Out of the Ashes: Eagle and Empire Reopens!

After 38 days of being closed following a six-alarm fire in the Belle View Shopping Center, Eagle and Empire has reopened! Northern Virginia area gamers and hobbyists rejoice! It’s been fully stocked and is ready for both it’s Grand Reopening and Small Business Saturday. 

Courtesy of the Eagle and Empire Facebook page.

Many thanks to all who have helped my FLGS and the shopping center’s other affected businesses during this tough time. The Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce and Belle View Merchants Association raised a total of $7,110 and the Eagle and Empire GoFundMe raised $3,400. That's a grand total of $10,510!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a list for my next run to Eagle and Empire!

DECEMBER 8, 2019 UPDATE 

I was in the shop today for the first time since it’s reopened and got to chatting with the owner. Apparently about half of the impacted businesses are still closed; he had pretty good insurance and was able to reopen quickly by comparison. Hopefully everyone will recover sooner rather than later. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

May you have a wonderful day!

On the Workbench: The Green Angels, Part I

Just just a quick update from the workbench! 

The new Green Angels squadron is progressing nicely. Just sprayed them with a gloss varnish and I think they look even better than before. Once everything’s dry it’ll be time to move on to decals and weathering. Because of my busy schedule it’s taking me a lot longer to finish these than I’d like, but I feel like I’m making steady progress overall.

Tamiya Navy Blue Paint

In the course of working on my new and updated Green Angels X-Wing squadron, I've finally tried Tamiya paints. In this particular case, their Navy Blue spray paint.

I'm a huge fan! 

Sprayed over a glossy black coat of paint.

The USS Midway's F4U Corsair & myself in 2011.

It might be a little hard to tell in the photo, but the color is absolutely perfect. It looks exactly like the F4U Corsair I've seen aboard the USS Midway in San Diego, California. I definitely made the right call in trying this spray paint out.

The paint was sprayed over a coat of Testors Glossy Black that had been lightly drybrushed with heavily thinned GW Eshin Grey (and a bit of Vallejo Gloss Varnish too). It needs detailing now, of course, but I think this is a great starting point.

This stuff is seriously fantastic!

I'm eager to try out some of Tamiya's other colors now! I'm impressed with the number of aircraft-specific paint they have, which has my creative mind working overtime. 

On the Workbench: Putrid Choir of the Death Guard

Taking a bit of a break from X-Wing to post some progress photos of my Putrid Choir test figures. These guys have been sitting on the workbench for a while: I first picked them up when Dark Imperium was released in 2017. They promptly sat in the box until earlier this year when I decided to take a crack at the Death Guard. There they sat again until I decided to make a post in the hopes that I'll be inspired enough to finish them (and their pestilence-ridden brethren) in the very near future.

For those unfamiliar, the Death Guard are from Warhammer 40k and are a chapter of Chaos Space Marines dedicated to Nurgle, the surprisingly jovial Lord of Decay. These fellows accepted Nurgle's "gifts" and despite their grotesque appearance, are immune to disease and pestilence. Not to mention that they're deadly proficient warriors. 

Yup, he sure seems like a nice and happy fellow!

When the set first came out, it seemed that everyone was painting these guys up in standard Death Guard green. This is fine but I wanted to do something different. Inspired by a faded set of green dumpster steps I pass on my way to work, I decided to paint them up as the Putrid Choir warband. These gents announce their presence with Undertaker-sounding bells in a maddening cacophony that will test the sanity of nearly every opponent. I may or may not also be working on a soundtrack to go along with playing. 

The "Death Guard dumpster" steps.

Anyway, here are some more detailed shots!

These guys were basecoated with two thin coats of GW Sybarite Green over a white primer. This was my first time trying either and what a difference it made! They were then given a bath of GW Agrax Earthshade and given two drybrush coats of the original color to bring it back up. The result is pretty grimy and dirty power armor that, well, looks like a dumpster. I'm pretty pleased with it! 

I've got plenty more of these guys basecoated and ready for finishing. Like many other hobbyists, however, I tend to get distracted by other projects and have a really hard time finishing projects that I start. I think my New Years Resolution for 2020 will be finish many of the figures I've started but have sort of abandoned over the last few years. 

I'm still not sure how to do the bases, though. If anyone has any ideas please let me know in the comments below!

The Green Angels: An X-Wing Tribute to Grandpa

Happy Veterans Day!

You might recall that I flew a squadron of T-65 X-Wings painted up as 1950s F4U Corsairs for the 2017 Campaign Against Cancer. I'd actually painted them up the 2016 event, but had misplaced some of the pilot tiles so I couldn't bring them out. I just realized, though, that I never highlighted them in them own blog post. 

My grandpa, Bob Abel, enlisted in the Navy in 1944 while World War II was still raging. He eventually became a naval aviator in 1948 and retired in 1976 as a captain in the Naval Reserve. In his lengthy career, he flew many different types of planes but really only talked about one: the F4U Corsair. My grandparents' house was decorated with photos and models of it, and whenever anyone in my family sees one we instantly think of Grandpa. I can remember talking with him once and even though he was incredibly sick, his face lit up when started talking and thinking about that plane. Even more than 50 years after he'd last flown one, Grandpa could still close his eyes and remember where every single switch and button was in the cockpit and what it did. It was incredible to see. 

So when I learned about the Campaign Against Cancer in late 2015, I knew that I wanted to paint some X-Wings up as Corsairs. I opted for a very simple design: blue hull with a yellow nose and appropriate decals. If I remember correctly, the ships were basecoated with some old GW Mordian Blue, given a bath of GW Nuln Oil, and drybrushed (a bit too heavily I recognize now) in GW Regal Blue. Not only were these my very first X-Wing repaints, but it was also the my heaviest use of decals at the time. I've traditionally avoided these like the plague and I viewed them to be too finicky and not worth the trouble. It was very much a learned experience and while my decal work isn't the greatest on these ships, I think they turned out alright.
 

After several nights of work spread out over a month, the squadron was finished! I opted to call them the Green Angels. Grandpa told me that his squadron called themselves that in contrast to the Navy's elite Blue Angels flight demonstration team.

At this point, these ships are nearly 4 years old and I think I can do a better job now. As I'm typing this, I have 4 T-65 X-Wings drying downstairs. They got a nice coat of Testors Glossy Black (I'm taking advantage of the season's low humidity and spraying paint like a madman) and should be ready for the next stage soon.
 

 

This Corsair was from Naval Air Station Los Alamitos in Los Alamitos, CA I was lucky enough to find this photo this morning and it will be the inspiration behind my new Green Angels squadron. Why? NAS Los Alamitos was where Grandpa was based out of during his Naval Reserve career That photo of him from earlier in the post was very likely taken there in the early 1950s.

“In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”

Tonight my wife, Teresa, asked me if I wanted to play Risk: Star Wars Edition before dinner. You might recall that she gave it to me for my birthday back in September after playing it for the first time in Chicago the week before. After cleaning off the dining room table (which needed to be done anyway...I'm not entirely sure it wasn't a ploy on her part to get me to do it) I went ahead and set up the board. She chose to play the Rebel Alliance, which left me fighting for the glory of the Empire once again.

As before, the game was fast moving and lots of fun! I once again managed to kill Luke Skywalker early in the game and started using the Death Star II to blast the Rebel fleet into oblivion. At the same time, however, the shield generator was destroyed and Teresa moved in to try to destroy the Imperial space station. If any of the attacking ships roll a 6, the Death Star II is blown apart. 

I realized that I accidentally left a sector by the station vacant, which the Rebels moved in to. The Super Star Destroyer Executor moved in to attack and was successful in eliminating most of the ships there. With only one Y-Wing left in the sector when she played the Y-Wing card, Teresa decided to attack the Death Star II "for the Hell of it" and for the laughs. 

She rolled a 6 and destroyed the Death Star. With one die. The Rebels won the battle. 

We were both laughing up a storm at how ridiculous and awesome that was! That's honestly one of my favorite things about these sorts of games: you never know how one dice roll will change things. Especially if they're played for laughs. Teresa kept saying over and over again that it was "nothing more than dumb luck."

"In my experience," however, "there's no such thing as luck."

We had a super fun time, and I look forward to playing again very soon!