Luke! We're going to have company!

X-Wing seems to me like an excellent game. There's just one thing about it, just one tiny niggle, that I can't get my head around.

Pre-painted miniatures.

I know. I know! It saves time, they look good, everything's ready to go right out of the box. It's at least half the reason the expansions are so overpriced. The other half being, of course,  that you pay premium rates for more goddamn packaging than a sample of live anthrax requires.

Obviously, having told everyone I'd decided not to buy anything on the grounds that needing physical models to play over Skype is clearly retarded redundant, I took my Christmas money to the shops with me.

Nice work. Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your stomach.

And yes, then I painted them anyway.

Not much, in my defence! Just tiny colour retouches. Er, kind of. Until I got to the Hound's Tooth.

Bossk's original YV666 is a mix of dun and terracotta, not terribly attractive. To match my newly green escorts, I went with a white, grey and green job for the model. The whole lot took two hours tops, and that was really only because I had to re-basecoat the entire big guy. I also took a moment to add in some missing details that were bugging me, like barrels on the side cannons and some colours on the exposed wiring. Nothing fiddly.

A bit of dirtying up with a sponge and some Leadbelcher, and the pirates are good to fly!

I've packed scum. Who's brought the villany. Anyone?