Friday, November 6, 2015

Star Wars: Classic Rebel Heroes Part 4: Chewbacca and his Wookie Scouts

Unbeknownst to pretty much everybody but myself, the mighty Chewbacca recruited a small band of Wookies from his home planet of Kashyyyk during the mid-and-latter stages of the Galactic civil war.
When not hovering around Han Solo protecting Han from himself and others, Chewie led this band of scouts and jungle fighters in a series of raids and intelligence-gathering operations on a number of planets throughout the Empire.   The famed Wookie warrior is shown here with a detachment of this famed Kommando.
The unforgiving nature of Kashyyk's vast rain forests forged tough and resourceful warriors who could thrive in  environments where Imperial forces struggled, and the services of the Wookies proved invaluable in numerous engagements.
Who doesn't love Chewbacca?    Alas, as was so often the case with Grenadier's Star Wars line, we only get one generic figure for the species, armed with a laser rifle and power ax, and wearing a smock type garment.

 It's not a bad pose, and I dig that the figure is armed to the teeth with rifle, pistol and close combat weapon.

Would have been really nice to have even one or two more, though, with bowcasters and muskets, maybe, to represent wookies at home on Kashyyyk.  There was one more wookie mini made for the line, but it came along later, was not a Julie Guthrie figure, and doesn't look particularly great.  I'm trying to figure out something I can do with it.  It wouldn't have fit in well with Chewie's Commandos.  I may try painting up a few more of these guys someday, maybe with a conversion or two, but the pose is pretty solid, with no obvious points of separation to play with, so this may be it for wookies.
I thought that the smocks would be fun to do in camo, but now I'm afraid the scheme I used just makes them look like candy stripers.
Oh, well.  Can't win 'em all.
I do really like the Chewbacca figure.  Julie's lovely sculpting nicely captured his character, I think.  And he has the bowcaster, which is great.
So, that's it for Chewie.

One more thing.  For a while, the closing themed pin-up pic was becoming a tradition of sorts within my Star Wars mini posts, but through the last couple of posts, I've been slacking.  Traditions are good things.  Once we've started them, we shouldn't abandon them.  So here's a little Wookie-themed something to help you think warm thoughts as the season changes.
'Til next time, friends!

4 comments:

  1. WOOKIES!!!!! Yeah, Mouse, they look fantastic!! Great figures and brought to life so nicely by your painting! The regular wookies put me in mind of The Planet of The Apes, for some reason. Perhaps their expressive mouths and chins? And endless great things you can do with this Wookie troop...but that all goes happily out the window when one considers the beautiful photo you end with - all I can now think of is Necromunda and how I want a Clan Escher Wookie gang!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, P.W! I thought the same thing while working on them. The darker and orange ones especially reminded me of the gorillas and Orangutans from Planet of the apes. Interesting that I wasn't the only one who thought that.

      Delete
  2. Sweet dude, I haven't seen that many classic WEG wookies all in one place, your collection fills me with envy, I'd love to see them in a battle report (although I have to cheer for the empire)
    Keep the mojo going your output is great!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, 24 cigs! Don't worry, I'm planning out a few Star Wars games, and I'll do reports on all of them. The Wookies will most certainly be included in some of them.

      Delete