The road to Adepticon

Preparations...

I'm all paid up on my Geek Nations Tours for Adepticon in 2015 and really looking forward to hanging out with a lot of great friends, meeting some amazing producers and painters, and of course lots of drinking...er gaming.

Seminars

For this, my first Adepticon, I've signed up for a bunch of classes and an X-wing team tournament. For classes, I've selected my classes based mostly on a desire to meet some people in person or friends. Taking a Weathering Pigments seminar with Justin McCoy (Mr. Justin) of Secret Weapons Miniatures. Though it will be really nice to meet Justin, I am looking forward to adding another layer of depth to my work with this new set of tools. I have a seminar with Victoria Lamb of Victoria Miniatures on Object Source Lighting, which is something I've never been able to do effectively. This will be a great class to meet Victoria, who has added substantially to my Imperial Guard Army and with whom I have great respect. My last seminar is with my friend Dave Taylor of davetaylorminiatures, who will be teaching a class on metals. I've known Dave a while now and really respect his work and am looking forward to learning some new techniques.

Tournament 

For the team tournament, I've partnered with one of my oldest friends to play the Imperial forces. I've played very little in the way of Star Wars, but will be increasing my ships and picking up some Battle Foam trays on Black Friday to carry them to Chicago. Once we figure out our ship needs, I'll pick up some between here and March. At least I don't have to paint them! I will post updates on learning that system fully and playing, but have to find a free Saturday first.

Imperial Guard

Though I am not signed up for any wh40K tournaments, I do have a lot of gaming planned. I've been setting a goal of having a 2000 point army list created, painted and ready to go. From this I'll also develop a 1850 point and 400 point lists so that I can maximize what I have and minimize what I carry. Thankfully, I think I can do this with my current Battle Foam 720 system. Now the problem, I need to buy two more Leman Russ tanks, assemble them and paint them. I need to finish my Valkyrie, Taurox, and another Chimera and I might need to buy 30 more troops. So there is a lot to get done and probably not enough time for me to do it all, especially since I still have not played one full game yet. Hopefully there will be plenty of time for me to do that as well. At least I've read the rules...more to come when I have my lists ready for review.

Robotech RPG Tactics Update

United Earth Defense Force: Destroids

Spartan

I have started working my way through the assembly phase of the Kickstarter shipment. I went immediately to the building the destroids, because when played the regular RPG that was my go to unit. I mean who didn't love the Gladiator (Spartan in RPG Tactics). The Spartan sprue contains two figures with sufficient options for any combination of hands/arms and open/closed missile pods.

You get a couple of options with the Spartan. You can equip it with a baton or you can equip with the gun. The baton fits rather neatly into the hand which is slightly opened. The gun more or less rests on top of the hand/arm with a nice cut-out. 

The second option is with open or closed missile pods. I've modeled both with this set form the bonus material. You also get a large number of hand options from open/closed hands, different hand configurations and angles possible from the hand/arm combinations. 

Overall this was one of the simplest of the figures to assemble. The legs are even versatile enough to allow for some minor poses with motion. The trickiest and most patience testing part is the assembly of the legs to the mid-section. While most of the figure assembles pretty well, the cut-outs in the mid-section are not exactly for the posts from the legs. Compared to some others, though this is easy.

Phalanx

The next of the destroids included in the Battle Cry bonus material is the Phalanx. This little beast of missle pods is ready for long distance combat and cover fire. Like the Spartan, there are two destroids to the sprue with plenty of arm combinations.

There are two arm options available. One with the large round missile pods, familiar to those who played the RPG. The other, I'm not quite sure about as I don't have the rule book yet. These seem to be 4 rather large either missiles or cannons. Either way, it looks pretty intimidating. 

As with the Spartan, this figure for the most part was pretty simple to assemble. One item not covered in the assembly instructions was a second leg option. There are two different leg assemblies on the sprue and the legs are not universally assembles to the feet, which is why one of these has a weird off-balance look. I had to do a little green stuff work to it to make it stay and flow a little better, but it is definitely worth knowing. I'll post him on a base so he is standing on something. 

Zentraedi Invasion Force

Tactical Battle Pod

This is pretty much the combat standard for the Zentraedi attach force. These come with the standard compliment of weapons and a few pose options. The sprue contains three battle pods all with the same set-up. There are no extra parts to this sprue.

There are two different leg styles which I discovered after building the first set of three. You have legs to pose one in a more squat pose or as I have done with this set in a flying pose. Also the narrow leg set, of which the sprue has two, makes the feet sort of hit slightly if you aren't careful. You can easily change this by putting it on at a slight angle or using a stance in motion. The assembly for these is really easy. There is a small split set of parts for the leg connection that is pretty small, which means you will get glue on your fingers. The laser cannons on the head are a little to clean, especially the small pair on the bottom of the head. 

Artillery Battle Pods

For long range threats, there are Zentraedi artillery battle pods. These are designed with three options for load out. There is the long range cannons, missile pods, or large missile pods. These come one to a sprue with options for all three of the designs. Most of the model is identical to the battle pods, except there is some additional load out mounted to the top. I've opted to model out all of the variants just to have them available. 

There are less issues with the leg assemblies as the standard battle pod, but some other weird things. The missile pods attach to a small cross bar, but on both sets the space to fit the bar doesn't seem to be evenly bored on both sides so getting the pods to be uniform is a little challenge. Add to that the shallow depth of the bore and if you aren't careful and patient you will get frustrated as the parts fall off continuously. 

For the large cannons, the only issue is the attachment of the cannon to the stem on the head. This is a very small connection and the weight of the cannons requires you to hold until the glue is pretty set. This means you can't do a mass set of figures at once if making these. They do look very cool, but if you don't hold until sufficiently set than the barrels start to fall toward the table.