Rebel Transport for Star Wars Legion

So my old school Kenner Rebel Transports from eBay have arrived and the journey towards a combined cool scenery piece and miniatures storage solution takes a step closer.  This is a quick (picture heavy) update on progress so far.

First step was a clean up (yet another way baby wipes are awesome!)  Being unsure of how 35 year old toy plastic would take paint I settled on an initial top coat of Testors Dullcote.

In the UK  we have had unseasonably good weather (even for late Spring), so I concentrated on using spray cans outdoors rather than the airbrush.  As such the next stage was a base coat of Army Painter Uniform Grey.  (By the way, I love my airbrush, but with the volume and area I was going to have to cover, aerosols seemed like a quicker and more convenient route for this project).

The next stage was an airbrush highlight with Vallejo Game Air Light Grey.  I wasn’t too careful here, just tried to get a consistent highlight without worrying too much about the panels.  The deep lines on the main body of the toy were panel lined using a medium tipped black Gundam Marker.

The weathering was done in stages with some brushed on streaking using Army Painter Strong Tone wash, some oil brush pens from ‘Ammo of Mig Jimenez‘ and then a bit more wash through the airbrush.  Following this to tie it all together I used a can of Plastic Soldier Company ‘Light Brown’ Weathering spray.  Now sadly out of productions these are water based weathering sprays that you apply and then partly wipe off to get a really grimy look (they are great for WW2 tanks).

I’ve concentrated initially on the upper half of the body.  The lower half contains a bit more detail which according the the reference images I am using needs a bit more variation in colour and detail.  That will be the next step, then following that onto the ‘storage solution’ part of the project.

All in all I am relatively pleased with the outcome so far.  I think the grey colour scheme is actually a bit too dark when comparing to images of the ships from the films, but it will do for me.  I may have gone a bit over the top on weathering, but I like the idea that this is a proper battered old ship that perhaps the Rebels have been reduced to using out of desperation.  The one thing I will probably change when I come to starting the second ship is the approach to the panels on the hull which had stickers on.  This time round I just sprayed over them and then coloured them red using a Gundam marker.  I think the red is a bit too stark (plus the paint ran a bit), and also the stickers underneath did start to lift slightly.

So a bit of one down and one to go.  Trying not to get distracted but I may just have got hold of an AT-AT or two (oh dear)….

Legion first play and storage solutions

I finally got round to having a game of Star Wars Legion last weekend.  This was very much a training and learning game, so was played with unpainted miniatures (the horror!) on a 3 by 3 table with only infantry squads and an open acceptance we would more than likely get things wrong.

First impressions are very good.  There are some obvious commonalities with other Fantasy Flight Games both in terms of presentation (lots of tokens, high quality components) and gameplay (custom dice, use of ‘surges’ etc).  I’ll need a few more games to get to grips with things.

Having read some warnings online we played with the full supression rules (which are excluded from the Learn to Play rules) and it was fairly obvious that vehicles will be key moving forward.

The rulebook is worth a mention – it’s not great.  FFG provide a printed ‘Learn to Play’ booklet in the core box which attempts to introduce the rules in a step-by-step manner, but to me was just confusing and contradictory.  The full (freely downloadable) Core Rules are much clearer and I’d highly suggest that you skip straight to these.

So since then (and as a direct result of the excellent weather here in the UK at the moment) there has been lots of undercoating and painting (including the addition of an extra core box).

However I cannot seem to stay away from old Star Wars toys…..

Having decided that I really wanted an Imperial Lambda shuttle for the tabletop, I promptly changed my mind when I saw how much the toy versions (which are the ideal) size were on eBay.  (Revell do a kit, but it is far too small at 1:100ish scale.)

Seperately I had been thinking about investing in some figure cases for the growing Legion hordes, and then it struck me.  Combine the two – scenery piece and storage, and I remembered this…

I’ve managed to source two reasonably cheap and am awaiting their arrival.  Originally designed as carry cases for the action figures, I’m thinking the trays inside could easily be adapted with a bit of foam for miniatures.  Add a bit of weathering and Hoth board here we come…..!

Tabletop gaming with Action Force and the Red Shadows

As a boy in the early eighties I had no shortage of fictional villains to rally against, be it on the playground at school or when playing on the floor with my toys. Cinema, television and comics all offered various nefarious types to rally the forces of good against, many of which are now pop culture icons. Megatron, Skeletor, Darth Vader all had their place, but there was one man who for me stood head and shoulders above these on the baddie roll of dishonour…..Baron Ironblood!

The likehood is that if you weren’t of a certain age between 1983 and 1985 and are outside of the UK you will no idea about this man or his villainy.

The Baron was the main protagonist for Action Force, a range of ‘Star Wars’ scale action figures that were spawned from the popular (and larger) Action Man range. Action Man himself was the UK version of what was know as G.I.Joe in America and in the UK was produced and marketed by Palitoy (who also happened to be the distributor for the Star Wars figure range on this side of the pond).

Recognising there was an untapped market for military toys in the scale of the stupidly popular Star Wars range Palitoy shrank Action Man down from 12 inch doll to 3.5 inch action figure and the first wave was released in 1982.

Initially taking a similar approach to their larger cousins these fellas represented generic historical and modern military tropes (including Royal Marine Commando, Pilot, WW2 German Soldier, Desert Rat etc.)

However recognising the opportunity to expand the range the line was reorganised in 1983. With the help of some vehicles and figure sculpts borrowed from the US G.I.Joe line, Action Force was rebranded as an international military team brought together to fight an evil terrorist ‘Enemy’, The Red Shadows.

Action Force itself was split into four ‘arms’:

• Z Force – the infantry backbone of Action Force
• SAS Force – special ops and behind the lines specialists (tapping into the minor pop culture obsession there was with the SAS following the Iranian Embassy siege in 1981)
• Q Force – the naval and underwater team
• Space Force – did what it said on the tin!

Each team and the ‘Enemy’ had a range of figures, accessories and vehicles available.

At the same time the new toy line was supported by a series of comic strips published in the long running weekly boys war comic Battle. This was such a popular addition that the title soon renamed itself Battle Action Force.

By the way, for a full and detailed history of the toys and comics I’d highly recommend you visit the absolutely excellent Blood for the Baron website. Here you will also find comic strip scans from Battle Action Force.

Now eventually things changed, the toy line became more closely aligned with the American GI Joe line (dropping the Red Shadows for Cobra and introducing a new merged Action Force team) and while this was reflected very cleverly in the comic strip for me it was the passing of a golden age.

So here I am three decades later with the opportunity to revisit my favourite toy line on the tabletop. This is something I have been working on off and on for a few years, but with the increased availability of multi-part plastic kits in 28mm, 3D printing and a plethora of modern and pulp rulesets available this is something I have gone back to with a vengence recently.

Watch out Baron, here I come…..

(BTW I am certainly not the first person to approach this subject and blog about it. If you get chance please look at the excellent Action Force vs The Red Shadows by Andy ‘Soapy’ Dormer.)