It's a good bet the Empire knows we're here...

Painted up the pack of Probe Droids from Star Wars Imperial Assault. They were painted vaguely following the tutorial Sorastro put up on Youtube - vaguely in that I watched it a couple of months before starting painting, and then watched it again once I was too far into the painting process to change anything.

I went for a fairly dark scheme, with some bright nicks of weathering. The bases took some more doing than usual, as since the models are so flimsy there was a lot of careful glueing involved to get them to bond to their new bases, which seemed to disagree with the sand staying where I wanted it. Two were glued using tiny contact points, whereas the third I managed to trim down the base without the legs all snapping off and so smoothed the edges down with filler before applying grit and sand.

To make the Elite figure stand out, I decided to give it red lenses and some markings - cue some frantic digging through every Star Wars reference book in my house looking for a reference chart of Aurebesh (the Star Wars alphabet) only to discover that it's in the Star Wars Miniature Battles rulebook, which is Uncle Johnny's, so I googled it:

If you peer at it, you can just about make out AB172 on the side of the Elite probe droid (chosen for the same reason my Fallout survivor is from Vault 172), as well as very carefully painting an Aurek on top of the droid. I then looked at it at arm's length and figured that the small red symbol wasn't obvious enough to differentiate between the different droids, so I repainted the entire panel red and repainted the Aurek in white. Then, as per the Sorastro video, I gave all of the lenses a coat of GW 'Ardcoat to give them a glossy, reflective finish.

Tally:

24 vs 40 = -16

In other news, I spent part of my afternoon sieving bits of shell out of Wilkos £1 bird sand. After explaining to our local Labour MP that that was what one of the two tea strainers my daughter was holding was for when she asked. As you do.

You have failed me for the last time!

Painted up a couple of Imperial Officers, because Darth Vader needs someone to show off his ability to choke people using the Force on:

The chap on the left (who holds the rank of Admiral, according to the rank bar on his chest) was painted up as a member of the Imperial Security Bureau, because I figured that if I ever got round to running a Star Wars RPG he'd make a handy mid level villain, or even do nicely for an Elite Imperial Officer in Star Wars Imperial Assault. The chap on the right however was painted as a generic deck officer, and so got a more subdued greeny-grey uniform. If I do any more officers, they will probably get a light grey uniform, which fits how they appear in my memory if not in any of my research!

As the figures were originally bendy prepaints, the detail is a little soft (especially on the face of the figure on the right), but I think they've come out alright overall. Fun fact: these two figures were originally based and prepped on 30mm DS bases, as I'd planned to use the as Alliance Officers for the Firefly/Serenity project that has been on the back burner for a while now, and so were recently plucked from limbo and rebased to rejoin the Star Wars project!

Tally:

21 vs 40 = -19

Dark Trooper Phase 2

Having briefly played Star Wars Commander before my attention waned when it turned into another pay-to-win app, I thought one of these lightsaber-resistant robo-meanies would be a good add-on unit for my Imperials. He was surprisingly difficult to photograph for such a straightforward paint job too...

[Tally - 61 vs 36 = +25]

Scout Trooper finished!

One quick and dirty paint job later, and my converted Scout Trooper Sniper is ready to join the rest of my boys in white in putting down those troublesome rebels:

Which reminds me, I should probably try and turn my attention to basing and painting some opposition for them...

Well, that and sorting out some rules (he says, from a deep pile of reference material):

[Tally: 57 vs 36 = +21]

Scout Trooper Buttplate issues

Finding myself with an hour to myself, I thought I'd best get on with finishing undercoating some miniatures that I was partway through doing at the end of last week. Picking up my brush and pot of Ceramite White, I found myself staring at a miniature that I'd clearly been interrupted in the middle of undercoating, and I recalled that I'd realised that something was missing from my converted miniature - one of these thins is not like the others:

The more eagle-eyed of you will be quick to notice, he's missing a buttplate. Presumably an essential piece of armour, although maybe it's actually a cushion to make those speeder bike rides a little smoother? Whilst I'm not normally a button counter type (as opposed to some that I won't name), I knew that it would bug me if I didn't do something about it, so set about the problem with a little Liquid Green Stuff. Now, my pot of LGS has gone a bit funky, but mashing it about a bit and leaving it to set a little have me a manageable chunk that I could carve into the desired shape:

Yeah, I know, the back of your fingernail probably isn't the best place to carve green stuff with clay shapers and knives, but I'm fairly certain my mother rarely reads this, so if you don't tell I won't either!

After leaving it to set a little more (and dropping it on the floor, inevitably), a little dab of superglue with a cocktail stick later we have a Scout Trooper that's ready for the ball!

Alas, I now need to wait for this to properly dry before I can finish undercoating him and get on wih some actual painting, but them's the breaks...

Scout Trooper Sniper conversion

Having had my urge to produce some Star Wars miniatures reignited by the computer game Battlefront, I thought I'd quite like to model a scout sniper to add to my existing Imperial forces:

I dug out some WOTC bendies to provide donor parts, a Scout Trooper and a Kashyyyk Trooper (the proto-Scout Trooper you see in Episode III):

The good thing about these bendy plastic miniatures is the ease with which you can chop them up and Frankenstein them into new configurations:

So, Scout Trooper torso for the armour, Kashyyyk Trooper legs because I thought it would probably best to not have a sniper running along (even if that is how it tends to go down in video games). 

But what sort of sniper would he be without a sniper rifle? After various attempts to rig something up out of Tamiya WWII parts and even an attempt to carve one out of a WOTC sandtrooper mini that was abandoned when I had to come to the conclusion that I was essentially trying to whittle rubber, I took this from a Halo Actionclix figure:

A little bendy and a little big (as the Halo figures are pretty chunky compared to most other ranges), but we can do something about both of those things. First of all, the bend:

Boiling water on the left, ice water on the right. Soften in hot, bend to desired position, and set in cold water:

Freshly straightened, some careful cuts and needlessly fiddly pinning work later we have a more appropriately sized weapon for a chap that's frankly not dressed correctly for stealth operations (wait, is there a fridge up in that tree? No, it's the gleaming white armour of the Emperor's finest):

I had originally planned to cut the arms up to convert them into a traditional shooting pose, but test-fitting it into the existing pose I was quite taken with the 'sniper taken by surprise reacting with his small arm' pose that resulted:

There's a little cleanup work to be done with liquid greenstuff on his butt to neaten the transition, but other than that he's done!

And here he is (along with a couple of extra friends) based and ready for undercoat:

Speaking of undercoat, I find myself in Bluewater (oh, the giant delicious 5 Guys burger), and my companions were deeply amused that I bought 2 shades of black paint in the Games Workshop here...

Star Wars prep

Having dug out a bevy of Star Wars miniatures, I thought I'd best get a handful based up ready for painting. 

Although I've dug out a squad or Rebel Troopers, I thought I'd prep some random bits and bobs that might otherwise take my fancy. 

Cleaning up a tiny Chewbacca, I realised that despite what I might otherwise like to think, I am in fact the sort of nerd that would be annoyed at a tiny facsimile of a fictional character having the incorrect fictional weapon :

Some careful cutting and sanding of his original gun and a donor part from a Perry WOTR sprue later though, Chewie has a bowcaster:

Bam, here's a batch waiting for their basing to dry before I can undercoat them:

Vader's Fist

Pregnant ladies need naps, and thus I found myself with some free time today. 

Plenty of coffee and all three Robot Chicken Star Wars specials later, I had the basis of an Imperial skirmish force:

Two squads of eight, each with a sergeant, corporal and heavy weapon trooper; a Raxus Prime Trooper sculpt stands in for a leader in experimental armour; Darth Vader (for when absolutely every single rebel the other side of the table needs to no longer be counted among the living); and a Dark Side Adept for when you don't want that level of massacre but still want someone with a lightsaber. 

The bendy plastic sculpts aren't the best (especially on the heavy weapon troopers, unfortunately), but with careful use of reference material and a steady hand blacklining, they start to look the part!

Excitingly, finishing these is a significant boost to the tally:

56 vs 36 = 20

What to paint next though? I should maybe think about some Rebels to oppose them, or maybe some Scout Troopers (maybe even one converted to a sniper) to add to the Imperials. I've got a Death Star Protocol Droid ready that would be a quick paint job to use as an objective:

Or maybe the quite frankly beautiful (but incredibly, needlessly fiddly) Knight Models Boba Fett will catch my eye:

Or, who knows, maybe I'll get distracted and paint some zombies or apes or a third as yet unspecified thing, in which case I already have the following image ready: