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Earlier this year we suggested everyone catch up on Majuular's excellent (and lengthy) series of Ultima retrospectives. I hope you took our advice, because it's time for the next one: a three plus hour deep dive into the controversial Ultima VII: Pagan and the history around its development. The story naturally includes quite a bit about Wing Commander and it's all very fascinating.

I even noticed a Wing Commander nod I hadn't before: after summoning Pyros, the Lord of Flame, the Avatar is told "I will feast upon your entrails first, manling!". That's a callback to a common Kilrathi taunt... and it's spoken here by Origin's Ken Demarest, who voiced Bluehair in Wing Commander II. Here's the audio from Ultima:

The taunt first appeared in the original Wing Commander where it was "I shall feast upon your offspring." Secret Missions 2 updated it to "I shall feast upon your entrails!" and a tradition was

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Last time we checked in with Tyrel Lohr they were building the Super Wing Commander Snakeir (aka the Wing Commander Armada Shiraak). Now they've moved on to the rest of Wing Commander Armada's too-rarely-seen... armadas. We've got everything from the hated Phantom to the mighty Goran in the works, which you can see below. You can purchase their models to print yourself through Cults!

Thought I would share the in progress shots of the Wing Commander Armada Kilrathi 3d models. Shiraak and Shok'lar have already been test printed, the rest will test print later this week. Have to do the Goran still.

Kilrathi Wing Commander 3d printed pics of the painted 3d models I did of the Shiraak light fighters and Shok'lar fighters. I still need to do some more touch ups on the Shiraak and paint some more paneling details on the bottom, but they are all pretty much table ready now. (Skeet)

Suffered from a bout of

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War never changes but it's certainly interesting to see how its portrayal in the media does! The Wing Commander movie club found that while Go for Broke! certainly isn't some brilliant film that it was a pretty fascinating look at a war story that we don't know enough. The film itself is by the numbers–lots of shooting and characters learning dramatic moral lessons–but it's not quite like a Dam Busters or a Longest Day. It was fascinating to see actual Japanese-American veterans getting to tell their own story just a few years after it happened. !

Here's the movie's title, which as we noted in the previous post was the real motto of the 442nd Infantry Regiment. One of the movie characters explains that "it's Pidgin English for shoot the works" which… actually feels like a more arcane saying, but who knows! It definitely matches Wing Commander II's history of interestingly-named friendly capital ships.

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Mobile Suit Gundam I (1981) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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The term "redshirt" comes from the original Star Trek, referring to the inevitably doomed Enterprise crew that would appear in landing parties alongside the main cast. And Wing Commander II has them too: pilots beyond the main group you encounter in the story that adds a level of immersion showing that the Victory has more than just seven or eight people on it. The redshirts all share one 'profile' and set of comms… but they sure add to the universe!

And WC3's redshirts aren't just for immersion. You may have noticed that they appear in all four of the game's scramble missions. That's for a practical design reason: these missions need to have wingmen that the game can guarantee aren't dead. By having a roster of scramble-specific pilots, mission designers don't have to worry about cases where main characters might have been killed in a previous mission. Today we have a quick guide to finding all of

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Sorthak! Doesn't the very (code) name strike terror into your hearts? That's a tradition that goes all the way back to Wing Commander III's manual, Victory Streak, which terrified players with a vague report about a large fighter that had wiped out eighteen Confederation ships in a single attack.

INTELL: ENEMY FIGHTER UPDATE
>tcn.victory.intell

Codename: Sorthak

Two weeks ago, a routine naval air transfer ended in the destruction of eighteen fighters, including five Arrows, nine Thunderbolts, and four Longbow bombers. The exact circumstances are unclear, but black box data recovered from the debris indicate that an unusually large Kilrathi fighter attacked the group during its flight to Vega Sector. Apparently equipped with heavy shields and armor, the ship was described on digital tape as “a cross between a Vaktoth and a destroyer, with massive guns protruding from both the front and rear.” Other pilot