Work in progress on customized X-Wing Miniatures starships: Corellian YV-series light freighter (a la Bossk's modified YV-666 freighter) -- The main fuselage and wing structures are shaping up, as I've been building up the basic shapes and "greebles" with pieces of plastic paneling, and bits of putty filler.

YV-666 - Fuselage WIP - Upside-Down

I've been using Instant Mold temporary push-molds to lift details from FFG's Slave I model -- curved hull surfaces for the ship's tail end and the undersides of the S-Foils, and miscellaneous greebles for the rear assembly and main boosters. In my version, I've lowered the thrusters a little in order to look closer to being in line with the center of mass -- and in order to allow room for a YT-1300-style docking ring at the top rear of the main "cab." If this deviates from the standard YV-series style, I feel justified in that the fluff claims the YV series is "easily customizable" just like the YT series -- and the YT series features some pretty radical alterations by comparison.

YV-666 Fuselage WIP (right-side up)

I also got a Titanium ARC-170 as part of an Ebay lot as part of a silly scheme to get some more X-Wing Minis-worthy ships. My gambit didn't pay off quite as well as I had originally hoped, but it should pass for RPG purposes.

Titanium ARC-170

The ARC-170 has a canon wingspan of 22.6 meters. Most of the Titanium ships are about 3" in their longest/widest dimension ... and at 1:270 scale, that's in the ballpark for being around 20m. Well, I got my ARC-170, and it's actually 4" wide, shooting that scheme down. It's too big by a third or so, but it's the closest I've found, so I used some putty underneath to provide a socket for an FFG base peg, and repainted the thing in Imperial colors (as per a Hasbro toy version of the ARC-170). I figure it'll do nicely as a relic of the early Empire for a scenario. (I suppose I don't necessarily need a custom X-Wing card for it, because something that old probably isn't spaceworthy anyway....)

Titanium IG-2000 / Aggressor Assault Fighter

The other is IG-2000 -- AKA the Aggressor starfighter. Canon fluff (some of it conveniently printed on the package) also puts it around 20m (or, 20m exactly), and this particular model actually was 3" long, so it's about as close to 1:270 scale as I could hope. Fluff claims that this ship holds 8 people, plus a pilot, and also has a secure hold. And it's only 20m long? Yipes. One challenge was figuring out which end was the front end; there's no immediately obvious cockpit -- most of the art of this ship is from (what I found to be) the back side. I ended up having to use some putty and did a bit of repainting on the single engine exhaust, since there was a seam going right through it (which just didn't look right; glowing energy/flame shouldn't be broken in half ). I hate that the copyright ( © LFL ) notice is printed ON THE TOP of the ship, on what I suppose is meant to be the cockpit canopy. That area is painted black, so it's not immediately obvious, but still a dumb design move. It's die-cast metal, so I can't just shave it off with a hobby knife, and I am leery of taking a Dremel to it.

I've found custom IG-2000 stats, and while it might make for an interesting encounter (the PCs went out of their way to mess with an IG-series assassin droid, and thus at some point there ought to be some consequences), I'm concerned they might be a bit munchkin-ish. I admit that I'm enough of a novice at this game not to have any strong notion of it, but when I see lots of high numbers across the board, I get suspicious. Again, I'm using these ships to play out combat for a Star Wars "Edge of Empire / Age of Rebellion" campaign, so I'm not concerned with "point values" per se, let alone having a balanced force on each side for every encounter -- but I don't want silly situations where some oddball ship that was some hobbyist's pet favorite becomes THE BEST SHIP that puts X-Wings to shame, say. I'll likely just make up something on my own, based off of an already-established set of ship stats.

But craft-wise, hey, it looks kind of cool now that I know which end is the front end.

I made a version of each bounty hunter's ship, with pilots, maneuver, and upgrade cards. You might like them, I tried to keep them balanced, but they're still a work in progress so some costs are probably a bit high or low.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/110860-ig-88-bossk-dengar-zuckuss-custom-ships/?hl=dengar

I like the work you've done here. I too am a fan of instant mold. I've used it to copy custom torsos & heads for 40k figures as well as lift icons for replication & application to other models. You've far far surpassed me in its use though I must say. When I want anything 2 part in detail I usually just use silicone and resin to make molds & casts lol.

As for the Z-95s the old battle of hoth snap together model kits have several decent X-Wings with closed S-foils that once the astromech is removed, make excellent Z-95s & are almost perfect fit with X-Wing minis, being just slightly longer.

I lol'ed over the post talking about making psuedo-40k game rules for ActionFleet. My buddies & I did that same, only we used Epic 40k rules & between all of us we had almost every one of the action fleet sets. It was quite amusing to see Vader force choking a wampa as speeder bikes zipped by taking potshots at a modified version of Luke's landspeeder with an E-Web mounted in the passenger seat.

Please keep up the intresting work. As a lurker I looked at your thread several times & wished I'd had a GM like you back when I was RPing.

Work in progress on the YV-666 freighter:

I rigged up the wings so that they can rotate upward, as I happened to have in my "bitz box" a soft plastic cylinder from a construction set, and a wooden dowel with interior/exterior diameters that matched up neatly. This, however, was a largely pointless innovation (it seemed like a good idea at the time) since the model's made to be displayed as if in flight, and I have yet to make any landing gear.

The background piece, by the way, is another project I'm working on with my co-conspirator Chris Stadler. He has just about every Hirst Arts mold I can think of, and is far more meticulous than I am when it comes to casting. We've done some 3D Super Dungeon Explore boards in the past, and he's helped me make some modular "space station corridor" scenery for Star Wars miniatures battles, but the current project is to make up some Robo Rally boards -- this first one based upon one of the 2D boards included with the game. But I digress.

Later, I finally gave the thing a base coat, used some Tacky Glue to affix the wings a little more firmly in place (though it's an easy enough fix if I decide I want to make them mobile again later), then did some rough dry-brushing and a token bit of spot color. I wanted to get this thing "done" over the weekend so it's table-ready for next weekend's game, since I'm going to be putting in a lot of overtime this week, hence I can't count on having time to deal with this further.

Afterward, I'll likely go back with the Dremel and more putty to try to smooth the corners and seams, as the drybrushing really brings out every last imperfection -- and I still need to add those two "smokestacks" (or whatever they are) to the rear greeble area.

Thrown in for good measure, I have a homemade plastic base for the IG-2000/Aggressor I made by tracing an X-Wing Miniatures base onto some scrap plastic. My idea is to affix the display base that came for the model to my makeshift base, rather than tying up a proper X-Wing Minis base. I'll just have to make a custom info card (and I'm not quite sure how to replace it on the fly) that puts the critical information on both sides rather than the front or back edges. I don't have any way of holding up the number/pilot ID tokens, but I don't expect to have more than one of these on the table at a time anyway.

@ Radarman5: Thanks! I will be sure to check those out. I've seen some treatments of the Hound's Tooth that used a single large base, but my own ship ended up a bit too big to plausibly fit on just one of those. I'm going with two bases for now -- though that has me wondering whether that means I need to treat it as a Huge Ship, with energy and fore/aft differentiation and all that. Ack. I manage to complicate things without even trying.

@RedStarrise: Yeah, Instant Mold really doesn't compare to what can be done when making PROPER molds. The main advantage in it is that it allows me to be a whole lot more IMPULSIVE with the molding. Like, I'm putting together this model, and IF ONLY I had another copy of this exhaust-port surface element that I could glue onto the surface ... then, voila! Just get out the Instant Mold, get a surface impression, get out the putty, and I can make a quick facsimile. If I wanted to make anything with serious detail and quality (and especially if I wanted multiple copies of same), then taking the time and effort to make a more permanent mold would certainly be more appropriate.

Regarding that Hoth battle set -- I find myself regretting I never picked up that "Rebel Base" or the "Hoth Battle" set when I had the chance. At the time, I was more focused on everything being 25mm scale (AKA 1:72 or 1:64 or thereabouts) because that's the scale I was using for my minis for skirmishes. I just didn't have the foresight to realize that one day, a really awesome starfighter miniatures game would come out that would use 1:270 scale models, and some of those tiny ships and scenery pieces would come in handy.

I've seen folks posting stats for various ships, but quite often, when I examine the stats, they tend to be suspiciously powerful (as in, "Why would anyone ever want a mere X-Wing, when they could have THIS?!").

I think this a lot too when I read the stats people suggest for ships from the X-wing alliance video game from 1999 being suggested as options for new waves. The X-wing is an OUTSTANDING ship for it's era, the various stats of other fighters when taken a as a whole should rarely match and never exceed the X-wing. The Z-95 'in it's day' was a very highly regarded ship. While it may not be as far above it's competitors as the X-wing, it is safe to say the Z-95 was an above-average craft for it's day so ships like the Cloakshape, Toscan8 Q, R-41 Starchaser should be very comparable if not slightly inferior.

I hope FFG pays attention to this. It does mean they are not very likely to ever bring many of those ships into their game now that the 'cheap' roll has been filled by the Z-95.

I hope FFG pays attention to this. It does mean they are not very likely to ever bring many of those ships into their game now that the 'cheap' roll has been filled by the Z-95.

Yeah, there's a certain point where you'd really be splitting hairs. For my Edge of Empire campaign (where I've been using X-Wing combat for the starfighter combat portions), I've been representing pirate ships with various "Star Wars Starship Battles" craft, and basically either using B-Wing, Headhunter or TIE Fighter maneuvering wheels with stats that are some variation off of the respective ships.

For instance, I had a scenario where the PCs stumbled across a pirate cache guarded by a bunch of rusty old Clone Wars-era Vulture droid fighters. I used the TIE maneuver wheels, and gave them the same stats as TIEs, except that I took away the Focus action (inferior targeting systems), and dropped their Hull to a mere 1 (so just one hit and the thing is stardust). Combined with only giving the droids a Piloting of 1 (really bad maintenance on those droid brains!), that meant that while there were 8, the heroes still made short work of them.

And it's not like the players were going to complain, "Oh, those were too much like TIE fighters!" What mattered was that they were small, fast, and maneuverable, but squishy.

I suppose if FFG released too many ships that had very, very similar stats to each other (even if the models were completely different!) there might be folks to complain about it -- but I'm doing fine for my purposes with a few proxy minis anyway, so I won't hold my breath over it.

One thing, though: If they ever introduce a third faction (e.g., "Fringer" or "Syndicate" or "Mercenary" or whatever), I could see an excuse to release a few ships that fill roles that would already be covered in the Imperial and Rebel fleets. I would've expected a ship like the Slave I / Firespray to go into such a faction (rather than being officially "Imperial"), so I kind of doubt they have plans for something like that ... but if the game was popular enough and stuck around for long enough, who knows?

Anyway, I kind of like having models who are on the low end of power. I suppose it's why I sympathize most with the poor crazy guys in the TIE fighters, not the supposedly "rag-tag" Rebels in their super-duper fancied-up Letter-Wing craft.

And in minis games such as 40K, I was partial to the Imperial Guard ... and in Warzone, I'd go for low-level troops such as the 32nd Trench Battalion rather than sinking all my points into a handful of expensive special forces and a cheesed-out hero. Mind you, I tended to LOSE almost all the time, but that's due at least in part to my near lack of any tactical sense.

Revisiting the Gozanti Cruiser, since the players in my Edge of Empire campaign finally scrounged & scavenged enough to buy one, moving up from their much-abused YT-1300.

Going by my rough calculation of 70m as the length needed for the Gozanti to carry the TIEs as depicted in the Rebels TV teaser, I sized up a silhouette in Adobe Photoshop to be 10.2" long (my rough calculation of the resulting model length based on 70m * 39.3701 in/m / 270). I then positioned the TIEs onto the resulting print-out -- and, hey, it's snug, but it looks about right. If I'd gone with the 75m others suggested, I think the results would be similar (just slightly roomier for the TIEs).

I also noticed that on Wookieepedia, they've updated their measures for the TIE fighter. On the "Legends" tab, it still lists the TIE fighter as being 6.4m long. However, on the "Canon" tab, it gives a length of 8.99m. Given my tape-measure length of the TIE fighter models from FFG as being 1.3" long, I calculated a scale length of a little over 8.9m. That, to me, says that FFG is pretty close to canon size, so I'm confident that my 70-75m estimate for the Gozanti isn't just a product of "inflation" of TIE fighter size. (Even if TIEs had been 6.4m long, 42m would still be too short.)

...

In other experimentation, I've been slapping a few models onto 40mm square plastic game bases with custom printed base stat cards to use for my Edge of Empire / X-Wing Miniatures crossover starship battles. The Starship Battles models might not be PRECISELY the right size, but I'm reasonably certain there won't be any official FFG prequel or Clone Wars ships released to directly compare against. The fine details (logos, etc.) are nice, and it's helpful that I can pop the ships off their clear "flight" rods -- and yet put them back on again, thanks to a notch that makes it easy to line up the correct direction.

V-Wings:

The first time I saw these models, I thought they were rather ugly ... some sort of strange mash-up with the Jedi Starfighter as a pseudo-predecessor to the A-wing, but with some TIE fighter cues thrown in. Well, they've grown on me since then, looking appropriately Star-Wars-ish, but also sufficiently clunky that I'm willing to accept them as PREDECESSORS to the relatively polished respective designs of TIE fighters or A-wings later on. In my campaign, the group has acquired a couple of antique V-Wings and fixed them up, entrusting a couple of astromechs to fly formation with the main ship -- more as a deterrent to casual raiders than an actual major contribution to their fighting force.

I wouldn't mind seeing some FFG V-Wings -- I think they could make sense, painted up in Imperial regalia, as "early-Empire" craft, perhaps still in service in some remote Imperial outpost.

ETA Shuttle:

This toy was actually from the Micro Machines Action Fleet "Series Alpha" set for the "Imperial Shuttle." In that series, each box would come with one regularly Action-Fleet-scaled vehicle, plus a smaller, oddly-scaled model that resembled a "prototype" design of the same ship. (E.g., the X-Wing set included a Ralph-McQuarrie-designed early version of the X-Wing at a smaller size.)

So, this goofy-looking shuttle (seriously, the cockpit looks like they were TRYING to make it look like an evil smiley-face) is much larger than the typical Micro Machine, but much smaller than the Action Fleet shuttle. It's smaller than the FFG Imperial Shuttle, but it's close enough that I could see it as plausible as some sort of early predecessor to the Lambda-Class Shuttle. A ship design appeared in the Clone Wars that was billed as the "ETA" class shuttle, sharing the same goofy cockpit, but with very different wings. It's close enough for my purposes, so in my campaign I'm just going by the conceit that this is a later-model ETA shuttle, making a transition to the same tech that was eventually used in the Lambda-Class shuttle.

Vulture Droids

When I'm using X-Wing Miniatures as a rules set to handle starfighter combat for an RPG campaign, I have a greater need for "mooks" than I do for well-balanced battles. Thus, I came up with an excuse for some pirates to have a bunch of surplus Vulture droids guarding one of their asteroid-base caches. To represent the poor state of maintenance of the droids (lots of micro-meteor strikes and such while they're sitting on an asteroid, dormant, waiting for action), I dropped the Hull rating by another point. They were still highly maneuverable, and it made for a quick but (I think) satisfying encounter for the heroes, since they got to BLOW UP LOTS OF STUFF. While I'd be enthusiastic for some FFG Clone-Wars-era models, I confess that it would've been a pricey proposition to field swarms of Vulture Droids that way. (And I couldn't presently swarm the players with this many TIEs.)

If FFG ever goes the route of having lots of "squishy" fighters such as Vulture Droids, I'd hope that they'd try to at least soften the blow a little bit by offering some sort of a package deal. E.g., TWO fighters in a pack. (I mean, you wouldn't want to field JUST ONE, right? )

The "mook factor" is a big difference, incidentally, between playing X-Wing proper and using it for RPGs. For X-Wing Miniatures proper, you aim for an even match; either side could win! For RPGs, where the same heroes are going through encounter after encounter, the typical one has the heroes greatly outclassing the enemy, or else PC survivability won't manage much past MAYBE one battle -- or you're doing the odds wrongly.

CORRECTION: As has been pointed out in another thread, my estimate for 70m for the length of the Gozanti-class cruiser just won't work. THAT IS TOO SMALL. Clips from the new Rebels TV series show a very significant gap in between the TIE fighters when the ship is viewed from the front (just about wide enough to squeeze in another TIE in between if only there was another docking tube) -- so my build just doesn't cut it. So, it's back to the drawing board for me.

Meanwhile, I took a few pictures of some other ships I've been considering as proxies for starfighter battles in my campaign.

ARC-170 Revisited:

Despite my earlier predictions, I actually got some push-back from the players on the Titanium ARC-170 on the table. "Surely, it can't be THAT big, can it?" Well, surely it can't. If I had a proper model to represent the ARC-170 at 1:270 scale, it would be about 3.3" wide, and the Titanium ARC-170 is 4" wide. There's a Shapeways model from Mel Miniatures that comes in at 3.36" wide, but I'm not keen on the "peach fuzz" and the surface detail from 3D printers for miniatures that small. I'm trying out the Starship Battles ARC-170 (too small at 2.25" wide) as a substitute, since I think it does a bit better at passing the "eyeball test" on the table. If I get any gripes, I'll fall back on, "Well, then *YOU* find me a better model!"

Virago / StarViper Comparison:

In my campaign, the PCs have had a few brushes with the Zann Consortium, and the "StarViper" is supposed to be a key starfighter for that group, so I figured I should fix up a few for the nigh-inevitable battle. The Wookieepedia entry for the Virago/StarViper is pretty useless. It gives a length as 24m. 24m measured from whence to where? Those wings are supposed to move about, after all. I'm guessing there's unlikely to be an official FFG Virago -- at least not anytime SOON -- so I figured I'd settle for a Micro Machine that "looks about right." As luck would have it, the Starship Battles Virago, while having the wings in a wider configuration, happens to still be about the same size/scale. This is especially evident if I put the two models together, cockpit to cockpit -- the cockpits are the same size. (As for which model is BETTER ... well, the Starship Battles model has a little finer detail, but it's subject to lots of warping.)

Corellian Corvette Comparison:

Lastly (for now), I picked up one of those old Collectors' Fleet "Rebel Blockade Runner" models. The sound effects still work! It's a bit bigger than FFG's model (I can live with that), but the level of detail is ATROCIOUS by comparison. Where FFG's model has a finely detailed vent, the Collectors' Fleet version just has, say, a bump if you're lucky. I'm toying with the idea of using Instant Mold to get impressions of greebles on the FFG version, and then try to recreate them with putty on the Collectors' Fleet one. Sure, the scale is different, but I think the added individual spot details would still constitute an improvement.

Right now, I can't really envision having much need for TWO Corvettes in a single starfighter encounter, but a long time ago I had wanted to get one of these so I could convert it to resemble the FarStar from the DarkStryder campaign. (The variant had a hangar bay and some docking tubes for X-Wings, and I liked the idea of having a ship that could act as a roving base for a bunch of starfighters.) If I ever settle on a proper size for the Gozanti-class Cruiser (with TIE support) and start actually building it, perhaps this could be the Rebel equivalent once I add on the docking tubes and fighter bay. It's not something really called for in my current campaign, however, so it's a lower priority.

Come on seriously???, another topic of prequels out of place, greettings.

Come on seriously???, another topic of prequels out of place, greettings.

I think you might be objecting to my posts, but I am having considerable difficulty understanding your statements, so I'm not sure how to respond.

Ok, get the right fórum to speak of the prequels, this is about X-wing, in OT and Legends, nothing else, I know you think is a good and good loking but not all see it, greettings.

Ok, get the right fórum to speak of the prequels, this is about X-wing, in OT and Legends, nothing else, I know you think is a good and good loking but not all see it, greettings.

Are you serious? He's posting his own custom X-wing miniatures in the only X-wing forum that makes sense to put them in. He's kept all his posts in the same topic, so it's not like he's spamming.

I have yet to see you offer any relevant insight into a single one of your broken posts. Greetings.

Ok, get the right fórum to speak of the prequels, this is about X-wing, in OT and Legends, nothing else, I know you think is a good and good loking but not all see it, greettings.

So far as I know, the StarViper is a ship that is relevant within the time period of the Original Trilogy, since it first appeared as the "Virago" piloted by Prince Xizor in the "Shadows of the Empire" multimedia that, for a time, back in the day, was being billed as if it was blessed by George Lucas himself. (Not that I cared for the whole Faleen pheromones thing and the creepy situation with Princess Leia, but whatever.) Not once have I seen any indication that the StarViper was something special to the Prequel period.

The Corellian Corvette and its variants (such as the type exemplified by the FarStar) have for quite some time been associated with the Original Trilogy time period.

So, for example, two out of three of the subjects of my most recent post that you objected to featured ships from the Original Trilogy. And as for the ARC-170, I see no indication that they all blew up right as soon as the credits started rolling for "Revenge of the Sith." There's a toy set featuring ARC-170s in Imperial regalia patrolling with the Death Star (under construction) in the background, for instance. I've been selecting various "prequel" ships for my own campaign of encounters under the pretext that some forces might be using ANTIQUATED ships -- the same way as ships such as Headhunters, YT-1300s, Y-Wings, and even Corellian Corvettes, all of which existed in the time of the Clone Wars (and all of which showed up in the prequel movies and/or in the Clone Wars cartoon series), are still employed in the time of the Original Trilogy.

EVEN IF this thread were explicitly about, say, recreating battles between Naboo N1 Starfighters and Vulture Droids using the X-Wing Miniatures rules (but swapping in different ships), where might I find this "X-Wing Miniatures Prequel Forum" that you seem to be alluding to, so that I might post in the proper forum?

This stuff is interesting and looks good.

Keep posting, let the detractors move on to something else.

This is an excellent, enlightening, thread that shows off wonderful models and helps inspire my own RPG. Please keep up the good work.

Yeah these are interesting please keep posting.

Also nice RoboRally board.

CORRECTION: As has been pointed out in another thread, my estimate for 70m for the length of the Gozanti-class cruiser just won't work. THAT IS TOO SMALL. Clips from the new Rebels TV series show a very significant gap in between the TIE fighters when the ship is viewed from the front (just about wide enough to squeeze in another TIE in between if only there was another docking tube) -- so my build just doesn't cut it. So, it's back to the drawing board for me.

Meanwhile, I took a few pictures of some other ships I've been considering as proxies for starfighter battles in my campaign.

ARC-170 Revisited:

Despite my earlier predictions, I actually got some push-back from the players on the Titanium ARC-170 on the table. "Surely, it can't be THAT big, can it?" Well, surely it can't. If I had a proper model to represent the ARC-170 at 1:270 scale, it would be about 3.3" wide, and the Titanium ARC-170 is 4" wide. There's a Shapeways model from Mel Miniatures that comes in at 3.36" wide, but I'm not keen on the "peach fuzz" and the surface detail from 3D printers for miniatures that small. I'm trying out the Starship Battles ARC-170 (too small at 2.25" wide) as a substitute, since I think it does a bit better at passing the "eyeball test" on the table. If I get any gripes, I'll fall back on, "Well, then *YOU* find me a better model!"

Virago / StarViper Comparison:

In my campaign, the PCs have had a few brushes with the Zann Consortium, and the "StarViper" is supposed to be a key starfighter for that group, so I figured I should fix up a few for the nigh-inevitable battle. The Wookieepedia entry for the Virago/StarViper is pretty useless. It gives a length as 24m. 24m measured from whence to where? Those wings are supposed to move about, after all. I'm guessing there's unlikely to be an official FFG Virago -- at least not anytime SOON -- so I figured I'd settle for a Micro Machine that "looks about right." As luck would have it, the Starship Battles Virago, while having the wings in a wider configuration, happens to still be about the same size/scale. This is especially evident if I put the two models together, cockpit to cockpit -- the cockpits are the same size. (As for which model is BETTER ... well, the Starship Battles model has a little finer detail, but it's subject to lots of warping.)

Corellian Corvette Comparison:

Lastly (for now), I picked up one of those old Collectors' Fleet "Rebel Blockade Runner" models. The sound effects still work! It's a bit bigger than FFG's model (I can live with that), but the level of detail is ATROCIOUS by comparison. Where FFG's model has a finely detailed vent, the Collectors' Fleet version just has, say, a bump if you're lucky. I'm toying with the idea of using Instant Mold to get impressions of greebles on the FFG version, and then try to recreate them with putty on the Collectors' Fleet one. Sure, the scale is different, but I think the added individual spot details would still constitute an improvement.

Right now, I can't really envision having much need for TWO Corvettes in a single starfighter encounter, but a long time ago I had wanted to get one of these so I could convert it to resemble the FarStar from the DarkStryder campaign. (The variant had a hangar bay and some docking tubes for X-Wings, and I liked the idea of having a ship that could act as a roving base for a bunch of starfighters.) If I ever settle on a proper size for the Gozanti-class Cruiser (with TIE support) and start actually building it, perhaps this could be the Rebel equivalent once I add on the docking tubes and fighter bay. It's not something really called for in my current campaign, however, so it's a lower priority.

Would something this work in scale for you?.. http://starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/2482/1350-gozanti-cruiser.cfm

Would something this work in scale for you?.. http://starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/2482/1350-gozanti-cruiser.cfm

Thanks for the link! That looks like a beautiful model, but it says it's about 6" long, which wouldn't be much longer than FFG's Millennium Falcon / YT-1300 model. (At 1:350 scale, that means they're going with the old 42m measurement.) It sure makes me wish there were some marvelous scaling tool I could use to take a "master" at one scale and somehow sculpt an exact duplicate scaled larger or smaller.

I was GMing Edge of the Empire just before getting into X-Wing. We had trouble with its more abstract space combat and I thought about using the X-wing rules instead but the diferances in the two systems didn't seem like they would mesh, so I never tried it. What's your aproach, do you alter the talents and skills from eote or change the ship stats from x-wing? Say a PC has training in pilot(space), how does thier ability score/skill ranks translate?

Since I'm doing this for RPG purposes, there's an awful lot of "winging it" going on, and I need to make some updates to my "cheat sheet" since the last game. For each ship being used by the players, I've been pasting together quick-ref sheets that have the Edge of Empire stats, and then a bogus (Photoshop patched) ship card for the X-Wing stats, along with paste-in equipment cards that seem appropriate (for ion cannons, proton torpedoes, etc.). In some cases, I don't happen to have both Edge of Empire *AND* X-Wing stats for a given ship, so I have to make something up. I don't yet have a smooth "conversion" process, so it mostly consists of my conjecture about stuff like, "Well, this ship is supposed to be a lowly mass-produced craft, so it's probably close to a Headhunter in stats,

I've seen folks posting stats for various ships, but quite often, when I examine the stats, they tend to be suspiciously powerful (as in, "Why would anyone ever want a mere X-Wing, when they could have THIS?!"). So for now I'm just eyeballing it and hoping the players don't think too much about WHERE I got these stats.

For game play ... it's still a work in progress, and I think my own balance is a bit broken and in need of further work. But with that in mind, here's where I am at the moment.

>>> Determine Piloting score by adding up the character's dice in Piloting (Space). Each green die = 1 point; each yellow die = 2 points. This puts the typical TIE fighter pilot (3 Agility + 1 rank Piloting) at a Piloting score of "4." This is used for purposes of determining order in which movements are made.

>>> Every PC who is a member of the crew of a ship (e.g., multiple PCs acting as gunners, etc.) acts at the same time as the ship's pilot. (Yes, this means a ship with awesome gunners and a lousy pilot will be severely disadvantaged in terms of action order, but I can live with that. And what player group will tolerate having a lousy pilot at the helm for very long? )

>>> We go through rounds of X-Wing Miniatures combat like usual -- but if there is any non-starfighter-combat activity that's taking place at the same time (e.g., a fight taking place ON one of the ships right in the middle of the battle, or the "talkie" guy in the group is trying to negotiate in the middle of the shooting), then any die-rolling exercises related to that are handled at the "bottom" of each round.

>>> For the various Talents, I've been figuring out their impact on the game on an "as it comes up" basis. Being able to reroll a Piloting check isn't of much use if Piloting is just a fixed value determining your position in the action order each round ... but I can entertain the idea that it could be used to reroll anything involving dice that could reflect upon actual piloting (e.g., reroll the damage dice when you pass "through" an asteroid in hopes that it'll come up with no hits ... or reroll evasion dice in hopes of negating an attack). Once I make a house-ruling on that, I write it down for future reference, but I haven't exhaustively gone through ALL the Talents to see how they might apply.

>>> Having multiple players on, say, a YT-1300 to man the turrets, etc., means the ship can get in more attacks. A YT-1300 has two turrets, so if you've got one pilot and one gunner, the pilot could make an attack in his forward arc, AND the gunner gets to make one attack that can go outside the forward arc (because it's a turret). If you've got TWO gunners, then it can make two attacks, each one ignoring the forward firing arc (but it doesn't magically add a THIRD attack, because in-game there are still only two turrets.)

>>> I calculate a "score" for certain other skills that might impact game play, mostly in the form of allowing rerolls on dice. My current formula is similar to that for Piloting: Add up your dice (green = 1, yellow = 2), but then SUBTRACT TWO. If, SOMEHOW, after that, you end up with zero or a NEGATIVE score, you're just too incompetent at that skill to contribute, or there's some sort of penalty.

(Note: I don't apply this to the Piloting score because it would be kind of moot anyway, since there it's just used to determine turn order.)

>>> Gunnery: You get to reroll a number of attack dice equal to your "gunnery score." You must take the new result, whether better or worse. If you have a negative Gunnery skill, you get NO rerolls, and in fact you must pull out one attack die per negative score. (Note: I treat the typical space pirate as having a "Gunnery Score" of zero. This tends to mostly benefit the players and "major NPCs.") If "Lock On" is an option, a gunner can "lock on" separately from the pilot.

>>> Mechanics: For this, I listed a number of abilities based on the various Astromech cards, and then ranked them by how "powerful" I thought they were (e.g., the ones that let you flip a Critical over to be a regular damage, or let you restore a shield point if the pilot takes a green action). Each round, anyone who is acting as a Mechanic (i.e., not doing anything else!) can take a repair action, choosing from the list, as long as he meets the minimum Mechanics score for each option.

>>> Computers: For this, I think I went overboard: You calculate your Computers score, and then you can engage in "electronic countermeasures" or providing "targeting support" over the course of the round (rather than waiting until your "turn") ... which basically means that you get a limited number of dice you can reroll on any attack or defense die that round, for friends or foes who happen to be within 3 range. So if you've got 4 yellow in Computers (4 * 2 -2 = 6) then over the course of each round, you'd get to reroll up to 6 attack or defense dice, friend or foe, hoping each time that the new roll is better than the old.

The first time I did this, however, there was no range limitation. Having a Slicer in the group meant that he was probably the most versatile and engaged character in the entire conflict, since he could mete out help or hindrance as desired, over the course of the round. (And being able to pick and choose which dice to reroll on both sides of an exchange is a pretty big deal.) Next time, I'm going with the range limitation, at the very least.

Since I've got a Slicer in the group, I pretty much have to make sure he CAN do something, and the fact he's specialized means that he's got lots of dice in it -- while others in the group (those acting as gunners, pilots, etc.) tend to be more diversified in their skill sets (since they need to be competent not only at space combat, but when the action takes place on land as well), so I'm not sure on where to properly balance things.

...

Anyway, that's just an abstract overview, and I still need to do some edits to reflect observations from our last game. We don't go through THAT much starfighter combat in our campaign (as half the time the group keeps AVOIDING combat situations through trickery, fast-talking, etc., and they're smugglers, not soldiers), so it takes me a while to go through iterations of "playtesting" this properly. Hence, it's going to be a while before I there's even a hope that I'll have anything worthwhile to post over on the Edge of Empire forums.

Initiative could stay the same, so if you had for example a pilot, and 2 gunners:

Pc

Pc

Npc

Pc

Then the PCs could still have the normal options.

Pilot flys the ship

Gunner 1 attacks

Npc moves and attacks

Gunner 2 attacks

Or

Both gunner attacks

Npc attacks

Pilot flys the ship

- The Full Throttle talent could be the same as the boost action from x-wing, with supreme full throttle granting use of either a 1 or 2 straight/bank template.

- Ship speed would only be necessary for Chase scenes. With Gain the Advantage, you could either use the speeds of each ships chosen maneuver or with an opposed pilot skill check. Punch It and Accelerate/Decelerate wouldn't be used in combat anymore.

- Determining which section of a ship can be targeted could use the closest point to closest point rule.

The only thing I'm not sure on is the range issue. Standard ship weapons only work at close range, but missiles and such can be fire from short. Maybe range 1-2 for close and 3 for short.i think this would need some play testing.

For my Edge of Empire / Age of Rebellion / X-Wing campaign, I've had need for a few "generic" starfighters now and again -- for pirates, mercs, planetary law enforcement, etc. Sure, I could just have Y-Wings and Headhunters and the occasional TIE squad AGAIN, but I thought I might see what I have in the garage that I could kitbash into "generic" ships that still have something of a Star Wars look for a change.

I have a whole bunch of Crimson Skies airplane Clix -- largely thanks to my local game store, Sci-Fi City, having RACKS of them (and "more in the warehouse," I was told) for 99 cents per blister. So, that makes it 25 cents per plane for the 4-packs. (I just wish that when they made the PEOPLE figures, they were in regular HeroClix scale, and I'd be all set for pulpy action heroes. I haven't much need for *54mm* pulpy action heroes, alas.)

One pack is called the "Fortune Hunters." Each pack contains 4 aircraft, in the typically dopey Crimson Skies style. (I mean, if we're going to have "1930s aircraft overdrive," then, for crying out loud, I want battle Gee-Bees, Ford Tri-Motors and DC-3s bristling with weapons emplacements ... not VariEzes and canards and just taking all the props and sticking them on the BACK instead of the front. But at least they have "flying wing" style craft. I wish WizKids had released a "zeppelin" pack. But I digress.)

Of those 4 craft, there are just 2 styles. First is the P21-J Devastator -- with a tubby fuselage, and in VariEze fashion it has its main wing and a pusher prop in the back, and a canard in the front. But that's not all -- oh no! It has to be a BIPLANE in the back WITH swept wings. Well, I might do something with that later.

Instead, I focused on the Sanderson FB14 "Vampire" -- narrow fuselage, wings in the front, big pusher props up in the back, and a silly arrangement of six gun barrels of varying length from the wings. I had it in mind to rearrange the parts and see if I could end up with something "StarWarsy" -- in the fashion of the Z-95 Headhunter, ARC-170, or X-Wing, in that it'd have a long nose up front, wings to the back, and rocket boosters, preferably with wing-guns some distance away from the fuselage (because in the Star Wars universe, we don't want our guns lining up with the pilot's line of sight for some reason).

Each aircraft model has a LOT of little pieces glued together. Sometimes they come apart easily (and have already done so in the box). At others, removing them is something of an ordeal, because a great gob of glue was used on a particular piece in the factory. Here I've disassembled the craft into its constituent parts; the little bubble-like structures on the wings with two guns sticking out are actually separate parts that can SOMETIMES be popped off (I discovered this when one simply fell off in the box), and I experimented with prying them off in the hopes of positioning them further out on the wing, but I ended up just sticking with keeping them in place.

Now, getting the parts back TOGETHER in another arrangement is a bit tougher than just breaking the thing apart, naturally. I used a hobby drill to make holes in the facing area of the wings (after using a hobby knife to make sure the surface was smooth), and then in the corresponding parts of the engines, with some wire to make the join. I decided to keep the "gull wing" arrangement, but to lower the angle of the wings where they join the body so that the outer planes are aligned to the horizontal (more or less). In the picture, the "gun bubble" has been temporarily popped off the wing (though I glued it back on later).

Note: The "engine" structure here with the "V" support in the middle is also pretty nice for kitbashing "dieselpunk" hero types -- giving someone an aero-pack versus a rocket-pack, for instance.

And above is the "gull-wing" assembly.

I then reattached the wing assembly to the back, using a bit of putty to fill the gap between the "V" of the center of the wing assembly and the horizontal tail/aileron arrangement. I trimmed off the "spinning prop" (clear discs) on the backs of the engines, so I can paint them up in "ion engine blue" to represent thrusters. There's a bit of putty on the front fuselage where I tried to smooth out the areas where the wings were originally attached.

I drilled a hole just behind the cockpit bubble to add a tiny piece of wire, then a bead of putty to make an astromech dome, and used a bit more putty to make a tail-gunner bubble (with wire for the gun) at a gap on the tail assembly.

Now, I just need to put this thing on a double-wide base (80mmx40mm), fix up a custom stat card for it, and do some touch-up work on the paint (to get puttied areas to match the original paint scheme, which I've decided to keep for now).

The result does not look like any PARTICULAR Star Wars craft (and I regret that I didn't have an easy way to give it "proto-X-wing" foils as on the ARC-170), but I figure it can work for generic starfighters when needed. Stat-wise, I'll base it off of the Mel Miniatures stats for the ARC-170, but with some ion cannons, so it would be ideal either as a pirate raider ship (for theoretically disabling rather than destroying its prey*), or as planetary customs enforcer craft (for disabling rather than destroying law-breakers in orbit). I figure I'll fix up 3 more like this, and do a little touch-up work to paint some color dots on the astromech domes (so they stand out as such, even if I don't go into great detail).

(* Yeah, I know, "disabling" versus "destroying" is an entirely moot point within the scope of any given X-Wing Miniatures battle, but I'm using the Edge of the Empire RPG as a framing element.)

As for the other craft in this pack, they're a bit chubbier and I think they might work better if I were to convert them into retro-style rocketships for games of Slipstream, than if I were to try to shoehorn them into a Star Wars campaign.

I would totally pick up some more crimson skies stuff at that price. It was actually a pretty decent game (some similarities to flight path system) and your idea of using them as conversion fodder for unique star fighters is great.

I decided to dub the Crimson Skies "Vampire" conversions as "Stinger-1000." This is an allusion to the "S-100 Stinger-class starfighter," which is about the closest I could find to a starfighter that this bore much resemblance to ... if only the wings were folded up at a 90 degree angle. My notion is that it's a sort of "spiritual successor" to the old spacecraft, with wings that fold up when landing.

Stat-wise, I imagine it as comparable to the ARC-170, but minus the hefty sensor suite in the nose and missile tubes, and with just two crewmen and an astromech. The ship would be for planetary customs and enforcement, so armed with ion cannons and standard lasers/blasters; the tailgunner serves as a deterrent when it's "escorting" an unlicensed craft.

Et cetera, et cetera. The important thing is that I was lucky enough to have some "maroon" paint that blended well enough with the dark red of the existing paint job, so I cleaned up the lines just a bit.

A project of mine over the weekend was to take an Action Fleet "Republic Cruiser" toy, and turn it into a CR-20 Troop Carrier (as seen in the Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon):

The toy would serve as the base to start from, with some foam core illustration board to form the "shell" of the extended fuselage (fortunately mostly a bunch of flat surfaces):

Given the thickness of the illustration board, I had to do a bit of beveling with a sharp hobby knife, and in some cases scraped away most of the foam interior to make way for extensions of the ship form underneath. I had to pop off the plastic "landing gear" (keeping those as "bitz" for later), and also the top of the "cockpit" (which was hinged so a single figure could be fit inside, despite the ridiculous scale problem).

Once the surface was assembled, I scored the surface among drawn panel lines, and used some epoxy putty to fill gaps. I also used some epoxy putty to make larger "docking rings" for the sides (using a Snap-Tite "Millennium Falcon" toy's docking rings as a model, and some Instant Mold to make a temporary mold off of same).

Now, I really need to do something about smoothing those corners, and I'd do well to add some definition to the surface with some cardstock cut-out panels and such, but in the meantime I did a rough paint job so I have something I can put on the table at next weekend's game:

Aside from the aforementioned corner-smoothing and panel-adding, I also hope to do something about the cockpit windows. I have some shiny black plastic that would work nicely for recessed "transparisteel" panels. I'm not sure what to do about the "turbolaser" turrets that should be on either side; I have a few "turrets" in the bitz box, but they're all overly large for this; I may have to fashion something out of wire and putty at this rate.

The symbol on the side is the Star Wars universe equivalent of the "Red Cross" medic symbol; I'm using this ship to represent a medical ship for my "Edge of the Empire" campaign.

At our next game, I plan on starting up with a good ol' starfighter scenario using the X-Wing Miniatures rules, with this model to represent a CR-20 modified to serve as a medical transport -- and one of the PCs is currently on it when the fighting commences. It's not a particularly agile fighter, but the PCs also have a Headhunter, an ARC-170, and a YT-1300 at their disposal.

Since this sort of ship easily occupies two Large Ship stands, I figure it's something bigger than merely Large, but it doesn't seem quite up to Epic levels. I'm using standard starfighter maneuvering for it (no Power ratings, no bulldozing through smaller fighters), but its custom dial is pretty much just straights and shallow turns. No hard rights, and no K-turns.

Inspired in part by the "Uglies" thread (I already had something like this in mind to do anyway just to see if I could), I've tried making a Z-Ceptor "Ugly."

Putty Rough:

The bulk of this just consists of some epoxy putty put in temporary push-molds made from Instant Mold, using existing starfighter models to get portions of the appropriate ships (in this case, X-Wing and TIE Interceptor parts), plus a bit of extra putty and wire to make some reinforcing braces (particularly underneath).

Ugly WIP:

I applied a bit of grey dry-brushing to bring out some of the details more (as it's pretty hard for my poor eyes to pick out detail on that black epoxy putty), and tried making something to represent the truncated X-Wing cannons strapped to the nose. (That seems to be a theme with this Z-Ceptor design: MORE GUNS! Two TIE Interceptor guns on the wings, two X-Wing guns strapped to the nose, and then some sort of unwieldy turret on top for good measure.)

Stat-wise, I see this as having decent firepower, mid-to-low evasion, low hull, no shields, and a maneuver dial that isn't all that maneuverable (no K-turns, lots of red on the turns). No wonder they stuck a turret on it! I wouldn't know how to price this thing in terms of X-Wing Minis rules for fairness, but I'm planning on using this for campaign scenarios anyway.

For the other "Uglies," I think I'm going to work more with what parts I have on hand, and not worry about trying to get it so close to an "established" ugly type. Really, the idea of any force having squadrons of Z-ceptors, Y-TIEs, X-TIEs, et al., strikes me as kind of silly. I figured the point of uglies is that you're cobbling together a ship from whatever you have; uniformity shouldn't be likely. Even symmetry might be a luxury too far.

Now, due to the necessities of game abstractions, I may give several of these the SAME STATS, but they'll sure look a lot different from each other.

How have I missed this topic? This is brilliant work, good conversions and refits.