Begun, another Legion project has.

Two squads of Droideka join the Separatist forces!

Quite simple paint scheme on these.

Base coat Gunmetal, Nuln Oil wash, Plate metal highlights.

Tinny tin base coat for the bronze, drybrushed with Bright Copper.

Purple panels shaded and highlighted by mixing with a bit of black and white.

I then diluted Typhus Corrosion and spread some patches around and finished with a very light drybrush of silver on the panels for scuff marks.

Overall I think we have a lightly weathered but poppy looking rolling death squad.

Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger!

Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger!

Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger!

Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger! Roger-Roger!

All four squads of B1 Battle Droids are complete and rebased!  That is the backbone of the army ready and the biggest chunk of batch painting out of the way.  Phew!

I decided to go with squad markings on the backpacks and on the shoulders of the squad leaders.  In true Lloyd shot fashion, I should be looking at them for most of the battle so that made sense to me.

Just to satisfy my curiosity of how the clear basing was working out, I did a quick mat check and I think it is coming together pretty well. I haven’t tried clear basing before so that’s a relief!

Why would you start a Separatist army?  Why, to paint a tiny Christopher Lee of course!

I enjoyed this one and tried to push myself a little harder on the face, eyes and lightsaber. I usually wuss out on eyes entirely!

As this is an army game I’m trying not to be too precious on the squads but make sure the focal points look good.  This may be my best crack at OSL yet!

Following the dipping, drybrushing and sepia wash, I did some more highlighting by mixing Bonewhite with Ivory then going after some raised areas.

I feel like I have overworked this a bit by this stage, I think my drybrushing after the dip stage was too heavy.  I removed too much of the shading effect and could have probably made things easier on myself, but that’s a lesson learned for the next three squads.

I am using the purple as a personal touch to my army, I want them to be mine while sticking close enough to the source materials for everything to be instantly identified and feel like Star Wars.

Then I went in with the weathering.  I have used diluted Typhus Corrosion to grubby things up along with a light drybrush of plate mail silver for scuff marks.

All that was left then was to varnish and rebase onto clear acrylic.  I haven’t done this before and it was a bit nerve wracking!  I put the minis into the freezer overnight then (carefully!) popped them off the stock bases.

Using brush applied Gorilla Super glue, I dabbed a little on, waited a few seconds to allow fumes to disperse (this can cause fogging apparently) then put them down trying really hard not to let them slip around.  I messed up the first base but have spares!

Following the strong tone dip and matt varnish, I decided to dry brush the droids fairly liberally with the Vallejo Bonewhite base colour.

I wanted to leave the dip colour in the recesses but bring back the lighter bare colour.  I left it a bit tough as I don’t want my battle droids to look too pristine.

Once that was done, I went over them with a wash of Seraphim Sepia. They have a more brown look to them now which I like, I don’t want them to be too white.

While I was doing this I had a go at repainting the guns with grey seer then Black Templar contrast paint.  I’m still playing with this trying to get the right effect, so far it isn’t going down like I had in mind.  Either it looks too translucent or too much like flat black, I’ll revisit later.

The next step will probably be to do a few highlights and get the accent colour done.

Once all my B1 droids are built, I spray primed them in Vallejo Bonewhite.

Next, I needed to start experimenting.  I don’t want to spend several months laboriously shading 36 droids because I’m a slow painter and dislike painting the same thing repeatedly.

So first I tried washes and slapped Agrax Earthshade on one droid.  It didn’t bring out the details as much as I hoped so tried again with Nuln Oil.  It was slightly better but still didn’t define the model as I wanted.

So I escalated and brought out the big guns and reached for the Army Painter Strong Tone Dip.  This stuff stinks and takes 24 hours to properly dry so I took advantage of the good weather to go sit in the garden and slap it on with an old brush.

AP Dip is basically a tinted gloss varnish, it dries hard, darkens everything (strong tone, named for a reason) and leaves your minis quite shiny.  So I then went over everything with a layer of Matt varnish to take the sheen off.

Step one, assemble stuff for priming.  Pretty obvious, right?

As I have two core sets, I have two Grievouses. Grevei?  So I get to build two of the three options.  One is the four-saber whirling death machine, the other gets a pistol and cloak.  There is a lot of textured detail inside the cloak so I will paint it before assembling.

Then there was the task of building four squads of B1 Battle Droids with their tiny little TWO PART separate heads. I only dropped four of them under the dining table so that went *fine*.

Aside from the stupid heads I didn’t find them too horrific.  I am planning on clear basing the army so everything is being primed as is.

So this will be a Spring Cleaning Challenge entry as I get stuck into my Christmas pressies and start my first Star Wars Legion army!

I am going to start with the Separatists as I have always liked the look of battle droids and they have some cool villains.

I have accrued so far:

2x Clone Wars Core sets

Count Dooku

Cad Bane

Darth Maul

1x BX Commando Droids squad

1x B2 Super Battle Droids squad