Kavil Scum Y-Wing - X-Wing Miniatures Re-Paint

This was a quickie painted at the end of my stream tonight. I'm a big fan of Kavil as a scum Y-wing pilot. They've raised the points for the veteran turret gunner crew, but on Kavil, I think it might still be worth the points.  I fly Kavil enough that he deserved his own painted ship. The card art for him is pretty atrocious. I've seen a few Kavil re-paints in dark green schemes that I liked, so I went with a variant of that for mine.

X-Wing Quad Jumper Re-Paint

This was a quick project tonight that I painted mostly while watching Luke's stream from the Gold Squadron Paintcast.

This is a simple re-paint of the Quad Jumper. There's a blue stripe on the side of the hull, so re-painting the accent panels to match is a pretty easy choice. This will be my Unkar Plutt ship for my scum squadrons where I fly Unkar and a generic Quad Jumper.

Below are some additional photos showing the re-paint next to an original version. Total painting time was about 90 minutes, although I wasn't really rushing as I was enjoying watching Luke's stream almost as much as I was painting.

X-Wing Miniatures Fireball Re-Paint

Final photos of the X-Wing Miniatures Fireball expansion ship that I've custom painted as a prize for the Gold Squadron Podcast. I've been blessed to have won not one, but two of the painted ship giveaways on GSP streams this year. I thought it was appropriate to give back a little.

The Fireball is one of the ships in the most recent release wave. It's name is appropriate. This clone wars ship can choose to do a slam maneuver at the cost of revealing one of its damage cards as a critical hit. The stock paint job is quite nice, but I chose to go a different direction opting for a 'keep it cool' blue fading to white theme. Engine glow is green with a nice red cockpit interior color showing through the glass. Hopefully the lucky winner who receives it will enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying the ships I've received as prizes from GSP.

This ship was painted on my Twitch.tv stream over a couple of Thursday night streams. I cast prior to GSP painter Luke Carrington's paintcast stream on Thursday nights. Stop by the GSP Twitch channel on Thursday nights to watch Luke do some amazing X-wing re-paints.

Returned to it's original packaging, and on it's way to Dion Morales to add to the GSP prize pool. I wish everyone luck in winning it!

Thanks again to Dion, Luke and the whole GSP crew for making some great Twitch and YouTube content.

Gold Squadron Podcast Prize and X-Wing Galactic Republic Ships

I've been playing Fantasy of Flight Games X-Wing 2.0 game for a while now with several members of my club.  When 2.0 came out additional factions were added. Based on my collection at the time I decided to fly the Galactic Empire, Rebel Alliance and Scum & Villainy factions, giving the other up as 'too much of a good thing'.

In truth, the Scum & Villainy faction saw most of my play time. Something about the eclectic collection of ships is a puzzle I really enjoy trying to solve. Tractor beams are a particular favorite.

As  a fan of the game I'm also a huge fan of the Gold Squadron Podcast. Their name is a bit of a misnomer as they also make copious amounts of YouTube content and broadcast major X-wing tournaments around the world (literally) on their Twitch.tv channel. During their broadcasts they do many giveaways including alternate art pilot cards, acrylic tokens, 3-D printed X-wing play aids, and other goodies. The most fantastic prizes are custom painted ships, usually painted by their on-stream painter Luke Carrington of the Gold Squadron Paintcast. As a X-wing ship re-painter myself I can tell you Luke's stuff is amazing...truly top notch.

A few months ago I was very fortunate and won the grand price a their broadcast of the Nova System Open. The prize was two custom painted Delta-7 Aethersprites and a Naboo starfighter. At the time one of the top tournament lists was this exact ship composition with Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the Delta-7s and Rick Ole in the Naboo. The prize was a painted ready-to play Galactic Republic force for X-wing. While waiting for these beautiful ships to arrive I also picked up an extra Naboo and the Guardians of the Republic box set with two V-19 torrents and a third Jedi starfighter. I'm now a four-faction X-wing player. Well I WILL be once I actually fly the new ships in a game.

Thanks to Luke for doing a great job on the paint jobs and to the whole Gold Squadron Podcast team for providing such great tournament coverage with such excellent prize support. A close up of Luke's paint jobs can be seen in the photo below.

These have found a new home on the X-Wing shelf in my figure cabinets.

Two X-Wing Miniatures Modified Ships

Luke from the Gold Squadron Paintcast and I are working out the details of doing a joint stream some time next year. In preparation for this I thought it would be good for me to finish up a couple of my X-Wing Miniatures game modified ships on my Twitch stream. I did this mostly to work out the details of setting up the camera when painting these models as it is different than when I paint 28mm miniatures.

The first of the models is a modified M3-A Interceptor. I am thinking of using this as the ship for Sunny Bounder if and when I field him in a squadron. The inspiration for this is of course the Fang Fighter. I always thought the M3-A looked like it was flying backwards. Now it looks proper. The wings were cut off and reversed, with the underside made the top because it looked more interesting that way. I added a small tail fin as well and some details from plastic rod. Base light grey and blue were laid down with an airbrush, with the balance painted by hand. I'm pretty excited as to how this one came out.

The final picture below shows my modified M3-A next to a stock one.

The Jumpmaster is supposed to be a cargo ship. The cut-out in the hull always bothered me. My thought with this modification, is an enterprising smuggler rigged up a permanent hold for higher value or dangerous cargo. It has been fitted with an additional cannon. In the rear are doors to load and unload. I painted this to match the stock color scheme as much as possible. There may be a bit more weathering needed, but for now it's as done as it's going to get. The added portion was scratch built from plastic card and leftover bits from my bits box.

More 'Deadeye Jedi' X-wing Games

Friday we played some more X-wing 2.0. First game pitted Rob and Bob against Ralph, with Charlie and I facing off. I played Darth Vader and a cluster of Tie Fighters against Charlie's four X-wing list that includes a couple of Red squadron aces. Charlie jousted my four Ties with two X-wings, which I foolishly accepted thinking I had the upper hand. The engagement lost me a tie instantly and another a turn later. The rest of the game was clean-up for Charlie. I never touched him! Well played, he even kept away from Vader mostly making him irrelevant.

Game two Charlie and Ralph teamed up with Charlie's four X-wing list, each taking a blue squadron pilot and one of the better pilots. I brought an Imperial Aces list with Vader, Soontir Fel and Whisper.

I was pretty sure this list required far more skill than I posses, but I managed to not mess too many things up. Ralph and Charlie out-played me early with a quick turn on Vader and Soontir which forced me into hard decisions barrel rolling out of some arcs, but insuring I'd be going spelunking over some asteroids the following turn. I got lucky with my evades and mostly got out unscathed.

Following my rock adventure, I was able to use the Aces' maneuverability to my advantage. K-turning over the rocks ahead I was able to eliminate one of Charlie's X-wings. I think Ralph and Charlie mostly expected me to turn out. The trip over the rock cost me a health on Soontir and Vader, but was worth it for the surprise factor. Following this, Ralph's Wedge made an aggressive move K-turning over a debris cloud (maybe it was a sloop? not sure), double stressing him. With Whisper on his six, that made him a primary target for Whisper who took him out in a couple turns before he cleared all the stress.

On the other table in the second game, Bob's four fang fighter squadron Took on Rob's YT-2400 Outrider and two X-wing list. Bob jousted the YT-2400 and chewed through it in a single turn pumping out 11 damage in total. Fangs do love to joust! Rob's remaining X-wings made it close in the end taking out a fang for revenge.

Fun night again with X-wing 2.0. Next game might be a larger group on my 'big table' that can handle up to four separate games simultaneously.

Not miniature related, but on Saturday I did a little woodworking for a charity auction that's at a conference my wife will be attending in a couple weeks. This bottle opener and wine stopper set are turned from an interesting wood - the root of a fruit apple tree. I recovered this root and some of the branch wood from a storm damaged apple tree that blew down on a friend's property.

Deadeye Jedi X-wing night

Last Friday we got together for another 'Deadeye Jedi' X-wing night. A bunch of us bring lists and play some games. Five of us showed up so we played two games, one with 2 vs 1 with the two sharing a list. I played my 'Tractor Factory' list against Bob and Rob who flew Rob's four T-70 X-wing list.

I didn't give Bob and Rob much of a fight. They played well coming in from both flanks, and I mostly crashed all my ships into rocks and themselves until I was dead. At time I had two ships left, and had caused zero damage to the enemy. I think I have a lot of practice needed to play large base ships. Still Rob and Bob both played well and even had I been competent, they probably would have won easily. In X-wing, flanks are good.

For the second game of the night, Bob let me share half of his clone squadron. We flew against Steve who flew an effective Scum list with two aces: Guri and Talonbane Cobra filled with a second Star Viper and a Z-95. Steve flew great and the Star Vipers were the star of the show in my mind. I never got a shot on Guri while she danced behind my list with ease.

I flew more ships onto rocks, being far too heavy for Bob to carry me. At least I got one kill, finishing off the final hull on Talonbane Cobra after Bob did most of the damage on him. My love for the 'ugly' Arc-170 was softened a bit after playing with them. At 1 agility they're quite fragile despite all the hull and shields they carry.

I am very much enjoying that although there is a high amount of luck in X-wing games, like poker, the outcome of most games still goes in favor of the player who played best. In both games this night, no amount of 'hot dice' would have saved me from defeat. Poor play yields poor results. The answer - more solo practice at home!

Gull Wing Z-95 Nashta Pup Conversion

Since acquiring a Hounds Tooth for my X-wing scum forces I've wanted to paint up a matching Z-95 for the Nastha Pup escape craft. There are some good tutorials on how to do it but I wanted to do something a bit different. It was my thinking that if a ship were to be carried in a hanger it would need folding wings. I wanted my pup to be gull-winged.

To accomplish this I used a jeweler's saw to under cut each wing at the root and bent them down, closing the newly-created saw kerf with some plastic cement. Then I added some winglets made from plastic card to complete the effect. I've re-painted it in my interpretation of the pup's color scheme. I left off the top beak 'teeth'. Even though the card art shows them, I didn't like the look of them on such a small model. This mod and re-paint took a couple of hours, but I feel it was well worth the time.

Here are some comparison shots with a stock Z-95 matching the one I modified to make the pup.

More X-Wing 2.0

This post is out of order and a couple weeks late. A couple of weeks ago Rob, Ralph and I got together for some more X-wing 2.0. I brought two variants of a Scum list with Fen Rau and a Quad tractor array tug. The version I played against Rob added a a Mist Hunter and the escape craft with Lando in it to coordinate the whole bunch. This is a true 4-ship scum salad list. Rob was flying an Imperial tie salad. I only got a couple of tractors off with the tug, but the Mist Hunter did the load carrying tossing around both damage and stress in equal qualities.

Against Ralph, I swapped out the shuttle and the Mist Hunter for Talonbane Cobra in a Khiraxz fighter and a second tug. Aces and spacetugs I called it. Ralph used excellent range management to neutralize the tugs taking them out easily with Wedge and his wing men. I got Wedge's shields down but that was about it. Talonbane got out guessed by Ralph's flanking ties and died soon after crossing a rock. At time all I had left was Fen Rau and Ralph's list was in tact with the exception of Wedge's shields.

 

Even accepting that I got vastly out played in the second game, I found the first list to be superior in utility and ease of play. I'm still too much of a rookie to play an all-aces list. One ace and some 'beef' as they're calling it these days I think is more my style.  Maybe just all 'beef' would be even better until my skills improve. Still, there's a Star Viper I just modded and re-painted so.....

30-minute Star Viper Mod and Re-paint

I don't really like the way the stock FFG Star Viper model looks straight out of the package. To me the ship looks a bit to passive. I saw someone modify theirs to sweep the wings back and I wanted to give that a go. The article had a complex procedure of disassembling the model, re-shaping parts, removing glue and re-assembling. I just forced the wings back and hit each with a drop of super glue. Done in 60 seconds.

The stock white star viper is good for the ace Guri, but I wanted to have a second one with a different look in order to distinguish the two. This one I went for a bronze look with a simple sepia ink wash all over, then re-painted the highlights appropriately with orange and yellow. I followed this up by highlighting the guns with some steel dry brushing and a final liberal application of wear and tear with two colors using the torn sponge method. Total time 30 minutes...and well worth it I think!