Hailfire Droids 15mm

It was actually quite hard to find reference for these tank destroyers. As always with Star wars, sometimes it's the toys that can be the most useful when it comes to reference material.

This toy of the droid is very colourful and doesn't quite match the rusty brown ones from the film. So, I plan to do a mixture of both and see what happens.

I did a fair bit of under painting with the idea of using some GW Contrast paint to shade it.

A close up of the toy taken from a YouTube video. I was surprised to see all the colours being used.

There are quite a few subtle shades on the droid, so I tried some under painting to show these.

I like the idea of the body of the droid being slightly greenish, so I gave the models a green ink wash. Being a fast moving droid with big wheels, I coated the model in a heavy earth wash to weather it. This should tie some of the colours together as well.

 A detail of the patterns that will hopefully come through once the model is painted with Contrast paint.

Captain Fordo and his ARC Troopers

 

I managed to finish these guys up today and get them based.

The Cian blue is a perfect match to the cartoon, however, they are very similar to troopers from the 501st legion. The shoulder pauldrons really help to make stand apart from the normal clones. 

The decals look good on the backpacks now the matte varnish is dry.

Heavy Z-6 firepower covers the team as they advance. The team also sports a rocket launcher and a sniper.

Captain Fordo leads the way.

Here we can see troopers from the 501st legion, they look very similar but not quite the same.

Republic Gunship Decals

I struck gold today with a chance but from eBay. It's really hard to get an actual scale on some decals, but this gunship one is very useable.

I scratched off the WWII one I had used and replaced it with this actual gunship one.

I love the Republic symbol on there too, very nice. I have enough to do my other two LAATs too.

 

This is the guys card who makes them. I think they may be for Lego craft but the scale is perfect for my ships too.

Really pleased with this, I can't believe I managed to find an actual gunship decal. It's an improvement on my old one for sure. I had to touch up the paint work a bit but totally worth it.

Clone Wars Test Game

Today I grabbed some simple scenery and put a small test game together. My idea for a scenario was a downed Republic shuttle carrying a few Jedi masters. A veteran clone platoon was also on the shuttle and a couple of E-Web repeating blasters.

The game played very well and so I was quite relieved. My little lad got a bit bored and said it wasn't as much fun as a computer game...but I think he enjoyed it a bit.

 The crashed shuttle with it's make shift defenses prepares for the droid assault. The E-Web guns open up and rip through an advancing AAT tank.

Droidekas roll into range but are met by the Jedi. They were soon forced to fall back and regroup.

    

A droid battalion clambers through the foliage to surround the crash site.

The Jedi ignore the tank and jump into the flank of a battalion of B1 battle droids. They were cut to pieces and fell back.

The Jedi then turned their attention to the AAT.

Finally after what must have seemed an age to the clones, the first LAAT turned up. It's heavy blasters desamated the advancing droids from behind.

Once the gunship had landed, Omega squad disembarked to add their firepower to the battle.

The veteran clones now pushed forward to harass the shaken enemy. It wasn't long before all droid units were destroyed. This just left the badly damaged AAT, which limped away back into the jungle.

I thought the rules played well. It was a simple scenario to see if he could hold out until the gunships arrived. The droids had the numbers but not the quality. Jedi knights and veterans in cover backed by E-Web guns was quite a force. The droids did have a tank though, but this held its fire to allow the infantry units to close in. The game was over when the first gunship turned up and shredded what was left of a droid battalion. Well, he did it, he lasted out until help arrived. The gunships arrived on a roll of a 12 then an 11 and so on as the turns went on.

As with the actual lore, the CIS's major strength was its numbers of droids, overwhelming the enemy in endless waves.

I think the flavour of the combatants and the theatre of war was well represented, so all in all, I'm pleased with this little test game.

 It's allowed me to make some tweaks to the rules for melee too.

The tactical dice worked well, the three dice rolled at the start of each player turn that award extra bonuses. Although the medic bonus was never rolled, it would of been nice to have seen that in action.