Tag: Radagast's Alliance

Star Wars Legion Desert Terrain

Middle-Earth SBG, Star Wars Legion, Terrain

I played a Middle-Earth SBG tournament yesterday (more on this at the end), and was inspired by some of the tables I saw there to paint some terrain of my own. I’d done all the preparation for these buildings while recovering from my eye injury a few weeks back, but never got around to painting them as I got too excited by being able to see well enough to paint models again! My 15-month old had a three hour nap this afternoon that provided a window of opportunity to put my new found motivation to good use.

The buildings in question I 3D printed on my filament printer from models by Imperial Terrain who produce great Star Wars Legion terrain. To add to the look of them, I textured all of the walls with tile grout, which provided a great surface for drybrushing as well as hiding some of the layer lines from the printing process. I really love the look of this technique and will keep applying it to printed terrain where it makes sense.

For the walls of the structures, I started with an all over coat from a cream spray can, followed by a reddish-brown wash I made using a mixture of craft paints, water, and some window cleaner to break the surface tension. Once that was dry, I drybrushed a mix of ochre and white craft paint, followed by another drybrush of the same mixture with more white added.

The crates were painted in a variety of flat colours and hit with the wash and drybrush steps of the walls.

The rusted elements were done with a burnt sienna craft paint, followed by a mixture of burnt umber, red, and yellow inks all over. The same ink mix was used to do the rust streaks. The pipes were then hit with sponged on orange paint to add a bit more variety.

The roof of the tall building was done in a brassy-coppery look, which is something I’d seen on the painted examples on Imperial Terrain’s website and really like the look of.

I’m not sure how they did theirs, but mine was done using the airbrush, with an all over coat of Vallejo Metal Colour Copper, followed by a shading step done using Burnt Umber Ink. The verdigris was done using GW’s Nihilak Oxide through the airbrush (to avoid the wash running in the print lines), followed by some stippling of the same paint to add a bit of texture to the effect.

Overall very happy with the outcome, and the little guy woke up just as I was putting the finishing touches on the buildings so thanks a lot to him for giving me the time to get these done! I have a fair few more pieces to tackle before the table will be done, so expect some more Star Wars terrain posts in the future!

Radagast goes to war!

As I mentioned above, I played a one day tournament yesterday with the models I showcased in the last post. I ended up with two wins and two losses, finishing up somewhere in the middle of the field which I was happy with. For the tournament I put together the small display board you can see above and the effort paid off as I took home the best painted army award which I was very happy with. All in all a good fun day, and as always has motivated me to paint even more Middle-Earth armies!

Radagast’s Alliance

Middle-Earth SBG, Uncategorized
Radagast and his allies brave the foul weather to venture deep into Mirkwood

We have a small Middle-Earth SBG tournament coming up in a few weeks that I’ve planned on attending, and what better excuse to get more of my models painted! This tournament is limited to 400 points, which coincidentally is what Radagast on his sled and two giant eagles add up to! I’ve had these models since they were released (sometime around the release of the hobbit movies I assume), built and sitting in a case ever since. This seemed like a great opportunity to put some paint on them, and so off I went!

This is a three model army, and I have no idea how it will go in games but I hope it will be a lot of fun to play! I made the decision to experiment a bit with these models, and learned quite a bit in the process as I made quite a few mistakes that I hope not to reproduce!

For Radagast and his sled I used GW’s contrast paints primarily, the first time I’ve really experimented with these in their “intended” use, i.e. one coat that does basecoat, shading, and highlights. I’ve always found the MESBG models to take really well to washes due to their tight, small details (as opposed to other GW models that have a lot more large flattish areas), and was intrigued by how the contrast paints would work with them. The answer I think is really well. The rabbits are only painted with a single coat of 3 different contrast paints: Cygor Brown (Thinned down 50/50), Snakebite Leather, and Skeleton Horde. Radagast and the sled were also painted with contrast paints but were followed up with highlights of regular old acrylic paints. This model has a massive base, so I knew I wanted to make it a feature. I used a variety of Woodland Scenics foam flocks, and their more bushy clumping foliage. The flowers are tufts from Gamers Grass. The leaves are the usual seeds you can get for that purpose, I’ve had them for years and can’t remember where I got them. I had some issues with all this being pretty loose on the base and ran some thinned down PVA all over to glue it all down. This ended up drying all white in patches and made me very scared I’d just ruined the whole thing. No idea what happened there, but I ended up using some green contrast paint to tint the areas affected by this and they blended right back in, got very lucky there!

The rules for MESBG account for your mount being shot off under you, so it’s expected to have a dismounted version of any mounted models. Here’s my Radagast on foot, carrying his faithful hedgehog Sebastian. Painted exactly the same as the sled version.

The eagles were another experiment, I decided to try shading them with oils to cut down the amount of time I’d need to spend on highlights. This worked very well, but I made the mistake of being impatient and varnishing over the oils too soon, and ended up with a very unstable coat of varnish that came off with gentle rubbing! I left them alone for a few days, then went back over the white areas with some highlights and finally gave them another coat of varnish and that is holding much better. The lesson here: when painting with slow drying paints, don’t expect them to dry fast!

Overall I really like the look of the “army”. They were painted fast and there are definitely areas that suffered as a result, but I think they look nice and cohesive on the table.