Late birthday gift to myself

Broke down and bought these for myself.  

I've had Fantasy Flight Games' "X-Wing" for about two years now.  I've not really played it ... just haven't had time.  Our old game group (mostly guys I work with) really haven't gotten together in a year or so ... so, no games.  So far I've got the starter set (one X-wing and two TIE fighters) and the Millennium Falcon expansion pack (got it mostly just for the miniature).  At $15 bux a piece, the miniatures had kind of hit a price limit for me.  They're good, really good miniatures but $15 is a bit much for me.  Now I've found a dealer selling them for $10 each and free shipping on orders so I'm giving myself the go ahead to start building my fleet and get this game rolling.

These will be the start of my X-Wing game miniatures collection which I plan on adding to each paycheck as well as making some custom capital ships / freighters / support craft through kitbashing.  The Tantive IV is one of my favorite ships in all of sci-fi shipdom.  My 8 year old mind fell in love with that hammerhead shape and those eleven blazing engines as soon as I saw it on the silver screen way back in 1977 and ever since then I've been looking for a good sized replica of this classic ship.  About two years ago I broke down and bought the $300 27 inch long Rand Cooper Tantive IV (currently saving up for his $500 38 inch long Imperial Star Destroyer) but haven't put it together yet.  Here's a Tantive IV in much smaller scale (still large) and it's prepainted and assembled so right out of the box it's a display unit.  I'll probably only have one Tantive IV in my collection but I've got up to three Rebel transports ear-marked for the collection and this will be my first one.  The local hobby shop wanted $50 for the Transport and $90 for the Tantive IV which, again, was a bit much in my book (and for my wallet).  I spend some pretty money pretty fast sometimes but even I'm prone to waiting until the price falls or shopping around for the best price.  I like to support my local shops but going online I saved about $40 on these two items (the Transport was $40 and the Tantive IV was $60).  That savings gives me enough money to either add four fighters to my collection or another Rebel Transport (and I've found an online shop that I'm going to give a lot of business to in the months to come).

So, that's the update.  Happy late birthday to me and it was a pretty good birthday with me buying myself the '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby back in June and now, two months later, these two sets of expansion miniatures.

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to me and because the wife is off at camp with my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter is staying with my parents I'm all alone on my birthday and that means that I'm going to celebrate it by myself.  I'm going to be good to myself so I'm buying myself some nice presents.  

Three to be exact.  Three presents of one of my favorite movie spaceships of all time, the Millennium Falcon.  I saw these books a while ago, the Haynes manual at a Books A Million and the 3D manual at my daughter's book fair at school.  The miniature was a new arrival at the local hobby shop so I spent the $30 to get it mainly because, well, it's the Millennium Falcon and it's about the size of your palm and never before could you get a miniature this good looking and this detailed so, yeah, if I never play the game at least I have a conversation / display piece for my desk.

The Haynes manual goes into a lot of detail and includes various models the the YT-1300 freighter including my favorite (and hope to one day scratchbuild) the "Ooota Goota" from the old West End Games "Tramp Freighters" game book.

My favorite rethinking of the YT-1300 series freighter.  If I had a YT-1300, this would be the one that I would have.  There's a guy on the FFG forum that converts MFs to the Oota Goota variant.  I may buy one from him.

If you love the Falcon you need to get this book.  It's full of reference, information, pictures and history of this iconic ship all put together not so much as an owner's manual but more of a guided tour of the ship.

The second book I bought for myself was the 3D guide to the Falcon.  It's done in layers so each flip of the page takes another layer of the Falcon away showing more and more detail.  It was kind of marketed as a kid's book and I found this at my daughter's school book fair but it was so neat that I had to get it.

And finally here's the Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing game miniature of the Falcon itself.  A little pricey at $30 it was worth every penny.  The attention to detail is amazing and even the gun barrels on the upper and lower turret are individually molded (and probably fragile as hell).  That's attention to detail!

So, all in all, happy birthday to me!

Demonic possession and happiness ...

Apparently my '98 Lincoln became possessed today at work.  A few days ago I had a problem with the power door locks and trunk release, figured it was a fuse, found the fuse (it was blown), put a new fuse in and promptly blew that fuse as well so it's a short somewhere that I've got to track down.  Lately the car has been missing some, not enough to trigger a SES light on the dash just enough to buck and shake at low speeds ... almost like it's grumbling. 

All in moderation ... until today when I left work early this morning for Lucedale (at the state line) to install some security cameras and DVRs.  I hadn't gotten very far when I started to receive phone calls and emails and text messages that my Lincoln's horn was blowing ... not intermittently like when the car alarm goes off but just blowing all the time.  The car was locked, parked, not running and no one was around it.  Of course the only set of keys to the car were with me, east bound and down for the state line so all anyone at the office could do was stand around and stare at my demon inflicted Lincoln and wring their hands.  After causing much aggravation and annoying just about everyone at the office Jason Bolstad's brand new Kia Soul, parked next to my Lincoln, decided to join my car with his car alarm forming an even more annoying duet.  I'm told that my Lincoln's serenade of the other cars and trucks got a few other sympathetic horns to blowing as well. 

And then it just stopped.

And it never did it again the rest of the day.


The heat might have had something to do with it but I think it's a sign of the end times.

Worm sign!

On a much more happy note, I got in my pair of Taban Miniatures "Mutant Critters" in the mail today.  Mutant Critters : each pack contains one necrovorous and one burrowing worm. ... two 32mm pewter miniatures (22mm tall for the larva and 25 long for the centipede) ... I've been eyeing them for about two months now on Ebay, the retailer only had two left in stock and I kept putting off buying them but something told me to go ahead and get them so $20 bux later I've got the last two in his inventory.

 Ah, the joys of Microgaming.  Take a dollar or two,
add in pen and paper and dice ... and imagination.

One of my dioramas that I've put on the back burner is the scene from Metagaming's Microgame "Artifact" ... here is the scene in all of its two color ink and paper glory.

"This means war, ET."

Doug Potter's grisly depiction of American astronauts chancing upon the remains of an American Lunar Survey Team killed by Aliens trying to reclaim the mysterious "dingus" ... an artifact of XT origin which puts out more energy than goes into it.  I've wanted to make a diorama of this scene for many years now but just never had any suitable creatures to model the aliens on ... and now I do.  


Thanks, Taban!  


Pair these necrovorous worms with some detailing, some cobbled together backpacks, maybe some classic bubble helmets, an alien killing sphere or two and some kitbashing courtesy of some old Airfix 1:72 scale NASA Astronauts and this diorama is back to the forefront of the work bench.

Of course the scale is going to be off somewhat  ... the aliens in the diorama will probably be the same size or slightly larger than the astronauts but no where near as big as they seem to be in the illustration above.

On the other hand ... I do have some Ground Zero Games 15mm miniatures ... heavy EVA suited astronauts (loosely based on the Moebius design of EVA suit first seen in 1979's "ALIEN") and some of them are armed as well.  Some are even in zero grav floating poses (no base) so I may use those instead since the size difference between a 25mm necrovorous worm and a 15mm heavy EVA suited astronaut might just be what I'm looking for while still keeping the diorama small (under a square foot).

"You can have my dingus when you pry it from my cold, dead alien hands."

No problem, ET.  Happy to oblige.  We'll take it from here for God, Mom and Apple Pie!

Ready for the dip!

Got off my lazy butt, dug out my old Heritage Galacta 25mm figures which haven't seen the light of day in nearly three decades and decided to strip them and repaint them.  I've got a metal tub and some heavy duty paint stripper standing by so before they get dipped and scrubbed I thought I'd post my "loose" collection.  I've got a few unopened blister packs that I'm going to add when I can but for now this should be enough to get a game or two going with my family and friends.

Some sci-fi cops on their future Segway.  Yes, even in the future law enforcement will have to put up with having to deal with the stupidity generated by well meaning people who have good intentions but haven't served a single day behind a badge and therefore don't know jack crap about what it takes to either be a police officer or get the job done.  There's a third officer that I found after I took this picture and speaking of the picture, I think the one on the left is saying "YOU ride the Segway!" and the other one is saying "Negative.  I've got some parking tickets to write over by that doughnut shop."

Next we have the evil Empire ... three Sorcerer Knights (with energy sabers) in the back, four Stormtrooper Officers with lazer pistols and energy sabers and finally eight Stormtroopers with lazer rifles.  All are wearing body armor.

The Octopoids, some of my favorite pieces in the game, appear next to slither into the chemical soup.  From rear to front we have four Octopoid Squad Leaders, six Octopoid Grenadiers (with grenades, grenade bandoliers, and big ass blast cannon), and up front a single Octopoid Trooper (with lazer repeater).  How did I get so many Grenadiers and just one single Trooper?  Weird.

Three Imperial Heavy Power Armor Troops.  There's so much metal in these three pieces that I swear if you dropped these on your foot you'd be looking at X-rays and a cast in your future.

Three Imperial Stormtroopers in power armor ... I think.

The Rebels are represented with a Nausican Swordsman ("alien Jedi"), two Rebel Leader Swordsmen ("Jedi in body armor"), two huge Saurians, three Rebel Adventurers, six Female Assault Leaders (two girls for every Adventurer ... would make a great recruitment slogan) and the lonely Lesser Sauroid Adventurer.

The Robot faction weighs in with two Warbots, two smaller Security Bots and a Jammer Bot which is probably one of the worst casts and most useless figure in the game (short of the android which I didn't even bother to break out of storage).  Just for fun I put the Jammer Bot on top of the Warbot and it looked a lot scarier ... kind of like a cross between The Terminator and Mayor MacCheese.

The Planetary Strikers round out the bath  schedule with three Striker Officers and three Planetary Strikers.  I need at least three more Planetary Strikers to have three teams ... future purchase but since I tend to play with the more mainstream classic characters I'd rather just buy some more Imperial Stormtroopers instead.  Nothing like a game where a handful of Rebels are facing almost endless waves of Imperials. 

Update - I just pulled out my five (5!!!) unopened blister packs of figures, collected over the last twenty-five years from rare hobby shop finds in my travels across this once great nation.  I almost hate to open these up, it's like vandalizing a part of history ...

Heritage USA "ALIEN ADVENTURERS" 25mm scale Product # 2004 -  Original price stamped at $3.95 - includes (clockwise from top) Nausican Swordsman (with bent energy saber due to years of being slammed against the other figures in the pack), Greater Saurian, Squogg ("Squirrel Dog" - figure not used in MY games) and Lesser Saurian (with his back turned to us ... in fact, they've all got their backs turned to us ... stuck up figures).

Heritage USA "ROBOTS AND ANDROIDS" 25mm scale Product # 2007 -  Original price stamped at $3.95 - this pack contains from top to bottom Security Robot, Warbot, Android and Jammerbot.  The title is kind of misleading since there is only one android and it looks like a cross between C3PO and Maria from "Metropolis".  I don't use the Androids in my games ... if I do, I'm going to paint it up in space cop colors and stick it with the police as a supervisor or maybe some kind of traffic bot.

 Heritage USA "PLANETARY POLICE WITH GRAV SCOOTER" 25mm scale Product # 2008 -  Original price stamped at $3.95 - this pack contains three Planetary Police Officers and one Grav Scooter.  I'm still wondering how to fit these guys into my games ... they just seem out of place so maybe I'll just cobble up a 25mm diorama with them in it instead.  In fact, I don't think that I'm the only one who thinks this way as evidenced by the fact that this particular blister pack was taken off the rack and put back so many times that the store owners had to reinforce the punch hole with four staples just to keep it on the rack.

Heritage USA "ALIEN OCTOPOIDS" 25mm scale Product # 2011 -  No original price stamp but originally sold at $4.49 and marked down to $2.25 - this pack contains a Squad Leader, three Grenadiers and a Trooper so the ratio of Grenadiers to Troopers seems to be about 3 to 1.  No wonder I have so many Grenadiers and so few troopers.  I need more Octopoid Troopers!

Heritage USA "PLANETARY STRIKERS IN LIGHT ARMOR" 25mm scale Product # 2007 -  Original price stamped at $3.95 - this pack contains one Planetary Striker Officer and three Planetary Strikers ... all in Light Armor which translates into "Badass blister helmet EVA suits".

I remember when my local hobby shop had racks of these blister packs of figures hanging up but that was easily 30 years ago.  Good memories of good times.  Looks like I've got a lot of painting ahead of me ...

Heritage USA’s “Paint ‘N’ Play” sets

The late 1970’s really hold some great memories for me in regards to toys and hobbies and just generally having a hell of a good time as a child.  That was a time of “Star Wars”, dirt bikes, Dungeons and Dragons, the Terran Trade Authority handbooks, skateboards that were half the size of skateboards today and … Heritage USA’s "Dungeon Dwellers" series and "Galacta" series “Paint ‘n’ Play” sets.

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