May the Fourth be with quick wit and nimble fingers

As is tradition, May the Fourth brings a Star Wars themed post:

An Alliance Smuggler from Imperial Assault. Last year I’d originally planned to paint a pair of trusty droids, as that was what was missing from my classic trilogy rebels, but with Stargrave on my mind and a vague plan to run a Star Wars campaign using those rules I fancied painting something that could be used for that.

I was going to treat myself to a nice Diehard mini, but unfortunately they didn’t bring any of the things I wanted to Salute, so I had a dig in my backlog and pulled out this chap instead.

He’ll make a nice rebel operative when the time comes to pull jobs against the Empire I’m sure. He’s come out a little duller than I’d originally intended, but the good thing about painting to a deadline is that there comes a point where you just have to call a paint job done.

The Tally has also taken hits in the opposite direction, as the ongoing Age of Sigmar partwork magazine has had Skaven on it a few times, and the new Clanrats are pretty nice. Do I need more clanrats? No. Did I buy 20 because they’re much more animatedly posed than the old ones, even though that means that they might be tricky getting onto 20mm square bases? Yes.

(I actually bought two issues to get both halves of the sprue, but didn’t take a second picture)

All in, the Tally now stands at:

21 vs 180 = -159

What’s next? I have some enemies for my Firefly Stargrave campaign half finished on my painting tile, which I could probably polish off if I gave them about an evening’s worth of focus. Then again, the family game of D&D hasn’t run since the start of the year, and I have some minis for that half finished too that I need for a future session. Although, apparently I started watching the Third Doctor’s adventures exactly a year ago while doing the washing up, and this morning, while doing the washing up I was also watching the Third Doctor (odd, with it being Star Wars day I guess), and I have a half painted mini of him in the queue…

Never tell me the odds!

Han Solo, everyone's favourite scoundrel! It probably says a lot about my tastes that I've still as of yet to even consider painting a Luke miniature...

With this miniature finished, that's the end of the group of Star Wars miniatures that I was working on as a batch. Although I should probably prep and paint some bog-standard Rebel Troopers (and work on the rules!), I think I might take a brief diversion for other projects, namely Pathfinder (as I'm hopefully joining a new campaign, so have the opportunity to build a one-off character miniature) or taking part in Zomtober!

[Tally: 65 vs 36 = +29]

Still no troopers...

Not a lot to say about this really, it's a Rebel Pilot. I added red bands and some gold squiggles to his helmet to try and diversify his paint job somewhat, but other than that he's mostly an orange blob. He'll hopefully see use either as an objective (in 'rescue the pilot from the crash site' type scenarios, if I can find a Star Wars model kit in the right scale on the cheap) or as an unnamed hero/captain type!

[Tally: 64 vs 36 = +28]

Star Wars prep

Having dug out a bevy of Star Wars miniatures, I thought I'd best get a handful based up ready for painting. 

Although I've dug out a squad or Rebel Troopers, I thought I'd prep some random bits and bobs that might otherwise take my fancy. 

Cleaning up a tiny Chewbacca, I realised that despite what I might otherwise like to think, I am in fact the sort of nerd that would be annoyed at a tiny facsimile of a fictional character having the incorrect fictional weapon :

Some careful cutting and sanding of his original gun and a donor part from a Perry WOTR sprue later though, Chewie has a bowcaster:

Bam, here's a batch waiting for their basing to dry before I can undercoat them: