Hey everybody,
It’s been a pretty good weekend, even if I have been suffering with a cold! I’m in full-on Star Wars mode at the minute, it seems, and watched Solo last night. I forget just how good this movie is – it manages to hit all of the right beats for a Han Solo “origin” story, while being enjoyable and somehow very, very Star Wars. I think it really struck me this time around, how it is deeply entrenched within the galaxy as we know it. We get to visit Kessel, which was a delight, we have references thrown around to all manner of stuff that has been in the background since forever (Savereen brandy was first referenced in the WEG roleplaying game!)
Some of the visuals in the film are also pretty mind-blowing, as well. I suppose a lot of the Corellia scenes happen in such a blur that it’s hard to remember them, especially when the film is so full of other beautifully-realised locations. Sure, Savereen and Kessel are hardly beautiful, and the warzone on Mimban is far from it, but the look of this film is just glorious, and we get to visit these iconic places – it just really gets my juices going! I really hope that we get to see more of Corellia as time goes on, with the plethora of other Star Wars projects coming. While it does still seem to be quiet on the movie front, it is nevertheless exciting to see the amount of stuff we’re getting from Disney+. Hopefully we’ll get more in this vein, anyway.
I just can’t say enough how excited I am about seeing so much expanded universe material in the movie!
I know that I talked about it a lot during the Book of Boba Fett blogs, but it would be so good to see more of the Crimson Dawn, and more of the criminal underworld in general, really. In a very strange way, I think I would have preferred it if the Boba Fett series hadn’t included any of the Mandalorian, and instead put more time and effort into the Syndicates. We had a great opportunity there, but maybe it is being saved for something that we just don’t know about yet? Who knows. In the meantime, we have stuff like War of the Bounty Hunters that I still need to investigate…
I have also finally started to do things with the Star Wars Legion miniatures that I bought pretty much at the start of the pandemic. At the time, I was tentatively in a Star Wars RPG group that was being held over Google hangouts, and a lot of the people there were also into Legion. I picked up some Rebel stuff, but didn’t get very far with it. No more! I now have the box of Rebel Troopers, and the box of Rebel Specialists, built up and ready! I’m 100% not sure what I’m doing with this stuff, though, but suffice it to say, I’ll be waffling a bit more about it in the future, I reckon!
Solo and Legion do coalesce in the best possible way, however, insofar as I have seen that a new faction is coming, the Shadow Collective!
The Shadow Collective is a criminal alliance formed by Darth Maul towards the end of the Clone Wars, with the intent of taking over the galaxy. I believe it was featured prominently in the seventh season of The Clone Wars, which I really need to get round to watching! A surprise to me was that Fantasy Flight seemingly don’t make Legion anymore, so I need to look into that, at some point…
It’s not all Star Wars though, as we’ve had quite a surprise this weekend when Games Workshop revealed that Squats are coming back! It was a very interesting way to do April Fool’s, by showing us a video that everybody assumed was a joke, and yet the joke was that it’s real all along. The Leagues of Votann are quite an exciting release, I’m not gonna lie, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing to get these miniatures when they are released. I know that I say this kind of thing all the time, but I honestly have too much stuff going on right now, I need to stop buying plastic!! It’s good to have more variety in the game, though, and I know of at least one guy in my local area who is excited for this, calling it his version of the Sisters do-over, so it’s great to see the fans getting what they want. While the community article called it a full army release, I do wonder if it’s going to be a Kill Team thing at first, or something. Though I guess time will tell on that.
I feel like I’m woefully behind with my many many projects that I have on the go right now, though. The Tau project seems to have come to a halt, and I haven’t done anything for my Black Legion for almost a week, so I think I might need to get a grip of myself there! I think I’m going to try my best to get a few of these Legionaries finished soon though, as I just want to have some finished models to my name! It’s been almost a month since I finished the Tau Commander, after all, and I haven’t done anything of note since him!
While I say the Tau project has ground to a halt, I’m not giving up with them – I think I might try to get the Crisis team finished this month, as well, though between the three suits and the six drones, I’m not going to be too down on myself if it doesn’t come to pass. I think the fevered activity from January and February in getting models painted has definitely cooled a bit in recent weeks!
And it doesn’t help, of course, that I’m so into Star Wars again right now!
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