Ben's Imperial Painting Blog
Greetings! For those of you who don’t know me, I am a proud Rebel player. However, FFG has recently found my sweet spot and I could not resist a faction switch. No, it isn’t clones or droids. Both are cool, but my love of Star Wars is rooted deep in the original trilogy. So when FFG announced they were releasing Dewbacks, I was stoked. Lizard cavalry! How could I not start an Imperial army? Some community members will undoubtedly be rolling their eyes, but Dewbacks are something I have been banging on about for at least six months, and I am sure they are thinking that FFG has finally shut me up. Well, they would be wrong. I am going to continue talking about Dewbacks for at least six more months.
The face, and cats, behind the magic (left), and desk of infinite projects (right).
Since a new release is a time for celebration rather than silence, I thought I would chronicle my work assembling an Imperial force in a painting blog. Now I am under few enough illusions about any artistic talent I may possess, but long practice has let me obtain sufficient skill to produce at what, to my eye, is an acceptable table top level. I will do my best to provide a step by step accounting of what I do and the materials I use so that any interested party may copy or improvise from what I do.
Now, as of this writing the Dewback release is in the mythical land somewhere between the FFG design studio and my individual possession. But as impressive as the thunder lizards are, they are not a whole army on their own. At the very least, they will need a leader and some troopers to cover their flanks. Fortunately, I am something of a magpipe when it comes to miniatures. This is something my wife is pretty supportive of, and it means that I don’t come at this effort completely cold. I also went to my FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store), Montag’s Games, to get some stuff off the shelf. One of my community members also gifted me with a partial squad of Stormtroopers who had gotten separated from the rest of their unit and needed a new home.
This scrounging produced an initial inventory of the following:
- Three Stormtrooper squads (one missing a squad leader and an activation token)
- One Darth Vader (I thought I had two)
- Box of Imperial Specialists
- General Veers
- Director Krennic
- Box of Death Troopers
- TX-225 Tank
First round of assembly:
That seems quite enough to get started. A manic weekend has seen the infantry and heroes assembled, cleaned, and primed. It is my intention to post an update every week, most likely on Tuesdays, until September when my schedule will likely preclude regular updates. This may mean that my updates lag behind my actual progress, but writing these posts takes more than a little time. It is unlikely that any of y’all are as excited about this as I am, but I hope that some of you find this enjoyable. I hate to leave you hanging but I have some painting to do!
-Ben