Dibdab's Hobby Blog

 Just prepping my next project. These are some Scout Trooper sculpts from Skull Forge Studios . Going to be some nice variants from the model from Atomic Mass Games. These were printed out by my good friends at 3D Kingdoms. They will be painted up in the standard white imperial scout trooper armour and deserty style bases.

 Completed my Death Troopers this evening. Nothing to fancy, just some layered black and metals. I may go back and pick up some of the straps as I am planning for these guys to be like an end of level encounter rather than a run of the mill encounter.

Up next will be finishing of some Scum that have been sat on the painting desk and a couple of Spartans for Legion Imerpialis.

 

I am waiting on some basing materials to arrive so that I can finish off my first unit of French Infantry, I have ordered a selection of flocks, shrubs and flowers from Gamer's Grass as I am wanting a French countryside look to the bases, like what was seen in the early episodes of Band of Brothers. 

So I wanted something quick and easy to finish off, so plucked the box of Death Troopers from the pile of shame. These have been undercoated black and then a drybrush of Platemail then followed by a drybrush of Ray Gun Blue. Then the final layer was Black Templar. This is giving a nice blue hue coming through the Black Templar. 

Just waiting on the basing material to dry and then I will pick out the pouches and areas of metal to get the unit finished.

 Next up on the painting table was a new Rebel figure that might be closely ressembles Blaize from Rogue One. This was printed by my good friends at 3D Kingdoms. If you have not checked out their site pop over and have a look. They also do bespoke printing if you don't own one yourself
 

 Well it has been a while posting real life has been limiting my hobby time.

But I have been collecting and researching my projects for 2024. In this post I will put a little detail in to what I aim to be focusing on in 2024.

1. Legions Imperialis

This was GW latest release into the Horus Heresy era with the core set bringing us both Space Marines and Solar Auxilia and the new frame for the Warhound. Once again it seems that the manufacturing side and promotion sides of Games Workshop do not communicate with each other fully. As the initial launch has sold through the base core items needed to build your armies. So hopefully this will not allow the release of the game to stall. 

My focus from the starter set will be the Solar Auxilia and I have picked up a couple more box sets of infantry and Baneblades. My planes from Aeronautica will be used to fill out my army to hopefully hit the 3000 point mark. But we are still waiting for some of the core releases from the rulebook to be released. So hoping to see the Leman Russes, Malcadors, and Vanguard units released shortly. Or there are going to be some very very beige and boring army lists without the variation needed.

2. Black Templars

With the release of 10th Edition 40K, I have taken my time deciding what force to start with. Always had a hankering for the crusading forces of the Templars and also going to add in some Sisters of Battle as an allied force.

3. Star Wars

This project takes on many guises:

Role playing Game: I have started to run a Star Wars Campaign set just after the decree of Order 66. The group have a number of Jedi so they are currently focused on escaping the planet and ensuring that they lose the chasing Clone Troopers.

Within this project are a lot of 3d printed models done by my friends at 3D Kingdoms.

Legion: I have a only Ashoka, Clan Wren to finish my rebel army, then I will be working on my Empire force focused on the occupation of Jedha.

Shatterpoint: I have all the releases so far from Atomic Mass Games and will be using these figures to focus and improve my painting techniques. I am not sure if and when the group will play the game. 

Armada: I think that this game may be dead in the eyes of Atomic Mass Games at the current time. So I will use this as time to paint up all the unpainted ships. 

 

These have been sat on the painting for a while so it was good to finally get them completed. So all left to finish the army is Ashoka, Sabine and Clan Wren. Hope to get some progress shots this week.

 Recently picked up the Separtist Starter set and it comes with 4 unpainted Vulture squadrons. So a quick undercoat of grey and then a coat of Leviadon Blue Contrast paint and drybrush metal and black cockpit.

I have a new neoprene mat on order from DeepCut Studios so looking forward to getting some battle shots and unboxings.

 As you will have seen from my recent posts that I have slowly been getting back into Star Wars Armada. I delved deep into this game when it first came out and bought many of the first set of waves. but then as usual with me and our gaming group other distractions came along and I lost track of releases and what was going on in the community.  

But after finding Crabbok's YouTube channel (Check out his channel great videos of what is fresh and new in Star Wars Gaming) when looking up Star Wars Legion I found his love of Armada and this got me to hunt out my crate that I had stored everything in and see what I had in my collection.

Having a mix of Imperials and Rebels but nothing really that would allow any variations in my fleet builds and sorely lacking upgrade cards I made out my shopping list for the Imperials to start off with:

SSD: I mean it is huge but Gor Dam I want that model for my shelf lol

Chimera: This is a Star Destroyer variant that brings Thrawn as a commander and some other useful ship cards

Gorzanti Imperial Assault Carriers

Interdictor

Imperial Light Cruiser

Imperial Star Destroyer: I have one but jeez love a big space triangle and there is no way to replicate that famous scene from Empire without 3 of them 

Imperial Light Carrier

Onager Class Star Destroyer

Imperial Squadron packs 1 and 2: I have both of these already but I reckon that more Squadrons cannot hurt. Plus I do love a Tie Bomber.

 I think one of the issues that I am going to have is how many of each ship variant do I want?

Since the release there has been some price rises and getting hold of some of the items is getting quiet hard. But hunting cap was put on a I started scouring the internet.

I found on good old Amazon these two items well under RRP so even though the Pelta Frigate was not on the list it was to good an opportunity not to pick up, for maybe a future fleet. The Interdictor was also a great price so with these two new ships under my belt the shopping has started

I will be doing an unboxing of my purchases in the near future so you can see the models and what cards etc you get, but now time to pack for a much needed holiday. We are off to Tunisia and hopefully if my leg is feeling a lot better we will be able to go on a planned Star Wars tour as some much of the films and backdrops have locations not far from where we are staying. 

May the Force be with you.

 Its been a rough couple of weeks for me, I woke up feeling all feverish and my left leg had swollen, packed off to the Doctors by my loving wife. I was soon in the QMC Nottingham Hospital being treated for an infection caused by an insect bite a couple of years ago. Spent a whole week in hospital on IV drips. I cannot thank the nursing staff of ward C52 enough for all the help and care they gave me over the seven days that I was in hospital. 

Feeling pretty low and mostly bed ridden, I decided to cheer myself up and bought myself a Star Wars Lego set. I was thinking of the Falcon but at £750 it was a bit steep.

Now I had not made any Lego for a very long time, so was pleasantly surprised at the numbered bagging to make the build easier.

I built the model over a couple of days and it is a fairly big kit but easy to build only a couple of areas where I scratched my head a bit.

 

Finally with some clear weather and not on husband duties I have got round to base coating the ATDP.

Started with a black undercoat and then Mechanicus Grey over the top.

Will now start on lightening up the base coat before I can start weathering. 

I am following Sorastros painting guides as I find them a very good starting point for a lot of my projects.

 

Finished up this week 2 more squadrons for Armada, its the Y-Wings and B-Wings. Now just have the X-wings and Tie Fighters to get started on. Before I start working on the Elite pilots.

 

Welcome to part 1 of my All Terrain Defense Pod project. This walker has long featured in the graphic novels, books and cartoon series, but as yet AMG have yet to bring it to the table top. So I hunted around the interweb to find some 3D files. Now I have no idea and to be honest no willingness to learn how to 3D print at the current time, but a good friend of mine owns a 3D print business. So I popped him the files and hay presto like green magic I took ownership of my first ATDP.

If you are looking to have anything 3D printed look up:

3D KINGDOMS

If its your first order you get 10% off

So here is the ATDP assembled and ready for priming

As you can see she's big

With a clone trooper for scale.

If the rain holds off this weekend I will get it primed and hopefully the first layers of paint.

 Fresh of the paint pallet today is a squadron of A-Wings for Armada. I am slowly working my way through the squadrons and getting a feel for the scale. Even though the larger ships come pre-painted I am going to look at a new repaint or see what I can do to personalise them for my fleet.

 

Its been a while since I hit up some paints on the final unit of Rebel Commandos so this week I am aiming to get them completed. As you will see from the front row of troops I have 5 different alien races to work on.

Looking forward to using some different colour skin tones and a variant on the pallet. Next set of photos should be the unit complete meaning I can move onto Clan Wren and Sabrine.

 Despite the unseasonable heat we have in the UK at the moment, completed another Squadron for Armada, this time from the Rogues and Villains pack. The dial is dual sided the other allowing you to take the famous Millenium Falcon. That will be up next to going to work on the well known and loved scheme.

 Tonight I got the final four bases from my Imperial Fighter Squadron II bringing 2 stands of Destroyers and Phantoms. Will start exploring how I will look to use them in a game and what role they will play in a fleet.

 

Spent the weekend working at Games Expo this weekend and this was my haul from the show. I had planned on picking up Shatterpoint at some point but the deals at the show were to good to pass up on. I also got hold of the Padawam Ahsoka Tano as part of their promo release. 

 

Some more Armada squadrons completed tonight. Each of the squadrons has the standard version and an elite pilot version of the card. This is half the box set completed I have some Tie Phantoms and Defenders to paint up next and the box is complete. 

 

A break from the legion painting tonight. Spent some time tidying up the garage and came across my box of Star Wars Armada. Not played this game in a while but I knew I still had my squadrons to paint up. So nice quick and easy paint job on one of the shuttles. 

 Work is progressing nicely on the next batch of 12 rebel commandos. Most of the base layers are now down, just some undershirts to do and then onto the cammo and washes. As you may have noticed there are some additional alien races to add some nice variants to the units. So are the following a Mon Calamari sniper, Ithorian gunners, Gran solider, Ishi Tib officer and a Chiss gunner. I am going to enjoy the paint work on these so that they really stand out on the battlefield.