Bring on the Wars - Star Wars Legion!

Howdy everyone,

 

So after literal years of painting Legion figures, I finally got up the motivation to get a game in…a big thanks to Mike and Duncan for the push to try it out. Now with the first game down, I have the bug to get some more painting done AND get some more of these games under the ole belt. 

 

For our first foray, we decided to go relatively light on the force structure and card allocations...keep it a little simple and just work on the overall mechanics and flow.

 

With that, Mike had some Trade Federation bots being led by General Grievous; Duncan and I had the Empire under the shuffling slipper heals of the Emperor (he does move a little slow). We each had roughly 3 grunt sections each, the Empire had some fast-moving combat support with a duo of speeder bikes and the Federation took a couple of card upgrades to even the points (I think we went with 400? Maybe Mike or Duncan can sort me out on that)...

It is a little long and there are a few pics to look at, but as always, enjoy...and of course, if you want to see the incorrect side of the story, Mike beat me to the posting punch:

Mike's Trade Federation LIES

Table setup...pretty basic, we went to our sides, threw a bunch of random scatter terrain and pieces down to block line of sight and movement. These are some excellent looking pieces that Duncan printed up over the past week, can't wait to paint them up. BTW, good guys on the left, Mike on the right...

Pretty relaxed deployment, from the edge within 2 range sticks. 2 x Stormtrooper sections deployed on our left and right, 1 x Snowtrooper section in the middle, Speeder bikes at the back, the Emperor at the rear..and oh yeah, totally forgot about his guard, they were just in front of the boss.

Troopers move forward, get behind whatever terrain they can...old bunker walls in the main portion of the table, random cargo on the right side. Mike had deployed a bunch of walls/barriers as well, so there were those options too.

View on the Empire right / Mike's left flank...bots moving up...standard 'Roger Rogers' and super bots...

Mike's right flank, more Roger Rogers led by a Tactical Droid, and a couple of Droidekas

The harly's of the Empire moving up on the left flank, taking their time...within range of some Roger Rogers...a buttload of firepower gets thrown out, spare parts and plastic scattered among the field (I think we took out 3 or 4 of them)...

I can't remember exactly when, but this happened a turn or two later...Grievous moving up, Droidekas rolling with things, and a couple of Roger Rogers walking amongst the spare parts...still moving forward.

The metal line moving forward on Mike's left...

 

Droidekas surging forward...

Stormtroopers on the Imperial left, engaging droids to their 12...

Speeders slowly moving forward...putting some more hurt on the Roger Rogers...I think they may have tried blunting the Droidekas as well...

 

 Snowtroopers facing their own elephant on the left...

 

Stormtroopers on the right move forward, blasting through doorways and working the angles...

 

Grievous and the Droidekas not impressed with the Snowtroopers...

The speederbikes dishing out pain and taking a hit or two...down one bike...

The Emperor lets loose with his Crimson warriors...they engage with Grievous in melee...

 

Battledroids on Mike's left take the Empire down a peg or two...decimate the second Stormtrooper section with ease.

and they start sizing up their right flank...

 

Meanwhile, a flurry of dicing action continues between Grievous and the Crimson Guards

 

...and the Emperor really where he likes it best, hanging with his best homies waiting to lay on some massive hate, regardless of the electric bill! The Emperor can intentionally take damage to inflict lightning pain on his targets. I think Duncan gave almost half his hit points to the electric company and unleashed severe pain, he was pretty happy to melt a section of Roger Rogers...

 

Conclusion - the Trade Federation were able to take the Emperor down and win the field, but it was a big cost on both sides of the battle. 

Conclusion for the 3 of us - Please Sir, we would like some more....

Marvel Crisis Protocol - Starter Box - Main Characters

Hello everyone,

As always, hoping that things are right in your respective corners. So with my previous post showing off my finished Baron Zemo and Doctor Octopus, I thought I would share a quick collage and group photo of the heroes, villains, and in-between from the Marvel Crisis Protocol core box.

That's it...not much else to say...except to say that so far, I am really enjoying these Marvel characters. Not only are they fairly dynamic in sculpt and pose, but they look really cool, and for me they have been an excellent challenge to my painting technique.

I have to throw a shoutout to Sorastro...yes, I do follow him on YouTube, I do contribute to his Patreon, but if you're tight on budget, he has a great website that not only includes great pics, free painting guides for select figures, but also an excellent painting techniques page that has links to his videos free to access on YouTube...if you can, I encourage you to check him out, if you like what you see, then check out his website, and if you are able, then support him on Patreon - I'm a big fan and love that this is his dayjob now.

Anyway, promotions aside, I really like how looking at Sorastro and other pictures on-the-Google got me out of my painting comfort zone. I like the comicbook colours and approach to these figures and I now have a molehill becoming a mountain of Marvel Crisis Protocol plastic to work through.

I hope you enjoy the pics. Have a gooder!!

The Heroes...for the most part, being heroic...and maybe conflicted (I'm looking at you Widow)...

 

And in all their villainy glory...not conflicted, very sure of themselves, the confidently evil!

 

 

 

 

Aaaaaaaannnnddd of course, GROUPSHOT!!!

Zemo and the Doc Octo-man

Hey folks,

I hope all is well on your respective fronts.

So with the latest Disney+ marvel series hitting the 'airwaves' and the trailers for the upcoming Spiderman movie, I couldn't help but have the title of this post come out like a new webseries. Not to mention, since I came up with the title all I can think of is American Dad and Wheels and the Legman!! So yeah, its gotta be a series now...

 

American Dad - posted on YouTube by user Jennifer Hime Lawrence

 

Anywho, Baron Zemo and Doc...I mean, Doctor Octopus (he didn't go to evil science school to be called 'doc')...are part of the core characters from the Marvel Crisis Protocol core box. I gotta say, Zemo was a real hoot to paint and he came up fairly quick. On the other hand, the Doc, has been on my painting table for probably the last 4-6 months...for some reason he really intimidated me and had me uncertain on how to reach the level that I was envisioning. Of course, that fabulous sob Sorastro really set the bar high for this figure.

I gotta say, after the fretting I am really happy with how things turned out...and in all actuality Doc painted up relatively quickly...go figure! I'm particularly really happy with how the tentacles came out as I'm dipping my brush into the non-metal metallic field.

 

Anyway, with these 2 glorious villains complete I am now 'half' way through completing the core box with all 10 heroes/villains complete...the next step will be to tackle the great looking terrain that came with the box.

 

I hope you enjoy the pics. Take care!

Magnificent looking buggers. With the right banner and theme song, Zemo and Doc Octo-man could be a real thing, I'm sure of it! In keeping with our title, we'll let the Baron strut his stuff first...

I have to say, this painted up so easily. I did have a Sorastro painting guide to help me, but the main difference I had compared to other figures is that I wasn't concerned with paint-matching per say. I used the guide...well as a guideline, not a rule. I liked the overall look and I adapted my painting to my paint collection and personal taste. I even tried out some NMM on the sword - much more practice needed, but I'm still happy overall. 

 

 

I really like Sorastro's approach to Doctor Octopus, the colour scheme is very much keeping with the comic book feel. The tentacles are very representative of the comic as well, and the source lighting in his treatment looked spectacular and was quite inspirational. And just because I like seeing figures from all angles...

 

The doc of the hour in all his NMM and impatient glory!

Lead Mountain 2021

Painted:

 

Large scale              3

28mm                     25, +2

15mm                   102

Bought                  24

Progress               +106

Let Me See Your WARFACE - Grunts for The Nam

Howdy folks, 

 

I hope you are all fine and well. As the title to this post says, its all about the grunts on this one.

 

taken from YouTube 

Continuing my latest bout of inspiration and motivation around  gaming some of The Nam and fashion this around a Vietnam Aces campaign, I am finally getting to some additional combat platoons. Having a quick planning discussion with the guys, we are anticipating 20/40/60/?? as the point levels for this venture, and I think I've said before this is pretty consistent with the Aces escalation campaign format that BattleFront came out with.

Now, given my past interest in the era and original painting run with my Air Cavalry force, I was already prepped...my Air Cav was good to go for a few rounds worth of escalation. However, given that we will be having a random number of battles per round, I thought it would also be good to have some options and maybe another force on the field with some flexibility in deployment/back story.

 

You can see the summary of my previous painting for my Air Cav...I almost choked when I saw it was from 2015. To be honest, I still have some rotors to finish up...sigh.

 

Air Cav 

So, as you can see from the video above, my main inspiration for this force was around the Marines and the rifle company. I've already painted up some M60 teams to go with my combat platoons, but with this post, you will see that I now have 20 stands of infantry for 2 x Marine combat platoons - which is more than enough for round 1 and gets me part way to round 2. And, if I really look for flexibility, I can re-jig these grunts into an Airmobile or leg infantry rifle company with 3 platoons. Of course, to do that I will need to add in a few stands (another 2 x M60, maybe some 90mm antitank teams, and one more infantry stand) so that I could have 3 platoons with 7 stands each.

Anywho, here are my grunts for the Nam, 20 stands of combat platoon hell to unleash, and course 2 stands of formation commanding goodness.

Have a good one.

OOH-RAH MARINES!!! The combat power of the force... 

 

I have to say, the BattleFront Vietnam figures have really progressed over time from their initial Wargames Illustrated run to the AUS/NZ infantry figures. The poses have become more dynamic and the sculpting of individual kit got much better and improved. The AUS/NZ troops really are the Cadillac of the range.  You can see the mix of the range throughout the platoons, but really evident in the Formation Command stands. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

2 x Marine Combat Platoons, now becomes 3 x US Army Platoons. All I need now is to fill out the numbers with another Platoon Command stand, 2 x M60 teams, and 1 x Medic/Corpsman for the company.

Lead Mountain 2021

Painted:

 

Large scale              3

28mm                     23

15mm                   102, +78

Bought                  24

Progress               +104