COLLECTION DIARY: SEPTEMBER 2014

I have my EPIC Collection set up nicely as of this month with a pair of Tantive IV Expansions to go with my pair of Transport Expansions.

Looking ahead a bit to Scum & Villainy I got a pair of the crappy-ole-crows, which will soon become magnificently evil Dark Phoenix! I even grabbed up cute little versions of the Tantive as well as one of my Mandalorian Assault Carriers, to be used in my Backdrop rules, which keep track of reinforcements and so forth. Funny enough these little models are almost in relative scale... you have to love it!

I now have enough Rebel Huge Ships. These wonderful expansions with my MARK III (once I have it built), and one more Transport I have to buy yet, gives me a six ship Epic Rebel fleet. That is good for me; until FFG releases something new for the Alliance of course.

I have been meaning to upgrade the parts for the MARK III, as I have shown in Part 2 of the project, the other nice bits I got will help a great deal too; a new scriber, and all kinds of neat magnets, so that the model can be taken apart for storage.

I have also been meaning to get a nice binder for my extra cards, and a few more modeling tool, all of which are taken care of now. I even snuck in a second Dracidizar, because who doesn't love space dragons, after all!
The crazy black parade gloves are for handling the models when I start making my Boss' Battle Parlor videos...

Boss out!

FFG POST THEIR SECOND ARMADA PREVIEW TODAY!

FFG gave us a second preview of the forthcoming STAR WARS ARMADA starter set in their Command Your Fleet To Victory article today!

I am very happy to see this new version of STAR WARS Miniatures Battles! I am certainly keeping an eye out for these very interesting bits of information from Fantasy Flight Games!

I will buy this game as soon as it becomes available!

Fleet Boss out!

FFG PREVIEWS REBEL ACES DUE OUT NEXT WEEK!

Fantasy Flight Games has posted a final preview for Rebel Aces and updated the status to; due out next week.

There are a lot of cool ways to make both of these ships much better. I think the A-Wings are good now. The B-Wings are absolutely awesome now... and I love that!

I am a huge fan of the B-Wing, and the A-Wing is okay too, so I am happy that this expansion is finally coming out!

The Team Covenant gang have already posted a nice unboxing video too, which is always fun to watch.

Here come them Killer Bee's!

Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: X-WING EPIC INTERSTELLAR TERRAIN - ASTEROIDS PART 3

I am starting to make this Styrofoam look like something now... almost.

Wraith Rocks

It think it might be time to make a crazy alternate Huge Ship Deaths-head Rock... Wraith style of course.

The weatherstrip is a great way to build up the skull shape I am going to sculpt. The foam putty will grab any other foam material, thus combining these products will work just fine.
Foam putty is more expensive than the weatherstrip so it is more economical to build such a large model by utilizing both of these materials.

Applying the foam putty is not unlike icing a cake. You actually smooth it on with a spatula, and push it down gently as you work it onto your base form.

The foam putty is a very good product. You can do all sorts of terrain modeling with it, but it is a little expensive.

Crazy view, just for fun. It looks like Eddie kinda...

I almost feel bad about messing up the cute girl and transforming her into the mascot of Iron Maiden!

More to come...

Fire Rocks

Hard foam is very porous and will pull the glue into itself. You need to take the time to vigorously brush undiluted glue evenly over the surface of the foam sections to insure maximum adhesion.

Now the glue needs to be allowed to dry for a full twelve hours, with a nice weight on the parts to force the glue to stay where we want it. Again, this type of foam will soak up the glue, but applied pressure will keep that reaction from messing things up.

Now that all of these sections are dried nice and hard I can carve and sculpt them without worrying about the pieces separating.

The basic shapes are done and I am ready to move on to detailing. I just used my trusty little perry knife to carve the shapes, just like I did with my Huge Asteroids. The rounded areas are pushed into shape with the large paintbrush handle. The final work was done with the screwdriver. This is where you actually sculpt in each bump and recess with the point of the driver. It is more like sculpt-carving.

The basic shapes lighted; to show the difference the sculpted detailing layer will make. We are not trying to make lamps here, we are going for a soft fiery glow from within the hot asteroid. The brightness will be toned way down with the texture and painting stages.

At this stage you could make these foam sculptures into very realistic sturdy explosion models. I am going to do this in fact as a future project. I will fully detail the explosion modeling techniques and detailing options in that forthcoming article.

Both large Fire Rocks are evenly illuminated. The trick is to keep the depth of the foam the same. If I wanted to have one dimmer say, I would have used three layers of foam rather than two. The details would be the same but you would have a full inch of extra material for the light to saturate and thus the final affect would of been a slightly larger rock with a lesser glow effect.

Now that the models are built it is time for the texture paint stage. This is not proper painting. The goal here is to fill in the much of the topmost surfaces with thick texture paint. That way the lowermost surfaces will shine and look like semi-molten rock beneath the dry hard rock surface areas of the asteroid.

I like to make my own textures because I want them to do certain specific affects by layers. You could buy a ready to use texture product, but I do not like that approach. Give me good ole tacky glue and sand any day. Be sure to use your old or cheap general hobby brushes when applying texture paint.

Now the details are starting to jump. I applied about three coats to get the rocks well covered. Notice how you can still see the remaining ink marks from when I measured the circles to cut the base shapes. That shows you that the texture paint has been mixed to stay semi-transparent. When the LED Tea-lights are under the models the glow effect that we want with these crazy asteroids will work out fine.

More to come...

PART 2

Crazy-asteroids Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: ALLIANCE MARK III ASSAULT FRIGATE PART 2

I have reevaluated my approach to building this Epic Huge Ship. I feel that all of the components will be better with the addition of some new materials and parts. My plan is not much different from what I had in mind last year, but now with the addition of new materials and a updated construction plan this model will look even better and last indefinitely.

I recently purchased some cutting board sheets. After thinking about it I decided that this sturdy material (which is designed to flex), is a better way to make the rounded front hull. I have to thank Bulldog UK for this little revelation, after seeing how he made his awesome MARK II.

If I had continued with my original plan to use vinyl to make one large covering for the front hull, sort of like a canoe skin, there may of been some boiling over time. Humidity can take it's toll from porous materials. I was being a bit to clever with this particular design.
It will be much better for this model to do the round hull in sections with the flexible cutting mat material.
I have further updated the building materials with some nice parts from the large version of the Republic Attack Shuttle kit which will serve for the main rear section of the fuselage and the secondary wings.

I am currently sorting and cleaning the main component parts,there are about a hundred say. I will go into great detail about these wonderful little goodies once I start the actual build in Part 3 of this series.

More to come...

PART 1

Rebel Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: SCUM ASSAULT CARRIERS PROJECT PREVIEW

I am adding the Rampage and Shadow classes to my work table this week, along with my MARK III build. I am very pleased with these models. It is going to be a lot of work to make them look as cool as I want them to, but certainly not as much effort as building some of my other projects.

Being able to make both of these babies without starting completely from scratch is very appealing to me because I want to have them done and ready to rock when Wave Six becomes available to us in about three or four months.

I will be making a Crusader too, in early 2015 probably. I think one Crusader with a pair of Assault Carriers should be enough Rock & Roll for Mandalorian Huge Ship Epic goodies.

I have always loved Cobra HISS Tanks and even had a full army of Cobra toys as late as my early thirties... Ha, Ha! I purchased a new HISS toy about a year before I got into Fantasy Flights X-WING products, because I suppose the old itch to collect cool toys was coming back after a decade long break.

Now a year later with X-Wing EPIC and SCUM I kind of just looked at the one HISS I had and saw how it could work as a Huge ship. It just came to me...

In this image you can see the profile which IMO looks just like a cool Mandalorian design, and even with now modeling work done the HISS body and drive chassis looks like a badass ship to me. The Assault Carriers load fighters to the underside of their body. The chassis (pictured behind the tank body) are going to be used as the fighter carriage. The tank tread wheels are also perfect as the large main engine as seen in my first mockup image at the start of this article. Basically everything I need to build my special Scum Epic Models comes with the HISS Tank set.

COBRA!!!

PROJECT OVERVIEW

SCUM Boss out!

BOSS SHOP: X-WING EPIC INTERSTELLAR TERRAIN - ASTEROIDS PART 2

I got a lot more work done on my Huge Asteroids since my last article, and added some new types to the group as well. I decided to move forward with my Scum & Villainy Terrain projects, since I know we should have these ships by the end of the year!

"FEAR THE DARK BAD PLACES."

I was always going to have my own Pirate Faction with the Rim Wraiths before SCUM was announced. I do not have all of the ships that I need for them, but there is a certain way they operate which can be worked on now, so I may as well get this aspect of their organization ready early...

The first set of HUGE Asteroids are about half complete now. I washed them and rubbed off the loose foam left over from the raw carving.

All of the mountings have been drilled in and their placements are situated to make each model look as cool as I could make them. It was fun to move them around and decide how I wanted each model to sit in space. I recommend marking your drill holes with a pen, so that you do not loose them... Ha, Ha!

The mounting rods are syringes. These work great for a lot of modeling projects not to mention applying certain glues in tight places. You want to be careful when using these medical items for hobby materials.  I recommend clipping the needles first and deposing of them properly. You guys know that of course.
The drilled holes are smaller than the actual rods. This makes them stay in place as they are nice and tight. I slowly twist them into place with the glue on, which helps to drive the rods in glue-and-all, without allowing air to interfere with the glues set while they are drying.

Once all of the mounts are in place and allowed to dry completely for a day, I got the models coated with a base of good ole reliable Flex Paste tinted with a few drops of black paint. Flex Paste is ivory white so you need to color it to see what you are getting down on white foam.
Flex Paste is great stuff gang. It acts as a texture and a ready to paint seal over foam and similar material. Now I can take these asteroids to the next level by adding other details and finish off the mountings with magnet locking ball-and-sockets so they can all be rotated and function freely together as interchangeable components.

More to come...

Wraith Rocks

The Rim Wraiths use asteroid fields and nebula to their advantage more so than other Scum. Because of the factions Force Sensitive members, who lead all important missions, they are able to navigate these Bad Places very well, despite the many dangers. Wraiths guard certain regions they have favored with regularly manned mini asteroids bases which have come to be known by their enemies and allies alike as Wraith Rocks.

Wraith Captains responsible for important regions guarded by Wraith Rocks typically carve a skull face into the chosen lead asteroids with mining lasers. This brief christening ceremony of these deadly hard rocks serves to keep the moral of the skeleton crews high. Wraith Territories in marked in this way keeps all but the most arrogant Imperials and foolhardy Scum far away.

Fire and Ice Rocks

In addition to my crazy Wraith Rocks I am making Fire and Ice Asteroids. These are going to be very fun in my games. I have rules for them too, of course... cause!

These special asteroids are going to make my Epic games a fun challenge to say the least. I am going to make only a few, because the rules I have written for them are hardcore... less is more with these things on the battlefield.

If you want to make illuminated asteroids you have to be certain that you buy the very porous hard craft foam, because light will not pass through  the soft denser foam, which is what I am using to make my standard huge rocks.

The first image shows the models pictured in full lighting, while the second image was taken in low mood lighting. The full dark results was the first image published in this article... Boba is going to be the BAMF we knew he was come Wave SIX! :D

I think the pictures say it all for these builds thus far. the tricky part of the work is going to come when I texture the shapes and paint them. I will go into more detail about the process then so you may build your own if you want to be crazy like your ole pal JB.

PART I

PART 3

Ambushing from the Asteroids SCUM Boss out!