Star Wars Legion: Imperial Scouts

The classic ones first seen being generally incompetent on the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. Standard paint job on these, grey undercoat, white base coat followed by Apothecary White Contrast paint. Black details then picked out and given a slight metallic dry brush where needed.

There's a couple of bikes from the base set kicking about needing a coat of paint too!

The squad

Trooper

Leader

Sniper

Star Wars Legion: Rebel Fleet Troopers

Since I was seven and saw Star Wars in Blackpool whilst munching dolly mixture,I've always fantasised about having a unit of these to recreate the opening battle. Palitoy/Kenner the producers of the action figures didn't oblige until I was well into my teens and finding other matters taking priority.

But now in my second (third? fourth?) childhood Fantasy Flight Games have obliged by producing this set.

 It contains seven troops in all, a leader, four troopers and a couple of special weapons types. No idea what the special troopers do, to be honest I would have preferred just more standard troops but then Legion is one of those games I've owned for two years but never played!

These were painted using Contrast Paints except for the helmet which is painted white and the washed with a light grey contrast paint. The helmet was finished off with a gloss varnish to make it look more plastic.

Pretty pleased with these and they only took an afternoon

Imperial Stormtroopers

I'm getting to use a lot of white at the moment with the Oldhammer Empire Army coming along and doing a sideline of Imperial Stormtroopers for Star Wars Legion.

In fact these are the figures I used to experiment in Citadel Contrast White. Initially I started off using Grey Seer as an undercoat and then the Apothecary White Contrast paint on top - effectively following the basic instructions on the GW site for Contrast.

Unfortunately, Apothecary White is a misnomer and it's actually a medium to light grey. Disappointingly the 'one thick coat' method didn't result in the sparkly PVC white of the troopers of the movies but the more drudgery sort of grey seen in the skies at the height of a Scottish summer.

I rescued the two troopers I had experimented with by carefully giving them a coat of White Scar the purest white available from GW; the one that clumps to your brush and dries unevenly. Trying to keep a modicum of shading in the recesses proved laborious and I found a figure took more than an hour (especially after adding the black bits) which was more than I was expecting to invest. What I wanted was that instant awe inspiring "looks not bad from two feet in a dimly lit hall" masterpiece I was expecting could be achieved from twenty minutes of lackadaisical Contrast work (I had swallowed the hype).

I changed tack, still going with an undercoat of Grey Seer I then gave the figures to watered down coats of White Scar; not quite clump free but nearly, and followed that up with the liberal application of the Apothecary White. This worked well and the Contrast paint stuck to the recesses giving some definition but leaving most of the model with a defined white coat (if squinted at whilst on a table).

This method was then transferred to the Empire Army (the Oldhammer one not the Imperial Star Wars one - this could get confusing!)

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.

Star Wars Armada

I know this has been out for a while but that's me, always late to the party, provided of course I actually get an invite. But enough social woes, I'm a wargamer I should be pleased with what I get, right?

Anyway, I purchased Armada about a year ago along with a few extra ships and only managed to get round to breaking the seal on the box last week, so it was a surprise to actually get a game in (first of the year!).

The scenario was simple as this was a learning process and taken straight from the book using the ships supplied by the core set. So for the Imperials there was a nifty Star Destroyer identical to the one in the opening sequence of the original film plus a half dozen TIE fighter squadrons. The rebels had a corvette and a Nebulon class cruiser, again familiar to watchers of the original trilogy, and four X-wing squadrons.

The setup was on a three foot square table with the opposing forces facing each other.

Turn 1
Not much happened in a very long round apart from a lot of page turning to find out how everything worked. The rules were split into two booklets Learn to Play and a Rules Reference. I admired the intention, get players up and running as quickly as possible but the split was annoying sometimes having to reference two or three pages to work out what was supposed to happen. There was the odd contradiction too which presumably Fantasy Flight, the manufacturer, must have known about as there was a clarification on contradictions between the two booklets!

Anyway after much flicking, pondering and scratching of noggins the fleets advanced.

A ponderous advance

Turn 2
This took even longer as we worked out what we had done wrong in the previous round and had to handle the first round of shooting. This was actually straight forward enough utilising some of the now familiar custom D8s that come with this and other Fantasy Flight products. The Star Destroyer's frontal batteries quickly knocked out the front shields of the Nebulon cruiser.

Some shooting!

Turn 3
The one turn where everything seemed to be in range. The corvette started the action off by taking out two (of three) of the Star Destroyer's shields. In response the Imperial ship blasted the corvette with it's port batteries nicking the rear shields of the rebel vessel. It then unleashed more attacks on the Nebulon, doing actual hull damage and a critical hit on the ship's shield generators.

Then the fighters clashed and all I can say is I wouldn't want to be a TIE fighter pilot. Those X-wings were mean taking down two squadrons of TIEs almost immediately. There was some response from the Imperials with an X-wing squadron being obliterated but if I had been in that navy (and with my accent that would be likely) I would have been hyper-spacing out of there!

This turned out to be the height of the battle

Turns 4-6
The issue now was that everybody had to turn and this took time (especially for the Star Destroyer). There was also the question of the table size for the Imperial ship there was a real danger that it would fall of the edge of the universe.

Turn, turn, turn...

The fighters continued to engage and the TIEs even managed to get in a few shots at the Nebulon cruiser.

Unfortunately the hiatus also allowed those ships that were damaged to recover shields which in effect meant that, apart for the dwindling fighter forces - which had had minimal impact on the capital ships - everything recovered.

Fighters still engaged

The game was supposed to conclude at the end of turn six but with no clear result a couple of further turns were agreed.

Turns 7-8

Finally two of the capital ships get back in range

The corvette and Star Destroyer passed each other but were unable to dent each others shields and the game petered out to a draw.

But damage is minimal

Conclusion
It might not sound like it but I actually enjoyed this and it definitely had that Star Wars feel (I was told off repeatedly for humming the Imperial March). I have a feeling that we were not applying the damage rules properly and that may have caused the issue. A bigger playing area and a better appreciation of the ships in play would also help. A re-read of the rules, especially now that I'm aware of the areas causing me confusion is also in order.