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Author Topic: [X-Wing] Gozanti repaint, (and of its exploits in a custom made Epic scenario)  (Read 3007 times)

Offline Daeothar

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Right... Well sit back and prepare yourself for a lengthy read (but rest assured; there'll be plenty of pictures... :D ).

Back in May of this year, my nephew received a Gozanti class Cruiser for X-Wing for his birthday. It was his first huge ship for the game and naturally, he was over the moon (we established that it was a moon after all  ;D ).

Also, I've not only introduced him to the game, but also got him into repainting his ships. When I say repainting, I mean embellishing factory paintjobs by the way; engine glow, some striping, washes etc. but he has taken to this with gusto and does some cracking jobs.

However; when he thought about his brand new Gozanti, he wanted his to have a paintjob like on the Vector title card. Of course, this was the most involved paintjob of any card (full repaint), and he asked me to do it for him:



Now, with a whole range of birthdays in the family , then a vacation and of course work and many other social obligations over the summer, I had to struggle to find the time to do the paintjob. And when I finally did find the time to start, a couple of weeks ago, it was too hot and moist to spray. ::)

Eventually I took the plunge and did the basecoat of white on (what felt like) a relatively cool and dry night, but alas; the entire spray job was botched, as the paint dried before it hit the model, resulting in a surface not unlike coarse grain sanding paper.  :'(

Darnations!  >:(

So now I had to carefully (but thoroughly) sand the entire ship back to  a smooth surface. Which I dutifully did of course, and only then could I finally start on the paintjob itself.

In the meantime, I scoured the interwebs for previous paintjobs by others for inspiration (I like to have as much source material as possible when I have to copy a certain scheme) and was surprised to learn that only two examples were documented on the net. One I ignored, simply because it was only one, very unclear picture, and the other I set out to use as a guide.

However, midway into the paintjob, I found that there was just too much red on there and I decided to take it into my own direction. So I painted over some of the red panels with both white and imperial grey, which broke up the red enough to make it more interesting.

What I did copy though, was the imperial logo on the wings, which was just too cool. I applied my recently emerged decal-making skills for this; it saves time and looks better than (most) freehand attempts. And as I was at it anyway, I also made decals with the ship's name. Neither the roundels nor the name are visible in the artwork, but a bit of artistic licence should be expected, right?

Such a paintjob is very time consuming though, and I must have spent at least 5 evenings on it (including the cleanup of the spraypaint disaster), and I was still not ready, when he asked me to play a game with his new Gozanti.

We normally play about once a month, but the summer had thrown that schedule out the window, so obviously I agreed, as it had been too long already. We would combine a painting session (during which I would finish the Gozanti) in the afternoon with an Epic 300 points game in the evening.

In the end, between coaching my nephew's painting and making sure my 3-year old, who of course wanted to paint with us, did not get her paint-smeared little paws on any of the good brushes or our ships (she has her own army men to paint), I managed to finish the Vector, bar the engine glow, which we decided will be added during our next painting session:



He wanted to play Rebels with the brand new VCX-100 Ghost he had bought, so I would have to play the Imperials. It then struck me that I could potentially play with two Gozanti's (his and mine), and all of a sudden I conceived of a cunning plan (, sir...).

And in a furious evening of writing, pondering and Photoshopping, I made my first X-Wing mission, complete with special rules and even tokens!

I proofread, adjusted, changed and expanded it several times but eventually, I came up with this:



Of course the special rules I created for docking and boarding required some more detailed info, so I cooked up some Reference cards as well. Actually, it's two reference cards and one Mission card; a category I dreamt up myself:



The tokens were added at the end, when I realised that we needed to track which ship was attempting to board.

So I made some from a bunch of Critical Hit tokens (of which I have too many anyway and let's be honest; who uses those anyway?). I simply made my design in Photoshop and then printed them on adhesive paper. I peeled off the top layers of the tokens and stuck them to the back of the adhesive paper.

Then I cut off the excess paper with a scalpel, used a black marker to edge them and coated the tokens with some matt varnish. I do not have the best of printers, so the colours came out all wrong, but they certainly do the job:



Finally, to make things more interesting, I also made a Crew and Team card, especially for the mission. One for the attacker, one for the defender and designed to be as balanced as possible, given the scenario.



And here is a shot of everything printed and ready for use. I added some other suitable tokens from my big stash of X-Wing stuffs as well:




So, with all of that out of the way, we can finally get to the battle report; how does the scenario play?

Well, I can't say just yet... ::)

Because even though this X-Wing game was one of the quickest ones I have ever played (in regard to not wasting any time moving, rolling and thinking), we had to cut it short right at the moment where the Gozanti's were starting to take fire because I had to take my nephew home in time (or risk the ire of my sister, which is not something one simply does...).

So; even though we had a very enjoyable game and many TIE's were reduced to rapidly expanding fireballs, no boardings were even attempted. Granted; we only had about 1,5 to 2 hours of actual game time (we had a late dinner and we had to properly build his list and then improvise as he had forgotten to bring some dials, ship tokens etc).

Still; I think I will be replaying the Mission as soon as possible so I can see how the Docking and Boarding Missions actually work out. Given the experience so far, I think it should work out just fine, as long as the Rebel player brings as much Ion weapons as possible.

As it was; the entire Mission began very much like a mission in the old X-Wing or TIE-Fighter PC games; the Rebels attacked with a first wave of Y-Wings, line abreast, with A-Wings and B-Wings flanking the formation, ready to take on the fighter cover. Behind the Y-Wings, the boarding transport (the VCX-100) edged forwards till the target ship(s) were disabled.



We had agreed beforehand that we would use as many as possible of the characters, and only craf that appear in Star Wars Rebels. So he had the Ghost and Phantom, with some of the series'  protagonists, with 4 Y-Wings, 2 A-Wings and 2 B-Wings adding a Rebellion punch. I had the 2 Gozanti's (one of them obviously with the Vector Title), with Grand Moff Tarkin in one and Agent Kallus in the other. They had 4 TIE-Fighters and 2 TIE-Bombers on their docking clamps and the Inquisitor with two extra TIE-Fighters was held in reserve.

As an aside: I did learn that TIE-Bombers do not fit the Gozanti's docking clamps by the way, even though they can dock according to the rules. That's a bit of a bummer, FFG... :(

Meanwhile, at the first sight of the raiders, the Imperial convoy broke formation and released its fighters, ready to intercept the Rebel scum. I had held the Inquisitor and his escorts in reserve as mentioned though, so they never made an appearance.



In a display of disciplined maneuvering, the two huge ships managed to reach the middle of the play area in parallel formation to maximize fire on the Rebels, while the fighters attacked the Y-Wings and the bombers made a run for the VCX-100.





Both bombers were destroyed by Ion turret fire in the very confined furball that resulted, having fired only two plasma torpedoes at the oncoming transport, with the A-Wings and B-Wings adding their fire as well.

The TIE-Fighters, staying in tight formation just as doctrine demands, were able to take out one Y-Wing and remove the shields on several others as well.



And just as the Gozantis started to make their presence felt, we had to call it quits. In the last turn, I tried to run the two huge ships into his fighters, just to even the odds some more, but they came up just short of the cluster of snubfighters.



In the end though, he managed to take out 2 TIE-Bombers and 1 TIE-Fighter, versus my meagre reapings of just one Y-Wing, so had it been a straight up fight, he would have won!


For now, the Imperium's secret weapons research is safe, but we must remain forever vigilant, for Rebel scum can turn up anywhere and anytime, to foil the Emperor's carefully laid plans...
« Last Edit: September 06, 2016, 10:07:25 PM by Daeothar »
Miniatures you say? Well I too, like to live dangerously...
Find a Way, or make one!

Offline OSHIROmodels

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That's a cracking re-paint  8) 8)

Just out of curiosity, how long is the Gozanti model?

(Loved the moon joke  lol)

cheers

James
cheers

James

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Offline Daeothar

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Thanks James :)

I didn't have time to measure mine this morning, but the internet says it's 24cm.



+++ EDIT+++ And that came out so wrong... lol lol lol
« Last Edit: September 07, 2016, 07:14:28 AM by Daeothar »

Offline OSHIROmodels

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 lol lol lol

Offline Mason

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Great repaint.
It looks stunning.
 :-* :-*

Caution: Dont believe everything that you read on the internet.
 ;D


Offline Daeothar

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Good point. But I read that on Wookipedia, so it must be true... :D

I do know I saw that the Gozanti is apparently the only Huge ship in X-Wing that is at the same scale as the fighters (1/270), whereas the other huge ones are scaled at about 1/350. I'm not sure about that though; this means it should be about 45m long 'in real life'. But looking at it depicted in Star wars Rebels, it seems much bigger and I've read length estimates of about 65m instead...

Offline OSHIROmodels

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Wookiepedia has it at 41.8m so at 1:270 that makes it 154mm long. Perfectly doable  :D Less so in 28mm  lol

cheers

James

Offline YPU

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It does make a lot of sense that it would be in scale with the fighters since you can actually dock them under it.
3d designer, sculptor and printer, at your service!



3d files! (here)

Offline Daeothar

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Yeah, but to my dismay, not the bombers...  :?

I might just have to magnetise all my TIEs now...

Offline Elk101

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Very nice job on the repaint and the cards. I like that a lot.

Offline The Voivod

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Lovely stuff dude.
Like I said, let's give it a rall and play out the boarding actions with an imperial assault game.
'Mercy? I am far to brave to grant you mercy.'

Offline seldon

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This is AWESOME !!!!!!

THANK YOUUUUU !!!!

really cool...

Francisco

 

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