Saturday, August 16, 2025

XCOM is back!

After playing XCOM2 a bunch recently I decided to revisit this as a wargame set.  Last time I tried it in 15mm, now I have a 3d printer I went for my favourite skirmish scale, 20mm.

Here's a taste of some of the figs I'm working on, ideally I'll cover terrain later.

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XCOM team.  Reference figs: grey is 1/72 Revell US ground crew, green jumpsuit is 20mm Elheim Planner/Survivor

XCOM team is from Panthera Warforge.  They are originally scaled at 8mm.  My printer is an Elegoo Saturn 2, using water washable Elegoo resin.  My scaling for these to 20mm is x:325, y:325, z:350.  They are a bit chunky, but deliberately so that the small/thin bits don't become too fragile.

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Skyranger inbound, XCOM team ready for pick up

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Advent, from the blue site, these are pulled from the game.  They are lower on details.  Scaled to match the XCOM troops.  same ref figs

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Advent on patrol.  This droid isn't in the game but it was too cool to pass up.

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Advent reinforcements called

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XCOM secure Advent resources

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XCOM with heavy body armour

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XCOM heavies with ref figs.  These are from the purple site, they are called Talon troops, I think they are from some video game.  The drone in previous pic is from the blue site, a random find

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VOTOMS, I made this from the original file I used to make the VOTOMs game.  Its native scale is about 25mm.  Its been sat on my desk, I thought I'd paint it to use as a XCOM mech.

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 Cool scuttlers found on the blue site.  The STL is terrible, the legs fall off when printed.  All bases are grey, urban themed fitting the predominantly urban nature of the XCOM games.



Friday, August 8, 2025

A year... ...in a post

 Wow, we have been busy.  Just not busy posting. so here's a minimal text update (its looong...)

Starting with gaming

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Mini-Me and homies have taken up DnD

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GZG ECC was Star Wars, these are all 18mm 3d prints (Wakesemporium)

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Sith, Ventress is a mild convert

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Jedi

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Clones

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more clones, a convert Jedi on ATRT

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Command Droids, including a command head so we can play the Lego Star wars mission capture the head mission (the boys asked for this one immediately when they saw the command droids)

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STAPs

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B1s

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B2s

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mini-spiders

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Droideka

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Vehicles a mix of Revell kits, Micromachines and opportunistic shopping at Target

We did a LOT of scouting stuff
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Camping, mini-me discovered the axe

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and really likes it.

More Scouting, we took another crew up to Maine High Adventure Base
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There is no road, you enter/exit via a boat

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The crew decided to paddle the upper Allagash wilderness waterway (from Churchill dam to the top)

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Some of this (Allagash falls)
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And much of this, pristine weather and awesome days of adventure.  It was a great trip (both mini-Mes went)

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One of my favourite pics, Mini-Me Minor poling on our final stretch up the Allagash.

And a bonus, Mini-Me Major and I paddled the lower Allagash a couple of years ago.  This trip meant that we have now completed the whole length of the Allagash.  We were quite pleased with ourselves...

Other trips/stuff we did
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Mardi Gras was great as usual (Mrs OA is from Nola, so it a combo Mardi Gras and family trip)

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Skiing the frigid NE area

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New MTB toy

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New Commuter toy (I do about 100mi per week commuting)

Trip back to England, visit Grandma and some cool spots

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A bit of a country garden

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Mini-Me Major is thinking of college, this is Manchester

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and of course it rains.

And back to gaming, this was a banner year
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Mini-Me Minor got his grades up and came with me to play soldiers at the GZG ECC !  

Woot!, stick a fork in me I'm done.