IMPERIAL ASSAULT - AT-ST comparisons

Was surprised to get my copy of Imperial Assault on X-mas eve, was expecting it some time next year since FFG is having a legal tiff with someone over board game licensing I hear.



BIG BOX, lots of lovely tiles, way too many tokens and a good pile of minis. Was a bit annoyed the chin guns on my AT-ST were snapped off in the bag of parts :( I tried supergluing them back together but it didn't stay together so I had to get a bit more drastic and remade the barrels with aluminium tubing.



With that fixed my friends were like how does it compare to your AT-ST collection so here's a representation of the various AT-STs over the years







in the lineup I have a KFC happy meal small version of the old Kenner AT-ST sculpt, a Micromachines Action Fleet AT-ST, the new FFG sculpt, the WOTC prepainted version from the CMG and lastly the oldest of them the snap kit MPC model which dates back to Return of the Jedi branded merch, though this was probably a 90s reissue. So how does the new one scale up, a bit oddly really, it's got the bulk of the WotC version, the height of the more 20mm scaled Action Fleet version due to it's short stocky legs and bigger side guns than any other version, it's kinda been "Heroic Scaled" like 40K oversizing of guns and short stumpy proportions. The detail on it is quite nice though. It's one of only 2 sculpts that have the window shutters open, I cut open and modded the MPC kit. It's made from a fairly stiff vinyl which has pretty alright sharpness but a bit of a pain to sand off mold lines, also don't think I can get the head of the waist to get to all the mold lines either. I do look forward to seeing the character version with even more guns jammed on it like the one from the boss from Force Unleashed.

N'dru Suhlak Hotrod Z-95 repaint and WIP Pirates

Inspired by the N'dru Suhlak card and the prodding of the N'dru repaint thread also that I had 3 new Z-95s fresh out of the packs that I hadn't repainted yet I got to work doing 2 of them as scum pirates (they're not finished yet) and N'dru with his awesome hotrod flames and shark teeth paintwork.

I started by painted the 3 Zeds in a light grey then did a wash all over of a mix of Airbrush thinner and Dark and Strong Tones from Army Painter, Then I drybrushed with the light grey again then a lighter grey to bring out all the detail. Then I went in with Strong Tone again to darken certain areas I wanted to emphasize as being darker on the engines and the wing joints to them.

For N'dru I started his fancy paintwork by painting the mouth shape and eyes white, I also painted the engine rings and exhausts white so the gold yellow would be brighter when I applied it later. Giving it over night to dry I went in the next day with a Pigma Micron pen and outlined the eyes and mouth and then drew in the teeth. After that I painted the inside of the mouth with a dark crimson the got out a nice bright red and started painting flames before filling in the area around the mouth and nose. That was then darkened a bit on the underside and around the nose cone to bring out the detail. I painted in the engine details in the same very very old Citadel Sulfur Desert Yellow that I used on the X-wing markings. I was then hijacked to make terrain with friends for the rest of the day (the Mantic building kits turn out quite nice, love the Mars Attacks ruined brick stuff) Today I came back and added edge highlights and chips and scratches plus some extra stripes on the guns for some extra detail then glossed the canopy.



Now the pirates, you can see I from the pirate that doesn't have checkers yet I painted the canopy frames, the guns a bit, the nose cone. Then painted the canopy black again, that will get a gloss coat later. For the checkers I thinned the red a lot and using a very light touch I painted lines vertically down the fuselage to get the spacing worked out 1st, then I painted the horizontal lines and filled in the squares. The artwork on the card having a diagonal checker pattern is a headache, I think I'll paint a few more checkers at the top of the pattern then have to start on the other one. i'll get around to hlghlights and scratches after the patterns are done.















you can see in the last shot I was thinking of just keeping it simpler and making the checker band vertical down the fuselage instead of the angle, I can clean those left over lines in grey but they're barely visible.