X-Wing Miniatures game: Dash Rendar´s OUTRIDER YT-2400 light freighter (scratchbuilt)

X-Wing Miniatures game: The next new scratchbuilt ship from my home based "shipyards" is the Rebel faction Outrider YT-2400 light freighter!

Fluff (source Wookieepedia): The Outrider was a heavily modified YT-2400 light freighter used by the brash smuggler Dash Rendar. Rendar held that his ship was almost as well known as the Millennium Falcon.  One of the first modifications Dash made was to replace the original engines with three KonGar KGDefender military-grade ion engines. When Rendar could not avoid combat, the Outrider was more than capable of holding its own. The ship was armed with a pair of Dymek heavy laser cannons, mounted on dorsal and ventral turrets.

The ship: Well this scratchbuild ship was the most challenging build of a Star Wars ship for me so far. While its shape seems to be rather easy at first glance, the many, many hidden details and undercuts of the hull and the visible internals proved very time consuming and sometimes challenging to recreate. 

I wanted to build this ship for a quite while and it took me about 4 full days to build without painting. The main shape comes from Warmachine game large miniatures bases and some GW flight bases. Tons of details needed to be added to the hull in a sandwich manner and I tried to recreate the ship as close as possible. I have provided some WIP pics too so that you can see the unpainted built. All in all I am however very satisfied with the final result. :-)

Gamewise it´s weaponry is true to the fluff that it has a 180° fire arc of the main laser guns to the front. I wanted to make this ship simelar but also different from the YT-1300 Millenium Falcon in terms of handling that´s why it can also perform barrel rolls as it´s general shape reminds me a alot of a B-Wing crossed with a Millenium Falcon.

Hope you it too!

Cheers

invivos

X-Wing Miniatures game: TIE Experimental M1 (scratchbuilt)

X-Wing Miniatures game: Finally reinforcements for the Imperial fleet have arrived! Imperial scientists have developed the prototype of the TIE Experimental M1 fighter which is armed with a single deadly Turbolaser (yep!).

Fluff (source Wookieepedia): The TIE Experimental M1, also known as the TIE Bizarro, was an experimental member of the TIE series and a part of the TIE Experimental Project. The port pod held the control systems, and the starboard pod held a turbolaser much heavier than the laser cannons equipped on any previous TIE.

The Ship: The TIE M1 was scratchbuild according to the measurements of the TIE fighter and consists mainly of plastic card and parts from the Biotoxin plant kit for the cockpit and weapon pod. I chose to build two fighters at the same time because you can quickly repeat some of the plastic card cutting work while the other model is left to glue e.g. :) So now we have the evil M1 twins!

Rulewise this ship has no basic weapon and is special to my house rule "Turbolaser". The Turbolaser as a weapon must be bought separately for the ship. The rules for the Turbolaser are also intended for bigger ships to handle their multiple large scale (turbo laser) turrets e.g. for frigates, destroyers, etc.

Hope you like the evil twins!

Cheers
invivos

X-Wing Miniatures game: Rebel Transport GR-75 in action!

X-Wing Miniatures game: Well I was very lucky and managed to get my hands on an old toy GR-75 Rebel Transport!  :-D

The rather huge ship was mounted to a custom plastic base and then immediately pushed into frontline combat action!

In a 100 point game to escape from Planet Hoth, it served as the Imperial mission target that had to be destroyed, while the Rebels tried to flee their Transporter in one piece over the opposing table edge.

The Imperial Navy send waves of TIE Bombers and TIE Fighters to attack the transport, whereas the Rebels only had an A-Wing and a B-Wing for escort duty (the Rebel Transport counted in at 30 of their 100 points).

Although the Imperial Navy managed to block the Transports movement and bombarded it with missiles and even laied a bomb in its way, the transport was able to escape severely damaged from the grip of the Imperial Navy shortly after the last threatening TIE Bomber was blown apart! 

Ship design notes: I designed the rules for the GR-75 transport-pilot card with the "Protect"-Action from mission 1 in X-Wing rulebook in mind. Therefore the transport has a defense value of 0 to represent that it is a massive, easy to hit capital size ship. To give the ship/player some sort of defense possibilities, it can however perform an "Evade"-Action. Coupled with a pair of escorting fighters who "protect" (Action) the ship this has turned out to be a very realistic and well functioning game feature. Due to its very long flight base the GR-75 Transport is very fast however (despite its maximum movement being 2, see its flight dial here) so some good movement planning is necessary to keep the Rebel escort fighters close by.

I will paint and weather the Rebel transport too, just need to get some Ink wash as this big ship will eat a lot of paint... ;-)

I will also post two(!) new scratchbuilt ships on the blog soon, so stay tuned until I have taken some pics!

Cheers
invivos