Assaulting Imperial Assault

I managed to turn around these clawdite shapeshifters in the same evening as the AT-DP (that’s contrast paint for you).  I find these quite an interesting inclusion in the Imperial Assault game and the miniatures are actually fairly good and the details are quite solid.  Sticking with my current policy of speed painting using contrast paints, these were a perfect fit for that method.  Because there’s two groups worth of miniatures (4 models in total) I used different colours on the jackets and the weapon holster trim so that during play it’s easy to see which models belong to which unit.

The AT-DP is the last of the Imperial “Troop” units I have for the game.  By “troop” I basically mean any non-named unit; I still have a couple of  Imperial character miniatures to do.  It feels a bit strange to suddenly be so close to the end of painting all of the Imperial Assault miniatures when at the start of the year it couldn’t have been further from my mind.

This model was incredibly easy to paint.  I primed it Uniform Grey (Army Painter) and then gave the whole thing a really heavy black wash which I wiped off before letting it dry.  That was it, then I picked out the details in Leadbelcher.  The gun I gave a coat of Black Templar contrast paint – my favourite trick for painting weapons.  Finally I had a bit of a play with some weathering pigment around the lower legs, first time I have really used them – I quite like the results.  It was based using some of the GW texture paints and drybrushing, with a few dabs of brown and black washes around where the feet are pressing into the sand

Managed to speed paint a few more things tonight.  The initial plan was to paint the AT-DP walker and the Dewback rider, the Loth cats were a bonus.  Well, I say “bonus”, what I really mean is what even is the point of them?  They look like angry Porgs and Porgs and are probably on a list that has such delights as ewoks and jar jar binks – a list of things Star Wars would be better without.  They got a splash of brown contrast paint and the base got painted grey and I still feel like they robbed me of some time I won’t ever get back.

At least the Dewback was fun.  I used exactly the same colour scheme and method as the other one, using contrast paints to do the Dewback and the tried and tested black wash method for the rider .

The AT DP Walker sadly hadn’t been properly assembled, just push fitted.  So it will have to wait until the next update

I found that the Captain Terro villain pack actually comes with two optional torsos.  You can either choose the dewback rider with the shock lance or there’s Captain Terro.  I decided that if I painted both torsos but didn’t create a permanent assembly, I would either lose one or both of the torsos or (and?) the paint would gradually wear off the torsos due to increased handling  brought about by constantly assembling/disassembling the model.  So I assebled the kit as the Dewback rider as that’s likely to get more game time.  However, being now in posession of a 3D printer, I had a look online and found a free dewback rider STL that had a Dewback model with Stormtrooper legs attached which I managed to scale down to fit (well, almost) the spare torso I had allowing me to make Captain Terro as well.  I don’t think the scaling is perfect – the Stormtrooper legs are touch too small, but it’s not too noticable.  Also, as a consequence of downsizing the STL, the detail has softened somewhat although I think the use of washes and contrast paints has mitigated that to a degree – you can at least see the scales.  The rest of the storm trooper is basically the same as the all the rest – white primer, black wash and then the plates picked out with white.  I have been using a really neat trick for all the Imperial Assault miniatures – painting guns using leadbelcher and then using Black Templar contrast over the top creates a really nice gunmetal look very quickly.

We have had a bit of renewed interest in Imperial Assault of late with our nextdoor neighbour proving to be something of a gaming convert and a massive Star Wars fan.  We got around two thirds of the way through a campaign, which had been played entirely with painted minitures, only to get to a mission that had a stipulation “no scum and villainy units”.  I found that it was a struggle to fill out the deployment cards allowance with meaningful options so I decided to rush through a few more Imperial troop units from the last couple of boxed expansions.  As it turns out, these are the last of the Imperial troops that I have, there are a few characters still to paint (Admiral Thrawn and the Emperor for instance) and a vehicle (the AT-DP walker) but beyond that, I have very little left.

As easy as these were to paint, being honest, I was a little underwhelmed by the performance of the Death Troopers in the game.  They were a simple black undercoat,washed with a mix of blue and black ink and then given a drybrush of a very dark grey.  After they were finished and varnished I then picked out the armour plates with a gloss varnish – fairly standard for all of the Storm Troopers

These look remarkably familiar, very similar to the Dark Troopers in the Mandalorian in fact.  I went with another very simple colour scheme – leadbelcher undercoat with a black wash, drybrushed with Ironbreaker and then given a purple glaze to finish.  The weapon was given a coat of Black Templar to give it a nice, dark gunmetal look.  Then I picked out all of the lights by painting them white and using a slightly thinned red contrast paint.

Lastly is the riot control troops.  To make them a little more interesting I followed a similar approach to that taken with the jet troopers – I use squad markings using the Shock Troopers as an inspiration for this.  Beyond that they’re the same as the original storm troopers, a white undercoat, a heavy black wash and then pick the plates out with white.  Easy peasy.

This bad boy had been sat on my shelf, staring at me, for several years.  It’s too big to fit back in the box with all the other miniatures and it just kept glaring at me. With the contrast paints having helped to massively speed up some of the other models I got myself to a point where I had effectively painted everything up to and including the Jabba’s Realm expansion (I have been painting the boxed expansions in chronological order for the want of any better plan). With the exception of the Rancor of course. So I decided to change that.

Firstly I watched the fantastic tutorial video by Sorastro

I then decided that I didn’t really fancy doing all that wet blending so I instead used an airbrush. Using the same colours that are in the tutorial I airbrushed the entire model in Rhinox Hide then applied the next two layers as zenithol highlights, the first was sprayed from a roughly 90 degree angle and the next from 45 degrees.  This created much the same effect as the wet blending and I followed it up with a global wash of thinned Aggrax Earth.

I also realised that before I did the wash I should have painted the spines and mouth, so I did this and washed them separately with the same Aggrax Earth.  Following this I pretty much followed the tutorial, applying a dark green wash to the top shoulders and a red-brown wash to the face and hands.

The next step was to highlight the spines and add a few highlights to the skin, especially the face and the tips of some of the humps along it’s spine (they could be vertibrae but I don’t know). I also added some salive to the mouth using impact adhesive and also some mucous to the nose using Nurgles Rot.

At this stage, because I was going to be working on the base, I gave the model a matt varnish using Testors Dullcoat.  This was to protect the model from the handling required to work on the base.  Unfortunately, unlike the wise Sorastro, I had already glued the model to the base because I couldn’t get it to stay on the base due to the pegs having to be cut and sanded in order to get it to fit.  The model has been played with so fixing it onto the base became necessary and the eventual basing process wasn’t considered at the time. So I was a bit more limited in what I could achieve without risking getting texture paint all over the model.  However that being said, I don’t think that the results are too bad; the base still has a nice swampy look to it.

And with that the model was finished.  Considering that some of the Imperial Assault models are very hit and miss, which is to be expected given that it isn’t primarily a miniatures game, the Rancor is actually a very good model with some really nice detail.

With the release of GW Contrast Paints I was inspired to pick up the Imperial Assault project again. At the time they were getting mixed reviews with some people loving them and some people hating them. For me the Imperial Assault miniatures were the perfect opportunity to give them a try.  They’re not the world’s greatest miniatures and really for the majority of them I just wanted a half decent result to liven up the games of Imperial Assault. I limited the use of Contrast Paints to rank and file troops. Characters, heroes and any big models I will paint the old fashioned way and use contrast to blast through the chaff so to speak.

Personally I am really pleased with the results. They’re not winning any competitions any time soon however the quality vs effort ratio is very favourable as I pretty much painted everything shown here in around about a day and a half, and that wasn’t solid effort either.

I also learned a really cool trick with black contrast paint. Most of the weapons are painted using Citadel Ironbreaker as the base colour and are then painted using Black Templar which results in an awesome gun metal effect

This gallery is for completed models from the Rebel Alliance Faction. These models were painted before the commencement of this project, sort of “the story so far”

This gallery is for completed models from the Scum & Villainy Faction. These models were painted before the commencement of this project, sort of “the story so far”. Consider them like prequels.

This gallery is for completed models from the Imperial Faction. These models were painted before the commencement of this project, sort of “the story so far”. Consider them like prequels.