A Quick Update: SWM SSB Collection Complete & Wayland Games vs Battlefront

It's been a very busy week since I got back from my holiday and I've managed to get almost zero hobby activity done in the mean time, however I still have a couple of bits I'd like to share with you.

Firstly I have a new addition to my Star Wars Miniature Starship Battles collection; which is this droid control ship shown above.  They are a key part of the separatist fleets and feature in the prequel film trilogy.  In the game they are a useful capital ship that make all your droid fighters better.  I wouldn't normally bother showing something like this off in a post, but as I mentioned when I talked about this game a couple of months ago, this was the only ship that I was missing from the game, which now means of course that my collection is complete!  Which is a surprisingly good feeling.  All the playing of X-wing recently has made me want to have another go at playing a few games of starship battles as well, and you never know one day I might make my intended victory at sea mod for these cool Star Wars ships.

Next up are some new minis that I've bought for flames of war, a British TOG 2 experimental heavy tank, a German armoured car and a couple of command stands.  I initially ordered these from Wayland Games some time before I went away and when I got back from holiday and still hadn't received them I emailed Wayland to see what was going on.  They stated that I'd misunderstood their 3-9 days dispatch on the products was a guideline only and sometimes it takes longer, fair enough to a degree but rather annoying.  I then checked the products and the TOG 2 was now showing as unavailable, which would imply they weren't even sure if they were going to get any more!  What annoyed me is that at this point they hadn't bothered to contact me to explain the delay or problem.  I wonder how long they would have sat on my money not fulfilling my order if I hadn't contacted them.  Anyway I did get my money back and placed the same order from battlefront (at admittedly higher standard RRP prices) and it arrived 2 days later.  I will definitely be wary of ordering from Wayland again after this.

And finally it's been nearly free Lego week this week if you buy the daily mail (all quickly sent to be recycled) in WH Smiths.  Whilst it's not really relevant to this blog as such I really like the style of Lego and especially when they turn already cool stuff (like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings) into Lego my inner geek can't get enough of it.  The highlights from this little collection are definitely the two Star Wars ships and the Spiderman Minifig, although I can't say I'm too impressed with Spideys glider thingy.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles

This is absolutely my last post on my Star Wars miniatures collection (I promise), whilst I have already posted about all the figs used in the main game Wizards of the Coast also released a one off set of starship minis, which although part of their star wars minis line were clearly not compatible with the main range and in fact formed their own game; Starship Battles.

Of the 60 ships available in the range I actually have at least one of 59 of them (I'm only missing the droid control ship) SWM was my entire gaming life at this point and I was just buying stuff to try and complete collections, which has lead me to getting more than I could possibly need.  The game its self wasn't great and we only played it for a couple of months before mainly forgetting about it.  it wasn't a compete loss though, I do have a large collection of very cool star wars ships, and whilst X-wing is a great game for small scale dog-fighting, I always like battleship clashes, hopefully at some point I will get around to making a victory at sea mod which I can use these ships in.

The game only has two factions light side and dark side, which I've always found very odd.  The light side contains republic forces from the prequel trilogy and rebel/new republic forces from the original trilogy and just after.  The dark side forces feature the seperatists and the galactic empire.  We soon gave up this system and played either rebels/new republic vs empire or republic vs seperatists.

The ships are split into four classes, fighters, frigates/crusiers/transports etc, battleships and huges.  None of the ships are too scale and are essentially representations of a ship, or flight of ships (in the case of fighters).  Whilst it can be annoying it does allow you to field both X-wings and star destroyers on the same table.

The rebellion and a huge Mon Calamari ship that was built in the early years of the new republic.  I actually have a bunch of A-wings as well, but they seemed to have missed their photo-op!  The rebels were very much king of the middle ships with the Millennium Falcon, Tantive IV and the Nebulon-B frigates.

 

 The Imperial fleet has a lot less variety, but star destroyers are very good!

 

 

These few ships didn't quite fit into any of the categories 100%, but wild card and the two versions of slave 1 were useful ships nonetheless.

The republic fleet has quite a bit of variety and is a bit of a miss-mash of styles and abilities.  The Arc-fighter above highlights one problem with this range, occasionally the soft nature of the plastic produced figs  resulted in really bad warping and ruined minis.

 

And finally we have the mostly droid fleets of the seperatists.  the droid fighters were poor, but the big capital ships packed a real punch and were tough.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures The Fringe

Finally we've reached the last faction in my epic look at my Star wars miniatures collection, this time the Fringe, which is also the largest faction in my collection.  The Fringe is a bit different from the other factions, it's not a unified faction in any way, but a dumping ground for assorted scum, villainy, aliens, monsters, droids and mercenaries. 

The fringe can either be fielded as a faction on their own, or more commonly can be added to squads of any other faction.  Some of these, such as the ubiquitous Ugnaught Demolisionist, were so useful it was rare to see a squad without them at one point.  More than any other faction the fringe also contains a lot of 'sub-factions', which I've separated out in the pictures below.

In the past I've always started these posts with a large pic of the whole faction, well this wasn't possible this time, my indoor table just isn't big enough and it's a bit cold out to be taking pics in the garage.

As always click on the pictures for a bigger version.

Tusken Raiders

Jawas

Utapauns

Prince Xior and the Black Sun Syndicate

The forces of cloud city, Bespin, and the ugnaughts 

Ewoks

Monsters

Bounty Hunters

Droids

Unique characters, from Jabbas palace, knights of the old republic, the cantina and many other assorted places.

Everything else that didn't fit into any of the groups above! 

And finally two Rancors, with a Jedi for scale.

Star Wars: X-Wing - First Thoughts

I've been keeping my eye on X-Wing by fantasy flight games for some time now and today I finally got the chance to play it.  I love Star Wars (as anyone who has seen my series on my Star Wars Miniatures collection will know) and have long hankered for a good starship battle game.  I have a large collection of starship minis from the Star Wars Miniatures: Starship battles game (coming to a post near you soon), but the game was weak and never became a permanent fixture in our gaming schedule, I was hoping that X-Wing would prove to be a lot better.

My friend turned up with several boxes of ships in little plastic boxes.  I was surprised with the good quality of the pre-paints, but they do look a little fragile, certainly better than my own collection of ships though.  We played two games, an initial intro game in which I fielded two tie-fighters vs an X-wing (a win for me!) and then a larger 100pt game, with me again taking the Imperials (a loss this time, but quite close)

My Ties about to shoot down an X-wing

Our first game was very quick, on the first turn we zoomed across the table, then the second turn I advanced my Ties very slowly as my opponent hair-pinned his X-wing expecting me to overshoot him and leave him shooting at my aft.  Unfortunately it worked the other way round and my ties were now just behind him!  The game didn't last long after that.

We then moved onto a proper battle with 100pts each.  I kept it simple by taking 4 Ties and a Tie advanced piloted by Darth Vader, my opponent fielded an X-wing, piloted by Wedge Antillies, a Y-wing and a HWK-290 piloted by Kyle Katarn.

Initial Posistions

I split my force into two groups with an intent to outflank my outnumbered opponent.  All seemed to be going well at first, my main group of Vader and two ties outflanked the Y-wing and Katarn and the other two ties drew Wedge away from the main group.  It then turned out that Katarn and the Y-wing had turrets that could fire 360 degrees and therefore weren't that bothered by their bad positioning, they also had a lot of hull points to soak up damage with, although they weren't dishing out any real damage in return.  Wedge however made short work of the two ties before coming round and taking out everyone else.  Wedge Antillies is very good and killed all five of my ships!  With hindsight I should have done everything I could to take out wedge first before harrying the other two ships. 

Let battle commence

This is ultimately a game about movement, there is synergy and card play as well, but outmanoeuvre your opponent and you will win.  It's done in such a fantastic way as well.  This is the first game that I've seen that's managed to get simultaneous movement to work well.  At the start of the turn you secretly set your movement wheel on each ship showing at what angle and how far you will be going (different ships can do different manoeuvres), you then flip these wheels over in initiative order and move the ships along the set course.  It's simple but makes the game tactically deep, you have to really think about what move you want to make whilst taking into account what your opponent might or might not do.  Some times you get it spectacularly right and it's great, but inevitably you can make some real screw ups too.

What I liked:

- simple enough to pick in a couple of turns, but.....
- obvious tactical depth
- the movement mechanism is fantastic
- great ship models and star wars theming
- different pilots of the same ship models increases variety

What I didn't like:

- too many tokens clutter the board
- turrets on ships with 360 degree fire which took away the need to manoeuvre on some ships
- too easy to knock something when placement is so vital
- it doesn't come with a mat, my fake pine table didn't have the right ambiance

Overall I think it's a pretty solid little game and I can't wait to play some more.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Minor Factions

The latest instalment in my ongoing showcase of my star wars miniatures collection, and with the four major factions already dealt with (Imperial - Rebels - Republic - Seperatists) todays post contains what I term the five minor factions.  These have many less options than the bigger factions and I have correspondingly less figures for them, some of them are still rather cool though.  As always click on the pictures for a bigger version.

Mandalorians

 

An odd faction this, it spans a massive time frame in the star wars universe and has only a few named characters, what it does have though is a lot of powerful, and points-efficient troop types.  They never really clicked with me, but there's some good looking minis here. 

 

Old Republic

 

 The old republic features some cool characters from the computer games and comics, a raft of interesting non-unique Jedi pieces and a lot of sub-standard troopers.  Ultimately they were always a weak faction and only really playable for friendly 'period' battles against appropriate sith or mandalorian forces.

 

The Sith

 

 The Sith is another faction that doesn't sit in a specific time frame, ranging from the ancient Naga Shadow all the way up to the new galactic empire under Darth Krayt 150 years or so after the movies.  This faction is all about the named sith lords there are some very powerful pieces here, but boy do they cost a lot of points and need to be used carefully.

 

 

New Republic

 

After the fall of the empire a New republic is formed, it's quite an interesting little faction and my favourite of the ones in this post.  The troopers are uninteresting, but the faction is mainly named characters a lot of whom have interesting abilities and are great fun to play with.  You get older versions of luke/han/leia as well as characters from the books and games that take place after the return of the jedi, like kyle katarn and mara jade, all the way up to luke and mara's descendants from the legacy of the force comic books.

 

Yuzhan Vong

I hate the Yuzhan Vong, the enemy created for the New Republic to fight after they defeated the imperial remnant, I hadn't even heard of them before I started playing this game so I tried reading a few of the books featuring them, but I just still hated them.  To me these do just not feel like star wars, their rules tend to be gimmicky and frustrating to play against as well.  The game would have been better off without them.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Seperatists

the collection - click to enlarge

 

Welcome to the fourth instalment in my series showcasing my star wars miniatures collection (links to Imperials Rebels Republic).  This time showing the last of the four major factions, the CIS, more comanly known as the seperatists.  I've left these till last as they're undoubtedly my least favourite of the four, and due to that this collection is a but smaller than the other three.

The speratists force is all about the droids.  In star wars miniatures droids don't normally get the benefit of commander effects, but these ones do and the right combination can turn them from being useless into a very powerful and deadly force.  There's a big variety in the droids you can field as well, from the humble 4pt battle droid all the way upto vulture and tank droids.

It's not just droids thought, you also get a couple of sith lord options, a couple of mean bounty hunters and various forms of General Grevious (a cyborg, not a droid) with which to lead your force.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Republic

 The Collection - Click to Enlarge

 

A quick look at another part of my star wars miniatures collection today, this time the army of the republic from the time of the prequel trilogy, concentrating mainly on the clone wars.  This is an army of three parts; The Jedi, the Clones and native troops (wookies, gungans, etc). 

 

The Jedi are clearly the coolest part, with many named Jedi all with unique special rules, but also some non-uniques you can field many of, including the awesome Jedi weapon masters.  The basic clones unfortunately are not good to play with, way overcosted for their 10HP and def13, which is a real shame.  Not all clones are created equal however and the clone commandoes are very powerful and for a while were a very successful tournament squad for me.

One disappointment with the Republic army is the lack of interesting large pieces, the couple of small skimmers are just dull and a bit ineffective.  In the end though it's really all about playing with the Jedi, and that's always fun.

 The many faces of the Jedi

Beware the Wookies

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures The Rebellion

A few weeks ago I put a post up showing my star wars miniatures Imperial collection/army.  It generated quite a lot of interest so today I've dug out their opposition, the Rebel Alliance.

Whereas most successful Imperial squads are based around a few commanders and then a whole bunch of troops the rebels are very much a hero based faction with luke, han and co normally being the driving force.  they also lake the really heavy items of the Imperials, no walkers or tanks here.

 

There are several 'sub-factions' in the rebellion, including commandos, wookies and the forces from the battle of hoth.  The 'sub-factions' aren't official, but the various commander effects mean that they often work best that way and add a nice thematic element to your force.

 

And finally, although technically part of the fringe faction (can be used by any other faction or as a faction in their own right) we have these ewoks.  These are all surprisingly useful and the standard ewok and wicket whilst not being powerful are very points efficient and are great for filling out squads with extra activations.