Terrain, terrain, terrain!

 o/

Floyd's discount droid repair is open for business!

I was off on a staycation last week with my dad & stepmother visiting for the first half of it. It was a good visit with fun had by all. The second half of the week I had more or less to myself where I did a fair bit of hiking as well as miniature painting, terrain specifically. 

The wing tower is a separate piece for ease of storage & transport.

While the interior is lightly detailed, I glued the roof on as I couldn't fathom any troops fighting within the tight confines of the structure. Plus painting the interior was proving troublesome (which is the real reason I glued the top on). 

I recently bought several 3D printed pieces off of Etsy and have been worked on them thru the latter part of my week off. I used the Krylon filling primer which mitigated the worst of the print lines, though some are still visible. Overall, the print quality is really good considering all of the curved surfaces.

Like so many of the outlying Outer Rim worlds in the Andor series, I opted to go for the dirty & grubby look. Shocked, aren't you? 

The print lines are most visible on the roof panels, but nothing too terrible.

I tried priming over the Krylon but while the black GW spray seemed to go one fine, the Vallejo spray primer rubbed off a bit during handling/painting giving some of the surfaces a bit of a granular appearance. Not too big of a deal as this building is of an adobe-like construction, but I'll omit that step in the future.

This turret has been out of action for so long that plants have already taken root inside the wreckage.

A few flowers, maybe a lick of paint and she'll be as good as new!

I have another house in this Massa'dun style, as well as a bunker and two destroyed turret emplacements that would look right at home on Hoth. However, as I am not painting any of my forces like they are on Hoth, I have based my first wrecked turret for a more temperate climate. 

I actually got these pieces late the week before and put 'em in game the next day, straight out of the box, not even primed!

My droids suffered a thorough drubbing in this game, aside from Grievous who proved impervious having made 8 consecutive armor saves in a row! Poor Tom was tired of trying to kill him at that point.

Black on Black!

 o/

You know the ISF are the bad guys when they are trampling someone's flower beds. 

As much as I loathed painting the Shoretroopers in their actual colors, I had no issues painting the remaining four up as a squad of Imperial Special Forces Troopers. Honestly, if there was any challenge, it was dry brushing them lightly to lighten them up somewhat without getting them too dirty (well, boots aside). 

I was pleased with how the dirty boots came out. 

But other than that, a lot of the detail is lost in the super dark color scheme. 

The guy with the red stripes is the squad leader

The official models for this unit are Tie Fighter pilot minis. However, after painting up Iden Versio a year or so back...well, she looked kinda like a bobblehead. I think these models work much better. Recently the ISF got a points reduction meaning they are likely to be a bit mediocre. However, as a mediocre player myself, that ought not bother me too much. 

Leaving the droids for a bit.

 o/

My CIS army is just down to just assembling and painting my 2 Droidekas, a task I failed miserably at the first time I tried it a year or so back. Thus, I took the only sensible approach to the problem and ignored them to work on other Legion projects. Here they are in no particular order of completion:

Rebel Veteran Mk II Medium Blaster gunner(s), a.k.a.: when furries attack! This was an Etsy purchase that took what felt like forever to arrive and no time at all to paint up.

I've never felt the need for the Ewok trapper, so it is now a bit of basing decoration

I like making these larger bases almost like little dioramas. 

I'm particularly pleased with the how the fur turned out on this model. 

In hindsight, the hands are a bit human like and furless, but whatever. I'm not going back and changing it now. 

I put several ferns on this base as I recall lots of those in the forest scenes of Endor. 

Also in the support weapon realm, I have my Imperial Shoretrooper DF-90 mortar gunner. While a vastly inferior weapon to the Mk II above (it is essentially a direct fire mortar which...isn't really a mortar), it is nonetheless a cool looking mini. 

Finally! The last of these infernal Shoretrooper models! Well, sorta. You'll see what I mean in a future post. 

Rather than ferns, this guy's has chosen to camouflage his mortar by setting it up amongst monstera and a multitude of weeds. 

I'm curious as to how the round mortar charges exit the rectangular barrels of the mortar. It is likely one of those 'shrouded in mystery...' things, I'm sure. 

Most of what was completed here recently is for The Empire actually. Next up is my (almost) finished Imperial Scout Trooper squad. I still have the Saboteur left to finish. 

Thank God for The Mandalorian series! I really like the dirty Imperial Troopers look over the pristinely clean ones from the Return of the Jedi. 

Cool factor aside, Scouts sadly have an all-to-frequent tendency to just show up and die. 

Meaning that oh-so expensive DLT sniper upgrade is likely to be used sparingly, if at all. 

As for the other random Scout trooper, I'm never going to field a separate strike team, so that model was carved up to enable me to convert the Imperial Agent below.

This 3D print was a generic Jedi that I never really knew what to do with. So, I lopped off the hand with the already bent light saber and replaced it with a gun hand from the aforementioned, Scout trooper. 

I think his camo cloak came out pretty good. 

As the Scout was already down a hand, I figured taking his head off for basing material was a viable option. 

He didn't complain.

A fully painted army = Victory?

Well...it took a little help from my opponent too, but yes. 

Fully painted army, check. Some of you may have noted that the black squad from my last post isn't included, meaning this isn't even all of them!

Up front I should say that I don't mean that in the sense of he did something really stupid and I capitalized on the mistake. Rather on the last turn, as I was about to make said mistake, my opponent convinced me to do otherwise. I was about to charge his AT-ST with my electrostaff armed Super tactical droid, when Tom stopped me and said: 'Don't do that or the game will end in a tie rather than you winning.' 

The Super Tactical droid in question, just before it killed his close combat-oriented agent who routinely kicks my ass. However, this time around said agent was taken down with ease by my Super Tac.

Tom asked if a could see the path to victory and flummoxed, I could not. He asked if my super tac could reach the nearby POI in my deployment zone, which it could. If it did so, then I would have 2 units (my T-series command droid was camped there all game) to his 1 (the aforementioned AT-ST).

The droid horde advancing earlier in the game. 

His plan was to double move his other AT-ST up to the objective, which would only allow him to contest said POI as the odds of the resident AT-ST killing one, if not both of my command droids in 1 volley was debatable. 

I had already taken his deployment zone POI with a dwarf spider droid, and we each held another POI in no man's land. As such we had a tie score going into the last turn. 

I apologize if this does not make a whole lot of sense as I only took 3 pics, so do not have enough for a battle report. 

General Grievous leading the charge in Tom's backfield. Of all of the Imperial troops in this pic, only a handful of Storm troopers on the right would survive the game. 

That said, many a time I have stopped a newer player from doing something detrimental to the chances of victory, not because what they were doing was wrong necessarily, but because their grasp of the game was still limited. I've even done this in tournaments (where I was already out of the running). 

As such, it was nice to be on the receiving end of that kind of advice for a change. Especially as, up until this game, I had never beaten Tom nor even come close to doing so (though he is always fun to play legion with regardless of my losses). 

I can't but help compare this experience to oh so many times witnessing the schmuck in Tennessee at my old FLGS whose 'teaching games' involved him grinding noobs into the dirt with meta-optimized tournament lists. Which sadly is very reminiscent of my first legion game here in South Carolina.

THE END IS NIGH!

 o/

Tufts aside there's not much new to see here.

They are done! All SIXTY B1 Battledroids in my Separatists army are painted, whew! These last two squads are all repaints of 2nd hand minis and have some minor damage (missing a gun barrel tip or antenna here and there), but nothing too terrible. 

About half of this squad are repaints of my original 'blue squad' whose cleaner scheme did not look good next to the rest of the newly painted horde. 

I still need to 'ard coat the backpack lights, but that is the only thing left to do. With such a negligible difference in their final appearance, I just went ahead and took pics.

Why are their tufts black? Must be from the radiation...

Fun fact, the rad gunner was the first B1 painted, as I used it as a test model to see the results of my proposed quick and easy paint scheme. 

The new 'Blues'. 

I had a bucket load of blue tufts, so I decided to make a new blue squad, and sell the old ones on eBay, leaving the 4th black squad as a smaller unit. However, there is a metric ton of tan/beige painted B1s on there already. So instead I scraped off their tufts, considered them 'primed' and inked them along with the other primed models to make the black squad above. 

Roger Roger! I have to say that in every B1 post.

(Am pretty sure that is a written rule somewhere.)

Clearly these are tactically advancing in the other direction, as the expendable B1s are not programmed to retreat out of self-preservation.

The blues have the same support weapon options as the red & purple squads, only the black squad is the odd one out with the rad gun.

All I have left now to do is assemble and paint a pair of Droidekas (no easy task that is) and paint a second squad of B2s. Then I will be ready to post some fully painted army pics. 

Massed Production!

 o/

The 'red' Roger Rogers.

I am using the color of the tufts to differentiate the different squads. 

It keeps their physical appearance uniform, while making them easily identifiable which will be helpful when inevitably they get in close with one another. 

The squad leader droid is also marked out in the same color as the tufts. 

Given the sheer number of B1 Battle Droids in need of paint, I have resorted to the age old (and often loathed) batch painting method. I also decided to keep them stupid simple: 

Step 1: Prime in Wraithbone

Step 2: Ink in Agrax Earthshade

Step 3: Drybrush in Wraithbone

Step 4 paint the guns (all Corvus black)

Step 5: paint the details which are just a few bits & bobs 

Step 6: Basing

Step 7: Matte Varnish and done. I do Ard' Coat a few bits & bobs as well. 

The big & little tufts are different shades of purple, but it still works. 

Each super squad has the option for either an E-5C (SAW) or an E-60R (rocket launcher). 

The little green light on the backpacks is the only spot to get any Ard' Coat aside from a few lights/lenses on the E-60R

Better view of the E-5C gunner here. 

This method has worked well, resulting in 30 Battle Droids painted in about 3 weeks' time. Plus, a little work on a mechs for Battletech and a not Harley Quinn inspired Super Tactical Droid (it just worked out that way). 

Am not happy that the 3-legged version isn't an option, but rather a necessity in order to build 2 Super Tactical droids with the kit. 

The heavy arm cannon will make this droid a free roaming, short ranged, light support weapon, as well as a leader. 

The dead B1 on its base looks to have suffered a Jedi induced, rapid disassembly event.

I have another 15 B1s primed and on deck as well as a second Super Tactical droid. I have also primed and dry brushed the Droidekas on the sprue. I loathe assembling those however and will likely leave them for last.