COLLECTION DIARY: CHRISTMAS 2014

I hope everyone had a good holiday, and got some fun toys. I did. Here is my Christmas Loot... and BREAKFAST.

With the new rules for the TIE Advanced I grabbed up a second expansion, with a pair of TIE Fighters. A few days after I paid for them they all went out of stock, which is hilarious to me. I am happy to get the first copies of Wave Five too, it is great to have these Large Ships in my collection!

I added a few alternates for some of the important characters, because I am a nerd about some things. I needed a younger Luke for the Falcon crew, and I also wanted a more badass Vader to field with the new improved TIE Advanced. I also managed to find miniatures for the complete crew of the new YT-2400. I added several cool aliens for SCUM too... which is great fun!

I have completed my collection of fun faction specific colored mats and started my colored bases this month. When I start my Battle Parlor Videos you will see how I use them, it is kinda cool, I think. I picked up a few more STAW Expansions too. I am just about caught up with all of the releases now.

Breakfast is an inside joke we share at the FFG Forum; thus behold the power of over-easy eggs, badass toast, sweet maple oatmeal, ham, and glorious crispy bacon!

Happy Boss out!

FFG POST THE ARMADA ARTICLE: ASSEMBLE THE FLEET!

FFG surprises us with a day after Christmas present with their very nice introduction to building our fleets in their Assemble The Fleet Article.

Is there anything cooler than this?

NOPE!

I am all on board with this one my Star Brothers... and you probably should be too.

Fleet Commander Boss out!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

I hope all of my B6*R7 Flyers are having a great holiday!

Happy Boss Out!

FFG ANNOUNCES THE IMPERIAL RAIDER FOR X-WING EPIC!

 FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES HAS ANNOUNCED THEIR IMPERIAL RAIDER HUGE SHIP EXPANSION!!!

FFG has made a great move to solidify the STAR WARS X-WING EPIC Game experience! So many people have wanted to play EPIC, but they (rightfully) felt no motivation to support the up scaled X-Wing game as Imperial players when there were only Rebel Huge Ships. Sure we could bring a dozen TIE ships, of our choice, but we still wanted our own cool Huge Ships!

Well my Star Brothers as Chris stated in recent months; "Epic... we are going to fix that." and sure enough they did!

Just look at all of that new paper... I LOVE IT!

The new Imperial Epic Expansion would be cool enough with just the Raider, but no... we also get the long awaited fixes for the TIE Advanced with a lovely new repaint of this beloved model!

GLORIOUS WORK FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES!!!
I have been keeping a close eye on how well X-WING EPIC has been doing because I love the game. Miniatures Market and Cool Stuff took twice as long to sell out of Tantives while the Transport went out of stock in just a few months. I won't bore you with the math, but I think it is a safe bet that all future Epic Expansions will include some type of neat small ship variant. That is the smart way to go FFG... keep it up Star Brothers!
How Bout DAT EPIC Now?

Imperial Boss out!

EARTH IS SAVED BY THE STAR BLAZERS ON THIS DAY IN 2199!

The brave crew of The Yamato, Our Star Blazers, return home on this day in the year 2199. They bring with them the hard won Cosmo DNA which restores life to our nearly dead Mother Earth.

 On December 8 2199 Mankind is saved by The Star Force!

THANK YOU STAR FORCE!

Blazers Boss out!

FFG POST THE ARMADA FIGHTERS ARTICLE THIS WEEK!

Fantasy Flight Games posted their Fighters Coming In article this week, and it looks like a whole lot of cool action is coming our way, for we Fleet Commanders! 

I think I am going to be ridiculous when it comes to buying the Fighters Expansions... they are going to be to cool to not own them in the hundreds.

Just look at how cute these little guys are...

The rules for fighter squads are slick, smart, and downright FUN!!!
Ten boxes of each?
YES!

Fleet Commander Boss out!

THE STARFARING ARK 9 MINUTE INTRO CLIP! (「宇宙戦艦ヤマト2199 星巡る方舟」本編冒頭映像)

A surprise treat made it's way to the Internet this week: a free preview video of the new ARK OF THE STARS (The Starfaring Ark) feature film. The Comet Empire Returns! 

We can absolutely expect a full Comet Empire Fleet and in all likelihood new EDF ships from our friends at BANDAI in 2015... it will be glorious!

These clips are from the 2012 remake, and other series. I love it!

Star Blazers Boss out!

COLLECTION DIARY: NOVEMBER 2014

This month I got my storage set up a little better with a second Iris Craft Cart. These granny-racks are very nice for miniatures collections. This is the same rack system that I purchased for the Battle Parlor a few months back.

Now that I know this is an awesome rack system I got a second. The six cases are perfect for my collection. You can fit 48 small based ships on a single peg in each case. The cases are hinged and have a sturdy latch to keep them closed and keep your models immune to dust and so forth.
You can also store Large and Huge ships in these cases.  I am happy to have two of these units now; one for my STAR WARS ships, and one for my STAR TREK ships! DAT Glory!

I finally broke down and got caught up on most of the STAW Expansions this month... cause.

I have a few more ATTACK WING Expansions to get to bring my collection up to date. Since I have focused more on getting the crazy Boss' BIG Approved models in my Parlor, these ships have been waiting for me to get to them, for the official rules and tokens. I can and will use a few of them in the BBA fleets, and the rest are happily going into my Backdrop collections.

Trekkie Boss out!

FFG POST THE STARVIPER PREVIEW THIS WEEK!

FFG posted the StarViper Preview today in their Lethal Ambitions article! I love this ship!

The StarViper Expansion brings a lot of cool new options to the glory that is Scum & Villainy!

The StarViper reads like a TIE Defender-TIE Interceptor combo to me. I think this is an interesting ship that will be a lot of fun on the table.

Keep up the great work FFG!

SCUM Boss out!

YAMATO COSMO REVERSE VERSION AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE THIS WEEK!

The new Cosmo Reverse Version of Space Battleship Yamato is coming this month, and she is beautiful!

The awesome factor this kit brings to gaming is off the scale. The badass characters ships are all included with this version of the Yamato! How cool is that? VERY Cool!

I was surprised that Bandai made this new kit, and I am very happy that they did!!! For my Star Brothers that are not in the 2199 know so to speak, these new ships are the equivalents in X-WING of all Large Ships and both sets of Aces Expansions for the 2199 fleets.
The previous model sets gave us all of the cool fighters and fighter-bombers. This new set brings in the rest of the ships from the series, which allows for some absolutely thematic games!

I recommend purchasing this beauty from Hobby Link Japan.

I am very pleased that Bandai is continuing this excellent model series by adding all new special ships in repackaged variant ships kits. It is a lot like the Aces Expansions, and as a modeling gamer it makes me very happy!

Blazers Boss out!

THE ARMADA WAVE 1 PREVIEW!

FFG posted their Wave One Preview of the STAR WARS ARMADA Expansions this week and it is glorious!!!

I love all of this Wave! It is a great start for the game, and in my firm and reasonably well educated view these ships represent the STAR WARS Universe very well. I am particularly happy about the tiny fighters being released, that is just cool!

I am all on board with STAR WARS ARMADA!

Fleet Boss out!

FFG POST THE SECOND MOST WANTED PREVIEW THIS WEEK!

FFG posted their The Galaxy's Most Wanted Part Two article and it rocks! We get to see the other half of the Scum goodies, namely Firesprays and Hawks! I love that Fantasy Flight Games had the good sense to bring these ships into the faction... it works!

Most of us love the Firesprays and the new versions of Boba and Kath are very cool... of course! What stands out for me, in almost the same glory (Ha, Ha!), are the new versions of the HWK-290.
The Crappie Ole Crow is about to become the Deadly Dark Phoenix!

I like all of these new pilots! Their abilities are designed to work perfectly with the new Illicit upgrades! These ships are not going to break the game... but they sure will make for some neat and hurtful synergies with other Scum ships. I feel the Scum HWK's are going to be a lot of fun, and see more use than their Rebel cousins.

Who knew that one of the nice support, but least favorite, low power ships in the game could become one of the coolest troublesome mid-range killers?!

Very nice work Fantasy Flight...

Scum Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: DEEP SPACE SCENERY CONTEST 2014 ENTRY

I managed to get my contest entry completed this week, despite rainy humid weather. Thanks again to Clint and Miniatures Market for hosting this cool event!

This was a fun build!

Boss out!

COLLECTION DIARY: OCTOBER 2014

I finally took the dark path this month and dived headlong into that scary Resin Nebula!

Federation

I mentioned in my BBA Fall Update that I have recently re-watched Voyager. I have been thinking of the cool rules that come with that ship and how the Borg are functioning in the game. I decided that it would be cool to have some more anti-borg ships in my collection. To this end I added a second Intrepid class, because it rocks, and the small version of the Vengeance Dreadnought class from JJ. I am going to convert this ship to be a new Borg Fighter for the Federation... more on that later.
The new Stargazer is an awesome ship which joins my collection as the third of my Eaglemoss models. I have had my eye on the Federation Models tiny ships for some time, and this month I finally got two of their fun little shuttle sets. These tiny craft will be awesome for scenarios. I even managed to grab up a rare pair of STAW Expansions in the Defiant and Reliant, both of which have been out of stock for months.

Dominion-Cardassian

The Cardassians rise this month, and shall continue to thrive next month with the AMT Cadet Series DS9 Set! I have been meaning to start the Cardassians for a while now, but until the AMT set was announced it was kind of scary, because these resin models need extra work and they are not cheap.
I am happy now that I have gotten these support ships as twin sets. I plan to get five Galor class ships. I figure having two of all of the secondary ships is fine, once I have the main line Galors in there with them it will be a nice mix with plenty of fleet options.
I will likely run a Keldon escorted by a Galor on each flank, with the leader Galor escorted by a pair of generic Galor running up the middle. There are other good combos to field of course. I currently have five squadrons of fighters which are fun and round out the fleet. It would be cute to field all five Galor each escorted by a fighter squadron.

Fancy rules stuff, crafts gear, and swaggies

I love this stuff. The STAW cards came with the STAR WARS sleeves. The eBay seller offered them for free when you purchased any of his STAR TREK cards. He gets it! I got two more IG-88's to go with the one I have, so that when the IG-2000 hits I can run three of them Boss' style. I also got my third little R2-D2... cause!

Taking a closer look at the shuttles, these little guys are going to be an awful lot of fun in special scenarios. They will need a bit of tedious work to make them look great, but it is all fun in my book.

Next month I am staying on duty with my STAR TREK Collection.

BIG Trek Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: BBA STAW SCALE BASES & RULES ADJUSTMENTS PROJECT OVERVIEW

You know I have been collecting these wonderful BIG ships for my BBA STAW Games. Now that I have a good few; enough to play some nice games, and I have my tables for my huge 5x7' set up... I need to get some bases done.

I have been thinking about how all of this is going to affect the actual game play. My BBA Scale does not cause to many issues. Because I have X-Wing EPIC in my head too, I have decided that Small and Large ships will work as normal, but the Huge ships will work differently.

Just as FFG chose to have special rules for these galactic titans, I am going to do the same thing but with some adjustments. I will go into all of that nerd detail later. For now I am concerned with getting bases under these models, so that they can be played and represented well on my table.

The FFG-WIZ Small and Large (which are Medium in BBA Scale, Yes... Uh-Oh!) bases are fine for corresponding ships. Large and Huge (BBA Scale) ships all need to be on GW Monster or 4x6" Tamiya display bases. I had planed to use Tamiya for Large (Medium BBA) ships too, as you can see above. That is not good for the overall game play, as I have discovered since I got to work on the rules adjustments. The ships affect the game by their bases, the ship models are not directly a part of the rules.

The base-ship scales in BBA STAW are: 

Tiny- Runabout, Fighter, Special (Mine or Probe).
Small- Defiant, B'rel, Fighter Squadron.
Medium- Miranda, K'tinga, Galor.
Large- Excelsior, Vor'cha, D'kyr.
Huge- Galaxy, Deridex, Sphere.
Special- Space Station, Cube.

I think I have the base sizes figured out pretty good now, after a few months of playing around with these wonderful toys.

Now there are just the Huge ship base templates and range rulers... I have some work to do yet!

Say Wizzies, thanks for FUBARing the models!

More to come...

BIG Trek Boss out.