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. 

Wining and Winning

My wife, Kitty, and I love wine tasting. Our favorite destination is the Adirondack Winery in Lake George, New York. It’s not just a stop for us; it’s a tradition. We visit four times a year. We try once a season and hit the mark almost every year. 

Adirondack Winery has an impressive lineup of over 40 wine varieties. We’ve proudly or shamefully sampled and purchased every single one. It’s no surprise we’re members of their Case Club, which comes with a variety of perks for those who purchase at least 12 bottles a year. For us, that’s easy. During each visit, we usually leave with a case in hand, and we keep going by adding three more bottles to our collection every month.

We are rapidly running out of room for wine. In our living room, we have a wine rack with about a dozen bottles. In the dining room, the legs of our dinner table have slots for 12 more bottles. Since we are gifting a bunch of bottles, we have at least a case of bottles waiting to be wrapped. 

Maybe you noticed that I had an ad for wine.com on my blog. It didn't work. No one clicked it. Not even once so I took it down. The link provided in the post is informational only, I don't receive anything from ADK for promoting them. 

The bottles are shipped in excellent packaging, a type of form-fitted cardboard. They use FedEx so the wine can be directed to a secondary drop-off point like Walgreens. In NY you need to show ID for wine deliveries. 

This growing collection has led to my latest project: designing a wine cellar. Kitty has officially put me in charge. To that end, Kitty selected a special Christmas gift that will be used to make this happen. I can't wait to start showing that off next year. 

But you know what I really want? 

Toys. Models. Buildings. Spaceships. 

I missed Mecha Monday this week, but I did make two posts this week to make up for it. If you like to order wine or know of a winery, you might be able to pick up some of these bottle-form containers. 

If you cut them apart with a pair of scissors and slap some paint on them, they start to look like buildings. This one looks a bit like a hanger or bunker to me. They have that old adobe Star Wars look, like Mos Eisley. 

I realized I don't have any grass or sand, so I will need to pick some up to texture the bottom edge. 

Depending on your paint job, you can deck them out for many different scales and themes. The slab-like arches can be painted to look like garage doors or regular man-sized doors depending on need. I have to say the Commando looks massive and threatening next to this thing. 

Since my last post was about Star Wars, I hope to do a campaign using a lot of Star Fighters. My pick for these are either Bandai 1:144 scale models from my local comic shop or small metal models from Studio Bergstrom. I have purchased a few ships from Studio Bergstrom and I suspect I will amass a lot in the future because I like models as much as wine. 

The three or four dozen ships I already have are going to be the focus of a lot of Miniature Mondays. I will be mixing that up with Mecha Monday, because a good mech is like good wine. 

Ships by Studio Bergstrom

I need to lay off the credit card. In just a few weeks or less, my OSE set will arrive. I can't wait... but I have some games that I can't play and review due to a lack of minis. Yes, I'm playing the "not enough minis, even though I have a ton of unpainted minis" card. 

I decided to try out Studio Bergstrom. They have a series of ships called "Galactic Patrol" that are not specific to any TV or movie I have seen. Honestly, I haven't seen them all even though I've tried. The 11 ships I selected set me back $55.00 before shipping, which makes the math nice. $5.00 each on average. 

With these first 11 ships, I want to practice painting. I figure I could come up with a nice paint scheme and vary the scheme by changing the base or detail colors. These 11 will be my base squad with one set of colors and the next order of 11 can have slight changes to create either a different squadron or an opposing fleet. 

(It occurs to me that I should buy a nice camera to take pictures of my models. Maybe if I stop buying models.)

Now, I didn't pick the largest ships available, I selected what I thought looked good for a matching squadron.  

1 Europa Cruiser
1 Scandinavia Destroyer
1 Indochine Cruiser
2 Africaino Destroyer
2 Oceana Destroyer  
3 Nipponese Corvette
1 Mongolian Cluster Frigate

Oceana Destroyer

Now that I have them, I was surprised, perhaps shocked, at the level of detail on these models. My poor photo skills do not do them justice. What had started as a lark to get back into painting brought a smile to my face when I realized that these models might be moderate to difficult to paint. At least for someone like me who has degraded skills. They aren't starter models, they are amazing ships. 

Many of the ships come in two parts, top and bottom hulls with additional turrets and details. 

The largest 4 ships came with silicone bases. These ingenious little things allow you to ram a pin through the base to mount the ship. I'm not sure if the pin's pointy end should pass through the base to the bottom of the ship or the other way around. Either seems like a fine idea. 

I should have taken a better picture of the whole group of ships. Anyway, I will take more pictures as I get some paint on them. And they will feature in some of my upcoming reviews.