I finally did it! After its launch in November 2019, I’ve finally finished painting all of the models within. You might think, 3 and a half years, to paint 25 models? Well yes, I am slow, but we’ve been through quite a few colour changes to get here!
I’m quite pleased with the results, anyway – so much so, that I set up that mini diorama above!
The Battle Sisters are some of the best models GW has produced, I feel, and now that I’ve found my colour scheme, I’m really enjoying getting the full army painted. After finishing the Arco Flagellants from the launch box to call the whole thing finished, I’m now ready to launch myself into the 500 points challenge that I talked about the other day. I think I’m going to begin with the Novitiates, because they’re intriguing me as regards the challenges that will come from having to find a different-but-similar scheme for them.
The awesome Exorcist is now finished, as well! It’s such a bonkers model, I just love it so much. Very much looking forward to getting all these to the table at some point, though for now, I’m still enjoying playing the Tyranids…
The final book in the Han Solo trilogy begins with one of those seminal events that we all knew would be coming in this series. Much like Han had to rescue Chewbacca from slavery, he also had to win the Millennium Falcon from his friend Lando Calrissian. So we open the third book with the sabacc tournament at Cloud City, where the large tournament gradually sees just Han and Lando left, and despite a pretty good bluff, Han is able to win the game with a Pure Sabacc and claims the Falcon as his prize when Lando is forced to use a marker after running out of credits. He immediately begins to work on it, and he and his casual girlfriend Salla Zend engage in races to see who can deliver their cargo the fastest. Unfortunately, Salla comes into trouble and Han is forced to rescue her, after which her attitude towards him changes, and she starts to plan their wedding, despite the fact Han isn’t interested in settling down.
To escape, Han travels to the Corporate Sector, and is absent for a good chunk of the book while Brian Daley’s Han Solo novels take place. Instead, we catch up with Bria Tharen, who was actually present at the Cloud City tournament, using the gambling as a cover to meet with other Rebel groups to try to forge an alliance between them. En route to Nal Hutta for an audience with Jiliac and Jabba, she is nearly captured by Boba Fett, who is following a priority bounty on her head placed there by the Besadii Hutt crime family. However, Lando is able to rescue her with the help of the pirate queen Drea Renthal, who had unexpectedly pulled from hyperspace the cruise ship they were travelling on, intent on robbing the passengers.
Durga’s attempts to discover who had poisoned his parent Aruk the Hutt eventually lead him into bed with Black Sun, manoeuvred there by the Falleen Prince Xizor, who has wanted to gain a hold in Hutt Space and agrees to help Durga in exchange for a cut of the profits from Ylesia. Despite at first trying to remain independent, Durga eventually gains the proof to place a bounty on Teroenza and challenge Jiliac to single combat, during which he is eventually able to kill the Desilijic leader. Jabba, after killing Jiliac’s newborn child, is thereafter the leader of Desilijic, and agrees to bankroll Bria Tharen’s proposed offensive to destroy the spice factories on Ylesia.
Bria, after a discussion with Lando, finally reunites with Han in an effort to recruit smugglers to help with the assault, and at first Han wants nothing to do with her. However, he eventually comes round, and the two rekindle their romance from ten years before. Bria is privately convinced that Han will follow her into the resistance, while Han believes Bria will leave the rebellion and maybe they can re-locate to the Corporate Sector.
The Ylesian offensive goes off as expected, and even the arrival of Boba Fett doesn’t stop Bria and Han from clearing out Teroenza’s treasure, as the bounty hunter is only there for the high priest’s horn. Bria has received orders the rebels need every credit they can get, so she basically double-crosses the smugglers, and they take all of the spice, as well as rescuing all of the slaves. Han is left with a box of Teroenza’s treasure, and the rest of his friends having the impression that Han was in on the double-cross all along.
When Han resumes his smuggling activities for Jabba, he is almost boarded by an Imperial customs patrol, and is forced to jettison the spice he was carrying. Evading the patrol made him fly dangerously close to the Maw black hole clusters, and the way space-time was warped effectively meant he shortened his distance, making the run in just under 12 parsecs. However, Jabba is not pleased, and demands either his spice or the value in credits. When Han approaches Lando for a loan, the gambler punches him in the face and tells him to stay away after double-crossing him. Desperate, Han and Chewie take on a charter to fly two people and two droids from Mos Eisley to Alderaan…
The final book definitely packs a lot of action into its almost-400 pages. Well, the whole trilogy actually has a lot going on, but it seems my synopsis of this one is so much longer than I had done for either of the others! I talked about this before, of course, but the story of Han’s earlier life had been doled out piecemeal for a number of years, through a variety of media, and the trilogy was always, to some extent, going to have that element of ticking off the boxes of things we know had to happen. Han had to win the Falcon from Lando, and it’s nice that we get to have a bit of the rules of sabacc explained along the way. I think it was this trilogy and the Jedi Academy trilogy that gave us our basic rules, with the West End Games supplement Crisis on Cloud City actually coming with a sabacc mini-game (complete with cards!) – I should probably talk about that book at some point, because it’s really pretty good!
We also have to explain why Han is so frosty towards both Leia and the Rebels, so we get Bria Tharen and her double-cross. Bria actually dies towards the end of the book, as her Red Hand Squadron beam the plans to the Death Star from an Imperial comms station to a blockade runner waiting in orbit, which of course was reworked for the movie Rogue One. But it’s nice to see the end of her story, as well. Yes, of course, she is a huge Mary Sue character, with sometimes awfully cliché descriptions (“exquisite bone structure” and “lovely mouth” always make me chuckle). But when you take it at face value, and try not to analyse the story too much, it’s actually a neat little parcel that Crispin delivers here.
Furthermore, we also get to learn what Chewie meant when Han was forced to stop over at Cloud City for repairs. The double-cross was perhaps not strong enough, in my view, as the way Lando had been written up to this point, being best buddies with Han and all, I think he would have actually listened to Han’s side of the story. I feel like something more should have happened to Lando. Han should have left him high and dry or something, it doesn’t feel like it was enough, somehow. And finally, of course, how did the Millennium Falcon make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs, when a parsec is a unit of measurement, and not a unit of time? Well, it might not be the best explanation, but it’ll do!
The ending did feel a tiny bit rushed, somehow. It’s where that Run takes place, and I think there was perhaps a need to wrap everything up neatly that overrode things here. The way Han talks about it, it sounds like it should be a famous feat in the Outer Rim, but he made that Run at most a couple of days before he starts to boast, which doesn’t seem right really, but I suppose I’m just nitpicking on that point.
The problem, I suppose, is that the ending is a little bit too neat, for a trilogy that has, overall, been a little too neat as well. On reflection, Han’s life up until the time he sits down in that cantina booth has been pretty smooth sailing, and fairly uncomplicated. Whether that’s a stylistic choice or just bad writing, who knows. However, there is a part of me that thinks he had it a bit too easy, just walking into a life with the smugglers on Nar Shaddaa and becoming one of the gang, and more, very easily and very quickly. There’s very little in the way of working his way up to any kind of notoriety, which I think would perhaps have worked if he’s made that Kessel Run in the middle book.
Rebel Dawn is perhaps most notable for the fact that Han disappears from his own trilogy for about a third of the story, due to the fact Crispin had to incorporate the earlier Brian Daley novels. These novels came out in 1979/80 and are very much just throwaway adventures that were written just to give Star Wars fans more of their favourite stuff, similar to the (dreadful) Lando Calrissian Adventures. With Luke, Leia, Vader and co all off-limits, Han and (especially) Lando were easy fodder for more stories set before the movies, so we have these weird and wonderful sci-fi stories about their escapades. In order to try to pull as many threads from across the old EU as possible, Crispin therefore had to plot her story so that Han disappears, but isn’t entirely absent. There are some Interludes which almost act as a postlude to each book in the Daley trilogy, and this decision is pretty divisive among fans. Some folks hate the book for it, but others like me actually appreciate the fact that it all works out pretty smoothly. The reason for Han’s departure is sound, after all, and I think it works better than ending the Hutt Gambit with a sort of “I’m off to do Corporate Sector stuff!” scene, then beginning Rebel Dawn with his glorious return. It also helps to tie in with the Salla Zend that we know from Dark Empire.
The book also gives us more Hutt action than perhaps any other expanded universe story, and I love it for that. We get to follow the machinations of Jabba, Jiliac and Durga, and we learn a lot about Hutt society and business as a result. These parts of the story are almost more interesting than the rest, I have to say! I love the Fringe in Star Wars, so I suppose it was inevitably going to be among my favourite parts of the story.
All in all, the trilogy is enjoyable. It fits in with the fact that Star Wars is a space fantasy / fairy tale, and the life of Han Solo being as convenient as it is, it still makes for a fun read. Sure, there’s a part of me that wished some things could have been tweaked to make it seem a touch more believable, but I suppose that’s not the point. We want to see Han Solo the dashing rogue, the space pirate who makes the right call and so on. We need tales of derring-do and so on, and this – like most of the other Bantam novels – hits the mark.
Ylesia makes a return appearance later on in the New Jedi Order, in a short story to do with the Peace Brigade that I’ve never actually read, so I’m looking forward to my eventual re-read of that series so I can actually see what goes on there. In the meantime, I’m planning to sprinkle a few more of these Bantam classics into my reading schedule, I think I’m going to move on to Shadows of the Empire next…
Remember about twelve months ago, I talked about wanting to play more board games, and even had the buy-in from my wife for joining this endeavour with a semi-regular games night suggested? I was very much fired up to get round to exploring the whole Elder Sign collection, and then promptly did next to nothing to make that happen!
Well, that’s not quite true. We played Elder Sign twice, then promptly moved on.
Anyway!
Slightly longer than twelve months on, I’m finally getting round to making this happen. I had a game with the first expansion, Unseen Forces, which was actually pretty good, I must say! I’ve already written up a proper game-day review of the expansion, which you can read here, but suffice it to say, this expansion has got a lot to offer for anyone who enjoys the base game.
Pretty much every expansion in the game line following this one changes the mechanics wildly, moving us out of the Museum and adding additional layers of complexity. Unseen Forces, then, is almost a “pure” expansion in that it gives us more of what we enjoyed the first time around. Of course, there are new mechanics, such as the Blessed/Cursed thing that is a part of so many Arkham Files games, as well as tweaks to the mythos deck, and so on. But there’s a big part of me that really appreciates these sorts of expansions, so I always feel the need to fly that flag!
At any rate, I’ve now chalked up a game with Unseen Forces, so up next will be Gates of Arkham, the first of the expansions to break the mould. I have only played that twice, and Omens of Ice has only seen a single game, with none of the others having had a look in. I’m excited to see what everything has to offer, at any rate, as I am to see what I’ve been missing all these years!!
Hey everybody, Despite a lot of waffle from me the other day about Tyranids, my current project is very definitely centred around the Sisters of Battle, as I’ve been enjoying painting the Exorcist tank, and want to try and get more of those units painted up in time for 10th edition dropping this summer. I already have a pretty decent amount of models painted, however I have an equally decent amount of models unpainted, with a not-insignificant number of models still in boxes on the sprue!
To help tackle this, James and I have started on a bit of a slow-grow type thing, where we have a 500-point list for each of our armies, and we just go from there. He’s doing Imperial Guard, as he has an impressive collection of Forge World Death Korps of Krieg models that need some attention, and I’ve got a small bunch of Sisters to get me moving once the tank is finished.
My list is simply ten Battle Sisters, ten Sisters Novitiates, three Paragon Warsuits, and a Canoness. It actually comes in at 530 points, but as I’ve already painted the Canoness, I think it’s probably fine! The idea is to keep us going by just focusing on this small force (although 500 points of Guard is actually quite a lot!) and then see about playing some games, either as a farewell to Ninth or to learn how to play Tenth!
To some extent, it’s also scratching that itch that I talked about at the start of the week, with having a project to work on. There’s a part of me hoping that I will be able to really focus on these models to the exclusion of all else, and hopefully get them finished by the end of June. I know that I still have some Hobby Goals for 2023 to work on, and I don’t want to be getting too distracted from those, but I would really like to get a full rounded battalion of Sisters painted up, so two HQs and three troops, before the end of the edition.
Naturally, I’ve already begun to think about what else I could be adding in to this as time goes on, in an effort to get rid of the backlog in the attic. I’ve currently got the box of five Seraphim waiting for me to do something with, as I really enjoyed those models back when I was painting them last year, so I would like to get some more Sisters of flying doom finished. I also have two more Penitent Engines, a box of Repentia, an Immolator, and the Triumph of St Katherine in boxes (that I can recall – there’s possibly still more…) It would be nice to get as much as possible painted though, especially while I’m in this mindset.
Once this is all finished, I’m not really sure where I would go from there. I mean, it’s possible that the army would be pretty much finished, which is quite shocking really! I suppose I wouldn’t mind a third Battle Sisters squad, as the Novitiates are a bit disappointing for what they do. A rhino for transport might also be nice. I’m not really sure what else I would like to get, though – I suppose it would become a question of whether there is a surprise release waiting for us, a bit like the AdMech release that came out during the Psychic Awakening series between 8th and 9th. A Sisters flyer would be nice, as would some kind of biker unit, so I suppose we will see. Their 10th edition codex isn’t due out this year, from what I can tell, so I suppose that could mean more unit entries could be on the way!
I’m definitely pumped for working on these models once more, and even though I don’t really have the best of memories for how they performed on the tabletop, I am still looking forward to having a fully-painted force to push around!
Well folks, I’m more than a little bit late to the party with this one, given that the first season on Andor wrapped up months ago! As it’s Star Wars Day, though, I thought it only proper that I try to mark the occasion, and Andor has been on my mind a lot lately. I think I just found it very heavy-going, somehow, though. After the slow-burn of the first three episodes building to an explosive climax, I did find myself almost having to force myself to make time to watch it, and once I had caught up at the time, with episode six, I kinda left it again, and it’s only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve wanted to return. It is a very slow burn, though, as a number of reviews have said, and I think that’s what was putting me off at the time – I was probably not all that focused on Star Wars after the summer reading I had done, so was keen for something different.
The first half of the twelve episode season breaks down quite easily into the recruitment of Cassian Andor into the growing resistance movement being co-ordinated by Luthen Rael. The first three episodes show a number of flashbacks to Cassian’s past, which go some way to explaining his current position as a bit of a down-and-out on the planet Ferrix, where he lives with his adopted mother. Luthen convinces Cassian to join an operation on the planet Aldhani, to steal the payroll of the Imperial sector garrison. Cassian joins a band of established rebels in the wilderness, and the next three episodes show the preparations for, and the execution of the heist.
Along the way a supporting cast of thousands begins to unfold, with significant time being given to both Mon Mothma as she attempts to gain control of her family finances to aid the rebellion, and the Imperial Security Bureau and their investigation into stolen Imperial tech, which leads them to Ferrix and Andor. With the Aldhani heist making galactic news, the stakes are ramped up and Cassian basically takes his cut and runs, however he is apprehended on a completely unrelated charge, and essentially jailed for six years for the crime of walking along a beach.
Forced to labour on unspecified machinery, Cassian eventually hears the rumours that the prison basically recycles its inmates, and nobody is actually released. Together with the shift supervisor Kino, Cassian instigates a revolt among the prisoners and they are able to escape. Upon regaining his freedom, however, Cassian learns of the death of his adopted mother. The ISB intend to use the occasion of her funeral on Ferrix to flush out Cassian, however a riot breaks out when the Imperials overplay their hand, and Ferrix becomes something of a spark for the nascent Rebel Alliance.
I don’t think any synopsis of this twelve-part series would do the storyline justice, as it is incredibly intricate and very far-reaching, all told. On top of that, however, the atmosphere is so on-point, it’s really quite remarkable. In the original trilogy, we get the sense that the Empire is not a nice organisation, to put it mildly, but things are told from the optimistic point of view of the rebels. We know that there’s danger, of course, but it’s somehow distant, and our plucky heroes are still untouchable even while their friends die around them. It all fits in with what I’ve mentioned quite a bit here on the blog lately, the idea that the original trilogy (A New Hope, especially) is full to the brim with optimism and heroism in the mould of the golden age.
Here, however, the Star Wars universe is dangerous. Andor takes a much more brutal and realistic look of what life would be like under a dictatorship. The rebellion scenes with Cassian himself are all pretty horrible, as you see some of the things that these guys have to go through in the name of fighting for freedom. Life on the frontier really is just awful, and the fact that the story moves at a much more slower pace allows you to get that on a really visceral level. I know there was a lot of criticism at first about the fact that basically not much happened in between the escape from Ferrix in the third episode, and then the heist on Aldhani in the sixth episode, but the series was taking the time to explore its characters and layer in so much more than we have, up to now, seen in the Star Wars universe.
By contrast to the rebels, we have Mon Mothma in her own deadly game on Coruscant, meeting with bankers in an effort to gain control of her finances without attracting the attention of the Empire. This is really where Luthen comes into the story, as a bridge between the two worlds. As an antiquities dealer, Luthen’s shop provides a perfect meeting place for him and Mon Mothma, who is buying stuff to get funds to the rebels. He’s not really a fence, but his character is so perfect, as he travels the galaxy without suspicion because of his front business. He’s able to meet with Saw Gerrera and his partisans, which was also a nice callback to Rogue One.
Something of a highlight, for me, were the scenes with the Imperial Security Bureau, where we see the men and women who are playing their own power games within the Imperial administrative machine. I thought it was fascinating to see how these people genuinely feel as though they are doing good, by preventing unrest and, as Palpatine himself said, enabling that “safe and secure society”. When Cassian Andor is suspected of criminal damage and the like, of course they’re going to hunt him down, especially when he is suspected of stealing from the government. I think it was pretty genius to not only include the ISB, but also to have them portrayed in this manner. They aren’t sadistic, per se, but they’re doing what needs to be done with almost dispassion, to get the job done. It’s an aspect of the Empire that we haven’t really seen in Star Wars, but its inclusion here really blurs those lines between good and evil quite well. Of course, they’re the baddies of the piece, because we’re meant to root for Cassian et al, but when you actually think about it, the ISB isn’t Darth Vader and the Navy, pursuing the rebel scum without mercy. They’re just performing a function within the government. If they were doing it with cackles of glee in shadowy chambers, then you’d perhaps think twice, but their conference room is bright white, as it their uniform, and they have due process they need to go through before they can progress an investigation. It does give you pause, especially when Andor and the others aren’t the squeaky-clean Luke Skywalker and co of the original movies.
I think, when you can watch all twelve episodes of this series in one hit (or, at least, on your own terms), then the show is tremendous. Having to wait weeks between each episode did kinda put me off for a while back in October/November, and it has taken me quite some time to get back into it. But I’m so glad I did, because it really is a tour de force of showing the galaxy under the thumb of the Emperor. I suppose it helps writing this when I’m also still reading the Han Solo trilogy, which is set in a similar timeframe. There aren’t many similarities, of course, but it’s interesting when we see in the novels how people are increasingly disillusioned by the Empire’s vice-like grip, and the over-reaching of power, which is forcing so many people to take up the offer of life as a pilgrim on Ylesia. In some ways, Bria Tharen’s Red Hand Squadron is a similar group to the one Luthen is setting up, they’re the ones who do the dirty work, who get their hands red in the blood of their enemies. Leave the photo-ops for the Lukes and the Leias, these guys are the ones who are doing, as Cassian himself says in Rogue One, “whatever it takes” to bring freedom back to the galaxy.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what season two brings – not least because it promises to be shorter, but I’m excited to see what happens next, as we gear up for a full-on lead-in to Rogue One. I might even re-watch this first season beforehand, although I’ll try to get it done in chunks again!
I have finally had a game with my Tyranids in 9th edition, just as we have the new edition coming over the horizon! I’ve been thinking about my big army of bugs quite a lot over the years, but somehow they’ve always lost out to something else. Well, finally they hit the table, as I had a small-scale battle with JP, and it was just glorious.
It helped, of course, that I won!
Tyranids in 9th edition are a little bit confusing, I have to admit. I think this is perhaps symptomatic of the fact GW have tried to make all armies really unique and feel really customised, but it does come at a bit of a cost. There are, of course, the standard things that we know and love about the big bugs, but it all just feels like there are wheels within wheels at times. But let’s go through and see what the Great Devourer can offer.
To start with, we have the classic Synapse rule, which applies to a lot of the units across the army. Synapse creatures allow other models within 6” to auto-pass morale tests. Marvellous! In addition, there’s a thing now called Synaptic Link Range, which is basically a 12” bubble around the Synapse creature, and can come into play with various aura abilities, and psychic powers. The big change for 9th though is that other Synapse creatures will allow that range to extend, so in the codex example, a Broodlord can affect a unit of Genestealers well outside of its own 12” bubble if there is a Hive Tyrant within 12” of it, and a Zoanthrope unit within 12” of the Hive Tyrant, creating that real “hive mind” feel. It actually needed me to play it to see how that would work, but blimey, it was useful in the game!
See, in addition to the rules that each model has, Synapse creatures also have Synaptic Imperative abilities that you can choose to be active at the start of the battle round. For example, a Tyranid Prime has the Guidemind ability which allows friendly units within 6” who are targeting enemies within 24” to get exploding 6s to hit. Trying to get these to line up is a bit of a puzzle, because sometimes you might want more than one to be going on (the Maleceptor allows a unit to make ranged attacks and still perform actions, so coupled with the exploding 6s, could be good!) However, whichever Synaptic Imperative is active for that round, every Synapse creature on the board can grant its effects, so you don’t need to have all of your shooty bugs clustered around the Tyranid Prime, because the Tyranid Warriors, the Zoanthropes, the Hive Tyrant, and all the other Synapse creatures are also granting the same thing.
As we know, each army has its own set of Chapter Tactics, the Tyranids being Hive Fleet Adaptations. These are subset rules that give your army its own feel, and I have really liked seeing how different armies can be made by adopting different ones. For yesterday’s game, I went with Hive Fleet Behemoth, because it’s a pretty aggressive subset, giving +1 strength for units when they charge, were charged, or performed heroic interventions. However, this edition we have a sub-subset of rules, where we can swap out different rules based on our needs. It’s very Tyranids, and is very good at giving that kind of representation of the fact that the army has learnt from previous battles. However, it just feels really confusing!
Each Hive Fleet has an Adaptive rule, which for Behemoth is to re-roll charges, and a Hyper-Adaptation, which allows you to instead change the Adaptive rule to one from the Biomorphologies table. There are three different Biomorphologies to choose from – hunt, lurk, and feed – and each one has a choice of five different rules. Behemoth can swap out its Adaptive rule for a Hunt or Lurk rule, and you can do this after deployment but before the first round begins, so it’s really quite flexible. But it just feels like it’s yet another step to go through, another decision point prior to the battle beginning, and I can see why the rules for 10th talk about being streamlined.
We’ve also got the standard sort of army-wide things, so Shadow in the Warp makes enemy psychic tests more difficult (and makes Perils of the Warp more deadly), there is a rule for the small bugs called Swarming Masses which increases the Engagement Range for these guys to 2.5 inches, which kinda makes sense.
So let’s get down to business. We were playing a 1000-point game, mainly because it has been a long time since either of us played, and so it was much in the sense of keeping things simple. My list was as follows:
I often try to stay away from heavy investments into models, for fear of them being shot off the table and therefore being a waste of time. However, I think both of the big bugs in this list, the Tyrant and the Carnifex, have had a lot of work put into them, and they really did pay dividends during the game. The Hive Tyrant has the relic Shardgullet, which replaces his heavy venom cannon and has quite the souped-up profile. In the first turn, I one-shot a Maulerfiend off the table by dishing out 15 damage to it, then in turn two I was able to destroy a Venom Crawler which got too close before shooting the Lord Discordant off the table in the third turn.
At first, I was a bit annoyed with myself for poorly positioning the carnifex, but he was able to tear apart a rhino, then due to the adaptive physiology allowing him to always fight first, he killed off the marines inside of it as well. I think the carnifex has had the most investment, though, both in terms of points and command points. I had spent some time in the afternoon before the game working out timings and whatnot, and with all of the buffs going on, he was able to get extra attacks, dish out mortal wounds when charging, spit acid in the face of his enemies, and then crush them unto death with Strength 12 crushing claws – he proved to be so damn deadly that I was actually disappointed to be killing stuff too early!
These big bugs can clearly shred through enemies!
Another shout out has to go to the Genestealers, who were able to kill the Daemon Prince over two rounds of combat (it would have been more, if only I had a full squad going into it). I think I ended up charging with 7 of them, but each of them does 4 attacks, and with all of the Synapse buffs going on they proved to be quite accurate! However, they are the poster-child for my usual tactic of just drowning a model in saving rolls. Making 28 attacks, 12 of which got through the first time, and 15 the second time, it was quite straightforward to take off those 8 wounds in short order.
Even though they were kinda pointless, I also enjoyed the fact that the Termagants proved to be just annoying, and they were able to halt the progress of the Lord Discordant simply by being in the way. A unit of 10 probably isn’t going to do as much as I’d want, though, so I think I might have to get building up some more soon, as it would be nice to have a bigger, more annoying blob to impede progress!
However, I’m under no illusions that, firstly, the smaller board size really worked in my favour, as the units were able to cross distances with ease and get into combat early. I also lost a lot of models – I’m just thankful that I could take out key pieces of JP’s army before he could turn the tide! Genestealers are awesome when they’re shredding through things, but left out in the open, they’re vulnerable with only 1 wound and a 5+ save. Once the Daemon Prince had gone, they were picked off upsettingly quickly!
But it was a great game, and I’m looking forward to getting them to the table again soon! I’m even thinking I might reward some of them with paint!
Following on from the first book in the Han Solo trilogy, we meet up with Han a few years after the events of the last book, where he has been drummed out of Imperial service for his rescue of the Wookiee Chewbacca. Down on his luck, and morose thanks to the fact Chewie is now following him around due to the Life Debt the Wookiee has sworn, Han begins to fall into the life of a smuggler. He reluctantly agrees to having Chewie as a co-pilot and gunner, and the two make for Hutt Space, and the smugglers’ moon of Nar Shaddaa. There, Han meets up with a former Academy colleague Mako Spince, and he gets to meet all of the key players in the smuggler’s life.
Han eventually starts working for the Desilijic kajidic, and its bosses, Jiliac and Jabba. However, Teroenza has not forgotten the grievous blow Han had dealt him when he and Bria escaped Ylesia, and has placed a bounty on the young smuggler’s head. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to claim it, in steps Boba Fett, who almost succeeds until Lando Calrissian is able to intervene, as he wants Han to teach him to pilot his new ship, the Millennium Falcon. Aruk, the Hutt overlord of the Besadii kajidic and Teroenza’s boss, cancels the live bounty on Han, prompting Teroenza to enter into an agreement with Jiliac to help them poison Aruk and weaken Besadii.
Just when Han is beginning to adjust into his new life as a smuggler, the sector Moff, Sarn Shild, proclaims the Empire intends to crack down on smuggling out of Hutt Space, and he specifically targets Nar Shaddaa for “base delta zero”, leaving nothing alive on the moon. Han and his cohorts determine to do all they can to fight back, backed to an extent by the Hutts themselves, who wish to preserve their criminal enterprises, so Han is sent to parlay with Shild. When he meets with the Moff, however, he discovers that Bria Tharen there, seemingly as Shild’s mistress. In truth, Bria has been able to kick her addiction to the t’landa Til ‘exhultation’ and has joined the Rebellion, mainly in an effort to free slaves. Her current assignment couldn’t have landed at a worse time.
The smugglers aren’t able to buy off Sarn Shild, but they do buy the Imperial battle plan from Admiral Greelanx, who is leading the attack. Greelanx is about to retire anyway, so takes the Hutt bribe, only to receive mysterious orders from the highest levels of Intelligence to suffer a defeat anyway. The battle goes well for the smugglers, and the Empire is driven off, not before Greelanx is visited by Darth Vader himself for retribution.
Much like the first book, I really enjoyed this one! Back when I was a teenager reading these things, I think books two and three of this trilogy, taken together, were in my top five all-time favourite Star Wars books. They are a tiny bit dated now, of course, and the plotline is perhaps somewhere more in the realms of junior/YA fiction than anything else – I mean, a lot of things go very right for Han, and sometimes I’m left thinking, where is the conflict? Seems like the life of a smuggler, out on the lawless Rim, is highly romanticised and just one long yarn. Of course, I talked last time about Star Wars on the whole not being all about the grim and gritty ultra-hard sci-fi that it has on occasion tried to become since, but even so. A lot of the plot of this book is very convenient, once again.
But I think this is perhaps down to the fact that Crispin is trying to weave her story around a lot of accepted facts about the Han Solo backstory, as they were understood back in 1997. Dark Empire and The Crystal Star had already been published, so any storyline about Han has got to reference the fact that he lived on Nar Shaddaa, he dated Salla Zend, he dated Xaverri, he hung out with Roa, and so on. The fact that the story is able to tick off all of these points, and still be pretty interesting and cohesive, is actually really nice, I think. When the EU became Legends, a lot was made of the fact that stories didn’t necessarily line up, but that was principally a problem for things set in the immediate are of the original trilogy. Books like The Hutt Gambit show how much care was taken years before the Story Group was established, to ensure the timeline remained sensible and coherent.
One of the things that I do dislike about the now-Legends stuff in general, though, is just how much is made of the fact that Boba Fett and Han have some kind of major enmity between them, which seems to have spouted from the fact that Vader told Fett not to kill Han in episode five. We have a ton of stuff that eventually seemed quite embarrassing, because for all that Fett was made out to be a feared bounty hunter, the fact that the overarching story dictated he could never capture Han, despite all this history between them, made him into a bit of a joke really. Here, an effort is made to explain that Han and Lando basically embarrassed Fett by drugging him and sending him far away from Nar Shaddaa, and then Jabba basically pays Fett to not hunt Solo because he’s too good for business. It’s not the greatest of explanations, but I suppose it’ll do…
But that is really a criticism of the larger EU at this point, I suppose!
All in all, the book is a lot of fun. We have tie-ins to all the other smuggler stuff like The New Rebellion and Dark Empire, we get to follow Han as he begins to make a name for himself in the underworld, and we get a look into the Hutt cartels and how they all work together. Much like the last one – indeed, much like a lot of the Bantam-era novels – it’s at its most enjoyable when you just sit back and enjoy the ride.
I’m having a lot of fun painting this tank right now. It’s such a ridiculous looking thing, I just love it. In so many ways, it encapsulates that over-the-top feel that 40k has always been about – it’s a tank that has a series of organ pipes that have been converted to launch missiles (because of course). The missiles are seemingly controlled by the driver, who sits front and centre (the Emperor protects, so why should she sit inside the thing?!) Her helmet has been altered to have that ridiculous visor, and she uses a double-manual wraparound keyboard to shoot the missiles behind her. All while blasting out hymns to the glory of the God-Emperor of Mankind, booming across the field of battle from those trumpets mounted just a couple of feet above her head.
It’s just glorious!
On top of all this, the tank is decorated with statuary depicting various Imperial Saints, as well as icons representing the Orders Majoris of the Adepta Sororitas. The tank is attended to by two cherubs, one of whom clings on to the chassis having lost his legs, poor thing.
Spectacular, in every sense of the word!
The new model is a definite improvement on the older one, above, though I do love that classic, ridiculous design too. The new design is of course far superior, but it’s interesting to see how much of that design was carried over to the new model. I do kinda like the older driver, though, who seems to be playing the organ up there with wild abandon!
While I’ve been painting it, I’ve been watching Shetland from the beginning. I seem to remember we watched one of the later series last summer when I was painting the initial portions of the force, so it’s kinda nice to be back with that once more.
I had great fun painting my Sisters of Battle last year, and it seemed that I got a lot of the army painted very quickly. I’m hoping that this tank might herald the start of more models getting finished, as I still have quite a few units to get done.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about giving myself a real project, for want of a better term. You know the feeling that you have when you open a Start Collecting box, or whatever they’re doing these days, and there’s a whole bunch of sprues in there? I have been kinda craving that sort of thing, where you have a defined bunch of stuff to get done… Well, short of buying something for the sake of this idea, I might instead launch myself at the Sisters again and see about getting all of these things painted.
In addition to the Exorcist, then, I’ve still got a unit of 10 battle sisters, a unit of 10 Novitiates, and the three paragon war suits that I recently built. It could well scratch the itch!!
I’m waffling here. In the meantime, enjoy my little diorama that I threw together with some of the finished Sisters and some terrain!
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