Red 2, Standing By

As I continue to play catch up with completed builds, the next one up is the Bandai 1/72 X-Wing kit. As I was scrolling through my past pictures I noticed that I took these photos almost exactly one year ago, so it seemed only appropriate to relive it now.

I bought this X-Wing kit as part of a two-pack box in conjunction with Rogue One, which included a 1/72 scale X-Wing and a 1/144 scale X-Wing. You will see the 1/144 X-Wing pop up later, but for now I want to spend some time on the 1/72 kit. The provided livery and decals were for Red Leader from the assault on Scarif, but I have always been a Wedge Antilles fan so I really wanted to build his X-Wing. Thankfully, there are a lot of great custom decal makers in the world of the internet, and I found a good set of Red 2 decals from Cosmos Models (he makes a lot of really great decal sets for many different Star Wars ships. I will plug him all day long; his Instagram handle is @nicholas_sagan).​

The hardest part about building Wedge's X-Wing is that there is not a lot of great reference material I could find. I scoured the internet for every reference image I could find, and even then, a lot of what I found had conflicting color placement, especially around the cockpit. Ultimately, I just went for my best interpretation from the reference material I could find.

One of the reasons I also wanted to build the Bandai X-Wing is that I have always been slightly unsatisfied with the FineMolds X-Wing model I built many years ago, probably around 2012. The picture on the right gives some reference. I was still in the early stages of learning about the hobby and did not know a lot about washes. Also, cameras have come a long way since then! I knew I could build a better X-Wing.

Outside of hunting for reference photos, this kit was fun and easy to build. I used a slightly gray tinted white for the base color, custom decals for Wedge's colors, and an oil wash with Starship Filth for the panel lines and dirty look. I am very happy with the final result on this kit, so much so that the old one got bumped to the land of storage.

Stay tuned for more on that other tiny little X-Wing that came in the box with this one!