X-Wing TIE Fighter Repair

I’m a huge fan of the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games. I’ll have plenty of posts coming about that game in the future. Today, however, it’s a quick note about repairing your X-Wing ships. I happen to have two TIE Fighters with broken pegs. They’re too expensive to throw away (retail is about $15 / ship) so what do I do?

Each X-Wing ship has a female connector attached to the bottom of the ship. This is attached to a peg (or two or five if you’re really adventurous) which is then attached to a plastic base. When everything works well (and you have the right peg for the right ship and the right base and everything is nice and snug) then your ship stands up tall and proud on the battlefield. In this case, the female connector split and half of it fell off.

But this isn’t my first rodeo. (I saw a t-shirt once that said, “I didn’t know I was supposed to learn everything in just one rodeo.” It was funny.) I recognized that the pegs (of which I have plenty) have the same female connector. It’s just attached to the peg.

With an X-Acto blade I can cut a tiny portion of a peg off. Here you see the results next to an unmodified peg. I made a slight mark using a sharpie, put the peg on a piece of plywood on the kitchen counter, and then carefully but firmly pressed with the X-Acto blade. Once I get about half-way through I put my finger on the short part so it doesn’t go shooting across the kitchen never to be seen again. (Voice of experience.)

It’s actually fairly easy to cut the peg. Once that’s done, I put it on a regular peg + base in order to make sure that the ship is facing the right way. The first time I did this repair I didn’t think about that, and my ship ended up flying off sideways. It was funny. (No, not really.)

You can probably use a variety of adhesive devices. I tend to use epoxy rather than super glue because I don’t want to super glue myself to myself. Epoxy gives me a little bit longer to work, but also means I have to hold the ship a while so it doesn’t droop when it’s done.

Tonight I repaired two TIE Fighters. They’re ready to hit the tables as part of the forces of oppression that are tying to take over the Aturi Cluster.