Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Imperials

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of silly pics of my star wars minis AT-AT in the snow.  It generated a lot more interest than expected so in the latest installment of my occasional 'army focus' series we have my Imperial army for Star Wars Miniatures.

Army might not be the right word actually, as actually playing with all this is one battle would be practically impossible, collection might be a better word.  SWM was very much a skirmish game and got clunky at anything more than about 20 minis per side, we did play a few larger battles, but they never seemed to work properly.

Too many Stormtroopers? No such thing!

 

The Imperials are very much the grunt force of SWM's and you find yourself feilding a lot less named characters than you do in the other factions.  To play really well you also need to combine the right commander effects to make your somewhat useless grunts become less useless.

Which Vader shall we play with today?

The Imperials do have some (anti)heroes, it's just that most of them are different versions of Darth Vader.

SWM also makes full use of Star Wars expanded universe and timeline, which means the Imperial faction can conatain poeple several hundered years apart, as well as various dark side force users and specialist troops not seem in the movies.

The future of this force? well there isn't one really, SWM is pretty well dead, and although I still enjoy playing I just don't get as much gaming in as I'd like and SWM's seems to get pushed to the back of the queue behind more 'current' games, which is a shame, it's a game I miss. 

Dreadball: Forgefather Team

Team no. 3 rolls off the painting line, this time the forgefathers.  These are lovely models and by far my favorite looking of the season one teams.  I've played only a single game with these so far and they also provided an interesting challenge, a little bit slow, but rock hard and in contrast to the marauder team you thankfully still get a couple of strikers.  These guys are my current favorite.  As with all my dreadball stuff these have been given a coat of gloss varnish.

And finally here we have 'coach renton' a kickstarter exclusive model based on mantic games CEO.

The Hobbit: Escape From Goblin Town - Finished!

I've done it! I've completed painting the hobbit boxed set.  It's been a lot of fun and although I was a little bit dubious of the price when I bought it, I'm glad I did.  Below we have the final dwarves, Bombur, Bifur & Bofur.

Then we have Rhadaghast the Brown along with hedgehog friend.

The last of the goblins the tiny little scribe.

And finally a group shot of Thorins company (click for a bigger image).

Dreadball: Ver-myn Team

 

 

Another couple of games under the belt, and the surveys have been sent out for season 2, which has made me realise that I'd better get on with painting season 1!  So team no. 2 has been painted, these 'ver-myn' (not skaven oh no definatly not).  As with the corporation team I've given them a coat of gloss varnish to help them survive the rigours of play.

 

Below are the two guards, in a team with no jacks the couple of guards you do have take on quite a significant role, nice models as well these.

 

Next are the strikers that make up the bulk of the team.  The top 4 are nice models that I like, however the second variant (in the bottom picture) I don't like so I've given them numbers at the end of the roster so when the extra ones come in the next package I'll barely have to use them.

 

And finally I've also painted up the refbot!

 

 

The Hobbit: Kili, Fili, Goblins & Elves

More from middle-earth today starting off with the dwarf brothers Fili and Kili.  The fili model is a bit flat, but kili is excellent.

Next we have the last of the goblins from the goblin town boxed set, they've been suprisingly fun to paint.

And finally a few elves, a metal Gil-Galad and 4 plastic wood elves.  Origanally I painted gil-galad with the dark hair that is normally painted on this model, but it didn't work so I've switched it to blonde.

Dreadball: First Games & Corporation Team

I've finally had a chance to play Dreadball.  Admitedly I've only played two games at this point, but I can report that I like it a lot.  The mechainics are different to blood bowl, but the two games did feel related, although Dreadball is a lot quicker and doesn't seem to stagnate.  Both games went down to the wire as well with one even going to sudden death!

It's obviously early days, but at the moment it seems to be everything I'd hoped for.  You can see throughout this post  that I've painted my first team as well representing the human corporation.

One thing I haven't got the hang of yet is how to use jacks in the corporation team.  Whilst they are of course flexible and can perform either roles, they're just not that good at it! It seems you only want to use a jack if you really really have no other choice.  To be fair it might just be that I haven't figured out how to use them yet, but jacks currently seem to the games weak area.

You might notice these minis are a bit shinnier than my usual ones, thats because they've had a coat of citadel 'ardcoat as they will ineviatbly have to put up with a lot of handling.  I've left the bases clear for now, but I'm undecided if I like them like that and am tempted to paint them black all over.

AT-AT In The Snow

Last week most of Britain was covered in snow, including my little bit of Bedfordshire, now whilst many folks made snowmen and ruined the nice snow in their gardens I had a much better idea.  I went and found my AT-AT and an AT-ST from the star wars miniatures game I used to play a lot and deployed them in the garden as a Hoth recreation.

Looking back now I could have done a lot better, and added some snowtroopers and rebel fortifications, still I'm sure it will snow again even if I have to wait till next winter!

The Hobbit: Dori, Nori, Ori & a Few More Goblins

I'm getting closer and closer to finishing my Hobbit set and we start today with Ori, Dori and Nori, I think Dori is my favorite out of this lot.

Then we have yet some more goblins;

And finally I've also finished my little bit of goblin town.

 

 

Kili, Fili and the final batch of goblins are nearly done as well and should be appearing soon.

Epic Fail!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a few new years resolutions, one of which was not to buy any more models until easter!  I knew it was probaly over ambitous, but still I expected to last a little longer, but no I have failed already.  As you can see above I've bought some hunter orcs from games workshop and and the new zulu war command figures from HaT and am looking forward to painting both.

The Hobbit: Gloin, Oin, Balin & Dwalin

Yep, more from the Hobbit boxed set today, specifically 4 of the dwarves, the top picture shows Gloin and Oin, who I'm rather pleased with,  below them is Balin and Dwalin, who whilst I still think are OK didn't turn out as well as the other two.  At the bottom is the Great Goblins throne.  I'm chugging along nicely now with half the dwarves, most of the goblins, and all the scenary apart from one platform painted up.

The Hobbit: Thorin Oakensheild, The Great Goblin & More

Back to middle-earth today, with some more models from The Hobbit starter set.  First off is the mighty Thorin Oakensheild, he has the option of being armed with with the elven blade orcist or with his dwarf sword and the oakensheild.  He finds orcist pretty early on in the story so I've chosen to arm him with that.  

 

Next 3 more goblins.

 

Then we have the Great Goblin, who is my favorite out of this lot after being painted, which suprised me a bit, as before the paintjob I wasn't so impressed.

 

Then we have the great goblins two henchmen, grishnah and the tiny goblin captain, both painted in the same way as all the other goblins.  I've no idea why they decided to make the goblin captain so tiny, but I'm not a fan of it.

And finally another couple of pieces of goblin town

 

Airfix Small Scale HMS Victory

For a bit of a change I have something for you today that has nothing whatsoever to do with middle-earth.  We have infact an airfix model of HMS Victory, it doesn't say what scale on the box (more than a tad annoying), but it is the smaller cheap version (it costs little more than a fiver).

It's a VERY simple kit with under 20 pieces total, and it shows.  I think the end result is unsatisfying, but I'm not sure what else I could do to improve it that much.  In the end it is tempting me to buy a bigger kit and do the ship justice.

 

One of the most annoying parts of this model is the utter lack of rear detail, which is just covered up with a transfer.

Happy New Year! 2013

Well happy new year everybody! I know it's a bit late, but a hangover, helping a friend decorate and having to do that annoying work thing have all got in the way of me finishing this post.  It's been an interesting year with the jubilee, olympics and of course a miraculous apocalypse survival.

My blog has reached a much wider audience this year, with a doubling in followers and my hit rate going up steadily.  I've managed to post consistently as well, although there were a couple of months I slipped up a bit.

These argonauts were among my favorite models this year.

My gaming year was dominated by 40K in the end, especially gaming time, but also with painting as I added a whole new army in my alpha legion and an imperial guard detactment.  The second game of the year turned out to be victory at sea, again with both gaming and painting, we are looking foward to the second edition of this next year.  Alas not everything I paint ends up getting used on the battlefeild, both my ancient greek and LOTR collections got a lot of models painted this year, but neither saw a game, hopefully something that will get remedied next year.

I'm hoping to play a lot of dreadball this year

It's also time to look back at those resolution things I made this time last year

1.  to continue blogging, my blogs not been a roaring success, but its not been a disaster either, more importantly I do enjoy it, so I resolve to keep blogging at least once a week. - 109 posts in 2012 says that this one is a success

2.  to finally get my high elf army upto 3000pts by finishing the unit of reavers and the unit of sea guard that have been sat at the side of my table for the last 8 months. - fail the reavers got done, but the sea guard still aren't finished.

3.  to finish painting the ships and monsters from Dreadfleet.  - yep done... and they've not been out of the box since, make your own judgement on that one.

4.  to get at least 1500pts of eldar painted so we can at least play some battles with them.  -  just, but thats still a success

5.  not to buy more models than I paint, so the queue at least is reducing.  - a success! the size of my queue has reduced by exactly 15 models!

6.  to spend more time playing a bigger variety of games - fail, nowhere near as many games as I would have liked this year.

4 out of 6 isn't bad, still not having the high elf army finished is kinda gutting.  I've got less resolutions for this year, they are.......

1.  Finish the damned high elf unit

2.  Paint all the models form my Hobbit boxed set.

3.  Paint all the models from the dreadball kickstarter and actually play a bunch of games.

4.  Don't buy any models between new year and easter (clearly silly, but another attempt to reduce the queue).

we'll see how I did at these this time next year.