Slave I Engine Touch Up

Boba Fett's Slave I.

Yes, there should be a "...and Future!" in this space, not pictures of Boba Fett's famous spaceship. Well, consider this an intermission while I put my plans for 2013 together. :)

Anyway, I went to another X-Wing Kessel Run event this past weekend. This time it was held at Arcane and it was the best attended event so far with 14 contestants! I was pleased with how my squadron performed last time, but didn't feel that Garven was as essential as I had hoped/thought he would be. So I ditched him and R5-K6 to make space for Wedge. I was worried that he'd be such a fire magnet that he'd go down too fast to do much damage, but decided to risk it.

It all worked out fine and I won all my three matches handily! In fact I only lost one ship in total, so obviously I did something right. Refused flank, tight formation flying with Rookies at the front. I'll probably write a tactics article about it later on. 

I played two mirror matches agains three ship builds that didn't end well for my opponent. However, I think mirror matching is a bit of a problem for the X-Wing tournament scene (giving advantage to the Rebels). More on this later.

In the finale I again took command of Slave I commanded by Kat Scarlet and faced off against Lando. It was a very even fight and it again came down to the Falcon vs Slave I. However a critical hit meaning the Falcon lost a round of fire meant I could make the final critical shot and win the game, and the tournament. Wooo!

Of course, since I already have the Falcon I picked Slave I this time around. Just like the Falcon it's a very nice model and the paint job is good. I'm sure it could be improved upon, but I don't really feel the need to. However, the engine area felt a little lacklustre with the engines unlit so I decided to give it a go and add some engine glow. Looking around the net I came across this model which uses LEDs to make the engines glow a yellowish orange. It looked good so I decided to try and emulate that.

Here's my go at it: 

The upper horizontal exhaust has some detailing inside which I was unsure of what to do with so in the end I just gave it an orange hightlight, guessing it's a thrust regulator or something (space-mumbo-jumbo).

This is what the vanilla model looks like. It feels like something is definitely missing, 

specially considering how prominent the engines are on a Firespray.

This was a fun little project as it only took about 30 minutes and made quite a big difference. I've started painting the engine on the Falcon as well, but it's not quite done yet. 

This is also my first Imperial ship outside of the two TIE/ln you get in the core box and it feels good to be able to demo the game using some higher points values. My next purchase will be another core box as I both want another X-wing and a couple of more TIE fighters. Then I'll await the official arrival of the A-wing and pick up a couple of those. 

Fly safe and good hunting out there!