Tag: Galactic Empire

This has wound up being a nice and quiet weekend, so that means more painted models! These three models are the remainder of the Imperial Specialists set (I painted the officer from the set back in Febuary), and also the last three models in need of painting in my current imperial collection (I have some spare storm trooper models but I have more than I need already painted).

I ended up using the same recipe on the trooper as for the Grenadiers I painted last week, it looks about right for Imperial uniforms which isn’t surprising, the influences for the designs of the costumes are pretty clear!

With these three done, I probably have enough for two standard games’ worth of models (i.e. way more than I need 😉 ) but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed painting Star Wars models and I’m sure there will be more coming my way in the future.

My friends have been talking about playing Star Wars legion again, and that motivated me to finish up some models that have been built and primed for probably close to a year: the three members of Inferno Squad, a commando unit of the Empire.

Inferno Squad made up some of the protagonists of the single player campaign of the Battlefront II video game that I enjoyed a lot when I played through it last year some time. I got excited when I saw that there were models of them for the Star Wars Legion game, and doubly so when I found them under the tree last Xmas! The kit for Iden Versio comes with a selection of weapons that match what she can use in the game, so I kitted her out they way I enjoyed playing the most, which I thought was a neat thing to let players do.

Painting-wise there is not much new here, they were painted with the same black recipe I’ve used for all the black models in the army (i.e. build up highlights using Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and Vallejo Ghost Grey, with shiny materials – the armour, boots, and gloves – highlighted brighter than the cloth elements).

This was a nice break from larger projects, a quick two-session paintjob (one this morning and one tonight!). It’s nice to be able to have these done, they made up most of my remaining Legion models needing to be painted. Left now are a couple of droids and a comms trooper!

I had some spare time today so I decided to tackle one of my “built and ready for paint” units that has been sitting on the shelf of shame for a while now: the Star Wars Legion Imperial Special Forces Unit. These are the first hard plastic Legion models I’ve built and painted and they are much nicer than the soft plastic part of the range. They go together really well and provide nice crisp details for painting.

These were painted much like my Darth Vader, i.e. highlighted from black using Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and progressively mixing in more Vallejo Ghost Grey until pure Ghost Grey was used. The red is Kimera’s “The Red” which has insane coverage (These are all one coat over black).

From the box these came in I still have the two characters from Inferno Squad as well as Iden Versio herself. I’ll paint those up next time inspiration strikes!

I’ve been painting up some longer duration projects recently and I’ve been needing a break to paint something quick as a change of pace to refresh myself (and feel like I’m making progress on something!).

This officer model is from the imperial specialists kit that comes with 3 other models: two droids and a comms specialist. I’ll be painting these up as I feel, when I need another break probably. One of my friends is keen to play “no named character” games, and this officer will lead my imperial forces when we do that.

The main problem I had to solve with this model was the colour of the uniform. As with the emperor, the colour of the costume and how it comes out on screen seem quite different to me. I looked through my Star Wars costume book to look for references and the uniform is clearly an olive green in the photos, while I always saw them as grey in the movies. I tried to mash the two together here, aiming for a grey with some green in it.

The shiny black leather is painted just like I do on all my models, with successive highlights of Vallejo Dark Sea Blue with more and more white mixed in.

This model is one of the soft plastic models that were made for the game and detail is lacking compared to hard plastic models such as Games Workshop plastics. Here the eyes were not really marked out, so I painted them where I thought they should go, an interesting exercise. I have a couple of the hard plastic sets for Star Wars Legion built and ready to paint, I’m keen to see what the details look like on those.

Here is the latest addition to my Star Wars Legion army, the famed bounty hunter Boba Fett.

This is a very cool model, I really like that they made him mid jump, as it really emphasises how different he is to the rest of the army.

He has a surprising amount of colour on him, more than I’d realised watching the movies. We have a book on the costumes that were made for the original trilogy that has a lot of photos of the Boba Fett costume, which was invaluable for this. I tried to stay true to the colours as much as possible.

There are a lot of different ways of painting chipped paint on metal pieces, and in this case I chose to first paint the chips in a lighter colour, then fill in the centre with a dark metallic paint (Vallejo’s Gun Metal in this case). I chose this method as it is what the prop makers in the movies did!

For the glow of the flames from the jetpack, I first used the airbrush to define the glow area using a bright yellow paint, and then darkened that back down with a glaze of orange paint. I chose to go this route as the orange paints I have access to are not opaque enough to sell a “lit up” effect. They would just end up adding a transparent orange layer over the dark green of the cloak which would end up more like a brown stain. Finally I mixed in some of that bright yellow into the orange to highlight back up the points where the light from the jets would project the hardest.

I painted the logo on the should pad pretty roughly, more to suggest the shape of the original design than anything else, the area is pretty small and the cloak half covers it so I’m not too worried about matching it exactly, it looks good enough on the tabletop.

This model was a fun change from the white and black of the rest of the army, and he really stands out from them on my display shelf. I have a few other models lined up to expand the collection, but these are mostly black, so back to normal!

Added another model to my painted Star Wars Legion collection, this time the emperor himself!

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The model is mostly black robes, so there wasn’t too much to do on it. I recently re-watched Return of the Jedi, where the Emperor is almost constantly basked in the blue glow of the room he’s in on Death Star 2, and that’s what I’ve tried to represent here.

The robes and the skin both make heavy use of Vallejo’s Dark Sea Blue, to keep them both tied together with the same tones. For the skin, that Dark Sea Blue had more and more Vallejo Dead Flesh mixed in as highlights were applied, culminating in final highlights of pure Dead Flesh. The robes are a gradient from black, through Dark Sea Blue, to Dark Sea Blue with a small amount of white mixed in.

I’ve painted up the last model for my 800 point Star Wars Legion army: the AT-ST! This is the model that drove me towards playing Galactic Empire, so I was pretty excited when it arrived in the post. I painted it using standard armour painting techniques, using oil washes over a somewhat shaded grey coat I did using the airbrush. The chips were done with a sponge and a 50/50 mix of brown and black paint.

I mainly concentrated the weathering on the legs of the models, where I would expect most of the damage and dirt to be.

Here’s a photo of the finished 800 points. I’ll add to this army over time, to give myself more options during games, but this is a good starting point to try the game out.

After finishing the grunts it’s time for some villainy! Here’s my painted Vader. This model was rather interesting to paint, as it is almost all black, but has three distinct materials, cloth, leather, and hard plastic. I tried to highlight these differently to make them stand out from each other. Not sure if I succeeded, but I’m happy with how it looks. The glow was done the same way I did the glow on my necrons, using an airbrush for the glow effect itself and a brush on the lightsource (i.e. the light sabre!). Overall he took me around 3 hours to paint.

I’ve painted up the speeder bikes for my Star Wars Legion army. These we fun to paint, I had them in quite a few sub-assemblies, with pilot, bike, pedals, and camping gear all separate.

I painted the pilot, gear, and pedals in a rather standard manner (i.e. using regular paints and washes), but did the bikes the way I would paint larger vehicles like tanks, that is to say using enamel washes over an acrylic base coat with a matt varnish to seal the lot.

This leaves me with Vader and the AT-ST (When it arrives!) to paint to complete my 800 point army.