X-wing Miniatures - Test Flight

I played a quick game of X-wing miniatures (2nd Edition) with Laura the other night. It's a great game and is perfect for when you want to play a miniatures combat game without too much fuss with setting up, creating army lists, etc.

We haven't played in a while, and I actually sold my old lot of 1st Edition ships a while ago. I decided this time around I'd stick to buying just a few ships, as my 1st Edition collection had grown unwieldy. I found that I spent more time trying to get all the bits together to set up a squadron than I did playing with my 1st Edition stuff!

So I got the 2nd Edition core box and a couple of extra ships during the Black Friday sales. The core box comes with an X-wing and two TIE Fighters, so I got an extra Rebel ship and an extra Imperial ship, hoping to round out each faction a bit.

For the expansions I got a Y-wing for Rebels and a TIE Reaper for Imperials. I feel like this means the two forces are pretty evenly balanced now, and I'm gonna see how long I can last just playing with these few ships and doing thematic games. The game mechanics include ship options such as choice of missile, whether to include turrets and various other modifications, so hopefully that'll give it the variety necessary to make sure it doesn't feel stale for a while.

Our recent game had an X-wing, piloted by Laura, having a dogfight with my trusty Y-wing. I figured we're getting back to grips with the game, so the pilots are performing training manoeuvres on one another.

We laid out my space mat and set out a few asteroids and then went with some of the pre-equipped ship setups.

The X-wing had an Astromech which assisted targeting, as well as some proton torpedoes.

The Y-wing was equipped with an Astromech which could perform limited repairs, as well as an ion cannon turret and a couple of proton bombs.

Laura's X-wing out-manoeuvred me constantly, but thankfully my ion cannon turret afforded me an extra 90 degree angle to fire from (I mostly kept it positioned to starboard).

The first few turns of the game had a couple of exchanges of fire, but nothing significant occurred. But then the X-wing clipped an asteroid! I managed to get a solid hit of ion cannon fire at the X-wing while it was doing its best to avoid exploding onto the asteroid, and the ship was left to drift for a turn. During this turn I managed to re-position myself and line up for a good shot, intending to strike a crippling blow to the X-wing. Somehow I missed all my shots though (I blame the Force)!

For most of the game Laura had been trying to get in a good position to fire her proton torpedoes at my Y-wing, luckily I'd managed to keep within minimum distance for much of it. Unfortunately for me, as I peeled off from my failed attack run, she was able to line me up in her sights and fire the torpedoes. It was a direct hit and I was severely crippled. My console was on fire and I could barely move the ship anymore without causing stress to the engines.

She made short work of the remains of my ship, and I exploded spectacularly.

It was a good little game! In the end it was down to the last blow, as Laura's X-wing had 1 Hull Point left, and so did I before the killing blow. It felt pretty well balanced, and I feel like I could've done better if I'd planned to use my proton bombs rather than concentrated on attempting to joust her in an inferior ship.

Pedion Tiles Review

For a few years I've been considering getting a set of Pedion modular terrain tiles, but for one reason or another (usually budget-related reasons!) I never got around to it. However, at the beginning of this year I felt like I was in a position to get some tiles, and deliberated quite a lot on which sets to get.

The Star Wars Legion themed 3x3 sets had recently been released, and they looked like a good variety of tiles for a decent price. I usually play wargames on my coffee table in the living room, and the table is 3x3, so these seemed like perfect sets to go for. I went for the 'Tattooine Desert Set' and the 'Yavin IV Woodland Set'.

A month after making the initial order I e-mailed the head of Pedion (a friendly man called George) and asked whether I could add on some dirt roads and river tiles to go with the grass 'Yavin' set. I figured this should give enough variety to work with my other terrain, such as medieval village houses and my stone bridge kit from 4Ground.

George was accommodating to the request and added the tiles onto the original order with no issue. I imagine this added a month or two onto my delivery time, but I was happy to wait to receive them all at once.

Some pics of the grassland tiles in action.

I finally received the tiles last week, and have so far managed to have a game of Rangers of Shadow Deep on them (appropriately for my order - the Bridge Guards mission, involving a 3x3ish board and a river crossing).

The tiles are excellent, and really improved the look of the board. The trees & woodland tiles in particular are really nice. Also, the rivers do look lovely with the shiny water effect and rocky banks. It's nice to have rivers that are lower than ground level, rather than the usual river sections sitting on top of the ground terrain.

The edges of the tiles are a little uneven on some, but this is easily remedied by turning the tiles around until you get a good fit, or covering any unsightly gaps with a terrain piece such as lichen bush. This is pretty common with modular tiles with a straight edge unfortunately, but I don't feel that it detracts much from the overall effect.

My favourite tiles are definitely the desert ones, and I'm looking forward to using them for all sorts of games. These tiles would suit Star Wars easily, but also would be perfect for modern combat, generic sci-fi, historical or fantasy! While grassland terrains are pretty ubiquitous in wargaming, it's really nice to have some variety, and if you're planning on getting some Pedion terrain, I don't think you can go wrong with getting a small set of desert tiles for some variety of game setting.

I played with a little Tattooine setup on some of the desert tiles to see how they'd look.

The only tile I have any negatives about would be the plain grass tiles. They're fit well with the other grass themed tiles, but are pretty uninteresting and are simply made of a sheet of static grass applied to a 1x1 foam tile. The price of these tiles is very reasonable however, and the cost of the materials to make it yourself would only be slightly less than the cost of the tile itself (and that isn't including the effort of making it), so I'd say they're absolutely worth the money. I just think they're a bit uninspiring in terms of terrain. Their main benefit is being able to place buildings/terrain elements on them without any lumps, but in the absence of such elements, I would hestitate to use them 'as-is', and would definitely place some lichen or other small bushes on them to make them a little less uniform.

Two of the tiles from my order were missing: a 'broken grassland' tile and a desert tile. I'm unsure which desert tile is missing as the set appears to have been taken down from the Pedion store, but going by the picture on the side of the box it looks like it could be either a plain desert tile or a small hill tile. I messaged George about this and he very quickly responded that he would be sending me replacements ASAP, so I'm confident that I'll have my complete sets soon. Unfortunately with a missing desert tile this means I can't really use it in any 3x3 games yet, but the extra roads & rivers I got mean I can use my grasslands terrain in the meantime.

Overall I am very impressed with the Pedion tiles. In particular the desert tiles are really great, and I can't wait to use them in a game. In the future I will probably buy some additional desert hills and maybe a dirt road so I can recreate the Jundland Wastes of Tattooine. Brexit may make this financially crippling though so I'll have to see what happens with our mess of a country before I buy any more tiles.

Communication with Pedion was a little spotty at times during the wait. I inquired a few times as to if there was an expected delivery date, and while the replies were swift and friendly, the estimates came and went. I'd leave roughly a month between the latest estimate and messaging Pedion again, but to be honest I would've liked to simply be given a less optimistic estimate rather than having to wonder if something had gone wrong with the order each time it passed the latest expected dispatch date.

Pedion unfortunately suffered a setback in the Summer where a lot of their workshop & supplies were damaged through no fault of their own. This probably contributed to the extended fulfillment time and I don't blame them for it taking longer than the initial estimate to deliver my order.

George's manner was consistently friendly, and I have no issues with the service I received in general, but I would advise that if you're planning on purchasing some tiles that you should err on the side of 'longer than expected' with regards to wait times. With this in mind, I'd be happy to purchase from Pedion again in future, and fully expect to do so.

Also of note is that I received an extra tile (a transition - grassland to desert) for free, and I think it's a really great tile. If I do manage to make another order, I'll definitely get a couple more transition tiles so that I can recreate some Afghanistan-style terrain with the mixture of verdant grasslands & rocky desert.

TL;DR - Pedion tiles are great! Get them if you want a good looking modular board that you can use with multiple systems. Do expect a long wait for them however, so get those armies painted in the meantime!

Ainsty Castings Observation Post

I finished up my quick paintjob for the Ainsty Castings Observation Post recently. I plan on adding some additional detail to it in the future (probably some windows and a table & chair for the interior). In the meantime however I'm happy for it to go on the board.

I ended up opting for blue instead of a darker grey for the buttressed sections, and went for a cobalt metal (Grey Knight Silver) for the metallic areas. I then splashed some Ultramarine Blue contrast on those metal areas, and then touched them up with a drybrush of the original cobalt metal.

I'm hoping it'll give the impression of bluish tinted sci-fi metal, rather than just messy paintwork!

This building will be added to my sci-fi military / industrial set of scenery.