Working on my first Veritech as far as RTT goes, but I have got the whole Area Denial Squad finished:
Category Archives: Right Living
Robotech Tactics: Destroid Area Denial Squad Painted
Filed under Finished Projects, Hobby, Modeling & Painting, Right Living
Robotech Tactics: Painting the Tomahawk Destroid Model
This afternoon I painted my very first Robotech Tactics model, a Tomahawk Destroid.
Front:
Left Oblique:
Rear:
Right Oblique:
To show the coloured in firing arc pips:
Before and after shot:
I’m not terribly good when it comes to camouflage, but I didn’t want to do the normal solid colour schemes. One reason for that is that the camouflage pattern should help hide things like mold lines and where I screwed things up during assembly. It’s also just more interesting to me to look at.
I got so excited about painting this afternoon that I completely skipped scraping the mold lines before I applied the undercoat. I will try to be more restrained in the future…
I undercoated in Krylon Flat White. I was going to use the Testor’s Model Primer originally because it’s a finer spray and I was afraid of obscuring some of the more shallow details, but I couldn’t find any in the local stores and didn’t want to drive out of town today. I use regular Krylon spray paint for all my other base coating anyway, so I didn’t feel too fussed about it
My base coat was Reaper’s Olive Drab. It may have been a mistake to use a Reaper paint for something meant to be shown off to the KS backers, since I normally use Citadel and am not entirely used to Reaper paints (they mix and apply differently.) But I really like the Olive Drab colour and didn’t have an equivalent in Citadel on hand, so there we go.
After basing I washed the whole thing in a heavily applied Citadel Thraka Green wash, which is an old wash that is no longer produced. I’m not a very good painter, so I really rely on washes to help me out.
The camouflage pattern is Citadel Dark Angels Green. I didn’t have a plan when I started, just started off making some high spots on the rear torso dark. Then I just sort of winged that mother.
A few spots, notably the gun clusters, I filled in with a Vallejo Black, which I also used to repaint the base black. My original idea for the base was a medium gray colour, but what I had wasn’t covering my paint splatters from painting the mecha, so I switched to the black because I didn’t feel like going through the trouble of multiple cover layers to get an even shade.
Also I decided it would be useful to fill in the firing arc pips with colour.
There is a little plate like thing on the rear of the bases that I assume is meant to be a place to add a designation for the particular mecha so you know what model goes with what card during play. I painted that a heavy white so that I can go back with a Sakura pigma pen and write in a number or name for the mecha when I get a better feel for how my army is going to shape up.
Oh yeah, the search light I layered up with light brown to ice blue, then added the white for the reflection effect (one of a very few special effects I ever attempt.)
For the pictures my camera isn’t great and neither is the lighting in my kitchen. In Photoshop I used the auto-colour function, then bumped the brightness to +20 and pulled the contrast down -50. This was to help highlight the difference in the greens of the camouflage. The two oblique pictures are probably the better representations of what the model looks like to the naked eye.
Reviresco!
Filed under Finished Projects, Hobby, Modeling & Painting, Right Living
Robotech Tactics: Building the Destroid Tomahawk Model
This evening I sat down with my new Robotech Tactics game and had a go at building one of the models. I selected the Destroid Tomahawk model, because this mecha has always been one of my favorite designs. I also wanted to carry it to the game store tomorrow to have something to show my friends, and this is a familiar design to many people.
To start off, there’s a lot more parts to these minis than is strictly necessary. The Kickstarter comment section had a lot of backdraft blowing through it, and I understand the bitching about seams and mold lines caused some of the delays as the Ninja Division people did their level best to eliminate them as much as possible. Of course this meant more parts. Honestly, I would have rather spent a few moments using the edge of my Exact-O than deal with the extra headache of small, fiddly bits, but nobody asked me and I didn’t want to get involved in the silliness of the discussion.
So here is the picture of the parts freshly clipped from the sprue:
I didn’t really look at the instructions, but there isn’t much in the way of instructions to begin with. This is probably my prime complaint here, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Below is the torso of the Tomahawk. I knocked it out in maybe five minutes. For this I’m using nothing but an old Exact-O and a mostly used tube of Loctite Super Glue Gel. I wanted to prove that it was easy, mostly, because there’s been a lot of angst circling this game and everything about it, so this is, “here, I did this with what most people could find in a kitchen junk drawer.”
The problem I have with the instructions is two-fold: they are vague, and the parts aren’t numbered. The vagueness first hit when I first looked at the missile bits for the torso. I had to do a double-take and actually look at the instructions, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that there are two styles, two of each. So you’re either going to have one mecha with both hatches open and another with both hatches closed, or you can have one and one of each. A very minor complaint: I would have preferred to have the option for both styles on both Tomahawks on the sprue. Really, though, for someone who has done this sort of hobby modeling for a while, the closed hatch at least would be easy to just make out of putty, and the smaller hatch-open pieces would be easy to self cast, if you really wanted to have two with both hatches open.
Like the torso missiles, the particle cannons have two different pose styles. The instructions show the arms as being two pieces with the cannon able to swivel, but apparently that was victim to one of the many mold changes. Not a big deal.
The legs and feet is where things go wonky. When they repackage these for general sale I sincerely hope that they include better instructions regarding this train wreck. Numbered parts here would be a great help. There are four different feet styles, and two sets of legs, and I didn’t know how they were supposed to match up. Figuring that part out took about as long as the rest of the assembly steps altogether. Maybe if I had paid closer attention when I was clipping parts, but I didn’t just clip bits helter-skelter, either. I wasn’t sure even when they were on the sprues which ones I should cut off or what the difference between them was. It took me until the dry-fitting to fully realize the extent to which the feet were different from one another:
There was a lot of guess work involved at this stage. I came up with what I thought was the best arrangement and took a photo:
Honestly, though, I’m certain that in between swearing and gluing my fingers to everything the above arrangement was probably modified. But I got through it, and managed to get the damn thing posed and glued together:
I was going for the pose from the Loose drawing out of the old Battletech Technical Field Manual 3025:
I couldn’t get the legs the way I wanted. I’m not sure it’s possible, but maybe it is. The hip joints are the weakest part of the design, and the most aggravating part of the actual assembly process. I think even if it were absolutely clear which leg matches which foot, gluing the legs to the hips would still be maddening. I’m not even positive the torso isn’t going to fall off or rotate forward or back by the time I wake up tomorrow. I guess I’ll update this if it goes sideways any time soon, but I think that sooner or later I may have to re-glue the legs to the hips.
There’s a few mold lines I want to scrape off that I skipped when I was putting it together, but I want to wait until the glue is dry and I’m ready to paint. I’ll do another one of these blogs when I’m doing the paint, maybe next Friday. I have a 40k figure I need to paint for a competition, so I’ll probably do them on the same day. I also need to buy some good primer. I think the spray paint I normally use would probably be too thick for the details of these.
So that’s that. I will do one of the Veritechs (all three poses) at some point, hopefully soon. When I get enough of the models done I’ll maybe play a small skirmish with a friend and do a battle report and review of the rules.
Reviresco!
Unboxing the new Robotech Tactics Game
As a mecha fan I was pretty stoked for the Robotech Tactics game when it was announced on Kickstarter. I put my money down, then tried to ignore all the gloom, doom, and hysteria among my fellow supporters when the first delay was announced. HG (Holy shit) Palladium and Ninja put out like 160 email updates over the following year, so I was OK with what was going on; I never once believed I wouldn’t get what I paid for.
Turns out that I was just over the 300th person to get shipped, and today I got my game in the mail. Still no Roy Fokker, but someone told me that’s a later wave.
Anyway, let’s get this unboxing started.
First, the box:
Some of these photos are going to be on top my dusty used piano in front of my “charming” wallpaper, so just go ahead and get used to it. This is a big box. Even bigger than the Battletech Anniversary game box. Again, here is a GW Space Marine for comparison.
And I’ve fiddled with the contrast and brightness of the individual pictures to try and get the best out of my non-professional camera and improvised photo stage. But yeah, there is the front of the box. When I got the box from the UPS man (who I waited for all day like a sniper) there was a lot of rattling around. I expected some of that, but I had hear that the frames would be in bags. I was afraid I would open the box and there would be a thousand little parts falling off their runners, but there wasn’t:
The piano is a recent addition, and I haven’t dusted it off since I moved it into my house all by myself. While the neighbors stood there drinking beer and watching me do it. Not once offering to help. But whatever, here’s the pile of sprues on top of my dusty piano:
Gaming accessories. Honestly I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at them. Just, “Yep, they look OK.” I am pretty happy I got the faction dice, though. I don’t remember if that’s a standard part of the game or was just for the Kickstarter supporters.
The book was pretty hefty, too. I remember the old 2nd Ed Battletech rulebooks which were pretty slim and just stapled together, and I guess I was expecting something more or less like that. Did they talk about the book size in the KS? I don’t remember:
I flipped through the book trying to figure out which pages to show as examples, then settled on Skull Leader and the “Jotun”. I really wanted to get the Jotun with the KS, because I really enjoyed the Orguss anime. Except for the last five minutes, because I STILL don’t know exactly what the hell happened. But man, that OP is fun. Anyway, I eventually want to get a set of Jotuns and modify one back to the original design and paint scheme, just because.
I haven’t opened the card packs yet, but here they are. They are packed so that you can see all the Defender related cards. The mid sized one is a regular poker card size, the small one is the same size as the X-Wing Minis game cards, and the large one is roughly the size of an index card. I assume these are standard industry sizes. They look good in person.
Examples of the UEDF sprues:
I have no idea why only one was in a package and the others were not.
A couple of them were twice the size of the others.
And then you get these two Destroid sprues. I will probably put these together first. UNSEEN, BITCHES!
Moving on to the Zentraedi forces:
And the cool one:
I happen to have a scale model of the Glaug, still on the sprues, so I thought I would do a size comparison for anybody who might find that interesting.
Had to switch to a green background so the white plastic would actually show up in the picture.
And also just because, a comparison between the Robotech Tactics assembly instructions versus the scale model assembly instructions:
I have no comments on this subject; go to the KS comments page for that mess. I’m just putting up things I find interesting.
And while I’m at it, the UEDF assembly instructions on the flip-side:
A bad picture of the transfers, included for completion’s sake:
Along with the inserts about the release waves:
There was a couple of other things about other games of Ninja Division like Tentacle Bento, and Rifts or whatever, but I didn’t feel like taking pictures of that stuff.
So, there is all that. Someday when I least expect it I will get an email about my Roy Fokker model coming in the mail, and I’ll maybe do something about that, too. I don’t know. I have so many models to assemble and paint. I’ve got a backlog like you wouldn’t believe, and that was before even all this arrived…
Whatever. If I ever got finished then it wouldn’t be a hobby.
Reviresco!
Filed under Hobby, Reviews & Reports, Right Living
First 40k game of 2014
January 1st I travelled down to the FLGS to meet a friend, and we had our first game of the year.
I brought Chaos Space Marines: generic Chaos Lord, Plague Marines 2×7 w/Rhinos and x2 plasma, 1×5 Havocs (Lascannons x2, Autocannons x2), Melta-Maul Termicide squad x3, Ectofiend, and Baledrake.
He brought Craftworld Iyanden: Wraithlord as HQ, a Spiritseer to buff it, Wraithguard squads x2, Wraithblades x1, and a Crimson Hunter.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures, and I forgot I was taking pictures during the most intense parts of the game, but the ones I have should give a good idea of what happened.
We played Dawn of War and, as usual, forgot about the night fighting rules. I won deployment and decided to go first. We had three objectives, so I chose the table half that had two of the three. Since we had Big Guns Never Tire, I set my Havocs up on one objective backed up by the Chaos Lord: A. The other objective was at the entrance to a small building, so I hid a unit of Plague Marines out of LOS to camp out next to it, using their empty Rhino to block LOS in the gap between the hills in front of the objective: D. I set up my Ectofiend in the middle, so he could either support the Havocs or the other set of Plague Marines: B. The second unit of Plague Marines started in their Rhino, with the task of moving forward to contest or seize the third objective: C. The Baledrake and Termicide are in Reserves.
My friend sets up. He makes an “FU blob” with the Wraithlord, Spiritseer, and Wraithblades: 1. He positions them to move against the objective my Havocs and Lord are sitting on. He puts a unit of Wraithguard on the one objective in his deployment area: 3. The remaining squad of Wraithguard are placed opposite my maneuver units, probably to block them: 2. He’s got his Crimson Hunter in Reserves, of course, and counting on it coming in after my Baledrake so he can burn it down with it’s ridiculous shooting capability.
You can see those two Wraithguard there. I shot everything in the world at that one unit in an attempt to remove them before they could do anything. I got hits with both Ectofiend shots and my Havocs lit them up too. Not a bad first round.
My Ectofiend, and the worrisome menace of the Wraithblades. I was worried about taking just the one Ectofiend, because they’re only AV12 and they normally get exploded first thing. He lived to shoot for two rounds, though, then got tied up by the one surviving Wraithguard tar-pitting him in HTH.
My Terminators almost went off the board when they teleported down. They went nine inches straight toward the corner. Only the sergeant hit with his combi-melta shot, which failed to blow up the Wraithlord. The next turn the Wraithlord detached to face them, I forgot to assault with them, then the Crimson Hunter came in and lit them up and killed them.
And then I forgot to take pictures!
My Plague Marines had their Rhino shot out from under them, but had a gun-line showdown with the Wraithguard on the objective. The Wraithguard and Crimson Hunter killed my Plague Marines, then my Baledrake came tearing in and took HP off the Hunter with Meteoric Descent then put a fatal template over the Wraithguard. The Hunter was velocity locked at 18″, but it’s super maneuverability rule made that not completely terrible for it. The Baledrake got some lucky saves from the return fire, then flew off the board, hitting the Hunter again for HP. I think. Some things are fuzzy, but I know the Baledrake went off the table in a strategic retreat.
My Chaos Lord detached from the Havocs to set up a counter assault. The Havocs downed the Wraithlord with lascannons because it had left itself open by detaching from the Wraithblades squad. The Wraithblades made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to assault the Havocs, but they had the mysterious objective thing that halved charge distance, and I rolled some unholy 6s during overwatch shooting and killed a few. They finally made it up there and swept the Havocs, then the Lord charged in and used his LC/PF combo to wreck a few more before he got stabbed to death by the Spiritseer.
The Crimson Hunter blew up the Ectofiend after it finally managed to stomp on the lone Wraithguard following a terrible slap-fight. The Hunter then positioned itself to shoot up my Plague Marines on the far objective. Only 1 or 2 PMS actually go down to shooting, and then the Baledrake came screaming in from Ongoing Reserves and clawed the Crimson Hunter from the skies before laying down a template over the recently triumphant but now utterly horrified Wraithblades. All the Wraithblades got burned to death after failing every single invuln save, and the Spiritseer couldn’t claim the objective.
So we went 6 rounds, with the final tally being CSM: First Blood, Slay the Warlord, x1 Objective for 5 VP; Iyanden: Linebreaker for 1 VP. It was a very close game, and we both committed some tactical errors, but it came down to a single Spiritseer facing 5 PMs and a Heldrake at the end. A clear victory for the IV Legion XLIX Grand Company ‘the Iron Hounds’.
I look forward to a fun year of gaming and hobby related activities.
Reviresco!
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Filed under Battle Reports, Hobby, Right Living
Romantic Antihero™ 