Rebel Troopers for Imperial Assault

As some might have noticed, some friends and I have been playing Imperial Assault for a while. For a certain amount of time I had the idea to follow the releases to bring the whole Star Wars universe to live but luckily for my wallet Fantasy Flight Games (and in Germany Heildeberger / Asmodée) were too fast for a slow painter and volatile hobby fellow like me. Thus my efforts ended with those sets which are represented in the Imperial Assault app meaning the first wave at the moment.

Therefore I had a set of three rebel troopers lying around and somehow I felt it was time to splash some paint on them. Rather soon we want to continue with our campaign and we might need those allies to fight the fierde forces of the Galactic Empire.

 

The set contains of three troopers in the well-known uniform featured in the iconic opening sequence of episode IV. They are all nice and clean casts although all three figures are identical.

Colourwise I left the greyish 1970s schene a bit and went for the more colourful blue and khaki scheme wich the computer game Star Wars: Battlefront delivered.

After all those models were truly fun to paint. The details all crisp and clear, the facial expression easy to follow and a simple uniform which allowed a quick painting style.

As usual I used Vallejo paints for most parts of the figures and the Wargames Foundry skin coulours for face and hands.

Only the bases are bit of a problem. Imperial Assault may be set in various surroundings from the wooded areas of Endor to the dark and grimy hangars of an outer rim space port. Therefore I didn't find a good solution for shaped bases and left them greyish. So I applied some dark grey and added a series of lighter splashes.

 

Nevertheless I'm still pondering about changing to clear acrylic bases but I haven't brought myself to re-basing my whole Imperial Assault collection yet.

Star Wars Legion: AT-ST Walker

It was about a year ago when Star Wars - Legion caught my attention. First I was annoyd because Fantasy Flight Games chose another scale than their Imperial Assault game has. But afterall I wasn't able to resist the seduction of airspeeders and full-scale Imperial walkers. So I acquired the starter box as well as an AT-ST. Although I assembled it a while ago it sat on my to-do-shelf for a pretty long time. Now with the first bonus round of the AHPC themed 'Reconnaissance' what could be more obvious than a vehicle bearing 'scout' in his name?

This interpretation of the well-known All-Terrain-Scout-Transport is a huge beast. Therefor some 32mm stormtroopers for size comparison. It has a hight of over 20 centimeters with slightly bent legs. It has more or less the same size as the good old 1/48 kit by Bandai.

For painting I used my airbrush gun to apply a medium grey base colour and light grey highlights. Afterwards I applied a selection of washes: Nuln Oil by Citadel and several of the thinner based washes by AK. As a finish I added some rusty brown and charcoal black pigments at several places. E.g. the feet (dust) and the shoulder gun (grime).

For the basing I wasn't able to decide which theatre of war I'd use the walker for. Star Wars has so many interesting places which reach from the icy planet Hoth to woody planets like Endor or desert worlds like Tatoine. So how to base a model properly to suit all these different requirements? For me it became crystal clear when I checked some aftermarket articles and stumbled over some clear acrylic bases offered by Sarissa. So I ordered enough for a small Imperial invasion force and some appropriate heavy armour.

Well that's it for now. I'm lucky to have contributed something to this first bonus round between the bunch of ACW and Cruel Seas stuff I'm working on. Hope you like my humble contibution.

Cheers

Stefan

Imperial Assault - Rebel Scum

Finally after the simpler gaming pieces for the game master I turned my attention to the figures representing the player characters. At least to those for needed in our local group:

Imperial Assault - Nexu or Guess who's coming for dinner...

Besides the AT-ST and the E-web guns there are two fierce predators as larges figures in the Imperial Assault basic game. Nexu are feline predatory species native to the planet Cholganna located in a galaxy far far away...

Bounty hunters for Imperial Assault

Besides the imperial troops and the rebel scum the Imperial Assault basic game came with a couple of bounty hunters and monsters - namely four Trandoshan bounty hunters and two Nexu. After having finished the imperials I started with the bounty hunters:

Imperial Reinforcements for Imperial Assault - Guns and AT-ST walker

Last weekend we had a longish Imperial Assault session and yours truly also known as 'The Emperor' needed painted reinforcements. Thus I took some E-Web engineers and an AT-ST walker to the workbench.

First for the guns:

Risk Taker - Han Solo

When the painting challenge started I had a look at the bonus rounds and all of a sudden an idea for the 'Risk Taker' theme stroke my mind. Who could be a better choice than daredevil who is bold enough to kick a hunk of junk hard enough to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs? Or the one who was stupid and daunting enough to pick a quarrel with a giant space slug supervillain?

As you see I chose Fantasy Flight Games' incarnation of this well-known scoundrel. It's a nice plastic miniature the company is making for their Star Wars skirmish game 'Imperial Assault'. The details are worked out crisp and clear and the casting quality is pretty good. Maybe not as good as we are used from top-notch miniature companies like Perry Miniatures, Warlord Games or maybe Games Workshop but nevertheless much better than one would expect from board game pieces. Probably the material limits the quality in a certain way. It's slightly softer than those historical hard plastic miniatures, bendable and thus more suitable for board games who might not necessarily be careful tabletop gamers as well. Altogether a nice piece and much better than those old soft plastic figures by Wizards of the Coast.

As usual I painted this chap with Vallejo colours and used Wargames Foundry for the skin tones. I kept the base pretty simple as with all my Imperial Assault figures: Just a dark grey base colour and three shades of drybrushing.

Imperial Assault: Droids, Imperial Guard and the Dark Lord himself

Probably you've notived that a certain Star Wars mania had taken possession of Monty's Manour. Thus it suggested itself to start the Painting Challenge with a couple of Star Wars miniatures namely more playing pieces for Imperial Assault:

Actually very nice figures but somehow not the quality we are used to have from those top-notch 28mm figures by Perr, Front Rank, Foundry, Empress and other suppliers of metal miniatures. Some pieces could be more detailed and some parts are kept rather easy. Nevertheless they represent the figures from the Star Wars universe very well and were fun to paint. This week I prepared three lots of figures for our Wesdnesday night Imperial Assault session:

Firstly three probe droids. Those little bastards are always useful to scout the way for the stormtroopers. Within the game they proved rather handy and dangerous. As for painting I stayed very simple. Just a couple of grey tones over black primer. Really the quick and dirty kind of miniatures. For gaming reasons I kept the bases simple as well. Some light drybrushing and a colour marking to differentiate different squads in game.

Two sets of Imperial Red Guardsmen. In the game they serve in pairs and thus I prepared two with a red and two with blue colour markings. A pretty simple paintjob as well. Black primer, three layers of different red tones and then some darktone Armypainter Quickshade.

Highlight in a special sense was the dark lord of the Sith himself: Darth Vader.

A figure which seemed rather easy to paint but black is always special somehow. Of course I didn't want to turn him too greyish and therefore I chose to hold back with highlighting as much as possible. Only some dark and medium grey drybrushing on the cloak and some more efforts on the body armour. The lightsaber and the control panels of the Vader's suit were nice details and meant a nice diversion. The base is once again kept slate grey with some gentle drybrushing in medium and light grey.

Imperial Assault: Card Boxes

Last week I put some work into my project for 'Santa Clause'. I found a really nice pack of four figures hopefully according to my counterpart's taste. During the last days I started painting them because they should be finished during the following week end be sent to the United Kingdom the week after. No problem for them to arrive before Christmas.

Besides that I worked on Imperial Assault. The games contains oodles of cards, tokens, board tiles and such stuff and it was time to get them sorted. Thus I made some cardboard boxes for the game:

But those boxes weren't the work of myself alone. Luckily some other geeks seem to have kept struggling with disarray in the Imperial Assault box and one of them prepared a set of templates for the prone tinkerer. He's calling himself 'Sir Willi' and is providing a great number of boxes for Imperial Assault, X-Wing, Armada and other games, most of them at least in German, English and French. Have a look at his blog to get an idea of his work. The templates are free and ready to print at home.

To make the boxes I used 240g cardboard. It proved to be thin enough to work properly with our inkjet printer but thick enough to ensure the needed stiffness for the boxes. Then I cut the templates with a sharp knife and a steel rules and glued them together with usual all-purpose adhesive. Really no big deal but afterwards I had some clean and tidy boxes to sort the different cards in.

Only the active cards of our current campaign are in a zip bag to have them ready for our next session. Altogether a simple and convincing solution in my opinion. Agreeing to this was our little one Anna who helped me to sort all the board tiles and the tokens. But especially the AT-ST caught her attention. Good girl!

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend !

Imperial Assault: Imperial Officers

During the last week I proceeded slightly with painting the miniatures of the Imperial Assault board game. After those Stormtroopers I took their officers to get some colour onto:

The figure are pretty straightforward. The details on the faces are nice for playing pieces but slightly behind high quality metal miniatures as we know them from Perry, Front Rank, Empress or other wargaming manufacturers. The figures clothes have no noteworthy details as you would expect from those rather simple uniforms.

Thus I painted them in a kind of quick and dirty undertaking during a really short time. As playing pieces they'll do well anyway I asume.

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

A happy first Sunday in advent !

Imperial Assault: Painted Stormtroopers

Actually I reserved the following Stormtroopers for my habitual weekend post as part of the 'Paint Table Saturday' venture. But somehow things never turn out the way I expect. Once again our weekend was busy with meeting family and friends and I didn't find the time to get myself to the computer and set a an appropriate article. To crown it all the signs of age exacted their toll and evenings I was too tired to turn my attention to the bloggosphere. Obviously I'm getting too old for three days of gatherings, beer and sports but I wasn't able to resist Rugby, Hockey and American Football...

Anyway with no further ado here's the humble work yours truly performed on some of the miniatures from the Imperial Assault board game:

As you see I started with the easiest figures in the box: Stormtroopers.

Those were my start of choice because I wanted to see quick results and I didn't want to withdraw my attention too much from our ongoing Plancenoit project. With the game come nine Stormtroopers representing three squads. To differentiate them I painted the edges of the bases in blue, red and green.

Besides the coloured edge I held the bases as simply as possible. Since the game works with a couple of different board styles like desert, woodland or space ship interior I was afraid that textured bases might look disturbing when hitting inappropriate underground. Thus I simply painted them dark grey with some slight dry-brushing with lighter grey tones.

Painting the Stormtroopers themselves was pretty simply as well. After a neat coat of white primer I used a dark grey colour on the joints, blasters and other more or less black parts. Then a coat of thinned Armypainter Quickshade: Dark Tone and some white highlighting.

As a result the Stormtroopers aren't as clean and bright as seen in the films but I prever them a little dirty because it brings out the details on playing distance. However those chaps are probably far from my best pieces but as simply rank and file troops they'll do well I presume. Next will be either the drones or the Imperial officers. But first back to Plancenoit. My progress there is small but constant and I'll be able to present another intermediate state later this week.

Unboxing Imperial Assault

During the last months I was lurking around Fantasy Flight Games's (FFG) Star Wars miniature game 'Imperial Assault'. It's more or less a tabletop board game hybrid covering small rebel operations against the Galactic Empire. Thus there are up to four players controlling heroes of the Rebel Alliance and one player leading the missions as a kind of game master and playing the Empire as well. Actually the game is designed to play campaigns of ten to fifteen missions but it has a two player skirmish variant as well.

Anyway after months of pondering I decided to invest in the game and actually wanted to order the German version which was released in late August. By mistake I ordered the English version instead but decided to hold it and rely on my humble knowledge of English. With around 80 € the game isn't cheap at all but you receive a thick and heavy box for your money:

As usual for FFG the cover art is top notch. Some rebels fighting stormtroopers and Darth Vader in person overwatching the battlescene. Excellent stuff so far. After opening the box I discovered the full content. It's really filled to the brim:

Of course there's some advertising material included but most impressive is the pure extent of the game material:

X-Wing AAR: The shadow of the Death Star

On friday we had the first club meeting after my holiday. This time we wanted to play a game of X-Wing and I agreed to conduct the game as umpire.

However I decided to create a short intro to bring the boys in good spirits. It's in German only but I hope you enjoy it anyway. In English the text means the following:

EPISODE VI 3/4

THE SHADOW OF THE DEATH STAR

There is a new hope for rebellion. Finally,

after a weak point was discovered at the

Death Star, they are preparing their decisive

attack against the Imperial space station. On

Yavin the rebellion is gathering all their forces

to charge the Death Star.

But Grandmoff Tarkin, the commander of

the Death Star sense the danger. So he sends

out his best fighter squadrons with their leaders

Darth Axel and Darth Kalle to reconnoitre the

rebel base.

Within a asteroid field near Yavin it comes

to a battle when some rebel fighters are able

to intercept the Imperial fighters...

A rather simple setup for a small game to learn the rules. Altogether four squadrons gathered:

- Two Y-Wings with ion cannons and proton torpedos under Georgs command

- Two X-Wings flown by Bernhard and his son Pascal

- An identical Imperial squadron which (Darth) Axel managed

- A Tie-Advanced and two Tie-Fighters lead by (Darth) Kalle

The setup after turn 1. The opposing forces are converging carefully.

Georg knew his Y-Wings would be disadvantaged in speed and number. So he tried to play his heavy weapons off against Axel's squadron. He launched a volley of proton torpedos early but wasn't able to cause greater damage on the Tie-Advanced. But at least he was able to paralyse him with the ion cannon. After shutting down another Tie the Y-Wings turned left and tried to support the X-Wings on the left flank to enforce decision there. Afterwards they could finish off the remaining Ties here at the right hand side...

The Y-Wings ionize some Ties and turn towards their comrades.

Meanwhile the other Tie-squadron gathered to rush at the X-Wings. Those stayed in close formation and sent first laser fire at their enemies.

View at the rebel left flank.

Thereby Kalle's squadron got under heavy pressure. Although he was able to destroy one of the X-Wings, the combined fire of the remaining rebel fighters vaporised his Tie-Advanced and one of the other Ties.

Kalle's Tie-Advanced with a collection of target locks.

But the rebels miscalculated the speed of the Imperial standard Tie-Fighter. Just one turn after the X-Wing seemed to conquer the left flank Axel's fighters came in and attacked them from behind. Result was a burning Y-Wing and a heavily hit X-Wing.

The remaining Ties outnumbering the rebels.

As potentially more dangerous enemy Axel hunted down the X-Wing first. Although Pascal rolled the dice rather luckily the starship couldn't resist the green laser beams.

Finally the last Y-Wing was hopelessly outgunned. With some last words of warning to the rebel base on Yavin he vanished in flames. This time the Empire won but the Rebellion will strike back...

Three solid hits put the final nail in the Y-Wing's coffin.

All in all it was an exiting and funny game. Although I didn't play myself it was great fun to prepare the stuff for my fellows and guide them a little. Anyway they were satisfied enough with the game to put the return match on the agenda for our meeting in a fortnight...

Reviewing X-Wing

A photo I took on my workbench yesterday and edited it slightly...

There are games that arrest one's attention but disappear between other projects. For me the old Wings of War was such a game. I saw it years ago on a fair and liked the test game we played. Since my wife didn't like it at all I forgot about it and its further edition were beyond my radar. But last year Fantasy Flight Games published a follower of this line of ancestors which I couldn't ignore:

After lurking around the core set for nearly a year I bought it last week and whish to present a short review of it. Somehow Anatoli from Anatoli's Gameroom blog had the same idea and presented his review some days before (here). It's really worth reading and I hope not to bore you with my humble point of view.

Contents of the starter kit

Actually the box is packed with a lot of stuff. Obviously and most important it holds three miniatures: Two Tie-Fighters and one X-Wing. Additionally the rules, pilot cards, damage cards, upgrade cards, manoevre wheels for all the ships, manoevre templates, special dice for firing and dodging, a bunch of different tokens as well as a set of mission material like satelites, asteroids and a shuttle token.

Contents of the X-Wing core set. Except the small blue box which I bought in the hardware store.

All of the stuff is well designed and of good quality. The miniatures come pre-painted and except of a small fault at one of the Ties' solar panels I see no reason for repainting or improving them. Even in closeup view they do rather well as you can see on the picture at the top of my post.

Rather mediocre pics of Tie-Fighter and X-Wing. Remember, they're 1:287 scale.

Therefore quality: 5 / 5

On the one hand that's a lot of high quality stuff, but on the other hand three ships is nothing more but a teaser. It's enough to learn the rules and practise the game mechanics but the three suggested missions are rather shallow. Really annoying is that there aren't enough dice to use all rules. E. g. when you fire the X-Wing's primary weapons at short range, you need four red dice, but there are only three in the starter set. While the lag of additional ships could be accepted as starter set factor, including too few dice smells just like daylight robbery to. Especially because FFG offers additional sets of dice...


Playability: 2 / 5

The Rules

After reading the rulesbook I got the impression that the rules should work well and smoothly. After two games which I played against myseld this impression proved to be right. At the beginning of each turn the players chose which manoevres their ships shall fly and adjust the manoevre wheels suitably. Afterwards the manoevre are flown with the worst pilot beginning. Then special actions can be performed and last but not least combat takes place. This yet starting with the best skilled pilot first. Hits and damage is worked out by special d8 and a set of damage cards. It works well and after some few sessions anyone should have taken the core rules in. If you are interested in them, look at FFG's homepage where they offer a free PDF (here) or at Heidelberger Spieleverlag for the German version (here).
But in spite of the simple rule the games promise to be exiting and anything but simple. It's rather hard to anticipate which manoevre the opponent might use and counteract in advance. Seems to promise a lot of suspenseful battles.

Ruleset: 4 / 5

Expandability

Meanwhile two waves of additional ships hit the market and are so popular that they've been sold out for week if not for months. They deliver additional Tie- and X-Wing-Fighters as well as Tie-Interceptor, Y-Wing and A-Wing. Second wave provided the Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett's Slave I. Those are still available.
However rules include arrangements for custom squadrons which may include the additional ships. Thereby one could employ nearly any number or combination of the available ships depending on the mission terms and conditions.

However related to the nice miniatures that causes a high amount of expandability and a lot of potential to collect them.

Expandability: 5 / 5

Conclusion

After all X-Wing is an entertaining dogfight simulation game with the potential to create complex missions either from the Star Wars films or completely free. It's collection aspect complies to fans and gamers alike. Unfortunately the core set doesn't provide more than absolutely necessary to play small games to learn the rules. Therefore serious players will have to invest into another core set or some of the expansions.
But under these conditions X-Wing is a really good game about the combats most of us know from the Star Wars movies. I definitely stay tuned!

By the way here is the original photo: