Draconis does…… Droids! Back to Star Wars Legion again.

Maul had three build options, I went for the sabre behind him. Forgot to get pics here, but he went together pretty well with nice joins and overlaps.

The three droids were also relatively easy. Laid out the parts, did a test fit, then whacked them together ?

Dooku was a straightforward build.

Only a few components, and no optional build. However, it is the only one from this project that is not hard plastic. So out came the superglue.

I have been so used to a thicker superglue that my new thin glue caught me by surprise again… and ran right over Dooku’s face ☹

I wiped as much as I could off – hopefully it wont impact on the detail when it comes to painting.

I left the model in two parts for painting, so that I can get to the back of the torso and the cloak easier.

Got these fellas built up. I worked the same way as for the attack mode ones. Built up one of them first to get the steps and process in place. Then went ahead and laid out the parts for the remaining three and rolled out the process for those. Again this worked pretty well for me.

I used superglue to attach them to the bases, then ran some plastic glue around the contact points. When it comes to painting though I do expect to have to re-attach some of them ?

29th January 2024

Onto the Droidekas now. Starting out with the attack mode versions. I worked on just one at first, so that I could get the build sequence in place and get used to it.

With one built I then snipped all the components for the remaining three and laid them out in the sub assemblies that I would work on. Theses three were pretty quick to build once I had built the test piece.

Also during this build I magnetised the larger bases for these and the STAP riders as I hadn’t yet done them.

25th January 2024

These actually went together really well. After snipping the parts off and laying them out I did a test fit – and it all held together without glue ?

So, glued them up and went on to the riders. The basics of these were easy enough, but it just needed some careful aligning for the arm to handlebar connections. I glued the feet to the STAP and glued both arms all at the same time, to allow me some wiggle room for alignment – another time when I could have done with more dexterity ? But they look ok when built.

Then it was on to the droid commandos. I started with the sniper and leader models, as they didn’t have any extra options. In the box there are four energy shields, but two are repeat models. So for those I chose to build one with shield and one without.

I decided to paint the shield frame first, then glue the clear yellow plastic shield in place. After that it was a case of blu tac and some test fitting, before fumbling around and gluing the arms in place. I didn’t glue the shield to the arm, so that I could paint the commando without worrying about masking off the shield.

Bit slower this past week, but I did complete a few builds.

Finished off the droid specialist box.

The medical droid was pretty fiddly, but the others were fine.

16th January 2024

When I first saw the image on the back of the box I knew I had to do a certain thing with the Tactical droid. An image came to me immediately, a droid in white….

Checking through the pieces and test aligning things I realised that I probably could do it. So…. I did ?

No one is going to kill this chap off…. He’ll be ‘Staying Alive’ throughout…… (oh dear ? )

This box is a 4 model upgrade to the base B1’s.

Among it there is a sniper and a radiation cannon droid. It does give you the option to build these as normal droids – but why would you want to do that, surely those are why you have the expansion ?

Firstly though, I magnetised the rest of the small bases that I would need for all the expansion minis.

Then I got these four built up.

The only really fiddly bit was making sure that the cable from the sniper rifle lined up with the visor on the droid head.

Over the course of the last week I finished building the core 36 base B1’s.

It got a bit easier as it went along, getting into the routine of snipping and gluing in a repeatable pattern.

For the rocket launcher armed droids I wanted to add a little variety to the pose. So I opted to use two crouching bodies for two of them, to mix things up a little.

For the rest I tried to adjust the poses where I could in order to add a modicum of variety to them. But, they are droids after all ?

I’m hoping that a simple painting process will work for these so that I can get them finished in good time.

Haven’t decided what to do for the basing yet though….

11th January 2024

The B1 Battle droids are all hard plastic, which is a positive.

However, a number of the parts are quite small or fiddly.

And they have more individual parts than the Clone troopers had.

In particular, the head comes in two pieces. So for this I decided that I would keep the smaller back part on the sprue and glue the main part to this in situ. This worked out pretty well, and probably prevented me from losing a few bits ?

I tried out just one at first, to get a handle on the steps that worked for me, then rolled this out.

I have been doing a bit each evening, and now have 20 of the 36 B1’s built.

I have found the arms a bit fiddly still – same as often here where the arms have to be connected to each other, I feel I need a third hand to hold things together. But they are rapidly rolling off the production line.

I thought this time I would sort out the base magnetising first….

Bases, washers and magnets sorted for the 37 normal sized bases from the core box.