A long time ago at a Hobby Weekend far far away…

After a slight delay to our flight we arrived at OTT HQ around 15:00. After meeting the crew and a few of the other guests I picked up my goody box, including the downed At-St expansion. I already had the standard Walker in my collection and was pleased to see it had survived the journey intact!

The plan for the rest of the day is to get the downed At-St built, ready for painting tomorrow.

An hour later and the kit is built. It was a pretty straight forward build but the base plate is made of soft resin and was fairly distorted when taken out of the box. A quick bath in boiling water, followed by a little downward pressure and I had it (mostly), flattened out again.

I began the day by priming my walkers with GW Mechanicum Grey.

Next step was to get my hands on the airbrush and for that I needed OTT’s John. Fortunately he was kind enough to oblige me and you can see a little more of his tuition here:

https://www.beastsofwar.com/eventslist/star-wars-hobby-weekend-live-blog/

The highlights on the walker were built up using GW Dawnstone, followed by Administratum Grey. The final step was to use Corvus Black to work into the damaged sections as well as any areas that looked they might get more wear and tear.

This image shows the airbrush work on the downed walker. The regular walker is just primed and you can see the contrast between the two.

I moved on to the the standard At-St which I gave the same treatment.

Returning to my regular paints and brushes, I worked over base with Vallejo German Camo Beige, while the  rocks were painted with German Camo Medium Brown.

The base that the walker is mounted on (crashed into), has pretty good texture to it. However all the bases in my Legion army have been done with GW Agrellan Earth, so I decided to use this in some areas to blend the walker further into the base.

The Agrellan Earth proved really useful as it allowed me to fill any gaps that had been left from my hasty assembly of the model. I also used thinned down Agrellan to further colour the beige I had painted, breaking up the overall colour. Once it had fully dried I gave the base a good wash of Agrax Earthshade, covering the rocks and blending onto the walker in some places.

After leaving the Agrax to fully dry, I dry brushed Screaming Skull over the entire base area.

The final stage was to add tufts of grass which serve to add further texture and a little more colour to the scene.

Between each stage of  tackling the large base of the downed At-St, I worked on the base of the standard At-St. The process was exactly the same, just a little quicker to complete!

With the two bases finished I had achieved my aim of painting these two walkers over the weekend. This left me a full day to play some games!….

Having completed my hobby plans for the weekend I had Sunday to kick back and enjoy some games. After catching up with the other visitors I found out that the youngest member of our crew (Robbie), was yet to play a game of Legion. He’d been working hard since I arrived and now had the Emperor and a few squads completed. As my army was also Empire I took the opportunity to try out the opposition and borrowed Luke, along with a couple of units of Rebel Troopers and an AT-RT, from the OTT collection. Robbie fielded his freshly painted Emperor, two squads of Stormtroopers and a pair of Speeder Bikes. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures but it’s fair to say the game was as brief as it was decisive. The Emperor char grilling Luke with a sustained force lightning attack on turn three!

Licking my wounds I moved on to the Skellig Michael board, which myself and Hazyboy had been eying up for a game all weekend. As the set up had a large body of water running through the middle, we came up with a scenario that set the two crossing points as objectives. I chose deployment and took the side closest to the crossings. Although this gave me the advantage of having both objectives close to my deployment, my force was going to have to deploy on a narrow cliff edge and split into two elements. I did however have two Speeder bike units that we reasoned would be able to skim across the surface of the water, giving me a little more room to manoeuvre.

I set my Shoretroopers, along with General Veers, on the cliff top. Their Job was to seize the cliff edge crossing point and rain down fire on any approaching Rebels. On the lower edge of the board I deployed my Hoth Troopers with the E-Web in support to hold the bridge.

My opponent was forced to deploy further from the objectives but had the benefit of solid land (& solid cover), for his troopers.

Despite having Veers and Boba Fett on my side and my opponent fielding no named heroes, just the rebel Officer, the game ended in a draw! My Hoth Troopers, supported by Boba Fett, ran in to heavy resistance on the foot bridge and ultimately gave way to the rebels. The shoretroopers on the other hand, lived up to their name and held the cliff tops against two AT-RT’s and a pair of Tauntons.

I really enjoyed this game, having the opportunity to play on such a beautiful table really brought the game to life. A fitting end to our Hobby weekend.

After seeing the Mig Oil Brusher system on a FB group, I decided to order a set to try out on my vehicles. With the Spring Clean Challenge back, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to dust off this project from a few years ago and finally get my At-St’s finished.

What interested me about Oil Brusher was partly the colours – which have been chosen to add weathering effects to vehicles – but also that they come in a really handy bottle with its own applicator. The paint is also much thinner than oil paint from a tube, which is exactly what is needed for pin washing.

Just like when I began this project, I opted to try the technique on the downed Walker first, less risky if I messed it up! As I was planning on using the airbrush for part of this process, I protected the base as best I could with cling film and masking tape.

Since the Weekender I have invested in a decent airbrush and got a lot more confident in using it.
I alwayse felt that I had left the walkers a little dark so now seemed like a good time to bring the grey up a shade before beginning the pin wash.

For this I used Vallejo Model Air – light Grey. I also worked back in to some of the darker areas with what little of the original Corvus Black I had left in the bottle. Once I was happy with the highlights I used Vallejo Gloss Varnish (thinned 1-1 with water), to prepare the model for the pin wash. This was applied using an older airbrush I had acquired and like to keep handy for close encounters.

The gloss varnish doesn’t look great at this stage, but is a necessary step to protect the model and allow the thinned oil paint wash to flow.

There are quite a few Oil Brusher sets to choose from but what attracted me to this one was the colour ‘Starship Bay Sludge’ – This seemed like the obvious choice for grubbing up my walkers.

My understanding of this technique is that you thin the Oil Paint quite heavily in order to allow the capillary action to draw the paint into the recesses. This is why it is beneficial to gloss the model, allowing for a better paint flow. I had picked up some low oder thinners for this purpose and used the brush from the bottle to mix a small amount on an old pallet. 

I picked a small area of the model to work on and applied the thinned oil paint carefully, but not too preciously, as the next step of the process would involve removing the excess.

I left the paint for about 15-20 mins before removing the excess with a an old stiff brush and a little thinners. I also found a piece of sponge worked well for passing over the larger areas.

I was surprised by how much control I had of the paint and was able to move the colour around, as well as remove or streak it. I decided to test a bigger area and so worked down the leg. Here you can see my initial application and then after clean up. Pretty happy with the result but I feel that too much paint has been removed from some places. I think I need to leave it longer to dry before removal.

After my initial test and gaining confidence in the technique, I worked across the rest of the model. I found switching to a finer brush helped me to get the oils into the deeper recesses and avoid too much overpainting.

Here is the end result of the pin washing.

The model still needed mat coating but before I did that I wanted to add some rust spots and oil staining. For this I would be using Modelmates Rust Effect, Rusty Red and Oil Brown. These technical paints really are magical!

Once again I started with a small test area but soon got carried away!

I found that some areas of the Rust Effect would dry too pale for my liking but by applying the Rusty Red or Oil brown over the top, I was able to adjust the colour and even blend from light rust spots to deeper tones. It’s worth noting that while the modelmates do dry, they become active again with water. This allows you to adjust the distribution of the paint very easily.

I aimed to apply rust to any areas that had suffered severe damage or buckling, as I reasoned that this would be where the surface would have been stripped away and the metal compromised. I also target areas where rain water might pool, as well as smaller and thinner components – bolts, clips, grills and vents.

By the time I’d finished applying the rust, this Walker really looked like it had seen its last battle! I feel the rust spots in the dented head section may still be too light. I’m gonna live with it for a while then decided if I should knock it back….

In the end I decided to knocked the white spots back in the head section. I also added a wash to the rocks on the base, which was now looking a little bright against the Walker. For this I used Soft Tone in some places and Medium Brown in others, as I wanted to break up the evenness. The final step was to apply a coat of Vallejo Mat Varnish through the airbrush.

Moving on to the operational Walker, I was surprised at how little variation I had put into the paint job. I had clearly chickened out of doing something bolder. I only had one person to blame, and that was John. He should’ve pushed me harder!

I definitely needed to do more than just lighten the grey with the airbrush. I had planned to mask the base with cling film but in the end it was easier to just flex the plastic until the base and feet separated. With the base out of the way I went back over the Walker with the original dark colours I had used – Corvus Black and Dawnstone.

This was an immediate improvement but as originally planned, I now needed to bring the grey up to a lighter finish. As with the downed Walker, this was was achieved with Vallejo Air – light grey

Spring turned to summer and eventually I found the time to pin wash the Walker. It immediately became obvious that accessing the areas below the head would be impossible so I ‘deconstructed’ a little further and removed the head, along with the weapons.

With the head out of the way I followed the same process I had used on the downed walker. This meant spraying with gloss varnish and then going back to the Mig Ammo pin wash. I started working around the legs and chassis….

… and then continued onto the head and weapons. It has to be said that the head was a piece of cake compared to the legs, which required a lot of surface work!

Leaving the head off for the time being, I broke out the Modelmates that I had employed on the downed Walker. I wasn’t intending to do anything like the amount of breakdown I had done to the wrecked version, but felt a little rust here and there would break up the greyness.

Using the Modelmates I added some small areas of rust around any bolts or grills that looked susceptible to weather damage. Oil streaks and stains were then added anywhere you might get leaking fluids!

With the pin wash and weathering complete I decided to use some weathering powder around the feet in order to add a layer of collected dust. For this I used Secret Weapon Dark Yellow, applied with a large, course brush.

With this done I gave the whole model a coat of Vallejo Matt Varnish. This would remove the gloss and seal the model mates and weathering powder in place.

Once the Walker was glued back together it was almost finished.

I just needed to match the feet back into the base, using my tried and tested formula of Armageddon Dust, Agrax Wash and a Screaming Skull drybrush.

And with that my walkers were finally finished!