Legions of the Emperor!

I have three friends the were very keen to get into Star Wars Legion and it didn’t take much effort to coerce me into joining in.

I went back and forth on whether to get some rebels or the imperials, and it was very close, Fantasy Flight having done some Rogue One models that were very tempting. In the end though, the Imperials having access to the AT-ST model was the tiebreaker and it was time to jump in.

I started off with the instantly recognisable classics: the stormtroopers.

I have a fair few of these to paint (2 starter sets’ worth plus an extra squad so 5 squads all up!) so I made sure to document the process so I can get them all looking alike. I’m not going to kill myself getting them to an amazing standard, I’m aiming for a nice tabletop standard here. The steps I detailed below are pretty quick, I got the full squad to the standard you see in the photo above in a few hours.

Step 1: Undercoat! I started with an all over spray of Grey Surface Primer from Vallejo, then a zenithal spray of Vallejo Dead White. The effect is pretty subtle, so it might make more sense to not bother with the zenithal step.

Step 2: Contrast! I’ve been eyeing off Citadel’s Apothecary White since the contrast paints were announced, and I finally get to use it. I covered the whole model, then went back over with the brush to smooth out and soak up areas that were a bit too flooded.

Step 3: I used Vallejo’s Gunmetal for the blasters and the backpack on the DL-19 trooper.

Step 4: I painted the cloth areas in a 50:50 mix of Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and Army Painter Matt Black

Step 5: More contrast, this time with Black Templar, over all the metallic areas and the cloth areas.

Step 6: The longest step! I repainted the raised areas of the armour with Kimera’s The White, which has a nice heavy pigment so allows me to go much faster on this step.

Step 7: I add chips to all the metallic areas with Vallejo Silver

For the squad leader’s pauldron I basecoated in Vallejo Parasite Brown, shaded with Citadel Agrax Earthshade and Highlighted back with Parasite Brown.

Overall I’m happy with how these turned out, the balance between speed and paintjob quality sits about right for me. Next up is basing these models. I have a few thoughts on how I’m going to do that, but I’m still experimenting. The goal is to get a forest floor/Endor look to them, but unlike my necrons I want to avoid a painted base as much as possible. The bases I made for the necrons were my take on hyper green and mossy forest textures as I’ve seen in comics and anime (think Princess Mononoke and the like). For my Star Wars models I’m aiming for a more real-world natural look, based on scenes from the movie and photos of the forest the Endor scenes were filmed in. This means using materials and techniques I haven’t really used much in the past so I’m looking forward to learning an experimenting in that space.

I’ll put up an article when I’ve settled on a methodology.