All Wings Report In

Today we have a guest article from our very own Red 7, "Foxy" Johnson, on how to paint up your very own Red Squadron.

Mr. Blackheart and I have been playing a whole lot of X-Wing recently. After a couple of games, we thought it'd be super-neato if the X-Wings were painted to represent the individual pilots. Given that the Rebel Alliance scrounges material from pretty much anywhere it can, it makes sense that no two X-Wings would look the same (much unlike the Empire, which seems to have an unlimited defense budget).

As a long time 40K player (I got the Rogue Trader book for my 11th birthday), painting miniatures is almost a force of habit. For some reason (most likely laziness), I was pretty hesitant to get going on this project. As I was perusing the X-Wing forums on the 'Geek, I saw a link that ultimately led to this post: (http://buckaroo13.blogspot.com/2012/09/x-wing-painting-red-5...) (if I could find the BGG post, I'd link it here, but I haven't had any luck). The post is a great article on how to go about painting your X-Wings. Yep - that post is what I needed to get started on painting our own X-Wings!

Righty-o - enough talk. Let's get on with it, shall we?

Red Leader

Red 2- Wedge Antilles

Red 3 - Biggs Darklighter

Red 4 - John D.

Red 5 - Luke Skywalker

Red 6 - Jek Porkins

Paint Palette

When it comes to painting, I'm extra-super lazy. As such, I will go to great lengths to avoid doing mixing of any kind. Shown below are the paints I used. Where possible, I've included the company's color code in parentheses:

Tamiya Deck Tan (XF-55) - matches the X-Wing miniature's hull color perfectly.
Tamiya Flat Red (XF-7) - matches the X-Wing "racing stripe" and wing markings almost perfectly. Also used for Red Leader's Astromech droid.
Tamiya Yellow Green (XF-4) - used for the "yellow" parts/patchwork of the X-Wing's hull (e.g. Red 5's nose stripe, nosecones of Red 2, 4 and 6, yellow trim on Red 4).
Tamiya Flat Yellow (XF-3) - used only for the R2 unit on Red 4's X-Wing.
Citadel Color Ice Blue (61-36) - Used for "candy striping" on laser cannon barrels.
Citadel Color Fortress Grey (61-53) - used for parts/patchwork (primarily the nosecone stripe on Red 4)
Citadel Foundation Mechrite Red (??) - used for red components on the hull of Red 6.
Citadel Color Chaos Black (61-51) - used for touching up canopy windows on Red 4 and Red 6. Also used for the "dagger" symbol on Red 2's hull.
Citadel Color Rotting Flesh (??) - used for a couple spots of slightly greenish patchwork on Red 3 and Red 6.
Citadel Washes Badab Black (??) - for some of the battle damage/weathering on Red Leader. Also to touch up some of the weathering effects in general

NOTE - Games Workshop updated their entire paint range, so some of the Citadel Colors won't be an exact match under their new names.

Oh yeah - one other thing. I strongly recommend rinsing your X-Wing miniatures in warm soapy water before painting them. I soaked ours in warm water with some liquid dish washing detergent for @ 5 minutes. I scrubbed them lightly with a toothbrush, rinsed them and let them air dry. I found that if I didn't do this, the paint (particularly the Tamiya paint) wouldn't really stick to the miniature.

Other Tools
Brushes - I used a Citadel Fine Detail Brush and a Floquil Golden Fox/Renard D'or F302.
Masking Tape - nothing fancy, just the plain ol' masking tape that you can find at any hardware store.

Inspiration
Like I said before, this blog post (http://buckaroo13.blogspot.com/2012/09/x-wing-painting-red-5...) kicked the idea of painting the X-Wing miniatures to look like the individual Red Squadron fighters into motion.

Reference Material
I used the following photographs as reference. I'm not exactly sure where they found data for the paint schemes, so I can't be 100% certain if they're canon. In particular, there seems to be some debate over Red 6's paint scheme (as near as my amateur eyes can tell, the red canopy/trim did not make it into the final film). However, the paint schemes for Red 4 and Red 6 are really freakin' awesome, so that's what I went with.

Paint Schemes for Red 2, Red 3, Red 4 and Red 6 (http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=40137) (this was my primary source).
Red 2 Commission (http://www.therpf.com/f10/x-wing-red-2-commission-157614/) (used primarily as cross-reference w/the first site cited above).
Red Leader (http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=30066)
Red 12 (http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=11564) (haven't painted this one yet, but I might have to... [I think we might need another "generic" Red Squadron pilot])

Stay on Target

and listen to the voices in your head

The Plastic Knight Rises

That is a hell of a thing. Even though the rumors broke a few days ago I never thought I would be holding a White Dwarf magazine looking at the new plastic Imperial Knights for 40K. WD #4 is worth picking up for all the pretty pics of the knights and the awesome decal sheet that comes with the kit. And for a mere $20 there is another huge sheet with lots more (different) beautiful decals.

The rules are brief and to the point. Two versions: Paladin and Errant. The Knights can be taken as a primary detachment of 3-6 or as a allied detachment of 1-3.

Interestingly, no mention of a codex. I find it hard to believe this is just a crazy awesome one off. Dare we dream this is the vanguard of a Mechanicus Codex? My bank account suddenly cried out in terror.

If this is the fruit of a weekly GW release schedule no longer tied to the One Big Release, I could not be happier. Odds and ends of various armies showing up just because the studio thought it would be fun to do them? Yes please.

The Emperor Protects

And Surprises

Kaiju Swarm vs Blood Angels

It was time to try a Kaiju Tyranid army. Matt was kind enough to brave the unknown and brought his Blood Angels to the party. 2,000 points per side; Big Guns Never Tire was the mission, and I went first.

I had a whopping 22 models, it may have been the first time Matt's marines outnumbered his opponent.

Kaiju Swarm Alpha

Hive Tyrant with wings, Heavy venom Cannon and twin-linked Devourers

Old One Eye 

Haruspex

Three broods of 4 Warriors  

2x Harpies

Two broods of 2 Carnifex(es) or is it Carnifexi?    

Tyrannofex                                  

Not many models, but a whole lot of wounds and toughness 6 creatures. The Blood Angels would be in for a rough time. A little bit over 25% of Matt's points was waiting in reserve, a risky gamble. 

As could be expected my first turn was mostly spent running, but a Harpy did take out the Baal Predator with its Heavy Venom Cannon. A few Tactical Marines were picked off by the Hive Tyrant, and that was it. I had a Carnifex shot up real bad and a few wounds spread out among the beasts. 

Turn Two got the monsters in real close, a few units didn't need to run and shot up the Marine's line a bit more. Tragically for Matt, his Stormraven loaded with Terminators and a Furioso Dreadnought didn't make it on the table this turn. I lost a pair of Carnifex and some Warriors to shooting attacks.

Turn Three went quite well for the Great Devourer. A few wounds from overwatch did not halt the onslaught.                                  

  Old One Eye turned a Land Raider into a smoking crater, the Land Raider Crusader was beaten into junk and a lot of assault marines were lunch for the Haurspex. The rest of the Tactical Marines were felled by the Hive Tyrant and Harpies. The Stormraven arrived and unloaded its deadly passengers.

The Haruspex did meet its end by a really angry Chaplain with a power fist and one wound left, and the Tyrannofex was gutted but the Furioso's Blood Talons. One Harpy took four wounds from the newly arrived Terminator squad. As impressive as the last minute heroics were, it was not enough. At the end of turn four only the Chaplain and a lone Terminator remained for the Blood Angels.  Tyranids 8, Blood Angels 3.

A good game that would have been much closer if not for a few rolls. But that is why we play the game.

6th edition Tyranids do seem to favor the Kaiju style armies so far. I am going to try a list that is mostly little fellows and 'stealers and see how that fares. The unpredictable nature of what kind of Tyranid list you will be facing gives a edge to the 'Nids by complicating army creation for their opponent. It will be fun to see this play out in the games ahead.

Feed the Hive Mind!

Must be Blood!

Multiple Warp Signatures

Star Trek Attack Wing is speeding up their release schedule. With the some new (non-Heroclix) sculpts in the line-up and a re-do of the Klingon Bird of Prey I do hope that the older Heroclix Enterprise A & E get a new model as well. I'm not going to hold my breath though. Not very many ships left for them to do, I would love to see an Federation Akira class (from First Contact and some DS9) and a bigger Borg Cube without the armor plates. But that's just me.

It will be interesting to see how much the Borg shake things up. They had better keep the Borg as a really hard to kill, but few in number kind of force. I will be covering the Wizkid's Borg Organized Play Events starting in June, should be fun.

Now if they would just release some faction booster packs with some new crew and equipment cards and a couple of new named ships I would be very happy indeed.

Go Roll Some Dice

And make docking space