"The Monuments Men" and "The Mighty 8th"... uh, yes please.

Looks like we have some great film and TV coming our way pretty soon, military history buffs!

First up, "The Monuments Men" a movie from George Clooney that covers a group of soldiers from WWII tasked with recovering the art stolen by the Nazis during the war.  Great cast, and I really trust Clooney to do it up right.

EDIT:  Whoops!  Apparently this clip is NOT from the HBO series, but a clip from a proposal for a show.  Sorry!  Whatever, the info I included is correct, and the clip is still cool, so I'll leave it:)

And how about this... from HBO, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks a NEW WWII series, "The Mighty 8th" which will track a bomber squadron through the war.  It looks VERY stressful, as any show that covers bombers will... I always thought it the story of the bombers was more stressful than many realize.  The network is spending a HALF A BILLION DOLLARS on the series, so I have high hopes for the visuals in particular!

Can't wait... will tide me over until Napoleon finally hits HBO ;)

An idea for my next X-Wing squad

Howdy all!

Well, I've been thinking about my next X-Wing squad, and since the last one was an XXYY squad, I thought I would try an AABB squad!

So... here is what I am planning.

Green Squadron A-Wing with Push the Limit and a Stealth Modification
Green Squadron A-Wing with Push the Limit and a Stealth Modification
Blue Squadron B-Wing with Advanced Sensors
Blue Squadron B-Wing with Advanced Sensors

The way I figure... the A-Wings will be able to be VERY slippery and VERY hard to kill, with the Stealth and two actions... and with such a forgiving dial, they'll be shedding stress like crazy.  I figure they will be mobile enough to get in close but still out of fire arcs pretty easily.

The B-Wings will be like tanks, and the Advanced Sensors will make sure they don't lose any actions when they are in close and personal.

Anyway... I think it should be a fun squad to fly, even if it isn't a "power" squad!

A few more 10mm forests sort-of-done...

A few more woods done and on the table for a look-see... overall I think they will look very solid.  I will make a few larger ones, and I still have to paint the tree trunks, but so far, so good.  I might need to buy a few evergreen trees to sprinkle them in the mix there too, though...

Proof-of-concept for a new forest project

Howdy all!

Well, at Fall In I bought a bunch of the supplies I would need for redoing my 10mm Napoleonic woods.

Today I roughly slapped together the basic idea for what I want to do (VERY roughly... not using the real glue, not varnished, tree trunks not at all painted) just to see how it looks... I think it will look pretty sharp!

I'll post more photos when I get the main bulk of forests done, but for now... thoughts?

An X-Wing report!

Hey all!

Well, my regular X-Wing gaming buddy stopped by tonight, and we knocked off a game!

I took rebels again... I wanted to try something new, so I took two Gold Squadron Y-Wings, both with an R2 unit and an Ion Turret, 1 Rookie X-Wing pilot with a stealth upgrade, and Luke in an X-Wing.

 My opponent took 2 Academy TIE fighters, 1 Scimitar TIE Bomber, and then Kir Kanos with a Stealth device and Soontir Fel with a Stealth device and Push The Limit.

So, the first turn or two saw both sides moving forward cautiously... I grabbed a bunch of target locks, anticipating getting to shoot soon...

But I forgot... if I am close enough to target lock, they are close enough to shoot.  Range 3 though, right?  No problem?  Yeah, not so much; some INSANELY accurate fire stripped both X-Wings of all of their shields, and then knocked two hull off the rookie!  Holy crap... with 10 attack dice on two X-Wings at range 3 I took six hits.  Not a good start, and I was almost ready to call if off!

But then came turn 3.  My opponent expected me to really slow it down and go head to head; instead, I put the hammer down and went forward as fast as I could!  And it really worked out!  I got my two Y-wings past the the TIE fighters in front of them, K-turned the badly damaged Rookie RIGHT behind Soontir, and moved Luke forward and out of danger (I mistook him as the guy who had taken two damage that turn, dumb me!)

My rookie ended up HAMMERING Soontir at range 1, but unfortunately that damn slippery Imperial evaded everything... well, everything but the ion turret shot from the Y-Wing on the far right of the above photo!  And because Soontir was stressed, he wouldn't be taking any actions anytime soon!  Oh, and there went his Stealth device, too!

Soontir drifted forward, and I AGAIN hammered at him with the rookie, this time causing two hits.

And then the Y-Wing blew him out of the sky with his Ion turret!  Talk about an effective use of points... that Y-Wing paid for itself, and then some!

Meanwhile Kir Kanos had made a wide K turn, looking to stay at long range, but he couldn't for long, and unfortunately found himself right under the guns of the rookie.  While he was able to boost out of the way, the Y-Wings did pound on him, and ANOTHER Imperial ace found himself drifting forward!  The badly damaged rookie quickly make a hard right hand turn to get himself onto Kanos' flank...

But a sharp move by one of the Academy TIEs put the rebel fighter RIGHT in the Imperial's sights!  The rookie was doomed... if Luke Skywalker, screaming in in his X-Wing, couldn't blow the damaged TIE fighter away first!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the asteroid field the two Y-Wings continued being awfully slippery, jetting out of the fire arcs of the other Academy TIE and the Bomber, and THEN ioning both enemy ships!   But what about the rookie?!

"I've got your back!" cried Luke, and he blasted the Academy TIE off of the tail of the rookie pilot, freeing the rookie up to focus on the task at hand...

... blasting the ioned Kir Kanos out of the sky!

At this point, with all of the rebel ships still flying and the lone remaining Imperial ships both drifting in an ion haze, my buddy conceded the game.

Overall it was a tough one for him, but really an interesting one... I think I flew VERY well, really maximizing the ion cannons on the Y-Wings along with the firepower of the X-Wings.  Both with Soontir and Kir I ioned them and then got X-Wings right on their tails at range one to destroy them, keeping the X-Wing right on his six in the case of Soontir for several turns.  Overall I think it was an interesting game!

AMC doing a Rev. War show!

Not sure who knew about this, but AMC, who has done such shows as Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead is premiering a new show about American spies during the American Revolution!  It's been a while since we got a show set during the AWI (specifically "John Adams" which only featured the Revolution itself for about the first three episodes) but I am super-excited for "Turn!"

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/01/11/turn-american-revolution/

It will hopefully tide me over until Spielberg gets that Napoleon show out there...

Royal Guard TIE Interceptor for X-Wing!

Hi all!

Well... after looking at the upcoming Imperial Aces expansion for "X-Wing" and realizing I probably didn't need to spend thirty or forty bucks on two ships that I already have three of, I thought I would go ahead and make my own Royal Guard Interceptor.

So... here it is!

I did have to add the secondary panels to the wings... they look a little rougher in these photos than they do in real life:)

I'm happy with the way the painting came out... just did a black undercoat and then painted right over!

The paint job is actually pretty sharp; for some reason the photos don't really do it all justice:)

I also printed up a few of the new pilots and pasted them to leftover cards to give them the proper heft and backing... I'll do this for all of the Imperial Aces pilots, as well as the upgrades.

Thanks for coming by and taking a peek!

"Men of the North" scene complete!

Hi all!

Well... my gift for my father in law is complete!

So, my father in law is a big lover of all things frontier... mountain men and Lewis and Clark and all the rest.  I've done one other scene for him, a Revolutionary War scene (another of his favorite periods) but I knew that he really wanted something from the era of the frontier... so!  This was born!

The idea was that I'd have a camp on a ledge with a few mountain men looking out to the mountains at night.  I knew I wanted to do a lighting element, and in this case did two... one for the fire, and one for the blue LED at the top of the whole scene that would make it feel more night-like.

Here is a shot of the main character of the scene, on the precipice, looking around the mountains.  I built the little lean-to at the back, and the fireplace and rocks, and all of that.  The guy in the background is actually a figure from Wargames Illustrated that I cut in half, and then I make a greenstuff blanket around him.  The guy at the foreground I did need to do a little converting with... namely, carving away his pistol and making it a rifle.

Here is the whole thing with the lights on.  It is remarkably difficult to get good shots of the light... there is, as mentioned, a blue LED in the top that sheds a blue light over the entire scene.  There is also an LED buried in the foamcore of the cliff.  The flickering looks incredible, actually... I build the back of the fireplace open so that you get a lot of firelight playing on the trees and the camp.

Here it is all closed up.  Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out!  Below I included a video of the lighting... it REALLY doesn't do it justice, but what can you do:)

Thanks for coming by and looking!

The Rockies at Night, WIP

So!  Just thought I would post, as I've gotten back to this Christmas gift project... right now it is unassembled (just propped up) and the wiring isn't done, but this is, ideally, what it should look like when it is done.  Still a lot left to do... plus, I am thoroughly baffled about the last few steps of assembly... there needs to be a piece at the top to hold the blue light, but at the same time the entire thing needs to be removed at will to change the battery... it will take some thinking to get it right.

Whoops!  I just figured out a MAJOR PORTION of this whole thing... I had been SO confused by the rigging of the lighting, and couldn't figure out WHY... I had done a million like this... and it JUST OCCURRED to me, after MONTHS of staring at this thing, that I had simply ordered the wrong switch/battery combo.  I am a certifiable idiot.

15mm Technicals finished

Hi all!

Well, I did buy a few figures at Fall In, and thought I'd get them painted up!

These are a trio of 15mm technicals from Old Glory miniatures.  The crew is also from Old Glory, although I had to do some head swaps and green stuff work, as they only had the African heads, and not the Middle Eastern heads in stock.  I did put a passenger in the red one (you can see his AK sticking out the side) and added a guy with an AK and a guy with an RPG to the beds of two of the trucks... I just think these look better with a lot of dudes on them!

I tried to make them look really ragged and dirty, and overall I think they turned out okay.  I went with a white truck, a blue truck, and a red truck... those Toyotas you see are always those colors.  Unfortunately in the photos you really can't see all of the work that went into them... the colors are REALLY varied, and the trucks have dents and the like.

Unfortunately there is an issue... what I *THOUGHT* was some sort of line in the truck itself (along the side) is clearly, upon painting, a mold line.  A really, really REALLY bad mold line.

Like... bad.

So... I think I am going to have to do some scrapping and repainting, because honestly those lines are all I can damn see now.

So, got some work ahead of me, matching paints and colors.

BTW, below is a shot so you can see them in scale with a few of my American pieces of armor!