Imperial Assault - HK Assassin Droids

While I haven't been posting for quite a while, I have been painting.

Here is the first in a series of entries of stuff I painted over the last six to nine months that I haven't posted about.

I think I finished these last November, but it might have been December.

The HK Assassin Droids from Imperial Assault, the Return to Hoth expansion.

The grey ones are the regular units, the coloured ones are the Elites.

As with all my Imperial Assault minis, I am following the Sorastro guides as they are helping me learn new techniques that I am using when painting other stuff like Reign of Cthulhu, or Drakon.

I hope you like them.

Full set of HK Assassin Droids

The Elite HK Assassin Droids in Orange and Red

Elite HK Assassin Droids facing the other way, far safer this way

As always, I would love feedback.

Han, Chewie, IG-88, and of course Boba Fett

It's time to see our favourite smugglers, and the bounty hunters who chase them.

Han and Chewbacca are the two most iconic characters from Star Wars for me, and I am glad they came out so well.

As always, you can click on the image to see a more detailed version.

Han was always being pursued, not just my the Empire, but by bounty hunters sent by the evil Jabba the Hutt.

First off we have IG-88.

A wonderful looking droid.

But of course, the most popular character in Star Wars, even if not the most well known by non fans, is Boba Fett. This is by far the most complicated miniature I have ever painted, and he took me nearly 20 hours to complete.

From the detailed colour scheme, to the symbol on the shoulder, everything turned out amazing.

I hope you think he looks as wonderful as I do.

Again, thanks to Sorastro's Painting Channel for teaching me everything I know, and without whom I would never be able to do this.

Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?

Luke Skywalker is missing...

Well he was, until now. Now I have photos of him painted and ready to go.

FFG have announced a new Luke Skywalker figure for Imperial Assault coming in the future, him as a Jedi Knight from Return of the Jedi, but for now here he is in all his Tatooine goodness.

He is a fairly simple miniature, but the colour blending on the pants and shirt make this really interesting in ways that aren't fully obvious from the photos; which were again taken using nothing but natural light.

I hope you like them.

Once again, thanks to Sorastro for his wonderful guides.

Jyn Odan - The Rebels Prepare

This is another case of the miniature looking much better under normal light than under lighting for my crappy camera setup.

Jyn Odan came together really well, and a lot faster than I thought she would. Again, the combination of the wet palette and the magnifier really speeding up my painting.

Also, I am getting better. I think the photos at page render size are much more representative of the mini in reality, the larger photos are what they look like under about 5x magnification, and that isn't the quality my painting is aiming for.

I am still working on improving my highlighting skills, but I like where I am getting, I think the jacket came out great. The final thing I did was add a watered down gloss varnish to the jacket to give the leather a sheen, but while it looks great, I think I could have watered it down a little more and make it a little less shiny. Oh well.

This is my first attempt at doing eyes. A simple technique, but I think they came out very well.

The details of the jacket at the bottom I could never have done without the magnifier, not this well.

I am catching up with the Sorastro Imperial Assault guides, and getting faster. I am enjoying the quality of what I am getting following his guides, so I am not planning on jumping ahead, but if I catch up I will work on other stuff.

You can see Jyn unpainted from my post back on the 1st of August.

Next up, Wookies.

The Nexu are ready to consume whoever gets in their way.

It has been four weeks since I posted the image of the unpainted Nexu, and in that time I have spent pretty much every painting hour working on them. Unfortunately, I didn't get as many painting hours as I wanted, but I really think they have been worth it.

The Nexu are about 12 feet long and when they come towards you, salivating, I challenge any foe, Rebel or Imperial, to stay calm. The minis are around 6cm long.

This is by far the most detailed work I have done with a paint brush, and while my photographing is getting better, it still doesn't come close to doing these figures justice. On the table they look amazing.

Showing the different striped patterns on each Nexu.

You never want to get this close to these teeth.

The cracked ground effect was something I decided to do myself, it was not part of the original guide, but after seeing the Nexu again in Attach of the Clones, I thought the effect would work. Being able to use the different ground colours for the elite and regular deployment group I think really works well.

When you compare these to the unpainted figures I posted earlier, and you see just how amazing the Sorastro guides for the Imperial Assault miniatures are. Once again, I followed them to the best of my skill, and in doing so painted to a quality well beyond what I am capable of coming up with on my own.

Jyn Odan and Nexu pre-painting

A few people have asked what the Imperial Assault mini's look like before painting. So here are the next three I am working on before I start painting.

All I have done is some mold line removal and I have washed them. It's disturbing how visible the mold lines still are in these photos, but I can't feel them and I have filed them as much as I dare for now. I have mentioned before that mold line removal is something I need to get better at, and I am - slowly.

Also, they look a lot worse in the photos than in real life, due to the massive magnification.

Trandoshan Hunters

After many more hours than I expected, the Trandoshan Hunters are ready for deployment.

The leader of them is Bossk.

Then there is the one who's outfit I based on Han's Hoth outfit. I am really happy with how he came out. Though his base needs some touch up.

Finally there are the secondary guys in the Elite and Standard deployment groups. These guys are in a camouflage pattern. Of course this is based on Sorastro's guides, as all of these paint jobs are.

So here are the two deployment groups ready to hit the table and cause some trouble for the Rebel Scum!

The Dark Lord of the Sith

After only a couple of days work, Darth Vader is done - and the photos don't come close to doing him justice. I really need to get better at taking photos of miniatures.

I think this photo shows the glow of the lightsaber quite well.

This one shows the highlights on the back of the cloak, which I am really happy with. Getting highlights on black are supposed to be hard, but following the guide and being able to get a lot of subtle different mixes really make this come to life.

He took less than half the time I expected, and I really do put it all down to the wet palette. This is what it looked like when I was done with Vader. It looks like there is a lot of paint wasted, but I was getting less than half of what I used to out of the pot, and still getting too much. Some of these sections have also had as many as ten different mixes of colour in them, adding different effects.

If you want to see how I did this, have a look at Episode 7 of Sorastro's Imperial Assault Painting Guide.

AT-ST Ready for Deployment

Finally, my AT-ST is ready for deployment.

The rebel scum will run in fear when this machine of Imperial might comes their way.

This took many hours, and a lot of new skills, and after all of that it looks fairly plain and worn - but that's pretty much the desired effect. This AT-ST looks like it has seen a lot of duty.

As always, there are some aspects of it that look no where near as good as I had hoped, but I think that will always be the case - because if I am not challenging myself, then this won't be as much fun.

But this thing is going to look great on the table.

AT-ST Post Corrision - Almost done

Here is the AT-ST post highlight and corrosion.

Almost done. Just some mild rust drybrushing and the base to finish.

One thing that happened is the guns, which were really loose, are now completely stuck and don't move at all. No idea when that happened. Fortunately they are in a good position, so I am not sure I want to do anything about that.

AT-ST Post Black Wash

So I finally did the black wash on my AT-ST last night, and it came out okay. Not as smooth or as clean as I would have liked. The cloth I used was too large and too awkward to handle, and I lost too much time trying to hold it right so I could get it where I wanted and that resulted in the Nuln Oil drying too much sometimes. I also had some overruns of paint I didn't see until too late.

Nothing I think that will ruin the mini however.

I am now a little over half way done with the AT-ST, probably about 4-5 hours of work left. I have another one to do that will be more complex, but I think the lessons I have learned will help me with that one.

AT-ST about 1-3 of the way through...

This is my AT-ST from Imperial Assault about 6 hours into the painting journey, and before the wash.

I am really nervous about screwing up the next stage, so I wanted to share what it looks like now in case it goes horribly wrong.

Not Minis - Storage (still Imperial Assault)

As those of you who know me will know, I am very keen in pimping out my game storage - and this is also true for Imperial Assault.

I have put a lot of time (am I mean dozen of hours) into trying to plan my storage for Imperial Assault, including being able to make room for the expansions and extra minis as they come out. There are some beautiful solutions for storing IA in the base box, but I have seen with other games that these fall apart quickly when expansions come out, and the first expansion and extra waves of minis have already been announced.

So how was I going to store this?

Well, for the main game I have bought a large plastic tub that I think is a good size and I have started making foam core mini trays (which I will post about when I have them ready).

What I wanted to share in this post is the solution I came up with for the card storage for the two sized cards in premium sleeves.

First I thought I would make them out of foam core like I have for other boxes, but I wanted to look for something simpler and more robust. I then bought a plastic tub that would hold them, but the modifications that would need to be made were too complex.

Then I looked at the sizing of CCG storage boxes and how I could modify those - especially for the small cards. They would work, but I would need to put a centre partition in. So I did.

These are the photos of the finished product - minus the dividers which I haven't printed yet.

I cut slots in the card box for a central partition, then cut a piece of 1.5mm card stock to the right size and slotted it in. It holds well and the cards fit - except for one issue. The box is only just the right depth for the cards, with no room for dividers - so how was I going to put label dividers in?

Well the solution I am using is to have a piece of foam core between the different types of cards, and then the dividers when printed and laminated will go behind those and the gaps will make the labels readable. This is the next step.

For the large cards, just using the CCG box without modification works fine, so that was easy. All that's left is to print and laminate the labels.

Because these are white cardboard boxes, I will be able to decal them or label them how I want, so printing out movie images with text or something will be easy.

Anyway, I thought people might be interested in how, after dozens of hours, I finally decided to store my cards for Imperial Assault - and how I will probably end up storing Descent as well.