From PhilH: What's Black and White and... (80 Points)

Q - What's black and white and goes really fast before crashing in a blazing fireball?

A - Imperial Scout Troopers on Z-94 Speeder Bikes!

For my second Studio location, I was embarrassed that JohnE was working on his Star Wars Legion Core Set that he got this last Christmas, while I still had stuff lying around from mine in...2018? 2019? Yep, I got totally sick of painting the Imperial white armour/black undersuit in a COVID lockdown-induced frenzy, and couldn't muster the enthusiasm to start these at any point since. They might not be artistically greyscale, but the prospect of 20 bonus points was enough for me to promote them to the top of the queue for this location. 

I was painting these to match the stuff I'd already painted, using a method pitched as quick and easy, but ended up being very tiresome, involving contrast paints as a pinwash. If I were starting over, I'd be deploying every shortcut and a big drybrush. 

I settled on grey speeder bikes instead of brown, in part as a colour and weathering test before I tackle the big stompy chicken thing that we all know and love. It may even feature this Challenge!

Like the scout troopers, I did some conversion work to add a bit of variety: changing up the stowage on the bikes, and changing up the duplicate guy daftly shooting backwards while zipping through a forest at high speed: he had his body pivoted around to be facing at least vaguely in the direction of travel.

Those with long memories might recall that my last Legion stuff was all on clear perspex bases, whereas these have groundwork. Well I've done a u-turn on the clear bases, mostly because I find the method of mounting them after painting to be very tiresome and for models with small contact points, they break off all the time during handling. I also came to the realisation that with the explosion of 3D designers working on proxy models at this scale, I can inexpensively do characters and units in different environments with appropriate attire, satisfying my Star Wars nostalgia and nerdery. Seriously, I've at least four Luke Skywalkers, a half dozen Mandos, three Vaders. and so forth. I'm increasingly cool on the Legion ruleset anyway, with its silly metagaming and bonanza of cards and tokens on the table, though it's locally played so is useful to have the stuff. I have plans to use the collection with some alternative rulesets. 

So, I've re-booted this project with classic Endor forces of civil war era imperials and rebel commando strike teams. I'll follow, likely during this Challenge, with some desert stuff focused around the scum and villainy of the galaxy.

Four mounted troops at 35mm scale, 15 points each, plus the location bonus is a lovely 80 points, now we're cruising! Any guesses where we're going next?

These are fantastic, loved that bit of the movie. 35mm not on the spreadsheet of doom (?) so let's call them 40mm