Saturday, January 22, 2022

Star Wars Legion Biker Scouts And Speeders



Back to the Tabletop is finally back to the blog posts. It's been a quiet few months of absence on the blog front so I thank you all for sticking with me and not hitting the "unfollow" button 😀


Obviously trying to get any kind of motivation for hobby in over the past three months or so has been difficult but I have found an apartment and have managed to get most of my gaming and hobby supplies moved in.


I think the most frustrating thing for me right now is that my mind is constantly racing with ideas (especially at work) and a real genuine "want" to sit and hobby - paint, build, work on terrain, etc.


I can see in my head a great idea or finished project, but I'm having an incredibly hard time actually doing it when I'm at home on my days off. How to change this is my million dollar question right now. 


WIPs photos are probably my biggest miss in the hobby, I never remember to take pictures of stuff when I'm in the process of building or painting, but I did manage this one as a friend had texted me over the holidays and asked what I was up to.


I have even been chipping away at a couple of things since November as these photos show and I figured why not try to complete one of my favorites units from the original Star Wars trilogy.


I absolutely love the look and design of the scout troopers - the armour, helmet, the small blaster, it's just a brilliant design all around. And this is easily my favorite pose of the entire lot. It has a real "sneaky" James Bond feel to it that is just so cool.


This is another really great pose, again very Bond like.


Overall, I think the entire group has some of the best poses of the entire Legion line.


I decided I really wanted to put the speeder bikes on a sort of gimble to give them a bit more of a movie feel and look, so I used a couple of magnets to achieve this. 


I also cut down the original plastic posts the bikes sit on as I felt they were just way too high off the ground - here is a photo of the height difference with the original post on the left. You can also see how the magnetic gimbal allows for those dramatic and "in motion" poses.


I think it's a huge improvement and will definitely be doing this to my other four speeder bikes. I especially want to get the one with the scout firing behind him completed, as it's another fantastic pose, as well as having a go at a white paint scheme for two of the speeder bikes themselves, like what we saw in the first season of The Mandalorian. So there you go, first blog post in months, fingers crossed I can take some baby steps right now and continue with at least one post a month going forward.

I want to take a moment and thank all of you who reached out through email to send your well wishes and own personal experiences with a divorce and separation. The support was honestly overwhelming and just another reason why I'm incredibly thankful to be a part of this community and hobby.

Finally, thanks to new followers thegreatwhitejb, Michael Blair, and William Stewart - appreciate you guys hitting the follow button 😀

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Ivor


26 comments:

  1. Great to see a post from you Ivor, and that you have managed to get settled in to your new place, hope your son is doing well.
    The scouts and bikers look excellent, and agree some great armour and poses, still need to get some of these myself, when doing the white bikes, corax white is definitely your friend.

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    1. Thanks a lot Dave, much appreciated 😀
      I will definitely remember the corax white tip 👍

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  2. Ha! Welcome back sir and great SW stuff!

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  3. Hi Ivor. Hope you are doing well enough in your new circumstances. Getting back into the groove of things can be a hard with the ‘new normal’.

    LOVE the gimble on the speeder bike. The tilt makes it look like it’s banking on the turns. 😀

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    1. Thanks Stew, appreciate it 🙂
      Yeah, really happy with how the speeders turned out!

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  4. Welcome back my friend you been surly missed 👍 as always your work is inspiring,the costume & camera department's in your studios are first class 👍🙂

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    1. Thanks a lot Frank! It's great to see you back as well 😀
      *now if we can only get the script department and production department on the same page so I can make it to the tabletop again lol*

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  5. Always good to see the return of a fellow blogger posts and a great one at that. Whilst I have little interest in the SW stuff, I really do like seeing everyone's output. The gimbal idea makes for some very interesting poses available, but I also like the phot of the two bikes at different heights too !
    Good paintjobs too btw.

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    1. Cheers Joe, it's good to be getting some hobby in again 🙂
      Very happy with the gimble idea and results for sure!

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  6. Ivor mate! Lovely to see you back with us again. Happy to hear you have living situation sorted - I hope you have done similarly with your daily routines too.

    TB's are also my fav troopers from the films. Your minis look great, love that you went with a clean look to them as well.

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    1. Much appreciated Dai! Yeah, pretty well sorted now, even back to playing a bit of footy again a couple days a week.
      I was a bit torn on whether or not to dirty them up but glad I decided on a clean look.

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    2. Well, when I was still trooping with the 501st costume group, I kept my Biker Scout armour pristine. I wanted to look like the parade ground versions the Emperor walked past when he stepped out onto the 2nd Death Star!

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    3. Mate, you were a part of the 501st!?!? That's brilliant! I watched a fantastic documentary on them over the holiday where they brought members from all over the world to participate in the big Rose Bowl parade for the 30th anniversary of A New Hope. The dedication of the members was incredible - I've built a proton pack from Ghostbusters that took me two years but the helmets and armour of Imperial
      troopers seem a whole different level. You'll have to post some photos of your kit in your next blog update 😀

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    4. Not sure I have pics anymore. It was 15+ years ago and I sadly had to offload my armour. Trooping was fun tho and yeah, SO MUCH goes into putting it all together.

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    5. That's too bad you don't have any photos - it's a bit mad to think about but had it been now you'd probably have way too many photos and would more than likely have to delete some just to save memory space lol
      Well, if you stumble upon some definitely post them up!

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  7. Welcome back Ivor, you've been missed. Sorry to hear about your life challenges, which is why hobbies such as ours are so important. They allow one to think positive thoughts & set aside any negativity, even if just for a few hours. Nicely done on the Scout troopers!

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    1. Thanks a lot Terry! Definitely a lot of reflecting and thoughts of the future over the last several months, hopefully on to brighter times 🙂

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  8. Good to see you're back in the hobby.
    Great work as usual !!!
    Cheers from the other side iof the pond.
    Tristan

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  9. Always had an interest in Star Wars Legion but never really had the time for it, looks good what you have going :)

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    1. Much appreciated mate! Ironically I have never played Legion and actually buy the models (though I probably have more 3D printed models than official ones now) to play in different rules systems like Dead Man's Hand, Bolt Action, Pulp Alley, and Stargrave/Rangers of Shadow Deep 😀

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    2. To be honest, the minis I have I bought because I liked the minis, but almost none of them belong to the same faction, and I also have a few 3D printed SW minis that can't be used with SWL, but I have considered using them with other systems... if I get them painted.

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    3. I'm with you 100%, I bought them because they were Star Wars and looked cool.
      Painting figures continues to be a constant struggle for me as well, maybe someday I can get to a 50% painted/not painted ratio instead of like 20%/80% lol

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  10. Hello Ivor,
    just read your comment about playing Dead Man's Hand with Star Wars Minis. How do you do this? Have you developed a "hack" for this?

    Thx in advance for answering.

    Cheers,
    neo :)

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    1. Hey Neo,
      To be completely honest we don't change a whole lot, the system works really well as is within the Star Wars universe. The couple of things I can say we do is giving Stormtroopers (and the like) a negative modifier to be hit because of their armour, we play a lot with thermal detonators and use the dynamite card from the Bandito gang for those rules.
      The biggest thing that you'll need to do is just change the flavor/wording on some of the face cards to make sense in a Star Wars world - I think if you just throw a couple of Star Wars models on the tabletop and have a quick game you'll see how easily it works.
      We've talked about being ambitious and actually making Star Wars specific cards but haven't got there yet, we get distracted quite easily 😀
      Let me know how you get on 👍

      *I will tell you probably one of the most fun games I've had playing one of our modified versions was a take on "Cowboys And Aliens" - we had 4 aliens crash land outside of a town and it was a blast. Now for that game we did change a lot; for example we gave the aliens positive modifiers for their advanced technology, extra movement because of speed, a leap to get onto two storey buildings, but the best was the aliens ability to "chameleon" townspeople so you didn't know who was good or bad 😀
      I've also done Zorro with the rules and it was fun too, but single shot pistols slowed the excitement of the game a bit and we needed to work through sword fighting more as the normal hand to hand combat can be quite "swingy". But I think with playtesting and adjusting it could work - then I can play with pirates 😀

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