Imperial Assault - Nexu or Guess who's coming for dinner...

Besides the AT-ST and the E-web guns there are two fierce predators as larges figures in the Imperial Assault basic game. Nexu are feline predatory species native to the planet Cholganna located in a galaxy far far away...

Some of you might have noticed the appearance of one of those cuddly fellows in Episode II - Attack of the Clones. In this second part of the well-known space opera villainous Count Dooku employs a Nexu in the arena of Geonosis to finish off Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. Unfortunately his appearance finds a sudden end by the later Sith lord. Poor kitty!

Anyway for Imperial Assault Fantasy Flight Games delivers two of those beasts with the core set to make life difficult for the rebel scum. In our very own campaign they saw action for the first time last Sunday and performed very well. They are rather fast, very nimble and with their leap attack they have the potential to cause some damage on careless heroes...

As usual with the miniatures from Imperial Assault those two pieces of plastic are really nice gaming pieces. Their pose is excellent and full of dynamic, their teeth look anything but herbivorous and those spikes on their back look really intimidating. Actually a perfect incarnation of them. But for us painters preassembled figures are not easy to deal with. The belly of the Nexu is nearly inaccessible as well as the interior of the jaws. Additionally the figure had several obvious molding lines which were very difficult to reach because of the crouched position.

Thus I decided to keep the paintjob rather simple. Therefore I gave the beasts a good, clean white undercoat and a basecoat of Vallejo Game Color 'Khaki'. Then I applied some flesh wash on the tails, black-grey stripes, spikes and claws of the same colour and finally some Armypainter 'Strong tone wash' (water based little bottle). After twa stages of drybrushing most of the figure was done. Only for the face and teeth I took some extra time.

As usual for such gaming pieces I kept the bases simple as well. Since terrain in Imperial Assault is defined by the nicely printed board tiles I didn't want to have the bases stick out too much on the wrong sort of terrain so I just gave them the standard greyish look. One brim is painted red to differentiate both creatures on the gaming board because they'll be represented by different deployment cards with different values and abilities.

So with those pets all imperial and villainous figures are finished. Now the player characters and the Luke Skywalker special miniature are to follow...