Friday, September 18, 2015

Imperial Knight 5/5 and an Imperial Knight Commission


One year to the date of making my first Imperial Knight post, I finally finished the army. This is the fifth and final Knight, the Cerastus Knight Acheron. Of course I say that now, but god knows they'll release another cool Knight down the line and I'll probably grab one of those as well. There's an ITC style tournament this weekend and I can't tell you how excited I am to try this guy out. I was motivated to finish this guy up mostly because I was also doing my first commission paint job on an Imperial Knight Errant/Paladin. I figured I'd paint them up along side each other since I'd be doing a lot of similar things on each. This was the first of what I hope becomes many more commissions. The project went smoothly and I'm looking forward to helping more people get their armies painted. If you have any interest in a commission please feel free to contact me at capnmoe2002@yahoo.com.


Here's a few work in progress pics.











Thursday, September 10, 2015

X-wing: New League as Wave 7 Hits the Shelves


Last week as wave 7 for X-wing hit the store shelves, a new league began at Fantasy Books and Games. This wave would see the introduction of 2 bombers, the K-wing and the Tie Punisher, as well as 2 ships for the new Scum faction, the Kihraxz Fighter and the YV-666. I picked up the K-wing and the Kihraxz. This league I'm looking to run Scum only and the K-wing has some fantastic upgrade cards that should help. The Khiraxz is the Scums version of the X-wing with some slight tweaks. 

The league itself will take place every other Thursday starting 9-2-15 and ending 10-14-15. There's some great prizes this time around and everyone who participates gets an alt art "Recon Specialist" card.  


I decided I wanted to get the Khiraxz on the table in the first week for nostalgic purposes. When I used to play Star Wars Galaxies, I flew this ship often. I knew I wanted to try and step outside of my comfort zone for this league as well. I wanted to try an elite 3 ship list as opposed to the "Tanky" high shield/hull point lists I normally run. I also wanted to try and find better builds for a few of the Scum ships that hadn't preformed very well for me in the past. So with that in mind I decided to try:

   
   

With only 3 ships on the board, I tried to gear most of my upgrades towards keeping my ships alive. This was definitely a "Glass Cannon" list compared to what I'm used to running. 

Game 1
My opponent's Squad as Best I Can Remember:
Blue Squadron B-wing
Blue Squadron B-wing
Gold Squadron Y-wing - Ion Cannon Turret
Warden Squadron K-wing - Cluster Mines, Ion Bombs, Advanced Slam, Extra Munitions 

This game started out strong but really went no where. I was unable to focus on any single ship after my initial pass. Each of them had 8+ hull points so it was difficult to take them down. Guri hit a couple of the new cluster mines in turn 3 and got vaped. Once she went down it felt like a lot of the wind came out of my sails. I did however fly the ships pretty well, and to my surprise the M3-A was the only ship to survive. I lost this one pretty handily. The best I managed to do was get the K-wing to 2 hull points and burn a few shields off of some of the others.

Game 2
My opponent's Squad as Best I Can Remember:
Binayre Pirate Z-95 
Binayre Pirate Z-95 - Feedback Array
Binayre Pirate Z-95 - Feedback Array
Binayre Pirate Z-95 - Feedback Array
Binayre Pirate Z-95 - Feedback Array
Drea Renthal Y-wing - Flechette Torpedoes, Ion Cannon Turret, R4-B11

Man this was a cool list. I have often wanted to try this with Z-95's. Drea seemed to be geared to control a ship and then have the Z-95's rip it apart with feedback. I faired a bit better in this game. I managed to take out 2 or 3 of the Z-95's and put a hurting on Drea. Unfortunately it wasn't enough and by the end of the game the M3-A was the only shipped still flying for me. I lost this game too.

After all that, I do plan on fielding the M3-A in more games. It was surprisingly survivable and did some work with its Heavy Laser Cannon. Graz did all right and while Glitterstim is a solid card, I wasn't overly impressed by it. I'm still not sold on the Starviper or any of its pilots. The ship seems over costed and doesn't really know what roll it wants to fill on the battlefield. It's not a jouster and it doesn't arc dodge well. What is its purpose? Next week I plan on mixing in some of the gear from the K-wing expansion. I'm going to stick to a 3 ship build, but up the shield/hull points up quite a bit. I'm really excited to try out the new "Twin Laser Turret" and the "Extra Munitions" cards. I was never really sold on missles/torpedoes/bombs before, but with addition of Extra Munitions you get a ton of value out of the cards. Here's the list: