This May 4th, we celebrate Star Wars Day as we join HTX engineers Nicholas Lee and Wong Weiyang together with their miniature troopers in battle in a galaxy far, far away.
May 4th, with its reference to the famous phrase “May the Force be with you”, is celebrated as Star Wars Day by fans around the world. From movies to television productions to games, the Star Wars franchise has captured hearts and imaginations with its epic narrative and dizzying array of technology including artificial intelligence, robots and spaceships.
(Left to right) Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game and Star Wars: Legion (Photo: HTX)
In “Star Wars: Legion”, a game of ground combat in the Star Wars galaxy, players command miniature troopers, vehicles and weapons in a battle that pits the Rebel Alliance against the Empire at the height of the galactic civil war. The game, which involves assembling miniatures of characters such as Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Stormtroopers, was on display by the HTX tabletop wargaming Community of Interests (COI) during the HTX Carnival 2022 held from April 18 to 21.
Darth Vader (foreground) and Stormtrooper miniatures on display by the HTX tabletop wargaming COI (Photo: HTX)
Members of the COI, which was formed in June 2021, also play other tabletop wargames such as Warhammer 40,000. The COI is one of the many healthy lifestyle committee COI groups at HTX such as cycling, citizen developer and photography where likeminded Xponents pursue their interests.
HTX engineers Nicholas Lee and Wong Weiyang from the tabletop wargaming COI (Photo: HTX)
From explosive action to preventing fires
HTX engineer Nicholas Lee explaining Star Wars: Legion to colleagues (Photo: HTX)
“What attracted me to tabletop wargaming was how good the armies looked in the showcase and on the gaming table. I also had the freedom to paint my armies in the colours I like, as opposed to having proper colour schemes for historical tanks and planes,” said Nicholas Lee from HTX’s Protective Security & Safety Centre of Expertise (CoE), who is a member of the tabletop wargaming COI. Members of the COI affectionately call themselves TTXponents – a play on the word TTX, short for TableTop Exercise, where operational plans can be tested without putting officers on the ground.
Nicholas is currently forward deployed to the Singapore Civil Defence Force’s Fire Safety Department as a Principal Consultant (Performance-Based) where he reviews alternative building design solutions that use fire engineering methods to ensure that they meet rigorous fire safety standards.
“The heart of all these games is out-thinking, out-strategising and destroying our opponents,” said Nicholas, who started playing tabletop wargames in 2012. “Although they are thinking games, how successful we are in our strategy sometimes depends on dice rolls, which adds to the randomness and fun to the games,” Nicholas said. “The hobby also allows Star Wars fans to build and collect their favourite Star War characters and ships. Who wouldn’t like their own Millennium Falcon!”
Eye for detail, game-changing biometrics technologies
(Left to right) HTX engineer Wong Weiyang (centre, in blue) explaining the Warhammer 40,000; Weiyang holding his first Space Marine (Photo: HTX)
Wong Weiyang, Head (Consultation & Solutioning), Biometrics, made his first moves into tabletop wargaming at the 2018 SG Comic Convention, where he received his first Space Marine from the Warhammer 40,000 game and was hooked by how easy it was to paint a miniature model.
“An eye for detail is a must for the painting of the miniatures – one look at them and you will know why,” Weiyang said. “You will always miss something even with a magnifying glass, and sometimes you just can’t go back and fix it, so you move on and try to do better on the next miniature.”
Tabletop wargames revolve around the roll of the dice and statistics and probability can determine one’s fate in the game. “Even against overwhelming numbers, you can win if the calculations are right. There is even a sub-faction of fans [of Warhammer 40,000] who engage in MathHammer, which involves doing deep analysis of the game’s mathematics in fighting theoretical wars,” said Weiyang. “Seeing their published ‘papers’, I can actually envision them working at HTX.”
Weiyang, who is from HTX’s Biometrics & Profiling CoE, is part of a team driving solution recommendations, risk considerations and proof-of-concept trials for Home Team users looking to deploy biometrics solutions.
“Biometrics is also probability and statistics driven, which is why Math-hammerers would fit right in,” Weiyang said.
Xponents at the HTX Carnival 2022 (Photo: HTX)