Federation Pursuit Ships

I’ve had these a while, originally purchased for fleet scale combat, their size is around 5.5cms I think, which makes them quite large for fleet scale ships of this size, so they were upgraded to battlecruisers. The models are 3d prints from Shapeways, I’m pretty sure they are still available.

I decided to base them on x wing flight stands, with magnets, and I will use x wing rules for them to battle the Liberator. I think I might upgrade the antenna/laser barrels, and I may repaint one to act as Servalan’s Ship. I will be making some X wing style base cards, pilot cards and dials for these as well.

Below is a comparison shot, the Liberator being about 3 times the length of these pursuit ships, to me that looks about right, other people may disagree and want a huge Liberator…….Space might be big…..but table size is somewhat limited 😉

 

The Liberator Arrives!

The Liberator kit from popcultureprintinguk Link Landed shortly after Christmas, I left it late to order and there were a lot of orders in the queue ahead of me!

Parts themselves are very well detailed at this scale, they only needed a little clean up, and you will need to file down the the areas that join the main parts together so it doesn’t leave a gap. What gaps that remained were easily filled. I switched out the weapons barrels/antenna to something a lot more sturdy as the printed parts, although to scale, (and all intact) were just to fragile to last long.

I was pretty pleased with how the parts went together using super glue. Its now ready for priming.

Din Djarin’s N1 Starfighter for X wing 2.0

I’ve managed to paint the 3d Print of Din Djarin’s N1 Star fighter from shapeways.

The detail was amazing on this little print and was fairly straight forward to do by hand. I have a few more ships to paint, but I’m waiting for Santa to deliver an airbrush, so those will be painted using a mixture of by hand and air brush. Although all the Pilot cards and dials etc have been designed I have yet to print them out, but more pictures will follow when that is finally achieved.

That just leaves me with one final thing to say to all the followers of my blog, and anyone else who might come across this post before Monday…..Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a peaceful and restful time. All the best, Si

3d render

Actual physical model unpainted (poor photo, sorry!)

Painted Salvaged N1 Star fighter

N1 Starfighter comparison shot, 3d print to the left, Official FFG model right

Custom Pilot Cards for Star Wars X-Wing

So a few of you have been asking for images of my DSV-2 Liberator Pilot cards. What follows is what I’ve come up with but I may still change the values on the cards….Do you have any suggestions, if so let me know! or make your own here

Star Wars Legion Scale

photo link popcultureprintinguk

As regular readers of the blog will know, we’re big fans of Star Wars Legion figures and scale models here. I often like to supplement my official collection with 3d prints from a range of sources that gives my armies some unique figures or table scatter that would otherwise be unobtainable. 3d printing has advanced quite a long way in recent times gone are the poor quality detail with loads of layer lines. Resin has been used for a number of years, giving a superior finish and incredible detail at such small scales.

Although there are a lot STL files available out there, few of us have our own 3d printers, and fewer still are clever enough to work them hahaha! So its just as well there are people out there who do.

One such company is popcultureprintinguk they have a vast range of 3d prints available, but what concerns us here are their options for legion.

They currently have over 90 models with new ones being added all the time, see the range here, your choices are between Scenes, figures, battlefield scatter, vehicles including the vast AT AT to starships like the NB1 Naboo starfighter

UPDATE If you would like a small discount on any of these models, mention “Si’s soldiers” in the “make an offer” box on the ebay listings for these models.

Last supper

TIE Interceptor

Ahsoka

AT AT

Once I have a few figures painted up I will add them here with reviews

Liberator, Where from?

Had a few emails asking where did I get my 15cm Liberator model from, so thought it easier to post a link for you all. This kit is available in various sizes, but the link will take you to the 15cm long version.

Click on link to get your 15cm Model Link

UPDATE If you would like a small discount on this model, or any others listed by “popcultureprintinguk” mention “Si’s soldiers” in the “make an offer” box on the ebay listings for these models.

Kit comes from a company called popcultureprintinguk. it is a 3d printed model in resin, so a lot less layer lines on the surface of the parts than normal 3d printing. So only minimal clean up will be required. If you require a different size version do get in touch with Mark at the link above.

Space Pirates for X Wing?

DSV-2 Liberator

Visitors to this blog will already be aware that one of my favourite, probably the favourite Sci Fy ship of all time is undoubtedly The Liberator from Blake’s 7.

This ship is available in many scales for the modeller….mostly huge! The ship itself in sci fy reality is in fact meant to be really big…needlessly so in my opinion.

Photo credit Quora.com

I don’t know if this was intended by its designers or the product of something else, the studio scale ship is massive. Perhaps there were issues scaling a smaller model for special effects shots?

Now Scale is an issue in this hobby….as are the number of rivets, but this is Sci Fy and I don’t bloody care hahahahahahaha. I love this ship too much not to be able to use it in a table top game.

My plan is to use it as a “Scum and Villiany” ship in the table top space combat game of X-wing 2.0. I have already designed the pilot cards, base tile and dial for this!

For those of you still reading…………I needed the ship to be big enough to look menacing, yet small enough to fit on the table and fight 1/270 scale starfighters…in the same way that the Millennium Falcon does. Of the options I had, I estimated a ship size of around 15cms long to achieve this. So that is what I’m going with. I will continue to blog about its progress once it lands and I am able to start the construction process. Stay tuned for the next episode!

UPDATE If you would like a small discount on this model, or any others listed by “popcultureprintinguk” mention “Si’s soldiers” in the “make an offer” box on the ebay listings for these models.

1/270 Scale Shapeways 3d prints for X-Wing

It’s been a while since my last post, a lot has happened! I decided to get back into the blog now i had a bit more time and add to my X-wing squadrons, but with FFG selling on X-wing, it doesn’t seem to be getting any love from its new owners, so went looking for ships from other sources. If you wish to browse the list or buy your own a quick search on Shapeways using “1/270” gets you a lot of interesting ships.

Here are a few pictures directly from the site of those I’ve added to the fleet. I have already mounted them on flight stands with magnets and created Pilot cards, dials and base tiles using this online tool from Infinite Arenas , Link You’ll need to click on “Homebrew”, it takes a while to get the hang of it but its very useful.

Once I have painted them I will post pictures. Models are very detailed, have printed superbly well in this “Tan fine detail plastic” it is more expensive but does away with the rough sandpaper like finish of the white versatile plastic

Din Djarin’s N-1 Starfighter (Scum and Villainy)

NB-1 Royal Bomber ( Galactic Republic)

Corvan T7 Strikefighter ( Rebel Alliance)

Z-95 BX (Scum and Villainy)

Z-95 Mk1A (Scum and Villainy)

X wing Ships (Conversions)

A few weeks ago I bought a bulk load of X wing bits and bobs, some of the ships were work in progresses…they had been started but for one reason or another never finished. I think the original owner may have been attempting some pure Recon ships as armaments had been removed.  I decide to restore the weapons using bits from my 40 +year old  spares box!!! and completed the installation of magnets to the bases, and in some cases finished off the paint jobs.

We use some of these in the club, others have been obtained by club members.

Had some requests from the club for Millenium Falcons. We, and they couldn’t afford the real thing by FFG so I painted up 3 revell 1/241 scale Falcons and gave them all a set of edition 1 cards and dials and some large bases and pegs sourced from Ebay. They are only slightly smaller but with a superior paint job 😉

The kids were happy and thats all the counts….but they served to introduce them to their own X wing collecting, and I expect that Santa will be very busy in this region with boxes of x wing ships come the evening of the 24th.

X-Wing 2.0

Its been a while since my last post,  But behind the scenes I have been busy with the after school clubs latest Game…..FFG’s X-Wing 2.0.

I really wanted to buy into the 1st edition but somehow never got around to it, and then it got put on the back burner.  Out of the Blue during the summer the headmaster who co- runs the after school club with me suggested we buy a couple of 2.0 core sets with what was left of club funds, he mentioned that he had played it and that x-wing was something that might well be fun for the club…..I managed to find a couple of great deals online.

One main advantage for us is that just for once we didn’t have to spend the summer holiday painting for the club as all the models are prepainted!

The only downside is it is quite an expensive game to get into, so we may not be able to expand this game as much as we might like.  Also providing the children with their own model fighter is tricky but not impossible.

I wanted to make the game a little more special for the children playing the game by making them a personal “Pilot card” to help immerse them in the universe a little bit more! I found a website called Card Creator  which although not fully functioning yet (its a work in progress) had enough to make it easy for me! (Thank you so much Alexandre) I managed using M.S. Publisher and Card creator to bang out something we could use in the club.

The pictures below will give you some idea of what was produced.

It was impossible to resist the urge to get involved in the game myself, I managed to buy a Tie Defender in Red, Changed its peg to red, gave it a red base….and then made my own card for it…..well, there couldn’t really be anyone else piloting a red three winged ship could there?

Battle shots to follow in future posts, when the club returns after half term.