Star Wars: Silent Death - a build-up

Let's get off of Hoth!

Lately I have been building more space ships. Not carving them like my others. Building them. Out of paper.


The sudden surge in star fighter construction was indirectly triggered by (but directly related to) an impulse purchase of some Star Wars Micro Machines that were on sale at the grocery store I frequent. Today I saw them putting the toys into a clearance bin, meaning I may be tempted in the future to get some more, if the prices go down even further.

What I bought on sale, grouped by pack.

My justification for a purchase I'm currently not so sure was well thought-out, but which I do not yet regret, was to use the miniatures in an X-Wing Miniatures style of game. X-Wing is based on a miniatures series I already own parts of, and have also carved my own models for, and that is Wings of Glory (previously Wings of War). The two games have much in common:

- simple unit movement using pre-set templates,
- simple method of firing and damage allotment,
- high quality, pre-painted minis
- an element of collecting (base games are only enough to whet the appetite)
- small scale, thus as a miniatures game, it is accessible to miniatures noobs like me

In my opinion, it is the Star Wars franchise that is the main factor driving X-Wing to edge out WoG in what I perceive to be a greater level of popularity. Another factor may also be the use of cards in X-Wing that represent special weapons, droids, and characters from the galaxy far, far away that are used to beef up a ship in-game, making it more deadly or harder to destroy or whatever. Now, there are fans doing the same for WoG, but it's a tacked on addition and I think it takes a while of getting the hang of playing the game as is before people want to tackle that additional complexity. I think it just works better in X-Wing because fans of the Star Wars movies and books recognize and want to use their favourites. I could only name one fighter ace of World War II, and that only because I played the heck out of the air combat game he endorsed and read his autobiographic works.

For all those reasons in my list of bullet-points, I would love to own X-Wing too. The thing that keeps me from making that purchase, besides the fact that I know I would end up wanting to buy more ships (an expensive proposition), is the idea of the pre-game mixing and matching of ships, pilots, special weapons, etc. to get to the point value decided on for a match. I don't feel like I would enjoy that very much.

Which brings me back to my purchase of Micro Machines models to build an alternative.

As I said, I wanted to use them in a table top star fighters game. Once I got them home, I was scouring the Internet for rules I could use my newly acquired spaceships in and came across Star Wars: Silent Death Starfighter Combat Game. This is a Star Wars adaptation of an already existing game called Silent Death. Well, the problem I quickly ran into was the the need for more ships to fill out the scenario rosters included in the rules. This naturally led to a desire to build up a squadron of TIE fighters, which is actually rather difficult to do with without acquiring a glut of X-Wings and a bunch of unwanted miniature models.

So I started searching online again, only this time for collections of one type of fighter, i.e., a squadron of TIEs. Tried eBay, only to find that it would be just as expensive as building up squads by buying all kinds of vehicle packs for the one or two ships I might want from each. Then I came across some pictures of papercraft fleets. There are a number of files available for download that you just print the patterns on card stock, cut out and fold/glue the bits together and get any number of nice-looking miniatures for pennies apiece. After the ensuing downloading spree, I printed A-Wings and TIE Fighters so I could build them and play the first Scenario included with the SW:SD rules: 2 A-Wings vs. 3 TIEs. (Battle report next post.)

I have a number of other papercraft models downloaded that I have never built (mostly 28mm scale buildings), maybe I'm a little intimidated by them, maybe I didn't know where I'd keep them, maybe I just wanted to have some for the future possibility of wanting to build them. Likely a mixture of all three. But I wanted these ones and I dove right in!

Building is taking me a little longer than I had imagined, maybe 30 minutes per ship if I am "in the zone." But building 1 or 2 each day, I am now up to the following paper ship collection:

5 A-Wings, four of which I transposed the Basic (that's Star Wars alphabet) equivalents of A thru D onto the fins before printing

a small freighter they call Otana, reminiscent of the Millenium Falcon, but different, and a B-Wing

3 TIEs (foreground; one "Big Gun Prototype"? not familiar with where that comes in) and 3 TIE Interceptors (background; again, one is a prototype with some kind of rocket launchers mounted on it, which I am also not familiar with).

In the end, the building is so fun, I want to do more! Originally arranged to be of similar scale to Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles, these turned out smaller than Micro Machine size, but Micro Machines aren't known for sticking to a certain scale, so that's okay. Maybe later I will worry about that, and maybe not.

It may turn out in the end that the greatest enjoyment I'll get from the money I spent on those toys will be from turning them over to the kids, maybe as a reward for doing something hard. Or maybe just because I want to!