How I Paint Stormtroopers

After last months game of Star Wars Legion, and the fact that my Stormtroopers looked rather pitiful, I decided to do a test model to see how I could effectively paint them. Stormtroopers should be very easy to paint but somehow have proved challenging, both for Imperial Assault and now Legion.

(Apologies for the shocking colour balance on the photos!)

Originally this leader model had been spray undercoated (poorly) with GW Corax White, which is actually more of an off-white. I found a similar paint pot and gave the model a good undercoat of Celestra Grey.

Then I got started on the White. Relatively thin consistency was applied to all the armour plates, leaving shadows and joints untouched. This continued for several layers, repainting over the armour, concentrating more and more on the highlighted areas to get a (sort of) gradual effect. I went back with a thicker white to the purest highlights to make sure it was a pure white.

Then came the tricky bit – painting all the black elements of the under armour, vents, etc. These we highlighted with sparing amounts of Mechanics Standard Grey then a tiny bit of Administratum Grey. Once dry it was washed back with some thinned Nuln Oil, which was also used on some of the deeper recesses in the armour.

The red shoulder pad was base coated in Khorne Red and highlighted with Mephiston Red.

Content that this was complete. I covered the base in Astrogranite Debris, highlighting with Dawnstone and Administratum Grey. I then daubed a mix of snow flock and PVA to a large proportion of the base (my Hoth theme) and left it for 24hrs to dry.

To finish, I gave the whole model a matt spray varnish then went back in and brushed on gloss varnish to the armour plates.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with how he came out, although it took an age – an hour or so per evening over a large part of the working week. Not sure how practical that is for the remaining three squads, but I'm prepared to put more effort into the leaders, so I'll continue with those first.

The Empire Invades Pevensey

So given that Mr Awdry had a birthday last week, myself and Bull braved torrential rain on Saturday to visit Awdry Towers and participate in a first game of Star Wars Legion.

I had spent the last week feverishly painting my Imperial troops… and failed miserably. Mr Awdry on the other hand managed to paint most of his troops and build an Ewok village and Imperial bunker. In truth I had spent the majority of my available time reading through the rules and watching gameplay videos (which proved far more useful).

We started with the basic tutorial and went through everything step-by-step. It proved to be quite an exciting game. Han Solo showed his roguish tricky side that we all love (or not, grrr) and Vader turned out to be the intimidating, deadly presence I had hoped (albeit moving at a pedestrian pace).

After a brief interlude for pizza and a chinwag, we jumped back in – Bull taking over the command of some of the Rebels – with lots of our shiny extras, including a rather slick looking snowspeeder. My Imperials had nicked the win in the last game, but it was not to be this time. The flyer proved to be a tough and deadly addition to the Rebel lineup and a distinct lack of cover on my side of the table left my Imperials exposed from almost all directions.

Despite being disappointed that my shiny purchases had not lived up to expectation, I came away quite taken by the game. On paper it's rather 40k like, but in reality it's not – it shares more in common with Imperial Assault and X-Wing (which is to be expected). There are a few neat mechanics and overall it feels balanced (though I still don't quite understand why a trained, "precise" and more expensive Stormtrooper is a worse shot than a Rebel trooper!)

Expect to see more Legion stuff coming soon(ish).

Painting Lord Of The RIngs Undead

So my painting exploits. limited as they are, have settled upon my Lord of the Rings models. I've got some base colours down on the Uruk-Hai and even pulled apart the Mordor Troll to turn him into an Isengard Troll instead, but that's for another post.

As an aside from all that brown paint, I decided to have a go at the Army of Undead… or at least the first ten models. They were sprayed with GW … White spray (which is actually light grey, and a pig to use at it leave bobbles on your models if the temperature is not optimum) then I touched up the undercoat with Administratum Grey (above). Then came the cool bit.

I saw a blog post somewhere a while ago (though I cannot remember where or find it for love nor money) a neat trick about using the GW technical paint Nihilakh Oxide for undead, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's quite a thin, runny paint so I put some on the palette then lathered the model in it to see what happened. Oh yes, these guys were swimming in it (quite literally when I knocked over the stupid paint pot!)

After leaving it for a while to dry I got to survey the results.

I really like where this is going. The colour in the photo is a little off as it's still quite green like the previous image, but looks good.

I suspect I should have painted the models white before applying the Technical paint as this would have made the high areas, and overall colour brighter. Having said that I'm happy to leave that for the King of the Undead to make him stand out more.

I MAY go back in with some thin white highlights along edges, but this would open the door to shading and another layer of the oxide…

I'm happy for this to be a quick win – Hurrah, I painted something!!

There are still another ten of these guys not yet built but I'll probably go back to my Uruk-Hai until I can order the King of the Dead to lead them. I also managed to acquire Saruman to lead my Uruks, as well as Lurtz and a couple of the Uruk Captains, but I'm in no hurry. I'm happy to have something I can post about!