Epic Star Wars

Despite the fact the internet is crying out for it, there are no official sources of 6mm scale Star Wars miniatures. There aren’t many unofficial ones that I could find either. I don’t have a 3d printer and don’t know anyone with one so I was going to have to pay over the odds for pre-printed versions from online. The free market economy is bullshit but, being that I am a part of the problem, the best part of £100 is easily gone. Around a week later, two armies arrived.

The prints are mostly okay, there are some “soft” prints where they haven’t printed properly and they squish. There are missing arms all over the place. All in all, it’s fine but certainly not anything to write home about (also why I’m not naming the seller here). They are also sold in stupid batch sizes that make no bloody sense. If I hadn’t given myself a deadline, I’d have complained to the seller.

At 6mm, taking the supports off was a slow process of using a knife to cut through them but a couple of evenings in front of the TV and two armies were ready for basing. Going with the universally accepted 40mm x 20mm, I glued down models in what I thought looked like good blocks of troops and used wall filler to even out the ground level. Not wanting to play around with sand at this scale, I left them plain and set them to dry overnight.

It is worth noting that at this point, I hadn’t actually decided what rule set I was going to be using. Or even opened any rule books to start choosing. If I had, I probably would have reduced the numbers of droids on the bases to get more stands out of what I had.

As usual, don’t be like me.

I still haven’t decided on the rules.

Knowing that we’re fighting on Geonosis, it made sense to put the base ground colour down first. When painting at such a small scale, you try to have bolder contrast than you would at 28mm to make the army look better. If you check the source material, the B1 droids on Geonosis are a red paint that blends in better to the planet’s surface. That’s no good for this so I went with the more commonly seen beige colour scheme. The rest are largely painted to match their normal look.

There are some more droids but until I decide on the ruleset/army lists, I don’t want to work on them. Hopefully I can save some for a second army based for Christophsis. There are also a couple of other bits to add in but they will get their own post in the coming weeks.

The whole army took very little time to finish, mostly sitting watching the first two days of the US Masters. I had planned on doing the clones next but an upcoming game on Monday night means I need to finish some terrain first. If I can get through that quickly, I’ll base up the clones and hopefully have them painted by the end of this week.

With season three of the Mandolorian now airing, I resubbed to Disney+ for the first time in over a year. It’s given me plenty to catch up with; most of it has been mediocre, some of it excellent. Perhaps more important than quality though is that being back in the galaxy, I’ve rekindled my love for Star Wars.

I know myself well enough to know that I go through big swings in my interests and it is best just to jump in when one takes hold. I have a larger Star Wars project that I’ve done some research on but never quite gotten around to doing actual work but that’s not the focus for April.

With May the 4th just around the corner, now seemed like a good time to tackle the smaller project, the achievable one. A small scale mass battle game *koff*epiclegion*koff*

Originally I wanted to do the battle of Christophsis but as I got further into the budgeting stage, I realised I couldn’t do it for under £100. Buying the 3D printed models has been more expensive than I’d thought at the outset, so Christophsis is back burner-ed until the proof of concept has been tested. If this works out, there are at least another two Battle projects I’d like to do.

Back before Legion launched, I’d had intentions of making a Geonosis board and had started to buy up materials for it. It turned out that I don’t like Legion, and so the table never appeared. Hopefully what I’ve got is going to be enough for this project.

In an ideal world, I’d be making the surface on 1ftx1ft boards for easy storage but I don’t have any and can’t afford them.  What I have to hand is plenty of plastic-backed dust sheet, cut to fit my dining table. Following an old tutorial from Mel the Terrain Tutor, I’m going to have a go at making my own mat. I have plenty of spare xps and upholstery foam so choose between for making terrain pieces. I think I have the right colours of paints to do the whole thing from just what I own.