‘Begun, this Clone Force has’ – starting out on Star Wars Legion

10th July 2023

After finishing off Obi Wan it was onto Padme.

Unlike a friend of mine I don’t have a lot of beige paints, so had to think a bit on how to progress.

Images I have seen have her main clothing ranging from whites to off-whites, so i went with a thinned wash of Ivory over the white prime.

I then mixed up a wash from equal parts contrast medium and Soulblight Grey shade, with just a touch of Skeleton Horde contrast to give it warmth.

Actually pretty happy with how that came out.

I then went for Ushabti bone for the cloak, belt and boots. Followed by an ivory highlight on the upper parts of the cloak to emphasise things. After that I applied the same wash as above, with just a touch more of the Skeleton Horde Contrast. I thought that using the same basic shade would help tie the parts together.

Then It was just a case of picking out the weapons, and painting the flesh and hair. With the face, after painting the flesh tone I also added a thinned wash of Carroburg crimson to the lips and just under the eyes, to try to add a bit of ‘life’ to the features.

Just the vehicles and their crew to go for this May 4th Deal Clone army…..

17th July 2023

As the title suggests I have been working on the barc speeders and crew.

I made up a mix of apothecary white and contrast medium in order to add a grey tint to the vehicles, and add some definition to the panel lines.

While the wash was drying it was onto the crew. They were painted in the same way as the rest of the clones.

Armour wash, tidy up, black bodysuit work, tidy up, yellow accents and a tidy up again  ?

Obviously though I didn’t finish them all while the Speeder was drying, but I alternated between tasks.

Back to the Speeder I again used the yellow to pick out panels and sections so that it had the army colour scheme.

It was however seemingly a little too clean, so I decided to try adding some weathering.  I was a little nervous of doing this to the freshly painted Speeder, but the work I did weathering my Deadzone terrain gave me some confidence to give it a go.

I started off with some white streaks, then added further streaks with greys, browns and thinned black to build it up. Concentrating on the front of the Speeder with a little less on the front of the sidecar.

Added further scratches to various places along the edges of the Speeder and side car, and overall I was pretty happy with how it came out.

For the base I used some twigs from the garden and some basing tufts.

Can you delete entries?

First upload failed, then it popped up later…..

20^th July 2023

Over the last few days I have worked on the second Barc Speeder.  I gave it a similar treatment to the first one that I painted, but applied the yellow panel areas in slightly different locations.

I was going to do it in an identical way (as uniform equipment) but then I decided its my mini, and I can paint it in a way that is easier for me to identify – and still retain the army look.

I added weathering on this one too, but I think it went a bit heavy (or possibly too uniform) on the front of the sidecar. So I reworked it, and it came out better.

Basing and a few detailing bits and the second Barc Speeder was done.

I have started on the AT-RT, but will post that on my next update.

Then, if I can find a game I will aim to have a short battle report to finish things off.

22nd July 2023

So, the end is almost here…

I used the same mix of thinned Contrast over the AT-RT as I used for the Barc speeders. I then applied a second coat over the frontal armour panel. And based the model in the same fashion as the rest of the force – including another twig from the garden.

Yellow accents were added to some panel sections, in keeping with the army scheme.

It still looked too plain though, so I added some chipping and scratches at first, and then added some grey sections on the legs, a few more yellow accents, and then picked out some more small details.

Then I did some light drybrushing on the weapons, some highlights on the driver and glued him in place. The guns are just push fit, so I can change the load out.

I also added a few more scratches, this time adding them with a pencil – which actually came out quite well.

With that finished, that’s all of the Clone forces I picked up from the May 4th army Deal of 2022.

I will try to set up an army shot, and hopefully I can get some sort of battle report posted – once I find an opponent and learn the game ?

5th August 2023

Last evening I visited a friend who ran me through the basics for a introductory game.

We played 500 pts on a smaller play area.

He was using rebels with Andor, K2SO,  wookies, snipers, fleet Troopers, veterans and an emplacement trooper.

I had a commander,  padme, arcs, two squads of phase 1 and a barc speeder.

Having read the rules I had a core grasp of the game,  but there is so much more you can learn by actually playing and asking questions  ?

For Star Wars Legion a lot of the ‘game’ seems to be around tailoring your mission, conditions and setup cards to best suit your army list – and the game starts off by players in turn choosing to eliminate some of these.

We ended up with quite a close deployment,  vp’s for crossing through board and not being able to shoot past range 2 on the first turn.

My 1 pip card gave me the first turn, using Padme to move the order from her to Fives, which allowed me to put an order on the nearby clones as well.

We forgot about my commanders ability to also have a free order out….

I used fire support (using two units activations) to wipe out the veterans.

His fleet troops then moved up and with fire support from the emplacement gun inflicted some damage to my vanguard.

Next up I had the barc speeder shoot at the wookies, with fire support from the second clone squad.  Some good dice saw three of the 3 wound wookies go down, with the last one being injured.

The rest was more small exchanges.

The rebel snipers, and Andor have nasty abilities that pretty much negate cover, dodge and armour, so picked off a few more clones.

And K2SO dished out a few hits.

His remaining wookie charged up, but the arcs managed to survive.

The second turn saw shenanigans from Andor allowing him to shoot twice, taking out a few more clones, and go on standby.

The arcs failed two armour saves and couldn’t use dodge, so went down to the wookie.

On the Clone side, they wiped out the fleet troops and the emplacement gun, and also put some wounds on Andor – but more importantly taking away his standby token.

Due to time we called it at that point.

The clones were planning to use air strike next turn…

The rebels had an uninjured K2SO and sniper team, plus an injured wookie and injured Andor.

The clones had an uninjured commander, padme and barc speeder, plus 4 clones Inc big gun.

Definitely a lot more for me to learn, bit I think it went OK for a first outing.

The clones have some interesting abilities around passing their green tokens around, and fire support.

And the different upgrades and unit specific rules for each faction can certainly swing something from ok to pretty nasty…

7th August 2023

I think this will be the end point for this project.

I would like to get in some more games, so that I can get a better handle on how a lot of the interactions work – but I’m not sure when that will be.

In the interim I plan to pick up Anakin and probably some Wookies (they will be usable for Republic and Rebels). Perhaps I may look to pick up a tank in the future, but I think that I will definitely want to have some more play before focusing on the Clones as my main faction. I will probably need to get some Phase two clones as well, the extra that they get for just a few points seems very tempting….

But, in conclusion – The Clones have come out looking like a coherent force, and I’m reasonably happy with the paint jobs that I have produced on the character models and with the weathering on the speeders.

I did have to add some more magnets to the base of the AT-RT as it did come off in transit, and go on a rampage through the rest of the clones…

Up next for Legion will be the Droids, but I may work on a smaller project before going into those.

Thanks for joining me on this ?