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!

Star Wars: Classic Rebel Heroes Part 3: Lando Calrissian

Well, Hello!  What have we here?  Why it's Lando Calrissian!  Former gambler, smuggler and colonial administrator turned revolutionary and Rebel officer!  Also widely acknowledged as the handsomest man in the Galaxy or so he claims, though he doesn't like to boast, you know.

This figure isn't too bad, though it's definitely not one of the best that Julie Guthrie did for the Star Wars line.  Julie didn't quite capture Billie Dee Williams' facial features as well as she did Mark Hamil's or those of some of the other characters.  Still, everybody likes Lando, so painting this little group was fun.

 Lando in his Skiff Guard disguise.  I used the action figure below as a painting guide, not realizing the colors differ from those of the the actual costume Billie wore in the film.  You can see the difference in the movie still below.  Looks really good though, I think.

Lando's right hand man, the android Lobot.  Lobot's brain is hooked up to Bespin's central computer so Lobot can run most of the city's functions right out of his own melon.  Wish I could mow the lawn like that.  Nice figure.  So well sculpted it makes me look like I know what I'm doing painting it.  Since Lobot was pretty much a permanent fixture of Cloud City, I gave him a different base from the others.

The lining of Lando's cloak is interesting.  Lots of tiny green and orange Chinese Dragons.  They just look like little flecks from far away, though.

Small but fun addition to my Star Wars collection.  What I really need to do is step screwing around and get back to finishing my Rebel Fleet and Imperial Army Platoons so I can get a game going!

Star Wars: Rebel Pilots!

5 dashing Rebel fighter jocks, scrambling to their birds.  Or maybe they are rushing to defend their hangar against ground assault?  Or maybe it's an X-Wing Down  scenario?  I dunno, but it was good fun modeling and painting this group.  Again, all the figures are by Grenadier, made for West End Games' Star Wars Miniatures Battles.  Two have been converted.

Brave Sullustan Pilot ready to get down with his heavy blaster pistol....

Using a nifty invention called a Jeweler's saw, I removed the head of a second Sullustan model and swapped it out with a Chadra Fan non combatant figure from the cantina box set to make this Chadra fan pilot...I think he came out ok...

Fun stuff...

The second conversion is the pilot to the right in this picture.  I swapped out his original head with one pared from the Luke on Tattooine model from the A New Hope boxed set.  The female pilot is from the series of blisters Grenadier released to support their Dark Stryder campaign.  I don't think she is a Guthrie sculpt, the Dark Stryder models are noticeably more husky than most of the other models in the Grenadier Star Wars line.  The character in the Dark Stryder Campaign is a redhead.  As much as I love ginger girls, I decided to make her a brunette after I found Scruffy Rebel's Rebel girl photos while googling about looking for inspiration...

The last pilot...

"Man your ships...and let The Force be with you!"

Star Wars Classic Rebel Heroes Part 2: Luke Skywalker

Just added a few Luke Skywalkers to my Star Wars collection.  All are from West End Games' classic Grenadier minis range by Julie Guthrie, of course.

There's also a landspeeder kit, but I'm saving that for another post.

I think I did a little better with the eyes this time than I did on the Rebel infantry, but they still don't look very good.  Eyes in 25mm non-heroic scale is tough!

Great figures, though!  And an important addition to my Rebel forces...

May da Swartz be with you!

Star Wars Rebel Fleet Infantry Platoon Part 1: Command Team and 1st Squad

Although the Rebellion has a Special Forces Command which supplies specially trained ground forces for planet-side operations, Fleet itself provided the bulk of the Rebels' infantry right up through the Battle of Endor.  Here we see part of a Rebel Fleet Infantry Platoon as they would be seen soon after disembarking from a troop transport.

The Rebel infantry platoon I'm building follows the guidelines given for Rebel units in The Star Wars Miniature Battles Companion, though I've tweaked it here and there to suit myself/.  The finished platoon will consist of 4 8-man line squads, a 4-man command team, and a weapon section with two repeating heavy blaster teams, forty men in all.

The Companion says that 8-man squads were standard during the War of the Rebellion, though I don't know why 8. Whatever, I decided to go with that squad structure.  The book says a command team should be composed of a Lieutenant and a Sergeant Major.(?!)

I think they mean Platoon Sergeant. Well, I found suitable figures to represent the officer and platoon Sergeant, then I added a medic and a comm link guy, since an infantry platoon just doesn't look right to me without them.  Don't recall seeing any rules about medics and RTOs in the rulebook...maybe they will just be regular troopers, or perhaps I'll invent some rules for them.

Here they are.  The RTO isthe unarmed Rebel Trooper figure.  I didn't think he was good for much, having no weapon in hand, so I guess it's good that I found him some useful employment.  I wanted him to have a big bulky, annoying comm set, but didn't want to sculpt it, since I have no sculpting skills.  Instead I just made him a backpack out of green stuff and tried to make it look like there's an antenna sticking out of the top flap.

The platoon medic is not officially a member of the platoon.  She would be attached to the platoon for a specific mission, after which she would return to her own unit aboard a medical frigate.  As such she has a lot more latitude when I comes to customizing her uniform and equipment, and can get away with things the Platoon Sergeant would never let any of the others do.  As can be seen here, she has doffed her black vest, and replaced her Fleet Issue heavy blaster pistol for a high quality custom-made side arm, undoubtedly a private purchase weapon.  She has also replaced her Fleet-issue headgear with the army-issue crash-type helmet, which she claims is much less cumbersome when she is trying to work on casualties.  I wanted her to have an aid bag, so I made one out of green stuff, which looked ok, until I painted it.  I'll have to go back and touch it up sometime,  Right now, I just want to be done with the unit.

The squad troopers consist of 6 men with heavy blaster pistols and two 'specialists', one with a blaster rifle and one with what I assume is a blaster carbine,

Painting the unit has been frustrating, I'm not too keen on the way it turned out.  Painting 25mm with realistic proportions is tougher than larger, Citadel-type 'heroically proportioned' figures.

Faces don't show up as well, painting eyes becomes a lot harder, especially when figures are giving the Clint Eastwood squint, as most of these guys seem to be doing.

I'd have liked to have glossed the blast shields on their helmets, but didn't have any gloss to hand, so tried to add a highlight by blobbing some white on them.  It doesn't look too good.  Suppose I'll have to revisit them all at some point.

Oh, well, they're done.  Better luck next time?

Classic Rebel Heroes Part I: The Jedi Masters

Been really wanting to get back to working on my old school Grenadier Star Wars collection.  So rude of the Dept of Defense to interrupt my hobby like that.  No manners, those people.  Anyway, enjoyed getting things going again with a couple of old childhood friends like Ben and Yoda.

"Poorly lit is this picture.  Some lights in this dungeon you need, hrm?"

I think they came out ok.  Not sure how often I'll use these in actual games, but they're fun to have.

"Have at you!"

A good start, I reckon.  More to follow soon.