Sirrob01

Here are the Blue Falcon Vehicles from Flipit, I’ve built all the vehicle types except the Agile II. I will only build that model if I can find a copy of the Red Hammer mech. I’ve  included some notes and handy pointers from when I assembled each vehicle, hopefully these will be helpful for anyone else who may wish  to build their own Blue Falcon army.

First up for the Blue Falcons Motor pool we have the bikes. These are a pretty simple build cut out and score the lines, then fold up one side and glue the front back strip in place, then glue the other side up. I then glued some small rocks into the inside of the bike to help weight the base down. I did push my riders down a little far when I glued them in.

Next up is the AA Microtank (Night Owl), I found this model the hardest of all the Blue Falcon vehicles to assemble. Scaling it down to 75% meant the little gun barrels were extremely difficult to roll. So on one of my Microtanks I cheated by replacing the paper gun barrels with toothpicks  cut to the correct length and coloured yellow. The tracks were also a little fiddly but the best way I found to assemble them was to glue the track base to both sides and then wrap the ends around and glue in place. There are not many references around about how to build the Microtank so I pulled together a quick reference page which will hopefully be a helpful to others who might wish to build one.

 All Troops need some form of APC and the Blue Falcons come equipped with a rugged 4×4 called the Osprey. The model came together pretty easily, I did modify the windshield and inserted a small clear panel. I glued 4 troops into the vehicle permanently for two reasons; firstly as I based all my soldiers they wont fit in the vehicle with bases and secondly I didn’t want to be fiddling around pulling out and putting troops into the transport mid game much easier to just deploy a unit and mark the vehicle empty.  There are a number of completed pictures of the transport around the place but as with above Microtank I pulled together a quick 1 page assembly reference.

To protect the skies the Blue Falcons can deploy a Fighter Jet (Peregrine).  This is my favorite model for the blue falcon army (followed by the Micro tank), there’s something about it which just makes it cool and fun looking  (I deny all knowledge of sitting around swooshing jets through the air making engine noises). They were however a little fiddly to pull together at 75%. Make sure you have a pen or something thin handy to push/pull/press tabs into place while they glue. Newobmij put together some assembly instructions for the jets. I did build my own custom flight stands which are magnetized and let me store the jets much more easily, I did however make them a little tall and may need to shorten them a little in future.

Lastly we have the Blue Falcon Tank. I did build a 75% version of this tank but it just seemed a little small for the main line Tank so I rebuilt the tank(s) at 100%. With everything else scaled to 75% this gives the tanks a much more impressive presence on the table, well to me. I’ll be building the other faction tanks at 100% as well. Newobmij has also done a very nice sequence of pictures showing assembly of this tank. The only other minor change I made was that instead of using the paper/card axle I replaced this with a Kebab skewer cut to correct length, it was the perfect size as an axle and much straighter and stronger than anything I could roll from card/paper.

Lastly I needed some way to store my miniatures, so I grabbed two blue CD box’s from an Office supply store. For one of the CD boxes  I created a lift in and out module to hold the soldiers. The 2nd box will be used to store the Agile II (assuming I build it) and all the vehicles, if I need I can fit several units of troops on the top floor of the lift in and out module and several vehicles on the bottom so if I’m traveling anywhere I can take a single box with enough troops to game with.

Well that’s enough troops to field a fairly hefty Blue Falcon army so I’ll move on a build a similar sized black X army. Although I’m really not looking forward to making another 50+ Soldiers :).

A Flipit army wont get very far without troops and support personnel, so here are the Blue Falcon troops. There is not very much I can say about these as the pictures pretty much say it all. I did modify the base Blue Falcon troops so I had a male and female version but all the rest are pretty much stock except printed and built at around 75%. I did mount them all to 1 inch Octagon bases for extra stability (2mm mag sheet) and it seems to help finish them. Some of the edging looks a little rough but I was having issues with edge bleed. The pictures pretty much show the whole story so enjoy :). If you need help building the troops check out this you tube video.

Male and Female Soldiers

Awaiting Parade

In Units On Parade

Close Up Single Unit

Mortar Crew (Need to build two more)

Science Team Equipped with Jet Packs

Mechanic, Medic, Grumpy Sergeant and Saboteur

Armory – Little Low On Standard Rifles – Weapons tubes were fiddly at 75%

Showing Size Scale

Next up will be all the Blue Falcon vehicles and then I’ll move on to the Black X’s so the Blue Falcons have someone to fight against. I’ll try and find someway to share the female troops somewhere so keep a weather eye open if your interested in those.

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle

I really like the models for the flipit wargame made by newobimj, probably as they have a fun chibi look. As a bonus they come with there very own wargame called flipit for which newobimj has designed 4 full factions. The game has been around a fair while 4+ years and basically these have been on my to build list for about that long.

I finally settled on a scale to build the armies at I spent way to much time trying to decide on a scale with numerous test builds occuring between 100% and 65%. After comparing all the test builds I finally settled on a 75% scaling. This makes the little weapon tubes still build-able and the miniatures themselves stand about 28mm to the eye or 35mm to the top of the head/helmet. I plan on building all four factions and using them for flipit but also defiance  and of course flying lead.

First up I decided to build the Blue Falcon faction, I spent sometime working out how to assemble a few of the models as well as throwing together a few Custom models. First up I’ve completed the Commanders of the blue falcons faction; Air Marshal Roce Bleauciel, Serge Cargoe and Acel DeSparrow, I modified all of them so they use the karate chop hands and mounted them permanently to octagon bases.

First up we have Serge Cargoe, semi cyborg mad scientist type who gets around in an exo-skeleton wielding a nasty zap pistol and lightning glove. The assembly of the standard figure was pretty easy simple cylinder and a round top head. The exo-skeleton was a little tougher, I re-enforced each of the legs with wire in the middle and then mounted them to the backpack, bending them a little. I couldn’t find any instructions or any pictures of  an already complete Cargoe so I made a best guess with the leg locations. Hopefully the wire will prevent any future miniature sag through the paper bending.

Next up we have Acel DeSparrow, Rocketeer and all round smiling hero. I made some minor adjustments to his helmet colour so it was more gold/brass then silver and knocked together a rocket blast so it looks like he is just lifting off the ground. I used a tank explosion available on the flipit forum to make the rocket fire and smoke.  Looking at it I probably made the smoke and fire a little long.

Lastly we have the big cheese of the Blue Falcons Air Marshal Roce Bleauciel. I didn’t want to have him sitting at the same height as the other falcons so I found a nice Crate papercraft (scaled to about 80%) and placed the Air Marshal on top of the Crate. I was trying to make it look like the Air Marshal was giving a speech before the troops head into battle and so he’s not looking the same as all the other regular troops when placed on the table.

I found these a lot of fun to build and I’ve got more builds in the Blue Falcon faction coming shortly. If I could I’d share my 75% version of these files but unfortunately I can’t post in the flipit forum so for now you’ll have to scale them yourself. Later on if I get an okay to share or can post them in the flipit forum I’ll share them as I’ve done cut files as well. If I was building these guys again I would definitely edge in matching colour rather than in black but as I’ve now started in black edging they’ll all be black edged for consistency :).

Troop Builds here