Jasper Episode MMXXI: A Star Wars Legion WIP II - Revenge of the Clankers!!

[Jasper_the_2nd]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

 

No, a longer time ago.....in continuation of a "fine" tradition, we will now move backwards in time to the era of The Clone Wars.

(Hey hey, relax, don't leave.  No no, we aren't going to talk about THAT movie.  There will be no mention of trade embargos or senate politics.  Well, no other mention.....
To be completely honest, there may be references to it though....sorry.  But they did just come out with a Maul fig, and it is the version from THAT movie.....)

 

So, this will be a continuation of the previous WIP on Star Wars Legion.  New year, new WIP, oh and new core box.  My wife got me the Clone Wars core for Christmas (I MIGHT have hinted a few.....hundred.......times).

As I'm already painting way too much white armor (which I'll still be painting (forever)), I'm focusing on the Droids.  Yes I know they are called the Separatists Alliance, but Droids is easier to spell and you all know what I mean.

(Note, if you do not know what I'm referring to then we can wait while you pop off and watch Star Wars Episodes II and III.  Oh and the 7 seasons of the animated Clone Wars series (not to be confused with Star Wars: Clone Wars, which was a 3 season animated series and is now considered non-canonical).  All are available on Disney+ btw.  While there you might as well watch the 4 seasons of Rebels, as Sabine, Clan Wren and Kallus will be showing up at some point. You should probably watch the 2 seasons of The Mandalorian too if you haven't yet too.  Not that I'll probably be painting anything from there, well I do have some stls....but the reason to watch it is because it is awesome!!!)

 

I'll be continuing to work on my Imperials, but I'll also be starting on my Droid army, which I'll be painting primarily with contrast paint, doing some wear and damage (unlike my pristine Imps) and basing fairly simply with just some sand or gravel or something on the standard bases (we'll see for sure when I get the first unit done).

So starting out:

 

I assembled 2 B1s, and glued together two units of Imperial Royal Guard, which I'd prepped quite a while ago.  The Guards are the old plastic so were quickly superglued together. They are only 3 pieces each. They'll get pins for their feet soon.

The droids are the new hard plastic so they recommend plastic glue.  FYI they still need to superglued to the bases apparently. as the bases are a different plastic.

The droids come in 8 parts...each.  Yep that's a lot of very small, very skinny parts.  I only dropped a couple. At least I found them all. (parts are 2 legs, 2 arms (one with the gun attached), body, backpack, and two pieces of head.  Somehow they needed to make the head 2 pieces.....)

Since I hadn't put them together before I took my time trying not to mess up.  I still managed to, a bit.

 

Crouching guy took some damage from a bit of plastic glue on my thumb while trying to align the arms.  As I'm planning to make these guys a little beat up and worn, not big deal.

It's late and these are fiddly, so that's as far as I got tonight.  I should be able to crank out most of a unit (note, the B1 unit comes with 9 figures....you start with 6 in the unit, then can optionally add an extra troop, and one of two heavy weapon options) tomorrow hopefully as long as the snow storm doesn't take out power or something equally annoying.

 

 

Roger Roger.

 

 

Edited January 2 by Jasper_the_2nd
Fixing typos....this is the way.

[WhiteWulfe]

3 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Yep that's a lot of very small, very skinny parts.  I only dropped a couple. At least I found them all.

There's a feeling I know. 

 

Man, the carpet monster is always hungry, constantly going after whatever bits it can get - it's almost like it's a dog or soemthing! (I should probably put a floor mat or something under my assembly desk) 

 

Seems odd that they wouldn't use a type of plastic that plastic cement would melt the two parts together. So naturally... Which cement? I'm a curious fox. 

 

Also... Whoo, droids! Please say Sentinels/rolly balls of doom are going to be involved.  I'm also glad I'm not the only one who does the hundred drop hint trick... 

[Glitterwolf]

Cool project!

[Sharkbelly]

Looking good! Those B1s are a pain to put together. 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

4 hours ago, WhiteWulfe said:

There's a feeling I know. 

 

Man, the carpet monster is always hungry, constantly going after whatever bits it can get - it's almost like it's a dog or soemthing! (I should probably put a floor mat or something under my assembly desk) 

 

Seems odd that they wouldn't use a type of plastic that plastic cement would melt the two parts together. So naturally... Which cement? I'm a curious fox. 

 

Also... Whoo, droids! Please say Sentinels/rolly balls of doom are going to be involved.  I'm also glad I'm not the only one who does the hundred drop hint trick... 

The original plastics for SWL are probably similar to Bones, softer, more flexible, but won't melt with plastic glue. I'm guessing the bases are still the same material, since they already had the mold done it was probably more cost affective. 

The harder new plastic will certainly melt (obviously). Still, morning check shows I need to cement the first head....I expect I didn't out enough to get a good bond.  The rest of them seems solid enough.

 

And yes, you get two Droidekas in the starter (which is actually 4 models, they give you both the rolly ball mode and the attacky mode.  You can swap the figure when you switch modes, or just use a token to indicate, I believe.  So you can get away with buying half as many, not that it matters.  I'd bought a unit box of them when they first came out (since they are cool!) and I'll be getting a second starter box eventually (cheaper than buying the individual units, plus more dice)).

 

Snow is already falling here (supposed to get 15-25 cm today) so hopefully I'll get to some assembly.

 

Roger Roger.

[Unit04]

Don't forget Star Wars: Clone Wars, the animated movie!

 

I would love to see a large army of these painted up.  

[Jasper_the_2nd]

18 minutes ago, Unit04 said:

Don't forget Star Wars: Clone Wars, the animated movie!

 

I would love to see a large army of these painted up.  

Oh right, I had forgotten that one....I should go watch that sometime soon....

 

I'm not sure anyone could stay sane doing a large army of these....

 

Got 3 more put together.

 

Went a bit better, although the commander has some annoying parts.

I also noticed I had picked up Mr Cement SP, so looked up what that meant.  It seems to be the fast drying version which might explain some of my struggles.

I might try my old bottle of Testors next time, if it is still viable (been a few years since I did those Robotech figs) and see if that works better, or at least differently.

And maybe I'll pop over to the FLGS and pick up some normal Mr Cement S next week.

 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

Ok got a couple more assembled.

 

Really, just two more.  The rest are 3D prints I'm going to use as proxies until I get enough of the official figs.  I printed them about a month ago and just popped them on some Imperial bases (since I have lots of extras).

 

Certainly bulks up the lines though.....

 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

And the last two in the unit, the heavy weapon clankers.

 

Let's see.... on the left is the E-5C heavy blaster rifle, and on the right is the E-60R missile launcher.

 

I'm getting quicker, these two only took half an hour.  The Tester's plastic cement was still good once I got the nozzle unclogged, and it is much easier to work with for these.

 

Up next I'll put together the second unit from the starter and then I have a few B1 upgrade expansions that I'll probably put together before priming everything.

 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

Got a bit more done today.

Two full units of FFG B1s assembled now.  I'm getting much better at assembling them...now that I'm almost done (for now).

I also removed supports, cured and attached another 11 prints to bases.  One poor guy had lost most of a leg to a support failure....he didn't make it.

These guys had been waiting a while too.  Interesting the colour difference between the two, since I think they were printed one after the other.

I'll print a few more to give me 4 base units with an extra regular. I don't have STLs for the core heavy weapons guys. But I have three boxes of the upgrades, which include a couple of heavy weapon options.  I'll probably pick up another one when I'm in next, so I can get 6 fully loaded units on the table.

 

I also dug out all the CIS boxes I'd picked up over the last year to see if I had everything.  I have one less box of BXs than I thought, so I'll see if the LFGS has one in stock.  And I can use more B2s, so I'll see if they have more.

 

Next up will be assembling the upgrade boxes.  Then I should be good to prime (really I could now, as it would take a while to prime all these guys anyway, but I'm not ready to do priming tonight.....).

Then on to assembling B2s.  And maybe Grievous, since he should be assembled fairly similarly, and I should get a commander built.

 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

4 new additions.

These are the figures from the B1 Upgrade Expansion.

The two on the left can fill the personnel slot, the two on the right are heavy weapons.

First is 00M-Series Battle Droid, a better commander.

Next is a B1 Security Droid, which can use to turn off the AI:Attack keyword on its unit for a turn. (Note that as far as I can tell this sculpt looks just like a normal B1, you are just supposed to paint it as security I guess....)

Then the Radiation Cannon B1 Trooper, with that nasty weapon....

And finally the E-5s B1 Trooper, a sniper.  I like the different head wired into the gun on this one. A bit tricky to line up but looks cool.

 

I was busy fixing a printer and watching Canada crush Russia in the IIHF World Junior Semi-finals, so didn't get started until late.

Tomorrow the final game doesn't start until 10:30 our time, so maybe I'll get some priming done before it comes on.

[Jasper_the_2nd]

So first I assembled another upgrade box of B1s.  Then I based the 5 additional printed B1s to finish the units.

 

And then I fired up the airbrush and primed one unit of printed and a unit of FFG B1s.

 

Woohoo, actual paint in my painting WIP 

 

I've got one more upgrade box (currently, I AM stopping by the lfgs tomorrow....) then either Grevious or the Droidekas....probably Grevious.  And maybe try out the paint scheme.

 

[Jasper_the_2nd]

Did a test run on my basic colour scheme tonight.  Didn't have much time at all so it's a bit rushed an messy, but I was testing on one of my 3D printed proxies so not a huge deal.

Was a bit uneven wiping off pooling on his face, and missed some pooling on hist feet, but over all it doesn't look to bad.

But what I'm wondering is, did I get the white zenithal highlight bright enough when priming, or should I give these another shot of white before I start?  Thoughts?

 

Overall that works pretty well though.  I think the gun actually took longer than the rest of him. But I could pretty much just touch up that spot I missed in his hand and throw some sand on the base an call him tabletop.

I have second brown Contrast to try ( this is Skeleton Horde) called Aggaros Dunes. I saw one example where they mixed the two together, and they look good.  Might try that oon one as well. If the colour is too different they can be in different units....

 

[haldir]

That's an effective paintjob. Nice work for a quickie.

[Glitterwolf]

Very nice!