Wednesday 23 October 2013

ALong time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures (by Fantasy Flight Games) Game repaints.

Well I wouldn't go as far as to say repaint, but rather a touch up of the stock miniatures paint jobs.  You buy the models, for those of you who haven't seen the game, prepainted.  The models are very small, but detail is still present, pretty much as good as the original models from the 1977 film props, just much smaller in scale.  The back of the main rulebook contains some details on this.

The game is pretty good, quite tactical in fact, I've not played it a lot, but just started again recently, the dog fighting style of game is quite cinematic and if you like Star Wars then you'll love this!

The models all come prepainted as I mentioned above, but the panel lining and quality varies quite a bit.  As the ships are very small this has been quite forgiving.  I did some research and lots of painters have stripped down the models and fully repainted from scratch - possibly the best method.  I however opted for a retouch approach and simply washed the Imperial ships with a black wash.  This had the dual effect of darkening the whole model, but picking out all of that detail I noted above.  As the original wash was somewhat sporadic the effect was of benefit.  I didn't wash the Rebel ships (other than the Y-Wing) to preserve their brighter colour, but mainly opted to re-ink-line the panels, most notably the Lambda Shuttle.

The original paint job was very basic with just one or two colours, so I added silver pretty much where all of the engine and weapon areas where, again a black wash was used to bring out the detail.  The other thing I did was to paint in the engine glows, which are just blank on the original paint jobs.  Some have a neon blue/white glows such as the Falcon and Lambda Shuttle, others red such as the X-Wings, Slave 1 etc.  I also added a couple of green or red laser lights and painstakingly painted the R2 units to add a little flavour!

Below are a few snaps of my retouches, of course if you haven't seen the originals they won't mean squat!!!

Two Firespray's Slave 1 in correct colours on left!

Three X-Wings, photo hasn't picked out the engine glows unfortunately :-(

Better view of the X-Wings, I think the silver weapons and engines just stand out enough!

Y-Wing and B-Wing, the Y-Wing had quite a lot of retouching whereas the B-Wing very little.

Rear shot of the Y & B Wings, think you can just see the red engine glow on the B-Wing!

TIE Bomber and TIE Advanced

TIE Bomber and TIE Advanced rear shot

TIE Fighter front and rear
I'll try and take some snaps of the Lambda Class Shuttle, Falcon and rear shots of the Firesprays to complete the images of the retouches.

Hope you liked the article :-)

Wednesday 16 October 2013

From Khador with Love



It’s been a while since my last post, but that is not to say that I haven’t been hobbying.  To be fair I’ve done quite a lot of painting recently and this article will simply be a showcase of the Khador stuff I’ve recently completed.


For some unknown reason I found a burning desire to get back into the Khador after quite some time without fielding the my red army.  I knew that I had a couple of small coming up, the recent Bridgeford Bloodshed 2 and the imminent Frontlines 3.  I intended to get the armies fully painted for both of these events, but fell short of the painting mark for the former, so took the Menoth to that.  I actually did quite well at BB2, coming fourth – which was exactly where I came at the last one!  I went 3-1 on the day, the second through to fifth places (possibly beyond) were sorted via SoS, so not a lot I could do to better myself, other than to have won all four!  Superb event and looking forward to the next one :-)

So, the Khador; I decided to build a new list and went for Irusk2, I had played him a bit acouple of years back but decided to try him out again with the following list:

Irusk2
*Spriggan (bonded)
10 Iron Fang Pikemen with Black Dragon UA
5 Man-O-War Shocktroopers
10 Nyss Hunters with Valachev
Winter Guard Mortar Crew
Great Bears of Gallowswood
Man-O-War Drakhun
Iron Fang Kovnik

The second list was a copy of my 35 point Irusk1 list with the addition of the Iron Fang Kovnik and Saxon Orrik.  It isn't exactly the best pairing with Irusk2 as they both answer and pose the same questions, but it does let me field the mighty Konquest, which is all good.  I’ll focus on the Irusk2 list as this was what the project was all about to be honest.  The list has changed a bit, initially there were two mortars with the idea of cycling the Fire for Effect spell, having two fully boosted mortar shots per turn, I had Widowmakers and Kell Bailoch too, but the Drakhun and Great Bears found their way in, the Drakhun for speed and the Bears because, well they're great!  It is fairly balanced with some decent melee output as well as ranged threat, I do however think the lists will get raped by the current meta power casters such as Haley2, Morvanah2, Vayl2 and Lich2, the less powerful ones will probably bone these lists too!

I will be fielding the two fully painted lists in a week or so at Frontlines 3, I’ve been drawn against Jamie P, who is arguably the best player in the UK and winning Templecon Masters with Khador, so my chances aren’t that great to be honest!!!  But what the hell, I’m looking forwards to pushing my models around the table and having a bit of a laugh – considering the field of players and the army lists that have been submitted mine look like the worst there, practically friendly, so anything other than last place will be a bonus ;-)

Below are the photos of the recently painted Khador stuff for the two lists (mainly the Irusk2 list):
Man-O-War Drakhun (with dismount)

Man-O-War Drakhun (with dismount)

Man-O-War Drakhun (with dismount)

Nyss Hunters

Nyss Hunters

Black Dragon Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard

Iron Fang Kovnik

Iron Fang Kovnik

Iron Fang Kovnik

Supreme Kommandant Irusk

Supreme Kommandant Irusk

Supreme Kommandant Irusk

Supreme Kommandant Irusk

Supreme Kommandant Irusk

Winter Guard Mortar Crew

Winter Guard Mortar Crew

Man-O-War Shocktroopers

Man-O-War Shocktroopers

Man-O-War Shocktroopers

Kaptain Valachev


Kaptain Valachev

Saxon Orrik

Saxon Orrik