This is a 1978 Heritage 1104-E Superhero from the Der Kreigspielers Fantastiques 1100 range.
In Season 2 of the Disney+ television show, 'The Mandalorian', Dark Troopers were introduced as new villains for the Star Wars galactic heroes to overcome. They kidnapped Baby Yoda (Booo!), and helped defend Moff Gideon's light cruiser. These evil mooks were given a comic book origin; this third generation of trooper were no longer armoured humans, but powerful droids.
I wanted to introduce a few of these impressive troopers to our games of Star Wars Legion, but they are not manufactured by Asmodee or Atomic Mass Games. There is a strong community of sculptors and gamers out there, creating rules and figures for as yet unreleased or non-canon characters.
Accordingly, I picked up a couple of suitable 3D printed figure sets online to use as proxies: a 5-figure strong "Authority Dark Droid Squad" and a set that consisted of a "Rescuing Hero Wizard" with "Sliced Droids". For the latter two, one is crushed as if by a giant invisible hand, and the other is sliced in half from head to crotch, showing off its interior machinery.
[The header photo above shows the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker figure I painted, fighting off a couple of Dark Troopers, as Mando & Baby Yoda (which I purchased for a fundraiser), and Sabine Wren (also my painting) prepare to deal with another.]
These 7 models are nice renders. I don't have a 3D printer, so I ordered resin prints, which had fairly subtle artifacts of printing (those horizontal lines). They are brittle; a couple arrived broken, but the resin broke clean and were easily repairable with super glue.
Studying stills from the show, they are basically black shiny armour with a few metal bits showing at the elbows and knees, with glowing red eyes and 4 lights on their chests. The armour really reflects lights sources.
After undercoating them with Chaos Black I under painted the guns with Vallejo Grey Black and painted the joints with various grey acrylics. I kept the rest simple. I arbitrarily selected a single light source located to their front and slightly to their left sides. I worked up reflections and catch points using indigo and titanium white oil paints. Other amour highlights were slightly rendered with neutral grey oil. I picked out the eyes and chest lights with GW Evil Sunz Scarlet. The sliced up one was further detailed with various orange and yellow acrylics and oils. Groundwork was Golden Garnet Gel (Fine), painted to match the sandy bases of most of my other SWL models. To finish I dirtied up their legs with Vallejo weathering powder, fixed with Vallejo Pigment Binder.
In the game these models are tough, shoot a strong gun, and are fearless, but they are not strong in close combat. Plus, characters with lightsabers will trash them. There's also online social media groups for unofficial game cards.
These were fun to paint and are a menacing addition to my Star Wars Legion collection.
Seven 40mm or 1/47 scale figures (they're actually around 45mm tall) come in at 49 points for the Challenge.
 |
Life has recently got in the way of painting - these chaps have been painted for a week or so but I only just found the time to finish the bases and do a flag.
 |
They will represent the 1st battalion of the 4th Light Infantry regiment for a Quatres Bras/100 Days Project. With 8 light battalions done - I have 2 to go. There are 8 units (4 infantry and 4 cavalry) to finish out of the total of 48 for the French side of the battle. Nearly there! Then all we need is an end to lock down and some willing volunteers to play the game.
 |
| Chasseurs |
Light infantry had a similar uniform to line - but all blue and a little lighter than line French blue. The Grognards who follow these things don't like the Osprey book for the light infanty as it depicts them in a brighter bright blue than they probably had - wargamers through the ages have presented them in a more vibrant shade than I went for here.
 |
| Voltigeurs |
24 x 25mm infantry for 120 points.
 |
There are 20 figures @ 5 points each in the unit making that a total of 100 points!
Got
fed up of painting bicornes (back on them now though), so I've
skipped a project and done the light cavalry contingent for my
upcoming Bavarians. The usual 18mm AB Napoleonics - nothing fancy and there are no blue diamonds in the sadle cloth borders! They'd been prepped and haunting the painting table for about a year.
The first unit is the 2nd Chevauleger Regiment 'Taxis', which had a chequered career, being a heavy dragoon regiment between 1790 and 1806, then being split and absorbed into the Nurnberg Cavalry Regiment and the Prussian Hussaren Battalion 'Von Bila'. In 1811, however, they reformed as thte 'Taxis' light cavalry regiment.
The second unit is the 6th Chevauleger Regiment 'Bubenhofen' and had a more settled record, simply being renumbered in 1811 from 4th to 6th.
If you recall, the purpose of my Bavarian contingent is to replace the Hessians in Massena's corps for the 1809 campaign to save me having to paint lots of lace and is another example of letting a bright idea run away with itself. These two regiments never actually fought in the same brigade and were chosen more or less at random, although Bubenhofen is a hell of a name! The brigade as originally planned has become De Roy's division of 1809, plus cavalry (c1811/12!) and three batteries of artillery. Things to be aware of: don't read too much, if you don't like painting green then avoid light cavalry regiments called 'chasseurs', 'chevauleger', 'dragoons' etc. (and the Russian army in general) and don't talk to Dal Gavan cos he leads you astray.
All my Challenge
painting plans, as Moltke already famously predicted, have not survived contact
with the enemy. However, having somehow succeeded in reaching my (admittedly
modest) target I feel free to do more or less as I feel. And although it is very
unlikely that I will get to the lowest level in time I must admit that the
journey inspired my to paint things I had not even considered before. So far my
first Challenge is thus a very fun experience!
For the Hatchery
the protocol specifies “anything hatching - ideally, out of an egg.” So here is
the very first female (of sorts, then) figure I have ever painted:
This figure
is from the The Scourge of Valtan Forest Kickstarter and is described as a
Female Half-Snake Fighter. I printed her at 80% on my resin printer but she is still
the size of a 28mm figure, standing 40mm tall on her tail. She was painted
using Contrast paints, but I used the corresponding washes (i.e., Dragonshade
for the tail) and some drybrushing. Not sure the washes were an improvement in
all cases (Leviadon Blue for instance is a very nice dark blue straight from
the pot), but there you go.
As a
half-snake I’m pretty sure she was hatched from an egg, perhaps from these:
This is my
first FDM print. Not entirely happy with how it turned out, and the print lines
are very visible, but I still have got a lot to learn about the right settings en
post-print processing procedure. Since I had it lying around and it fits the
theme I decided to paint it up anyway. Consider it a piece of alien terrain and
the print lines become a feature, no? It’s on a 60mm round base and about one
inch tall.
I’ll ask
for a single point for the terrain piece, 5 points for the figure and 20 for
the Hatchery for a total of 26 points. To the Armoury!
This might be a familiar position to my fellow challengers, but I find myself in the slightly frantic stage of the challenge where I have about 20 projects on the go at the same time. It seems that starting new projects is easier and more appealing than actually finishing anything...... so I decided to post what I have managed to finish.
First up a five person spaceship bridge crew from crooked dice.
Simple colour scheme and she’ll fit in nicely with the other Wild West figures I’ve had for years.
Nice and simple for scoring, 6 x 28mm figures for 30 points which nudges me past my challenge total.
