Star Wars - Rebel Commandos

Some brave revolutionaries to take on the might of the Imperial Army - mind you given the accuracy of the average Stormtrooper in Star Wars I would think they would be quite confident of bringing down the Emperor!

Squad 1



Squad 2

These are from the Star Wars Legion core set and painted entirely in Contrast Paints, primarily Militarium Green and Snakebite Leather. Speed was the aim when I started these and was able to polish off all fourteen in a weekend.

Blackstone Fortress: Traitor Command

I've been collecting and playing this game for a while. With lockdown now in full swing I suspect I'll be playing it a little more. Cunningly the game is actually co-operative in nature and designed to be played against a card drawn/dice driven AI. Only when you have 5 players does one of them actually play the baddy. Because of this it can be played solo with no change to the rules.


It also has a campaign system and provides envelopes to put your characters into 'suspended animation' whilst you pack the game away.


Interestingly, GW have furnished Blackstone Fortress with a collection of villains which have been part of the meta but not supplied with miniatures. There are now Traitor Guardsman, Ogryns, Commissars, Beastmen and Psykers prowling the corridors and all come with WH40K stats.


As well as the base set there are also several add-ons and the troops below come from Blackstone Fortress: Traitor Command. Everything except the metallic are done with Contrast paints.

The Commissar and Ogryn from the Traitor Command set

Empire Cannon

Was Karl Franz compensating with the scale of his ordinance?

Once again contrast paints proved a great boon for this model.

Only metallic parts have been painted utilising traditional acrylics.

 Everything else is an undercoat and a single coat of contrast.

Empire Generals - Finished

Well this is embarrassing... I finally completed a couple of generals for my Warhammer Empire army.

The one on foot is only five or so years old but the mounted one made his first appearance on Khaki Drab in July 2012.

I've been playing Warlords of Erehwon recently which led to a resurrection of the project. Of course in the time that's passed the Old World has been destroyed and replaced with the Age of Sigmar, though GW are trailing the original Warhammer's return.


Three years, maybe I'll get them all done by then.

Everything is contrast paints except the metallics and the lettering on the shield. The Italia theme was entirely accidental!

Contrast Paints - Third Try

Another Star Wars Legion figure, this time one of the main bosses Darth Vader himself.

I'm almost embarrassed at how little time this took; including undercoating about thirty minutes.

1. Spray Painted in Grey Seer
2. Liberally covered in Black Templar Contrast paint
3. Painted luminous buttons and light sabre in white
4. Spiritstone Red and Waystone Green on the buttons and sabre
5. Bit of silver metallic on the sabre handle
6. Tidy up
7. Finally texture paint and ink wash on base

Rather pleased with the results - black I find is very hard to do.

Contrast Paints - Second Try

Basically I'll buy anything with Star Wars on it. Yes, I am part of that huge cadre of middle aged men who keep George Lucas's pension fund nicely topped up.

Naturally, I was quick to purchase Fantasy Flight Games' miniature skirmish game Legion. Very quick - in fact I did so from a departure lounge in Charles de Gaulle airport. The miracle of the internet where I can watch all my money dissipate from my bank account app and into the paws of Amazon execs.

Another group whose pension pots I regular contribute to.

Then the usual happened; the game arrived, sat with cellophane un-peeled for a number of months whilst I purchased the odd supplement and read about how wonderful it was on the internet.

One of these supplements were Death Troopers, the black clad, bully-boy, special forces types from Rogue One. Like the base set they sat unmolested for months, black is a hard colour to paint and rather tedious to my mind. Then the miracle of Contrast arrived; eventually GW produced enough Black Templar paint to sate initial demand and the results are below:

The full squad

NCO

Trooper with pistol

These were so easy, once primed I don't think I spent more than an hour on them. Quick splash of Black Templar, dry brush some metal on the gun; finally base the green and red lights in white and then an appropriate GW technical paint to get the reflection.

Contrast Paints - First Try

In June, the day after the Great Game finished I wandered into Games Workshop (I can't quite train my brain to think Warhammer) in Glasgow and picked up a few of the new Contrast paints to give them a go.

I've always liked the idea of Imperial Fists as a legion except for the unfortunate fact that they are yellow. Yellow and I don't get on, it has a habit of going green at the merest hint of brush contamination and even when it works it's either so dull as to be anonymous or so effervescent it dominates the pallet.

So here was a chance, not shading, no highlights just slap it on is what GW said. The result is below.

The yellows and browns are Contrast paints, the metals and red traditional acrylics and washes.

I'll have more thoughts on Contrast in a later post.