I’m lazy. There, I said it. I love painting miniatures, and I sometimes get a real kick out of putting heavy duty effort into making every detail of a character shine – but when you’ve got multiple armies and games on the go, there’s a unique and special pleasure to finding a unit that takes no effort whatsoever to paint to a good standard. And, reader, I’ve found the best example on the planet in Star Wars Legion battle droids.
This isn’t even really going to be a Star Wars Legion painting tutorial – because the word ‘tutorial’ implies there’s something skilled you need to learn, or detailed instructions to follow. Our full guide to painting miniatures has all of that covered, with loads of detail on each stage of the process and all the best techniques.
For these glorious, spindly beige clankers, no such finesse is required. I got the Clone Wars era starter set for Legion a couple of years back, but only recently sat down to paint it. I started with the Roger-Rogering battle droids of the Trade Federation, partly because I adore them, and partly because they looked like a quick job to build and paint.
Well, I was half right, because here’s the bad news up top: Star Wars Legion battle droids are some of the most cursed, godforsaken miniatures I’ve ever had the misfortune of building. Every piece is as tiny, breakable, droppable, and losable as a wren’s ear bones, and getting them together in a natural pose using the required superglue was about as enjoyable as getting half a metal tank panel stamped onto my arm while trapped on a conveyor belt in a Geonosis factory.
But once you’ve finally got your little tin-voiced sprocket men stuck together, boy oh boy, if the rest isn’t delightfully plain sailing. Here’s the ‘tutorial’ for painting them to a standard only the sweatiest fools would sneer at on the tabletop:
- Spray prime with white.
- Paint all over with Skeleton Horde Contrast paint.
- Drybrush lightly with a light bone color – Citadel Screaming Skull does nicely.
- Paint the guns with Black Templar Contrast paint.
- Drybrush the guns lightly with a light grey or gunmetal color.
That’s it. It’s not a half-assed job, either, that’s the joy of these models’ extreme simplicity. Just two colors, and a quick drybrush highlight on each, creates a legitimate, full, accurate paint job that’ll result in minis that look true to the movies.
The extent of the creative flourish I’ve added has been to mark out the Squad leaders by painting their heads with Blood Angels Red contrast – and to do up the bases with muddy texture paint, washed brown and and drybrushed with Citadel Tallarn Sand (or basically any light sandy dirt color).
It’s a good thing they’re so easy, too, because I’m going to need to paint up a lot more of them to field a full army list. I won’t say people should get into Legion, or the Droids in particular, just because they’re easy to paint. Their in-game AI rule, which forces units to take a predetermined action unless you’ve organized your troops well enough, is a tricky beast to handle, and – true to their movie counterparts – B1 battle droids are so weak and feeble that they shatter at a gust of wind, and have to be fielded in large numbers. It’s not necessarily a ‘beginner’ army.
But I just wanted to share with you the deep joy of models you can paint to a good standard super fast – these guys were way easier to do even than my 100% Contrast Tyranids. I can’t think of a single Warhammer 40k faction that’s as eye-blinkingly simple to paint up – except perhaps Necrons, if you go for a very basic scheme.
So, if you’re one of those maniacal hobbyists who fancies painting a whole army in a night, well, this is the one I’d choose. And once you have, why not use my (significantly more involved) Count Dooku painting tutorial to give them a snazzy looking leader with Force Lighting under his belt?
And, if you’re not on a mini painting kick right now, well, we can always recommend you the other best Star Wars board games to play.
Source: Wargamer
