Star Wars Legion AT-RT

o/

Whilst slogging through the nightmare of October, I decided on a little bit of 'retail therapy' in hopes of taking my mind off of reality for a bit. I couldn't make it to the FLGS, and I was assuming (quite correctly) that at that point in time we were flat broke. Thus I went to my usual haunt of ebay to see what sort of bargain I could scrounge up.  In doing so I found this AT-RT.

This was my first Star Wars Legion purchase, as I only know of a handful of folks playing it locally and my contact with them ranges from next-to-never, to avoid at all costs. It looked like someone was selling off their personal collection, and this was the lone unpainted mini (and as it turns out, also missing a few parts but I'll get to that in a bit). Anyways, I bought it for a mere $6.14 including shipping, and then had a new toy/game to research when time permitted, which added to the bang for my buck considerably!

The AT-RT is an obsolete though still formidable walker dating back to the Galactic Republic and Clone Wars. As such, by the time the Rebellion rolled around, all surviving examples were rebuilds from either battlefield salvage or junk heaps. Meaning that if anything, the few missing parts (2 pistons, 1 per leg) were if anything totally in character for this model.

It would have been MUCH easier to paint were it disassembled (or at the least the pilot removable), but such are the penalties of dirt-cheap, 2nd hand ebay minis. Most of the body is a lovely shade of rusty metal, with only the blast shield having any sort of camouflage (a not uncommon feature of surviving AT-RTs, though I'd imagine that it would be of questionable value given the small surface area of the armor plating). 

My initial attempts at said camouflage were disastrous, and my urban camo looked more like a badly rendered white/black/grey zebra striping. The 2nd layer of camo (in hindsight) ought to have used some paints with a bit more contrast. Sadly, it's been so long since my last paint restock, I'm more or less in an involuntary limited palette mode most of the time. It looks alright though I guess. 

Luckily for me, conformity, especially amongst the more rag-tag and motley units of the Rebel Alliance isn't much of a concern, and any future vehicle purchases can simply be painted differently without a second thought. In all honesty, I was thinking this as more of a 'Scum and Villainy' unit (ala the X-Wing game) rather than proper rebels.

To date I only have the Generic Rebel leader specialist (another dirt cheap ebay buy) to paint to complete my Legion 'collection' lol. Not sure if I'll really pursue Legion as a game to be played though, or rather just something different to occasionally paint.