Wednesday, October 29, 2014

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!

Sunday, October 26, 2014

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.

Friday, October 24, 2014

STAR WARS ARMADA PREVIEWS... JUST ABOUT AWESOME!

Are you guys watching this? I let last weeks preview: Capitol Ships In Battle slip by because I was busy. Now that this weeks preview: Set Your Course is out I am keeping a close eye on this game again.


There are a lot of people on the fence about ARMADA I think, because the idea of huge fleet games may seem less personal, compared to dog fighting with your named pilots. I can understand that. I think the game is going to be crazy, and just as fun in it's own way. With that said it is a different style of game, and it will be it's own thing for sure. I look forward to it!


Sometimes you just want to go BIG and ARMADA is a cool way to do it, I think!

Fleet Captain Boss out!

Thursday, October 23, 2014

NOVA SQUADRON PODCAST EPISODE 9 IS FUN!

If you do not listen to this podcast, this weeks episode nine is worth checking out. The gang talks about Scum and Villainy, and interview X-WING Champions Doug Kinny and Paul Heaver.



This was a fun one, good job Evil Ed and crew!

Boss out!

Monday, October 20, 2014

FFG POST THE MOST WANTED PREVIEW THIS WEEK!

Y-Wings get their due with Most Wanted! The first Illicit Dealings preview combined with this weeks Most Wanted preview has shown us at least five nice Y-WING ONLY Mods or Titles... and altogether they are just about awesome! FFG went buck wild today in their The Galaxy's Most Wanted, Part One article.


I need three of these wonderful boxed sets... three at the very least, I think!


FFG has done their work well.


No more complaining... not from me anyhow, the Y-Wings are fixed now!


Keep up the great work Fantasy Flight!

SCUM PREVIEW 1

SCUM PREVIEW 2

Happy Scum Boss out!

Friday, October 17, 2014

FFG POST ADVANCED A-WING GUIDE THIS WEEK!

FFG takes a fun look at using the new goodies for the lovable little Rebel Interceptor in their An Advanced Guide To A-WINGS article this week.


There are a lot of cool ideas for A-Wing squads in this article, including some fun uses of the Crappy Ole Crow.

Boss out!

Monday, October 13, 2014

NOT SUCH A LONG TIME AGO...

This time thirteen months ago I made my first B6*R7 post and introduced Black Six Red Seven to a few friends. I waited until my birthday here to mention it, but this is the blog's little first year anniversary plus a month.

It has been fun to read all your comments and emails since I opened the blog. 

I hope my fellow star travelers have enjoyed what I have done since September 2013
I have started a lot of projects this year, and many of them will be completed in the coming months. Next year there will be more. 

I have some nice plans for 2015. I am going to start a new feature this Spring: BOSS' BATTLE PARLOR. More on that later...

I AM HAPPY... DAMMIT.

Thanks to all of my G+ buddies who sent me birthday wishes today!

Boss out! 

Saturday, October 11, 2014

YAMATO 2199: THE STARFAIRING ARK!

The sequel to YAMATO 2199: Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Hoshi Meguru Hakobune (The Starfaring Ark) preview is playing in Japan now! I would love to be there...but it is cool to see that the second volume of STAR BLAZERS is done.


You know this means we will be getting another full length series in all likelihood, and new COMET EMPIRE toys as well as a new EARTH DEFENSE FORCE fleet from BANDAI, to go with our YAMATO 2199 Fleets!


Look at the beautiful NEW EDF and COMET EMPIRE Ships!


The YAMATO 2199 SERIES DVD and Blu-ray disk are coming too!


Based on how well the original series was received and the products support it enjoyed from BANDAI, 2015 is going to be another great year for YAMATO 2199 model collectors!

Boss out!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

BOSS' BIG ATTACK WING PROJECT PART FIVE: UPDATING THE MODEL COLLECTION...SIZE STILL MATTERS!!!

It has been seven months since I made the closing post of my Spring Series. New models have been made and several of them are now available to us, with more coming soon. It is time for an update to this ongoing project!

Boss' BIG Attack Wing FALL Update!

The Borg have been the most difficult faction to bring into the BBA Scale. Now that I have done some more research, and Wiz Kids has announced their forthcoming Over-sized Cube Expansion, the Borg fit right into the damn-close and good enough for games category.


At the time of writing my Spring series, I had not watched STAR TREK DS9 and Voyager in years, but since I reopened my Netflix account again, I have watched the entirety of both series. There are some awesome episode in that 14 seasons of Trek-goodness.

The Borg Cubes changed in size often during the Voyager series. We all know that. I am chilling on the whole scale thing, with certain models, because I have the images from the shows fresh in mind again, and this is all supposed to be fun. For the most part all of the important ships are available in 1/2500 scale, as for the rest; the tiny and the huge ships... I am willing to let it go now and just enjoy my cool toys in the game.


Believe it or not this cool version of Deep Space Nine is very accurate and close to the right scale concerning small ships like the Klingon BOP and Jimmie BUG. I am adding this DS9 to my collection because I like it of course, and the little ships are in scale with it. Since most of my BBA models are in scale with the little ships it will all work together well enough.

Is the new DS9 Expansion perfect, or even mathematically accurate to scale with other 1/2500 models then?
Nope... but it will look close to right, and that is good enough at this point.
Like I said above, I have re-watched DS9 and that station and all of the ships around it changed size about a million times in seven seasons.


Go figure... I did, and I am cool with it all now. It will be a lot of fun to battle around with these wonderful models.


The Cadet Series has a new boxed set due to hit stores this month. The Cardassian Galor is the star of this show in my opinion. The Saratoga is an older model that is newly released, while the Defiant is the same model that came with the DS9 kit. In this set the Defiant is molded in gray rather than clear. This set is priced at $23 and if you want to own multiples of the trio, it is a nice option for building fleets. The only other good Galors are priced at $20 to $40 each.


In my opinion the Federation Models version of the Galor is still the best model of the ship. I have two of the Galor/Keldon kits coming to me this week, with some other goodies. The Cadet set is due in later this month. I will compare the Federation Galor with the AMT Galor, and share my findings with you later. I want a large Cardassian-Dominion Fleet, so I have to decide what to do. I may go crazy and buy three more of the $40 FED sets, or be cheap (Ha, Ha!) and get five of the $20 AMT sets. Dunno yet...


The Defiant was less of a challenge to buy on the other hand as there are plenty of nice versions out there already and five of them are in BBA Scale... Ha, Ha!

Eaglemoss has been keeping busy since my last article too. You can visit their archive page to see the ships that are available now or soon will be. You will notice that some of the Enterprise series ships are coming, namely the Klingon Early BOP, and a wonderful Andorian Cruiser. Both of these models are in BBA Scale, but are not a part of STAW yet. I will leave it to you to decide if you want to pursue them. I am going to, because it is just cool in my view to build a collection for that era.
Below you can see the nice big Eaglemoss ships that are in Attack Wing. You might need to own them...


The Eaglemoss Stargazer is beautiful and newly available this month. She is worth $25 in my view. It is going to be a fun ship to have in games, to be sure! I find it very amusing that random chaos decided to make the STAW and Eaglemoss versions of this ship became available in the US at the same time!


The Eaglemoss version of the Surak is also very nice and right on the $$$. The scheduled release date is January.


Eaglemoss is gearing up to release several cool new models in the next six months that fit very nicely into our BBA Scaled collection.


The Eaglemoss version of Bioship Alpha is a bit large, but that is fine because my research indicates that there are two types of this design, as well as the planet killer ship. The standard Bioships are the small versions that are accidentally in scale as released by Wiz. The larger combat ship is almost three times the size. This is the bigger ship that was in some of the Voyager episodes.
The current model in STAW is the smaller version that was in all of the Species episodes. The forthcoming Eaglemoss version is perfect to represent the larger craft. You can have fun with this by naming them as you like; Bio Alpha, Beta, and so forth.

It would not be hard to convert the Planet Destroyer ship from this larger Bioship model.


The Andorian Cruiser will count as a new Boss' BIG Approved addition to the game. There is no indication as of this article that Wizzie is going to bring Andorians into STAW, but I am most certainly going to include them and their cool ships!

The Eaglemoss ships I have discussed in this article are available now or scheduled for release this Winter and next Spring. This timeline is fine because many of the ships will not be officially in Attack Wing until then either.

More to come...

PART FOUR: THRIFTY COLLECTING...WALKING THE TALKING!

FALL UPDATE 2015


Trekkie Boss out!

Monday, October 6, 2014

FFG POST THE SECOND SCUM AND VILLAINY PREVIEW TODAY!

FFG posted their second Scum and Villainy preview today in their Illicit Dealings article. I absolutely love everything about SCUM, and I am going to be ridiculous when it comes to collecting the ships for this forthcoming faction!

Today's preview is cool from top to bottom, but as a longtime fan of the ugly old Y-Wing the stand out upgrade card posted today has to be the much needed, long awaited, and very appreciated BOMB LOADOUT! I have been doing this all along, because I do not allow the shortcomings of these game companies to limit my fun with my toys in my game parlor... but it is nice to see an official fix coming out.


The beloved Y-WING can finally be a bomber... and it is about time!!! Now get that TIE Advanced love out Fantasy Flight Games... we know you will do it right.


Happy Boss out!

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

THE AMT CADET SERIES DS9 SET IS COMING!

The AMT 1/2500 Cadet Series DS9 Set is scheduled for release this month just in time to celebrate Autumn with Evil-snake-people's orange/brown warships!

These 1/2500 scale models fit nicely into The Boss' BIG Approved Series, and are a good option for upgrading your STAW Collection.


The Cardassian ship is 5 1/2" long, and that is just about perfect The set may be available for purchase at anytime this month. The Defiant is a reissue from the DS9 Station kit. To my knowledge the Saratoga is an older model finally released, and the Galor is a brand new model for the Cadet Series.
We have three versions of the Galor with this set, for our BBA Scale! Now to get going on building my Dominion War fleets up a little faster, I think.

Boss out!