Very very late last night I started physical production for our Molokh Gambit 1-day X-Wing narrative campaign. Behold, a fleet of CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttles appears!

By this evening I’ll have four of these sweet babies to hand over to Matt for painting. In the process I learned that the Senator’s Shuttle token from the X-Wing Miniatures core set is probably the most out-of-scale “model” in the game. I barely remember it from the prequels at all, but Wookieepedia tells me that the CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttle is actually 80 meters long and can carry 200 passengers. So more of a cruiser than a shuttle. To be in scale with the other 1/270 standard ship models, the shuttle would have to be almost three times the size seen above. Even against the 1/400 Epic ships it’d have to be double this size. However, I think this version looks great and the size gives it better and simpler playability for 100pt missions as we’ll be using it.

Modeling

I did not create this model, I found a design Losik published on Thingiverse. Err404 also has a great version that embeds the model directly into the shuttle token. I thought hard about using that, but we’re planning to build a bunch of models for the campaign so I went with the flying version so it would fit in better. In the end all I did to the model was recut the base to have a blank top, created a thicker flight pole with matching slots on base and ship, and added a tab & slot to the two ship halves to guide better gluing.

I also realized that despite instructions, the front half could be printed laying down rather than on its end. Although this model is thick enough it would almost certainly print fine, and you can put more on the build plate by going vertical, I try to avoid tall structures. Laying it down also let me easily add the gluing tab.

I’ve posted these re-cut models to Thingiverse for free download.

Printing

A somewhat interesting realization was that the front half isn’t actually perfectly flat though. I could see this looking at the shading on the model in various viewers as it moved around, but you can see it very clearly by examining the somewhat degenerate first layer toolpath. The nose of the shuttle lifts up a bit, creating a weird shape for the initial layer. However, it’s literally just the first layer. Given that, I’d assume this is unintentional. If I had to guess I’d say it’s possible (I have no idea) that the model was originally ripped from a game and this is some artifact from the video-oriented modeling and mesh construction. The print is unaffected though and it would have been an effort for me to correct using my software at hand, so I did not bother to fix it.

A more interesting general note about printing is that originally I had a taller flight pole. Most of it printed fine. However, toward the end when it was the last component being printed on the layer, the printer hot end cycling around continuously made the top of the piece too hot, keeping the deposited plastic melted a bit and letting the motion swirl and gnarl it. You could fix this with a sacrificial tower pulling the hot end away long enough for the piece to cool. I did the same thing here though by just cutting the flight pole down to the same height as the engine stack. As long as you print them together, the printer will be pulled away from the flight pole long enough, as it goes to print the engines, that the pole will cool and retain its shape.

The Gambit!

That’s a good start to physical production for the event, with three months still to go. Colin and I had a long discussion on our way to and from NOVA earlier this month about basic squad construction rules and logistics, the outcomes of which are on the event webpage. Matt, Colin, and I have also started passing around a draft dungeon master’s guidebook with detailed proposals for the campaign mechanics that I’m excited about.

More to come; hope you can join us!