Studio Bergstrom - Quality Models

I am on a side quest of sorts. I have a favorite website for spaceship models. I would like to share it with all of you. The website is called Studio Bergstrom, and I love these models. Take a look: 

Had I been thinking, I would have lined them up with the grid. The largest is about and inch and the smallest, half that. They are so cool. 

I need some brushes for models, oil painting, and my new hobby, watercolors. All of these links go to MeedenArt.com, my new advertiser. I may receive a commission on qualifying purchases made through these links. 

My oil painting case survived the fire through some sort of freaking miracle, so I have a ton of brushes of the wrong kind for painting models. But if I have learned nothing, if you have something, you can make it work for you. 

I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but this box belonged to my grandmother. The fact that it somehow survived warms my heart. If I had time and energy, I'd make this my one and only tool kit for art and carry it everywhere. This image is from over a decade ago. I have upgraded my paint set to 170 ml tubes with this set from MeedenArt. 

I hope she knows how much I love this thing, no matter how much the contents change. 

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Making stuff work. I used the smallest oil painting brush I could find on these tiny models, and the results were not horrible. Not perfect, but considering what I had on hand, I feel good about them. 

This could start a whole second tangent here, but this green scheme is modeled on Hera Syndulla's Green Squadron from Rebels. While painting these models, I listened to more than watched Return of the Jedi. 

There really was a Green Leader and Green Squadron of A-Wings in Return of the Jedi, which is a great... call forward? to the Greens of Star Wars Rebels. In RotJ they have red ships and green uniforms, but it's a cool touch. 

These are free-painted, using a mammoth 1/32 inch brush. As I said before, I need to buy some new tools, but I think I made it work. 

Studio Bergstrom also makes two different kinds of bases. These are described as resin, but to the average dude like me, they feel like rubber. All of them are black. You put a standard pin in them and glue the model down or up, if you look at the second picture below. 

The links to Studio Bergstrom are a part of this post for review purposes. They are not a sponsor, nor do I receive payment from them. Click to your heart's content. 

These stands are super cheap and a great option for any number of flying models. The website has a disclaimer: "Does not take paint well," which I took to be a challenge. You'll notice I didn't paint the bases. These are spaceships. Why paint a black base a color? 

I could paint them if I meant to use them on a different colored surface, but I'm not, so I won't. I trust that the company knows best, but I want to try sanding, then a clear coat, before slapping paint on these. I'll post the results when I am done. 

I will post a full spread of all of the models at the end of this series, but I really wanted to focus on Green Squadron today and A-Wings in particular. 

I purchased 18 A-Wings, 3 B-Wings, 3 X-Wings, and 6 Y-Wings. This distribution seems to be about right for the Rebels Era. The Rebels don't really go crazy for X-Wings until Star Wars, which is just a few years later. 

Here are 2 images of the bases, first large: 

And the next, small. 

Yes, they require some handiwork, but nothing serious. I sat outside with my wife, with a glass of wine and a pair of scissors, trimming away. All of these took less time than a bottle of wine to finish. 

Now for the crazy bit: Studio Bergstrom does these in two different scales. A 1" scale which is what I have, but he does a smaller fleet scale series. Those are really tiny. To be honest, I can't give you a true scale, but if I had to guess, the 1" fighters are 1:600 scale. The fleet scale might be 1:2400, but that is a wild guess on my part. They do look nice. 

Here is a handy table of links for the models I have: 

Fighter Model	1" Scale (single fighter)	Fleet Scale (set of 6)
A-Wing	Click here	Click here
B-Wing	Click here	Click here
X-Wing	Click here	Click here
Y-Wing	Click here	Click here

In another piece of transparency, over on Studio Bergstrom's Facebook page, I urged him to raise prices. Since 2017, the very reasonable prices have only increased by about 11%, which is not enough. He tries to keep things reasonable and stable for his buyers, possibly too reasonable in my opinion. 

This is the first of a whole series of posts. I need to cover B-Wings and Y-Wings, then some other models I bought for A Billion Suns. I hope to alternate between model posts and D&D posts with the odd review post in between. 

In closing, let's remember one of the craziest A-Wing moments from Return of the Jedi. 

Tankeren's Defenses

The Tankerenian armed forces are not really what they should be. They have aircraft like the ship below. I call it an H-Wing. In real world terms, it's like an A-10 or a SU-25. However, no conflict has reached the level of needing those machines. Unlike their real world counterparts, they owe their robustness to devolved fighter designs of the Republic. They are incidentally tough, but not as tough as a Y-Wing or B-Wing. 

The whole planet probably has 200 of them. Of those, 20 or so of them are outfitted for training, aerobatic groups and the odd civilian hobbyist. Of the remaining fighters, 30-40% are down for servicing at any given time. Tarkeren doesn't have much a fighting air force. 

They have evolved this ship into a space fighter. The lines are more angular, the engines are bigger and the wings much smaller. Since the planet has a tiny space presence, these little ships are hot rods. They go from ground to orbit when needed. They are on par with an A-Wing in terms of speed, but lack missiles and maneuverability. They do have one advantage over most fighters, the pipe like structures are sensors so each ship acts as control ship. Maybe they have 100 of them.  

I showed this air speeder in my last post. It is unarmed, but a purpose build speed machine. It uses advance technology to perform more like a spacecraft than a speeder. It can reach orbit, but this is more of a stunt than a capability. Citizens of the Republic or Empire would be terrified at the power of this commercial speeder. But like I said, it's unarmed. These speeders are ubiquitous on this planet. 

Green-5 has transformed this air speeder into a power space fighter. It has heavy ion cannons for battle against capital ships, space for an astromech droid and powerful lasers. It can match TIE fighters in speed, Y and B-Wings for armor and has better weapons than both. It does lack missiles and photon torpedoes as the planet doesn't have the ability to produce either. 

The downside of this ship is, it is modification from air speeder to spaceship. That's expensive. Every fighter is a custom job involving droids and humanoids, which means that each one is unique. Also, it requires a humanoid droid or live pilot which means that Green-5, defender of the planet, does not have direct control of them once in service. Not enough droids are available to fly them, they type of droid required is not anything the Trade Federation has, so he needs Tankerenian pilots. 

So far, Green-5 has convinced the Lord and Lady to make 30 conversions. Half of them are still being assembled. He knows he needs 100 times that number to defend the planet against the Empire. 

Over the next couple of posts, I will stat up these ships. I hope you enjoy them.