Dwarf Spider Droid and Rebel Troopers

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Awwww, isn't it cute?

This is my latest purchase for my Separatist army. I thought it would bring me up for 500 points, but then I remembered that you cannot have 2 commander choices in a skirmish army. Oh well,worst case I can proxy a suad of Rebel troopers as Pyke mercenaries, or just stick with Rebels for now.

Stepping off of the edge...

...or is it stepping into the future?

I like how colorful the base is.

Speaking of Rebels, I finished the last four original troopers. Meaning my army would have been fully painted were it not for the influx of new recruits, gifted to me by RJ. 

These were the Rebel Trooper Upgrades expansion where all four could be built with either support weapons or blaster rifles.

I'm not complaining though. These will be folded into one of the squads that RJ gave me to form a super squad of 10. That will also even out the human-to-alien ratio in said trooper squad. 

Clankers Update

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Making progress.

I've been moving right along on cleaning up & expanding my CIS force. I finished up the first squad of B1s, the blue squad as marked out by the tufts on their bases. 

Rather than Tufts, the specialists have cystals on their bases, whereas the Super Tactical droid's base looks like it is in a space ship or perhaps the under hive.

Wouldn't the binoculars just be hard wired in?

I also painted up a super tactical droid as well as a the four specialist droids: the repair droid (little blue bot), the medical droid (the ugly green one in the back), a recon droid (the mini Imperial Probe droid in OD green), and lastly a T-series command droid (in silver and red). 

Wat Tambor, Foreman of the Techno Union

(and also a model without any rules...)

Also as you can see I painted the Wat Tambor above. I'll likely just use him as a proxy for another T-series command droid. While the T-Series isn't all that stout of a character, neither are political leaders when on the battlefield. 

No, I didn't take these pics on the roof of my wife's white car in the garage. Why do you ask?

I also finished up some...uh...terrain pieces:

 Now those are some serious chicken legs!

I couldn't resist these goofy looking things. I was thinking maybe make them terrain that if you come into base contact with, will make a 1-white die attack and then make an immediate half range run away in the opposite direction. Or something like that. I probably ought to get the rules down before creating terrain with rules, but what can I say? My cart always leads the horse.

The Roger Rogers are back

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Base rim colors denote the squad for now. 

Sure is a good thing that I bought more minis for a game that I've only ever played once, right? Right. Consider it a bit of seller's remorse, though that said my previous color scheme had some issues. Firstly, these frail little B1s don't do well when being drybrushed, secondly it took two layers of the pink flock to cover the base decently. Lastly, if I want to easily add some bulk B1 infantry to my army, bone colored B1s are a dime a dozen on eBay, rusty looking ones? Not so much. Droids are a horde army, I don't really have time or rather the will build a horde of these, so off to eBay's bargain auctions I went looking. 

The minis above were a couple of second hand lots bought for more or less 1/2 retail price. No cards which doesn't matter as that is all about to change, and with the advent of  just being able to print off a list with all upgrade on Tabletop Admiral, I don't see much use for those anyways. Eighty cards along the tableside & tokens galore following each unit around the table is a legacy of Fantasy Flight Games that should go away in my opinion.

A handful are unpainted such as this Super Tactical Droid who is the default Commander of this meager 360ish point force. I also have a box of CIS Specialists coming as well. 

These B1s look as though they were primed black, drybrushed in a bone color and then slathered or maybe just splattered with a sepia wash, depending on the individual mini (a few almost have a literal stripe of wash across the body). I am just drybrushing over again for a cleaner look (yes really), cleaning up the details and then will be calling it a day (20-30 minutes a model total including basing). With 36 B1s constituting just the core of the army, there's no realy need to get too detailed with them. Honestly I could probably leave 'em as is if I wanted to, but I have to tweak 'em at least a little bit.

Finished model is on the right, both of the blue squad.

Once I am good with the model, I'll rebase it with some purple sand (I have tons of the stuff) and then add tufts in the color of the unfinished models' rims. In the end the tuft colors will be used to tell the squads apart. I have them in blue, red, green & purple so that they will blend with the rim painted minis in the interim. The plan is to hopefully have all of these cleaned up by the time the new Legion 2.0 Starter forces arrive in stores. 

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.

B1 Battle Droids (and stuff)

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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.

The Roger Rogers

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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!

CIS Droid Specialists

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These are also not the droids you were looking for.

Thus far I've avoided the CIS due to hearing horror stories about assembling the spindly little B1 Battle Droids (the Roger Roger droids). Annnnd...while I still haven't built any of those, these guys were a real peach. The worker & recon drones were fine, even the medical droid went together alright for the most part (though I did break it while painting it), but then there is the T-Series Tactical droid. 

I spent about 2/3 of its assembly process crawling around under my desk searching for its oddly shaped parts that I kept dropping (three fucking times!) onto the grey rug under the desk (worst color, would not recommend for a hobby space). I can only imagine the potential future hell of the B1's...

Oddly, applying the decal to its computer screen was quite easy.

I bought these (actually all I wanted was the t-Series) as I was intrigued by the new Experimental Droid Battleforce for Star Wars Legion. Rather than being an army full of not-quite-as-good-as-stock prototypes, I saw them more as an option for an old, rusty, and worn out but still active droid army for some Separatist holdouts. That would at least make them a plausible opponent for either my Rebel and Empire armies.