that 40K Imperial Space Marine bug. Too much like Mechs, maybe -- ha, ha! Anyway, he will definitely work for a heavily armored bad guy for the criminal syndicate. I guess I need to name him, otherwise he'll become "Trunk Monkey" or something like that...!

Final look at this batch of 6 Sci-Fi figs that puts me 12 away from evening up my Painted vs. Acquired

With the criminal syndicate completed, there's only one faction left to paint. The Rebels! Can't have a rebellion with the rebels, right? This morning, I took six figures from the Stargrave Crew and Crew II boxes and assembled them. They were primed this evening, and they'll be the next batch of figures I paint up. Stay tuned to see how they turn out!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 226
  
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 214

Hopefully, These are the Droids I'm Looking For...

    A dozen droids from various manufacturers, including a few scratch-built from scatter terrain

As I gear up for running Star Wars themed skirmish games, there was one thing I was certainly lacking: droids. Not war bots and military stuff like that -- I had painted up a good number of those already. I'm talking about the civilian type ones like C3PO or R2D2. They didn't have to be copies of those two. Any unarmed, robot or droid-like figures would work. Remember the scene inside the Jawas vehicle when those two were captured during the first Star Wars movie? There were LOTS of different sizes and shapes, so I felt I had a relatively free hand.

    Remember the 'Walking Trash Can' droid from Star Wars? Here's my version of 'Gonk'

One source was the Retro Raygun line from Hydra Miniatures. On our trip up to the Michigan Toy Soldier & Figure Company, I snatched up three types there. I also picked up some from RRB. Minis & More from the venerable Reviresco 28mm line. And finally, while painting up some of my 3-D printed scatter from Diabolical Terrain, I noticed some of the cylindrical pieces looked very droid-like. They would needed treads or something to give them mobility to be attached underneath, though. Rich Brown of RRB came to my rescue and pointed out stuff in his catalog that would work. 

So, once assembled, I had a very large batch of miniatures to paint at once. I prefer to work on about a half dozen or so at a time, but this was twice that size -- 12 figures. I started out with putting them together. My friend Jason had told me a trick to use with superglue -- have a light dusting of baking soda on one of the halves to be joined together. According to him, it would cause the glue to cure superfast. Since I am so untalented with superglue, I figured superfast superglue might be easier to use. I tried it out when assembling the various arms, heads, etc., together. I did seem to work much faster and hold strong. Thanks for another modeling or painting tip, Jason!

    I took pieces of scatter terrain that looked vaguely like R2D2 and gave them treads

I began with the Diabolical Terrain scatter pieces. I chose the smallest size of three different types of cylinders I'd purchased back at DayCon 2024 in April. I used my hobby saw to separate the bottom quarter or so from the rest of the piece. Only one cut went awry or uneven, but I hoped I could hide it with the RRB treads I would be gluing to the bottom of them. I cleaned up the treads and they were perfect size. They came from three of their Sci-Fi vehicles -- two tank-like ones and one "Jungle Bot." The hardest part was setting them upright for the cylinder to rest upon. Afterwards, I thought "Duh!" I should have glued the treads to the base first! I didn't use superglue for this, I used modeling cement that I have been using for assembling multipart plastic figures. They came out pretty good -- one or two has a gap if you look closely, but all in all, I was happy with how they came together. 

    Good view of the treads which I scavenged from Reviresco bots I bought from RBB Minis & More

I primed them with white artist's Gesso (another Jason tip), because I wanted the main color for most of the droids to be white. It seemed to be a predominant color in the Jawas collection in the movie, at least. Once drying overnight, I gave it a coat of white. I chose to do one accent color on each droid, doing red, blue, and green ones. I also painted the little rectangular panels black and gave them glowing buttons like I did my scatter pieces. I went back and forth whether to give these a wash to dull them up (they were really bright white), and finally decided to go with a dusty brown. After they dried, I gave them a spray clear coat. Upon examining them, I felt they were too dirty, and did a very light white dry brush over the darker parts to brighten them up, again. I know the droids were probably sitting there thinking, "Make up your mind...!"

    Two 'Simon 6' robots from Hydra Miniatures' 'Retro Raygun' line that I liked

Next up were the Retro Raygun robots, Blocko the Squarebot and Simon 6. While assembling these miniatures, I had noticed that the torso and legs of Block looked quite a bit like Gonk, aka the "Walking Trash Can" droid from Star Wars. So, I decided to not glue on the arms or head and have him be my take on Gonk. The others were put together correctly and primed with gesson and given a white base coat. I did the two Simons first, giving one of the red trim on a white body. The next, I left the trim white and repainted the body blue. This reversing of colors has a nice effect, I thought. I gave them a glowing green power indicator in their chest and red eyes. Otherwise, they're painted to be similar in theme to the scatter droids I did first.

    'Blocko the Squarebot' as envisioned by Retro Raygun and then re-imagined as a Star Wars 'Gonk'

Blocko I wasn't sure how to paint. I decided to go with a dull yellow as his basecoat. I painted the arms and legs a pale blue. I guess I decided to depart from the white and trim color theme here because I wanted it to look different than the two Simon robots. I gave him some dark blue metallic trim that I think sets him off a bit. He got the usual lighted yellow, green, blue, red, and white lighted buttons and dials, too. As I was painting him, I felt he looked so retro as to be almost cartoonish. However, once he was done, I was more pleased. After all, C3PO has theose shocked eyes and mouth, too.

    One of the easiest droids to paint up, two of Retro Raygun's 'Hoverbots'

Finally, it was on to the little ones. From Retro Raygun, I picked up a pack of five Hoverbots. Since this batch was so big already, I decided to paint just two of the five. To pick up trash on the ground, I bought a pack of three Reviresco Monowheel Scavengers from RRB Minis. These are pretty cool looking figures, being built around a single wheel, with metallic cover and body. Attached are two robot arms. What really sets them off is their wide open jaw with metal teeth at the front of the robot. I figured these guys buzz around the streets picking up trash and depositing in their mechanical mouths.

    3 'Monowheels' from Reviresco -- I imagine them as rolling garbage collectors scooping up trash

I wasn't sure how to paint them, so did a little bit each time. I began with a gesso and then white base coast. Next, I did the wheel a dark gray rubber. I made the metallic cover for the wheel Iron Wind Steel. I finally decided to use a color for the various trim pieces like I did with Simon 6. I decided the trim would be in normal flat acrylics, but the wheel color would be in a matching metallic color. From being unenthused about them initially, I'm pretty happy with how they came out. Strangely, though, I managed to have one of the blue one's arms come off and have yet to find it! So, I painted over the socket and I have one Mark I version and two Mark II's...ha, ha!

All of the droids and robots got my new Sci-Fi flocking. Rather than putting on Blended Gray fine ballast and then giving it a dark wash, I decided recently to buy a fine black ballast from the local model train supply store. I then dry brush this gray, cutting out a couple steps and using less of my black wash. Add in some brownish tufts and an occasional large patch of stones, and they're done. 

    Another looks at the back of 'Blocko the Squarebot' and my modification of it for 'Gonk'

This batch of 12 took a long time to paint up. I did it in stages, as I mentioned. I'm happy with how they look, though. Will a dozen civilian droids be enough for my games? Wellll, I do have two more Reviresco models I bought, and there are three more Hoverbots. Oh, and I have three more of those Diabolical scatter pieces I turned into droids. We'll see. I'm hoping, as the title of this entry suggests, that these are the droids I've been looking for, though!

What's up next? I am finished with two batches of Acheson scatter pieces. They are barricades made of stacks of tires and oil drums and also tall concrete barricades. As soon as I finish the flocking and take pictures of them, I will put them up here. As far as miniatures go, I'm thinking that the next minis I paint may well be the 'Criminal' faction for my Star Wars skirmishes. Stay tuned to find out!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 226
  
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 208

Stormtroopers, Walkers & an Acheson Building

    A platoon of 3-D printed imperial stormtroopers, supported by some Wiley Games walkers

As part of getting ready for some Star Wars themed Sci-Fi skirmishes, I would have to paint up some stormtroopers sooner or later. A couple CincyCons back, I had bought some 3-D printed ones from JS Wargamer Printing's "Galaxy Far, Far Away" line. I decided to give them some heavy support and painted up three walkers alongside them. These were actually a figure from Wiley Games' resin line of minis called BLST3R. Painted up almost simultaneously was a large Sci-Fi building from Acheson Creations that I had purchased at Drums at the Rapids this past May.

    Painting the black accents on the white stormtrooper armor was a royal pain, I discovered!

We'll start with the stormtroopers. There were 10 figures in the pack with only a few duplicate poses, so that was nice. They came printed with a "slotta" style base, which I despise. I had recently bought a pair of sprue cutters at a hobby store and this assisted in my snipping them free from their bar of shame. I did lose part of the foot of one of the figures while doing so, but was able to recover the figure (unlike with the Mon Calamari). I glued them to plastic round bases with modeling cement and then sat back and pondered how to paint them. 

    I actually had to do a light wash on these figures to be able to SEE the detail to paint them!

As most people know, stormtroopers have white armor, but a black undersuit, as well as black accents on the armor. Do I paint them black and dry brush white heavily? I didn't think that would work. I would cover up too much of the black areas, or not get it white enough, I felt. So that meant I would have to paint them white and paint the black parts by hand. I correctly surmised that it would be a royal pain -- wait, an IMPERIAL -- pain in the butt! However, since I wasn't spray painting these 3-D figures black, it gave me a chance to try out something my friend Jason M (check out his blog) recommended for priming: artist gesso. Jason warned me it seems really thick going on, but shrink wraps around the miniature, looking better in the prepainting stage than it does while applying it. What's more, the gesso surface absolutely grabs the paint and makes it every easy to cover. One coat of brushed on white was all I needed. I was impressed and will continue to use the gesso for figures I would normally prime white. Apparently, they also make a black gesso, so I may pick up a bottle of that, too. I also feel the thickness of the gesso coat may provide similar protection against the brittleness of 3-D printed figures that my normal Krylon spray paint and 50/50 acrylic and water does.

    The stormtroopers and walkers with their coat of Gesso from Liquitex -- I like using this as primer!

    The second squad of five stormtroopers: 'What's that? You two go over and investiage..."

Painting the stormtroopers reminded me a lot of when I did the Bronze Legion awhile back. It was a similar question. Paint the armor first and then do the careful detail to pick out the black joints in the armor? Or paint it black and laboriously do the bronze over it? Both ways were a pain for those figs. Similarly, doing the back was tedious on these stormtroopers. Interestingly, when I went to paint the black, I was struggling to see the detail even under my lighted magnifying glass! It was really hard to tell where to paint the black. So, I improvised and did a very light black wash over the figures first. This pooled in the recesses enough to be able to see what I needed to paint black. After the careful black step was done, I went back and added white highlights to areas where I felt there was too much black wash. Next, were the trooper's blaster rifles (Iron Metals Steel and a full strength black wash). I am happy with how they came out. I am also happy that, considering the scale of skirmishes I am doing, this should be the only batch of stormtroopers that I have to paint!

    The Wiley Games resin walkers come in two pieces, are easy to assemble, and look good, I think

The BLST3R walkers had been assembled (upper half and lower half) and based on round, wooden bases months and months ago. They also got the gesso priming. I decided I would go with white as their base color to match the stormtroopers and give them metallic colored accents. I chose three of my favorites, a deep red, dark blue, and "Christmas Tree" green. I experimented with one first, deciding which areas should remain white and which should get the metallic color. After finishing all three, I wasn't as happy as I thought I would be. I wondered if I should have gone with non-metallic colors? Oh well...too late now! I am definitely NOT going back and painting them, again. Like the stormtroopers, these figures also had a minimum of colors to paint. I picked out a couple areas on the weapon "arms" to paint black and give colored buttons or dials accents on. All in all, I'm happy with how they turned out, too. They are not Star Wars imperial walkers, true. It is a big empire, though. Who's to say the imperial forces did not have walkers similar to these BLST3R models deployed to some planet in the galaxy far, far away? I gave them a watered down black wash to pick out some of the depth and recesses on the miniature. They'll make tough enemies for the rebels on the tabletop!

    The rear of the walkers - you can see the watered down black wash I did on them, too

Once the miniatures were done, it was time to work full time on the Acheson building. I used my favorite Chocolate Brown metallic craft paint as the base color of this interestingly shaped building. I went back and forth over what color to make the "ribs." I ended up choosing the deep, burgundy red metallic because I knew those two colors went together well. The steel plates festooned over the building were painted in Battleship Gray metallic with Pewter highlights. I added bright bronze to a few other places and made the dome a pink metallic. I went with pink because it is in the same color palette as the deep red, I felt. I finished it off with my usual black wash and was very happy at this stage. 

    Large Sci-fi building from Acheson Creations -- I really like the interesting shape and very cool door

And then something unexpected happened! When I used my clear spray coat it caused a crackling effect on the top and some other sections of the building. I had never had this happen before, and am still not sure why it happened. One possibility is that I did not completely remove Acheson's very strong mold release agent sufficiently before I primed it. I normally run it through the dishwasher on a light wash. Did I forget to run this one through? Perhaps. More likely, my decision to not use soap (and the fact that it is a different dishwasher) meant the cycle may simply not have been enough. The crackling effect looks kind of cool, though. I am worried that the bubbling up is going to eventually cause the paint to chip and peel away. We'll see.

    Three quarters view of the building -- I love how the colors all worked out on this

I'm going to try to work on terrain alongside batches of miniatures going forward. Most of the figures will be Sci-Fi, for the time being. The terrain may be a mix, but with an emphasis on Sci-Fi. Right now on my painting desk is about a dozen robots or droids from various sources. These are meant to be "civilian" types -- not war bots like I've painted in the past. In essence, I want them for eye candy or objectives on the tabletop. Stay tuned, and hopefully I'll have another update soon! 

    A close up showing the crackling effect that appeared after I sprayed it will my clear coat

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 226
  
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 196 

'It's a Trap!' More Sci-Fi Figures - Mon Calamari from Star Wars

   'Fishman Troopers' that I purchased from JS Wargamer Printing at Cincycon & painted up recently

The more I paint JS Wargamer Printing 3-D miniatures, the more I am liking them. Here's another batch I recently painted up for my Sci-Fi games. They could be either a unit for Xenos Rampant, a couple squads for Wiley Games' Galactic Heroes, or an enemy force for Five Parsecs from Home. All Star Wars fans know Admiral Ackbar, the squid-faced, fleet commander famous for his line, "It's a trap!" Well, apparently his home world is a water one named Mon Cala. And his people are -- you guessed it -- Mon Calamari! 

    Go ahead, say it...you know you want to mimic Admiral Ackbar's voice and declare, "It's a trap!"

What's more, according to Wookiepedia (yes, that is the Star Wars fan site's name), there are various skin colors for the natives of the planet. So, this "fact" let me inject a little variety into this squad besides Ackbar's reddish tones. HMGS Great Lakes member John Leahy runs JS Wargamer Printing, and his prints were fairly clean and had none of the lines you sometimes see in 3-D printed models (especially terrain). I've been pleased with everything I've purchased from him so far, so I recommend his company highly. These figures came on "slotta" style bars, which I snipped off and cemented their feet directly to the base. I've always hated slotta bases. There are 10 "Fishman Troopers" in the pack, but I was careless in snipping off the slot and snapped one poor Mon Calamari's foot off. So, perhaps it was a trap!

    Two Fishman troopers, green and blue-skinned, armed with a light saber and blaster

As I do with 3-D printed figures, I primed them with Krylon Fusion acrylic black. Then I go over it with a 50/50 mix of acrylic black paint and water. I feel this gives it an extra shell to strengthen any fragile parts. I chose five different base skin colors, which I then dry brushed in lighter tones: blue, green, dark orange, red-brown, and salmon. I really liked how the dry brushing brought out the detail on the face -- especially the wattles or whatever the skin flaps under the mouth are called. As I looked over each one, I had to fight off the temptation to say, "It's a trap!" Still, I couldn't help myself sometimes. So, for the heck of it, I decided to keep track of how many times I said it during the painting process!

   Three more Mon Calamari, front and back, showing the subtle differences in color I used for variety

The outfits I decided were two basic garmants. The first was for the shirt/poncho that went down to the elbows and below the waist, and was slitted up on the sides. The "pants" I decided were actually a one-piece outfit that was worn underneath the shirt poncho. In addition, I screwed up and thought it also extended beneath the folded sleeves. I was wrong. Upon closer look, I saw that it was the trooper's skin beneath the folded sleeves -- not the underall and gloves. So, I had to go back and redo the skin on the forearms and hands of each Fishman trooper. I used pastel colors -- a light gray, light green, and dun yellows -- for the shirts. The pants were done in grays, tans, and dun yellows. I regularly referred to Google Image searches of Admiral Ackbar and Mon Calamari on the internet to get inspiration for colors. I didn't want them to be completely uniform, but I wanted them to have a relatively common look.

    I liked the varieties of poses, too, in this pack of 'Fishman Troopers' from JS Wargamer Printing

I did the same for the belts and shoes, switching it up and trying to make each as individually different from the others as possible. For example, for the three figures with the light gray shirt, I would give one gray pants, one khaki, and one yellow. I have been doing things like this on miniatures for decades to give an irregular but unified look to armies. The eyes I painted a dark brown first. I then did a yellow arc and tiny point to do my best to replicate the Mon Calamari's almost cat-like eyes. In the movies, Ackbar's eyes are very shiny and wet looking. So, when the final spray coat was done, I went back and brushed on clear gloss over the eyes.

    If you are a Star Wars fan, I recommend picking up this bag of Fishman Troopers!

The blasters were done in Gunmetal Gray with Pewter highlights. The nose cone of gun I painted metallic red, for the fun of it. The light sabers were done in metallic chocolate brown with gold highlights. Brown and black washes were done over the colors, depending on which would look better. Tans and yellows tend to get the brown, while the blues, greens, grays, etc., get black. Weapons get the full strength black wash. I flocked them up like I have been doing for my space forces, and was done. Overall, the Fishman troopers painted up very quickly and will make a nice addition to my Sci-Fi forces. Oh? How many times did I say, "It's a trap!" during the process. I counted eight -- which I felt was very reserved. I wanted to say it many more times...ha, ha!

    One final look at the Mon Calamari on my space station boards with Sci-Fi scatter terrain

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 104
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 120

First Star Wars Skirmish Using Galactic Heroes

    Keith dug out his old Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Miniatures for a game of Galactic Heroes

We have been using the Wiley Games rules for a number of different miniatures games. After watching Rogue One the other night, and reading some really cool threads on the Lead Adventure Forum, I was itching to give it a try. The only problem was I have zero Star Wars miniatures, and only a handful of Sci-Fi ones.

    My four Rebel troopers deployed on the edge of the ruined spaceport overlooking our goal

No problem, though. Keith has Star Wars figures. Keith has everything! So, all it took was a casual mention of how, "Gee, I really think we should give it a try..." and Keith volunteered to run a game of Galactic Heroes (Wiley Games' Sci-Fi skirmish using their Fistful of Lead engine) for us. Success! It HAD been awhile since he ran a game, so doubtless he was ready to give it a go. Plus, he said he has dozens and dozens of the prepainted plastic figures produced by Wizards of the Coast back in 2004. Keith was obviously the right man for the job, and he emailed out that he'd be running a game for us on our normal Sunday evening gaming session.

    We had six players -- two Rebels, two Imperials, and two "Mercenary Scum" spaced across the table

Mike S also has dozens of the figures, too, and brought his along, as well. However, there was no need for his reinforcements, as it turned out. Hmm...if BOTH of them have way more than they need, maybe I should see if either would be willing to part with a few? I could jazz 'em up a little and...well, I did say that I don't have any Star Wars figures, didn't I??

    Mercenary Scum player Joel sent his Gomorrans to investigate the ship, getting a jump on the others

There were six players on the evening of the game, and Keith divided us up into three factions: Rebel Alliance, Imperials, and Neutral Mercenary Scum (somebody said...not sure if it was Keith or another player disparaging the mix of droids, aliens, and leaders who had "Force" powers. Keith gave each of us a mission. I was a Rebel player, and me and Mike W were to get to the starship that had set down in the center of town and see what useful technology we could scavenge from it. The two Mercenary Scum players, Allen and Joel S, had a similar goal. The Imperials -- Mike S and Jenny -- were to patrol the ruined town looking for ne'er do wells, criminals and rebels. 

    We were having none of that, and drew a bead on the pig men, firing off blasters to no avail

Keith had us toss down a bunch of cardstock ruins to simulate a war-torn spaceport somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. Keith DOES own miniatures for every period ever imagined. However, his terrain is definitely in the "quick and simple" category. Still, this was a playtest, he reminded us. I'm sure he has more fancy terrain squirreled away somewhere in his basement that will see the light of a "G Class" star someday! I know I have a handful of buildings from Miniature Building Authority in their Middle Eastern line which would certainly fit the desert planet theme of many Star Wars films. Now...does that mean I will be painting them up soon...? Well, er...I mean -- Keith has everything! Well, we'll see...

    Thankfully, Joel's Assassin Droid & Trash Can Droid were blasting away at Stormtroopers instead

My Rebel Alliance troopers (Leader, Specialist, and two blaster pistol-armed troops) set up in the ruins on the corner of the board. Our goal would be to have our Specialist with his blaster rifle provide covering fire while the two troopers dashed forward in stages towards the spaceship. The leader would cover them and be in the middle to rally any troopers who needed it. My fellow rebel, Mike W, was W-A-Y on the other edge of the board and would never make it to the spaceship. He did get in a firefight with some Stormtroopers, though, like a good rebel! The other Stormtrooper player, Mike S, was directly across the table from me, but we were using a likely too large table, so he struggled to get a shot off at my guys. Plus, Allen, the evil Mercenary Scum kept him VERY distracted.

    Meanwhile, Allen's Mercenaries were giving the other Stormtroopers more than they could handle

Speaking of which, Allen's brother Joel was immediately to my left. Joel had a force of three Gomorran grunts (remember those pigmen from the Star Wars universe?), an assassin droid, a walking trash can (the walking square box of a droid) that we finally decided had a blaster mounted to his trash can lid top, and a leader who had the Force. He was a very creepy alien looking dude who came from a planet plagued by extremely bad luck. Joel's rolls were AWFUL!

    The Gomorrans reach the spaceship and begin to investigate it with their thick, piggy fingers

Anyway, as I crept forward towards the spaceship, Joel sent his grunts (perfect name for pig-faced aliens) towards the ship, beating me there. Luckily, the assassin droid and the trash can focused on shooting Jenny's Stormtroopers instead of us. I admit that I started hostilities between Joel and I when my laser rifle-armed specialist took a potshot at a pig man. Joel's leader then used the Force to attack my specialist, who shrugged off his attack. On my next turn, he ran to the window, drew a bead on the alien-mercenary-scum-leader and blasted him, knocking him to the ground, wounded. 

    The Force was NOT with Joel's leader, as my specialist & his blaster rifle took him out of action

This started a one-sided fight between the two. Joel's leader popped back up, used the Force to push my guy out into the open (and away from the window, so he had no shot). Not content with keeping me at a distance, the creepy spindly alien leaped out of the window and engaged my specialist in melee. Joel's leader was a combat specialist (roll two dice, take the higher in melee), and my specialist was a long-range guy. Joel proceeded to roll a "1" and "2" for his combat rolls. My stalwart rebel trooper knocked him down and gave him a second wound for good measure. On my turn, he shouldered the blaster rifle and finished him off. In none of those rolls, did Joel ever roll above a "3," I believe!

Rebel trooper cleverly uses the final action to sprint to the ship and 1st move next turn to reach it

He got his revenge, though. As I was being clever, I used the last move of the turn to sprint one of my ordinary troopers across the wide open ground towards the spaceship. I used my first move on the following turn to dart him into the cover of the spaceship, right underneath the landing ramp. One of Joel's Gomorrans fiddled with some controls and released the ramp. Keith let him roll an attack with the surprise descent of the ramp and it wounded and knocked down my out-of-breath rebel trooper! As you can imagine, much hilarity erupted around the table at my expense!

    Allen's tiny alien laughs as the Gomorrans release the landing ramp on my out-of-breath trooper

Allen, who had been focusing on Mike S's Stormtroopers, decided to sneak up a diminutive alien up and try to kick my trooper while he was down. The Force was obviously with me that night (and not with those supposedly having Force powers!). My trooper defeated the tiny alien -- sorry, I forget which race he represented -- and leaped to his feet. On his turn, he snagged a communications jammer from the spacecraft and bolted away as fast as his rebel feet could carry him.

  Droid trooper uses the newly-discovered 'Ready' action to wait for someone to run into the open

Allen made up for this turn of bad luck by taking his frustrations out on a different Mike (Stelzer, playing the Stormtroopers). His Force-wielding leader dashed out into melee with a squad of Stormtroopers. Just like in the movies, he light-sabered hapless trooper after trooper, leaving a trail of crispy white plastic armor in his wake. Between the shooting kills Allen had inflicted earlier on Mike, and this melee mayhem, the squad of imperials was left with one figure. He promptly fled the scene, doubtless calling in backup!

    Allen's leader wades through Stormtroopers with his light saber like they were...well, Stormtroopers!

Seeing as how my rebels had taken out 3-4 enemy, including a leader, and had snagged some tech from the spaceship, we decided to leave the scene of our crimes against the Empire, as well. It had been a successful outing, with no losses. We rationalized the communications jammer was exactly what we had been looking for. How else would we ensure the Imperials we ambushed couldn't call for backup?

Cue the Star Wars music, and hopefully there will be a sequel soon...!

Star Wars skirmish

    The Rebel Alliance enemy, Keith and Steve, and our Imperial co-commander, Joel

We use the Ganesha Games rules, "Song of Blades and Heroes," for a number of periods. Their modern one, Flying Lead, was adapted by Mike S to use in Star Wars skirmishes. We'd play-tested it once before, and Mike was itching to do another game of it. He cooked up a scenario that featured an imperial raid on a rebel base. Intelligence reported that the leadership of the Rebel Alliance was meeting on the planet, and we were sent in to capture them.

Mike set up a nice board with lots of scratch-built, futuristic terrain. Our favorite was the radar dish made from a plastic champagne glass. We also noticed immediately, as he passed out the command, that we would each have a freaking HUGE force. I think Mike looked at the recommended point level per side and interpreted it as per player. With six players total, that meant our battle was three times the recommended size - ha, ha!

This led some of us to attempt only one action per figure, so as not to "crap out" (two failures or more on an attempt). If a player rolls two or mroe failures on the same roll, their turn is over and the remaining figures in their command do not move. This would be my lot for much of the game. It seemed whenever I tried more than one activation, I crapped out. But rather than have you read about my typical, awful dice rolling, I thought I'd plug in a couple of After-Action Reports that others who were present emailed to each other.

    Imperial Scout trooper finds a nasty surprise around the corner -- a whole pack of rebels!

 First up, is the report sent out by my fellow Imperial commander, Joel Sams:

Star Wars Skirmish - GM: Mike S
Team Rebel:  Allen, Steve, Keith
Team S'Troopers: Mike D,  Tom, Joel

"...Juliett Platoon, right flank! Storm Troopers assault!" Fanned out moving smoothly toward the village. We encounter worker droids amongst a tank farms.

Pvt. 'Joker':  "Hey Sargent are these the droids we're looking for?" Then that ambush hits Papa Platoon hard.  The rebels are all over them like ugly on a wampa.  Our preplanned memory bank kicks in...
Sgt. HardKor:  "AMBUSH! SPREAD OUT -- MOVE, NOW! Third squad take rear guard  position by that radar dish. Pvt. Joker, take point!  Get across that pipeline...move, NOW!"

Our squad moves as a unit across the pipeline and our body armor is pressed hard against an adobe shanty.  We see Gunner Thompson of Papa Platoon is dropping grenades everywhere BUT on the  rebels.  The firefight is intense Papa Platoon holds up in storage tanks uses the cover and their body armour helps holds off the rebels.

Sgt. HardKor arrives at the adobe. "Is this structure secured?"

We repeat the question aloud to ourselves,  Is this ..structure...secure??" Suddenly we are under small arms fire from INSIDE the building. Then the adobe from across the dusty street also erupt with small arms fire.  Sgt. HardKor directs traffic. "Moon and Rok around back- look for a back door!"

Five minutes of firefight, then Pvt. Joker looks up and pauses, "I love it when they RUN!" Three streets away a herd of rebels (20 or more?) are running like gazelle, with move and shoot tactics.  Their unit moves fluidly and quickly overwhelm Motel Platoon on the left flank.  It is a sight to see and we are in awe of their ability.  Papa Platoon falls back just before Motel Platoon bends, and it is Papa Platoon that stops those Runnin' Rebels. 

 

    Things aren't much better on this end of the battlefield as my leader (in red hair) is about to be overwhelmed, but go down fighting...!

 Next up, is a post from the other Rebel commander, Tom:

It was indeed a trap! The 4th Antares Legion had deployed a battalion of Storm Troops flawlessly from their transports at extremely close range to the rebel hive of scum and villainy, known as the Sar-Lor Industrial Complex (SLIC). We advanced on a search and destroy mission intended to decapitate the rebel leadership in this sector of empire.

It appears that the rebels were aware of our plans and had laid an ambush for us. As we approached SLIC a large number of rebels appeared immediately to our rear and opened fire on us. If we had been deployed on different sides of the village as had been the original plan proposed, any one of our Companies might easily have been annihilated, but as the operational commander I had 'altered' our line of embarkation to minimize friendly fire casualties and the rebels were facing three times the troops that they likely expected.

Police Commander Smythe was the first to go down as he was the furthest in the rear of our forces and many of us were caught in the open. However, the rebel scum, were as usual, unprepared for a firefight and when the initial surprise was over the  massive firepower returned by our battle line proved devastating.

Our left and right flanks put forward advance guards toward SLIC to probe for further enemy forces and they very quickly found them lurking in many of the buildings of the town. In addition they reported additional rebel reinforcements were being brought up through the worker's slum.

The right flank held well, engaging rebel forces in the slum, but the left flank seemed to be unmotivated and once engaged with the rebel scum quickly decided withdraw was the better option. A huge rebel thrust on the left almost broke through our  lines to the waiting evacuation ships, but the left flank managed at the critical moment to stiffen and hold off the rebels.

A number of experienced rebel pilots were killed or injured, but the high level commanders slipped the noose.

General Moose
Commander Antares Legion

 

    Look out behind you! One turn after we march onto the board, a massive force of rebels sprints on behind us and opens fire...thankfully, Allen wasn't hot with his dice or we'd had an even rougher time of it...!