From ByronM - 1/144 Bandai X-Wing - Mudry's Mesa (36 Points)

For today's painting challenge entry I will be visiting my own map space, Mudry's Mesa.  The rules for my space are that the model has to be bought after the challenge was announced, or was purchased due to someone else's submission last year. 

This figure was purchased on a whim while doing some last minute Christmas shopping for my sons at my favourite local Gundam store (miHobbies) here in Winnipeg.  I saw that they had a pile of the Bandai Star Wars kits, and they were very reasonably priced.  Since I have loved putting together several Bandai Gundam kits over the last year (much to my wife's annoyance "where are you going to put those..."), so thought, why not try one of their Star Wars kits as well.

I could not help but add a space background to at least one image,
as I think this looks almost good enough to use to create a stop motion movie from!

The kit comes with both a 1/72 and a 1/144 X-wing in the box for a pretty reasonable price, or you can buy just the 1/144th separately.  I picked up the dual pack and got to work over the holidays.

The 1/144th scale kit is super simple to build having maybe 20 parts, but oh boy does it have detail! Oh, and the wings move! The 1/72 scale kit in the box seems to have probably 100 parts and even more amazing detail... hopefully I will get it done sometime later in this challenge.

After assembly, I did a quick pin wash with black oil paint and then cleaned it up with my handy Gaia notes finish master swabs. 

I then painted up the rest of the model and added some of the decals, and was done!  Super fast and simple, but I believe it looks almost perfect as is so didn't really do much else to it.

Unfortunately, I now really want to get a pile of these models and do a game with them, rather than the smaller Fantasy flight versions.  Heck, I may even just want to jump right to the 1/72 scale versions that they do, as those could look amazing mounted on tripods zipping around a gymnasium at a convention playing x-wing using a huge scale!  I know, I am kinda crazy....

Oh, and for scale here is one picture with a standard 28mm figure.  

I am not really sure on what it is worth points wise, so will leave that to my fellow minions to decide on.  Since it is for a map space (my own), I do know it gets a bonus 30 points for that.

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There was a time when I would have been so excited to see some Star Wars content! After all, is there any cooler fighter out there than the X-Wing? In any scale, a game where I get to zip around in an X-Wing and paste TIE fighters should be pure gold, so I salute your insane plan Byron - we could cover the gymnasium floor with space mats...just saying...

Alas, the appalling combination of Disney's Korporate Klowns and the various directors, marketing buffoons et al have so thoroughly and completely mucked up and wh***d out this once beloved franchise, I find myself trying to find the Nissan logo on the X-Wing model in your submission.  Here in Canada we see Star Wars now being used to assure us that Bell Internet is "hyperspace fast".  And did you know the Force is actually Bell's 4G network? F*ck off. 

But none of my grouchyness has anything to do with the quality of the submission here! The X-Wing model looks fantastic, and your efforts with the oil paints and swab serve only to enhance it.  One hopes it can make the kill shot on a space station full of marketing f*cks while they are signing a naming rights agreement...

Points? Well, I think this should count this as a couple of 10mm vehicles (I think 1/144scale  is not too far from 10mm). So that should give you 36 points.  Well done Byron - I look forward to the 1/72 version :)

GregB