Star Wars Armada - Paint Your Squadrons!

[40kGamer]

Outside of good gameplay and general tabletop fun a strong selling point for Star Wars Armada is that like X-wing the ships are prepainted. Even for us hardcore hobby lovers this is a nice touch. Between GW, Infinity, Coolmini, Historicals and so on forevermore there are already more things to paint than any of us have time to ever actually finish. However unlike X-wing, Armada does not offer up 100% painted product. The small squadron ships are bare plastic, silver grey for Imperials and tan for Rebels. So now there is actually something, albeit a very small something, for us painting nerds to have a go at.

What follows is my first efforts with these tiny fellas with some short commentary... yikes it's been a long time since I painted anything this small and smooth! I'm happy with how some of these turned out but a few of them will be revisited! Please share comments, criticisms and any advice you may have from your own efforts. So let's hit the ground running with the first wave rebel options! And for no good reason other than my OCD need to organize we'll go in alphabetical order.

A-WINGS

FFG did a great job with this little ship. The core details for the engines and cockpit are sculpted into the model which makes these an absolute dream to paint.

Here we have a basic squadron.







And to represent the elite pilot I painted one up in the Rebel Aces colours.



Here's a formation shot



And I wanted to show a couple scale comparison shots for chuckles.





Looking at these together I may go back and add a few small slightly darker grey squares to break up the flat light areas.

I used the following Colours and technique for these wee fighters. Any comparable colours would do great... these were just laying about my desk and I was too lazy to bother digging out anything different.

1) Sprayed on White Primer
2) Used GW Mephiston Red for the striping (size 10/0 brush)
3) used P3 Thamar Black to block in the guns and canopy (10/0)
4) Painted the engine exhausts with GW Stormvermin fur (size 0)
5) Washed the whole model with GW Nuln Oil (size 0)
6) Blocked in the bright areas with 50/50 mix of GW Ceramite white/Administratum Grey (size 0 and 10/0 brushes)
7) Highlighted these areas with pure GW Ceramite white (0 and 10/0)
8) Highlighted Red areas with P3 Khador Red (0 and 10/0 to paint tiny raised stripe on cockpit)
9) Picked out the small raised bumps on the front and added a small circle to each engine exhaust with P3 Khador Red Highlight (Med Orange)
10) Highlighted the small raised bumps on the front and the engine exhausts with old GW Sunburst Yellow (any bright yellow would work)

I made the mistake of priming during a highly humid day so I managed to get a little roughness in the basecoat. When I'm sure that I'm done I'll hit these with a few coats of brush on sealer to smooth them back out. Honestly you can hide a lot of textured paint sins with a few coats of brush on clear coat!

[40kGamer]

Outside of good gameplay and general tabletop fun a strong selling point for Star Wars Armada is that like X-wing the ships are prepainted. Even for us hardcore hobby lovers this is a nice touch. Between GW, Infinity, Coolmini, Historicals and so on forevermore there are already more things to paint than any of us have time to ever actually finish. However unlike X-wing, Armada does not offer up 100% painted product. The small squadron ships are bare plastic, silver grey for Imperials and tan for Rebels. So now there is actually something, albeit a very small something, for us painting nerds to have a go at.

What follows is my first efforts with these tiny fellas with some short commentary... yikes it's been a long time since I painted anything this small and smooth! I'm happy with how some of these turned out but a few of them will be revisited! Please share comments, criticisms and any advice you may have from your own efforts. So let's hit the ground running with the first wave rebel options! And for no good reason other than my OCD need to organize we'll go in alphabetical order.

A-WINGS

FFG did a great job with this little ship. The core details for the engines and cockpit are sculpted into the model which makes these an absolute dream to paint.

Here we have a basic squadron.







And to represent the elite pilot I painted one up in the Rebel Aces colours.



Here's a formation shot



And I wanted to show a couple scale comparison shots for chuckles.





Looking at these together I may go back and add a few small slightly darker grey squares to break up the flat light areas.

I used the following Colours and technique for these wee fighters. Any comparable colours would do great... these were just laying about my desk and I was too lazy to bother digging out anything different.

1) Sprayed on White Primer
2) Used GW Mephiston Red for the striping (size 10/0 brush)
3) used P3 Thamar Black to block in the guns and canopy (10/0)
4) Painted the engine exhausts with GW Stormvermin fur (size 0)
5) Washed the whole model with GW Nuln Oil (size 0)
6) Blocked in the bright areas with 50/50 mix of GW Ceramite white/Administratum Grey (size 0 and 10/0 brushes)
7) Highlighted these areas with pure GW Ceramite white (0 and 10/0)
8) Highlighted Red areas with P3 Khador Red (0 and 10/0 to paint tiny raised stripe on cockpit)
9) Picked out the small raised bumps on the front and added a small circle to each engine exhaust with P3 Khador Red Highlight (Med Orange)
10) Highlighted the small raised bumps on the front and the engine exhausts with old GW Sunburst Yellow (any bright yellow would work)

I made the mistake of priming during a highly humid day so I managed to get a little roughness in the basecoat. When I'm sure that I'm done I'll hit these with a few coats of brush on sealer to smooth them back out. Honestly you can hide a lot of textured paint sins with a few coats of brush on clear coat!

- - - Updated - - -

B-WINGS

Other than the fixed 45 degree pose I'm really happy with these... when my second pack of rebel squadrons shows up next weekend I may even try to repose some of these to give them some more character. Why not?

Once again the core ship details are sculpted into the model which really helps with painting.







Two things I'm going to go back and do for these... first I'm going to repaint the engine burn. I was experimenting with bright blue but I didn't like it as well and I apparently hit the area with the yellow too fast giving a slight greenish hue! Second I'm going to add some markings! these are a little plain for my taste.


For these I used the following steps.

1) Sprayed on White Primer
2) Used GW Mephiston Red for the guns/cockpit (size 0 brush)
3) used P3 Thamar Black to block in the canopy (10/0)
4) Painted the engine exhausts with GW Stormvermin fur (size 0)
5) Washed the whole model with GW Nuln Oil (size 0)
6) Blocked in the bright areas with Administratum Grey (size 0 and 10/0 brushes)
7) Highlighted these areas with a 50/50 mix of GW Ceramite white and Administratum Grey (0 and 10/0)
8) Highlighted Red areas with P3 Khador Red (0 and 10/0 to paint cockpit)
9) Highlighted the engine exhausts and Cockpit with P3 Khador Red Highlight (Med Orange)
10) Highlighted the engine exhausts with old GW Sunburst Yellow (any bright yellow would work)

[40kGamer]

X-Wings

These were actually the first models I played around with painting out of the main Armada boxed game. They are also the most iconic Star Wars fighter for the rebellion and likely the most difficult to cast as single pieces given their complex design. The X-wings are also my least favorite of the 4 initial rebel fighters which sucks cause you're probably going to paint more of these than any other! They have less raised details, more casting flash and require more effort to paint up than their cousins

The only shot I have is of one finished squad next to the out of the box models



For these I used the same steps, colours and brushes as the A-wings.

Y-Wings

These puppies are fighting with the A-wings for my favorite Wave 1 Rebel fighters. They have reasonably good details and were actually fun to paint... I'm really excited to get some more of these and really wish I didn't have to take more X-wings to get them!

Red Squadron







Yellow Squadron





I'm quite happy with how red squadron turned out... not so much with yellow. I'll be revisiting that one to add some detailing to the front of the engines.

As you might have guessed by now I used the same colours and techniques for these as I did for the others. Only additional items of note is that i also used GW Averland Sunset to basecoat the yellow areas and I have been using Altdorf Guard blue and Lothern Blue to pick out the droids and other odd details.

[Brenlak]

Wow you make it look so easy, those ships are TINY!

[40kGamer]

Wow you make it look so easy, those ships are TINY!

Thanks mate! I have a slight advantage in that I learned to paint back in the early 90's on GWs EPIC line. Thousands of 6mm infantry gets you used to working with a small area. Also a brush like this 10/0 one becomes your friend for projects like this.

[url]http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-2-Pack-Synthetic-Spotter-3750MSP-10/dp/B00SDLH4AM/ref=sr_1_3/188-2059493-5763408?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1432049080&sr=1-3[/url]



I truly dread finding new brushes to use... I picked up several hundred Simmons brushes sized 0 and 10/0 when they were being liquidated over a decade ago. Eventually that stash is going to dry up and I'll be at the mercy of the market!

[40kGamer]

Time for the first pass at some Imperial Squadrons.

Let's start with some Tie Interceptors.

I did one squadron up as Royal Guard







Still need to clean up the lines a little.

And here's a rough mock up of that will ultimately represent Vader and his Tie minions...



Whoops... wrong minions. Let's try that again.





While I like the Tie Interceptor and the Tie Advanced, the basic Tie Fighters are once again a bit of a chore. Most of the solar panels are warped... I should have really straightened these out with boiling water prior to painting!

Now off to paint some Tie Bombers and hopefully figure out how to fit them on a base!