Assemble the Fleet!

Hoi,

The X-wing saga continues. Due to some trick of faith Mark and I were able to obtain a large collection of Star Wars goodies.
Our haul included:
- two startersets
- 2x Slave 1
- 1 x Millennium Falcon
- 1x TIE advanced
- 1x TIE interceptor
- 1x X-wing
- 1x Ywing
- 1x A wing.

This lot was complemented by the arrival of a Kenner Imperial Star Destroyer yesterday. The fleets now look something like this:

Imperial "fleet"

Mark will be playing the Alliance and I myself will be collecting the Empire. I specially love the Interceptor (or squint).One of the Firesprays will remain in the original Slave 1 colour-scheme, the other one I will repaint when I find an appropriate scheme.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Kollected:"Best of Kula Shaker" by Kula Shaker

Stay in attack formation!

Hoi,

While Mark and I have played several small X-wing games over the last couple of weeks, some time ago we managed a larger battle. Larger in the sense of time rather then size of forces involved. What we basically did was play the first mission from the core rulebook with customized forces. I played the Dark Side with Darth Vader in his TIE advanced and two TIE aces to go along. Mark had two x-wings and an Y wing.

The game was pretty horrible for me since Vader lasted about 3 or 4 turns before being smoked and the rest of the TIE's were dead as well after several more turns. Because new TIE's (with lesser pilots) would enter play from my edge the game kept going but the Alliance shuttle eventually escaped pretty much unharmed.

We had some hilarious moments especially when several of our craft lined up accidentally in a ridiculous polonaise.

May the force be with you!

Darth Sander

Listening to: "Issues" by Korn

The Corsican Ogre

Hoi,

Many people I know, think I'm a big fan of Napoleon since I'm interested in the Napoleonic Wars: well I am NOT! I am a staunch Wellingtonian. That said I can not escape making a command stand for all of my Napoleonic Armies in time. Therefore I also need a stand depicting Napoleon and his staff, final stimulation to do just that was the release of the great Zvezda set of the French general staff. The set itself doesn't include a figure of Napoleon but I had an Italeri spare figure lying around. Here are the pictures I took from the completed stand.

Front view:

Side views:

back view:

The uniform the Emperor wears here is not that spectacular since it's mostly covered by his greatcoat, but it's the Grenadier's of the Guard Colonel's coat I tried to depict.

Some close ups:

My camera died on me and ever since I have been using my wife's camera. Somehow all the pics I take with it end up over exposed, can't seem to find the right settings.

Well I am overjoyed this monstrous little project is finished and in the showcase, on to the next one!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Ghostboy" by Gabriel Rios

Space cowboys,

...or why I hate Mark and Toby. This story is a very recognisable one to me and perhaps to many of you gamers out there. Once there was a game called Warhammer 40.000. I got to hear about it from a very strange boy (metalfan and all) in class when I attended higher secondary education. I swore never to get involved since he was really very strange and if strange people played this game it couldn't be much good.
Fast forward an odd 10 years and 3 large 40K armies into the future and there we find my good friend Albert-Martijn, he was really into mechwarrior and Classic Battletech. After an introductory game of this not very simple game, I was heard yet again to be uttering the famous last words of: I will never play this game...

Fast forward 10 odd years and 4 sizeable Battletech forces and up comes Fantasy Flight Games' X-wing game... can you sense where this is going?

This time Mark and Toby are to blame. Mark had been ogling the game at the Crisis in Antwerp last year and Toby actually bought the game and kept badgering (yes Toby BADGERING) me that I'd like it very much. Of course Toby knows most of my gaming weaknesses which are: good fluff, easy to learn rules and well it's Star Wars right? Can't go wrong there, as long as you leave the horrible Episodes I till III out of the equation. Well I persevered, said I would never start to play this overpriced monstrosity and that was that.

So at the Impact convention last May, Mark and myself laid some cash together and bought the starter box of X-wing. This was all fine since the box reclined at Mark's and did not catch my eye nor mind that much. Some weeks ago we played a few games and something started to stir which should have been let alone.

Suffice to say I have ordered a TIE-interceptor and A-wing from an onlineshop which have not arrived due to backorder problems. After being bummed out about that I ordered 3 more fighters from a different webshop and they delivered the very next day!

I now own a X-wing (I have repainted it to resemble Rogue 9's CorSec X-wing, pictures will follow):

An Y-wing (I have painted the stripes on it red)

And my absolute favourite: Darth Vader's TIE Advanced:

Yes folks; I am well and truly hooked! I know what all my wish-lists for my birthday and Saint Nick's will entail :-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack" by John Williams

Battletroops

Hoi,

At the Impact convention last May I obtained two Scotia Grendel Nemesis Assault Bipeds for the total price of €5,- Yes that's right just 5 euro's. From the start I knew I was going to convert them into mechs for the Battletroops 25mm scale. When I actually got time to do this, the problem was which Battletech mech would come closest and ergo cost the least amount of converting. In the end I settled for the Raptor light mech. One of the Bipeds had bean painted partially already and I took this one to experiment with and this is what I managed to do to it.

And a picture with my latest regular CBT mech as a size reference.

If you were able to guess the origin of the parts used you're a toff ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels" the soundtrack

Some 28mm Napoleonics

Hoi,

As a rule I do not paint 28mm figures in order to create historical armies, yet a fair amount of figures of said scale finds it's way to my paintdesk.
The two pictured below are special edition figures obtained by buying the Waterloo and Peninsula source-books for Black Powder direct from Warlord Games.

The ensign is supposed to depict a Foot Guards officer, I didn't paint him like that as you can see. To me the yellow faced Redcoat is the quintessential British soldier for the Napoleonic Wars. As he's wearing a stovepipe I've done him up in campaigndress complete wit repair patches to his trousers and jacket.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Random Access Memories" by Daft Punk

More Classic Battletech

Hoi,

Sometimes you get lucky in your E-bay purchases; I recently obtained an unseen Shadowhawk battlemech through E-bay. The mech missed some parts, most notably shoulder-mounted weapons and was hideously mutated by his previous owner. It had a WHFB longbow in it's left hand and the ppc had broken off. I removed he bow and replaced the ppc barrel and voila:

The original version with revised barrel and cleaned base:

My adapted version:

And with his friend the Razorback:

The paint-scheme is that of my Aragon Borders of course.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Roots bloody roots" by Sepultura