Rebel Troopers for Imperial Assault

As some might have noticed, some friends and I have been playing Imperial Assault for a while. For a certain amount of time I had the idea to follow the releases to bring the whole Star Wars universe to live but luckily for my wallet Fantasy Flight Games (and in Germany Heildeberger / Asmodée) were too fast for a slow painter and volatile hobby fellow like me. Thus my efforts ended with those sets which are represented in the Imperial Assault app meaning the first wave at the moment.

Therefore I had a set of three rebel troopers lying around and somehow I felt it was time to splash some paint on them. Rather soon we want to continue with our campaign and we might need those allies to fight the fierde forces of the Galactic Empire.

 

The set contains of three troopers in the well-known uniform featured in the iconic opening sequence of episode IV. They are all nice and clean casts although all three figures are identical.

Colourwise I left the greyish 1970s schene a bit and went for the more colourful blue and khaki scheme wich the computer game Star Wars: Battlefront delivered.

After all those models were truly fun to paint. The details all crisp and clear, the facial expression easy to follow and a simple uniform which allowed a quick painting style.

As usual I used Vallejo paints for most parts of the figures and the Wargames Foundry skin coulours for face and hands.

Only the bases are bit of a problem. Imperial Assault may be set in various surroundings from the wooded areas of Endor to the dark and grimy hangars of an outer rim space port. Therefore I didn't find a good solution for shaped bases and left them greyish. So I applied some dark grey and added a series of lighter splashes.

 

Nevertheless I'm still pondering about changing to clear acrylic bases but I haven't brought myself to re-basing my whole Imperial Assault collection yet.

Imperial Assault - Rebel Scum

Finally after the simpler gaming pieces for the game master I turned my attention to the figures representing the player characters. At least to those for needed in our local group:

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...

Bounty hunters for Imperial Assault

Besides the imperial troops and the rebel scum the Imperial Assault basic game came with a couple of bounty hunters and monsters - namely four Trandoshan bounty hunters and two Nexu. After having finished the imperials I started with the bounty hunters:

Imperial Reinforcements for Imperial Assault - Guns and AT-ST walker

Last weekend we had a longish Imperial Assault session and yours truly also known as 'The Emperor' needed painted reinforcements. Thus I took some E-Web engineers and an AT-ST walker to the workbench.

First for the guns:

Risk Taker - Han Solo

When the painting challenge started I had a look at the bonus rounds and all of a sudden an idea for the 'Risk Taker' theme stroke my mind. Who could be a better choice than daredevil who is bold enough to kick a hunk of junk hard enough to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs? Or the one who was stupid and daunting enough to pick a quarrel with a giant space slug supervillain?

As you see I chose Fantasy Flight Games' incarnation of this well-known scoundrel. It's a nice plastic miniature the company is making for their Star Wars skirmish game 'Imperial Assault'. The details are worked out crisp and clear and the casting quality is pretty good. Maybe not as good as we are used from top-notch miniature companies like Perry Miniatures, Warlord Games or maybe Games Workshop but nevertheless much better than one would expect from board game pieces. Probably the material limits the quality in a certain way. It's slightly softer than those historical hard plastic miniatures, bendable and thus more suitable for board games who might not necessarily be careful tabletop gamers as well. Altogether a nice piece and much better than those old soft plastic figures by Wizards of the Coast.

As usual I painted this chap with Vallejo colours and used Wargames Foundry for the skin tones. I kept the base pretty simple as with all my Imperial Assault figures: Just a dark grey base colour and three shades of drybrushing.

Imperial Assault: Droids, Imperial Guard and the Dark Lord himself

Probably you've notived that a certain Star Wars mania had taken possession of Monty's Manour. Thus it suggested itself to start the Painting Challenge with a couple of Star Wars miniatures namely more playing pieces for Imperial Assault:

Actually very nice figures but somehow not the quality we are used to have from those top-notch 28mm figures by Perr, Front Rank, Foundry, Empress and other suppliers of metal miniatures. Some pieces could be more detailed and some parts are kept rather easy. Nevertheless they represent the figures from the Star Wars universe very well and were fun to paint. This week I prepared three lots of figures for our Wesdnesday night Imperial Assault session:

Firstly three probe droids. Those little bastards are always useful to scout the way for the stormtroopers. Within the game they proved rather handy and dangerous. As for painting I stayed very simple. Just a couple of grey tones over black primer. Really the quick and dirty kind of miniatures. For gaming reasons I kept the bases simple as well. Some light drybrushing and a colour marking to differentiate different squads in game.

Two sets of Imperial Red Guardsmen. In the game they serve in pairs and thus I prepared two with a red and two with blue colour markings. A pretty simple paintjob as well. Black primer, three layers of different red tones and then some darktone Armypainter Quickshade.

Highlight in a special sense was the dark lord of the Sith himself: Darth Vader.

A figure which seemed rather easy to paint but black is always special somehow. Of course I didn't want to turn him too greyish and therefore I chose to hold back with highlighting as much as possible. Only some dark and medium grey drybrushing on the cloak and some more efforts on the body armour. The lightsaber and the control panels of the Vader's suit were nice details and meant a nice diversion. The base is once again kept slate grey with some gentle drybrushing in medium and light grey.

Imperial Assault: Card Boxes

Last week I put some work into my project for 'Santa Clause'. I found a really nice pack of four figures hopefully according to my counterpart's taste. During the last days I started painting them because they should be finished during the following week end be sent to the United Kingdom the week after. No problem for them to arrive before Christmas.

Besides that I worked on Imperial Assault. The games contains oodles of cards, tokens, board tiles and such stuff and it was time to get them sorted. Thus I made some cardboard boxes for the game:

But those boxes weren't the work of myself alone. Luckily some other geeks seem to have kept struggling with disarray in the Imperial Assault box and one of them prepared a set of templates for the prone tinkerer. He's calling himself 'Sir Willi' and is providing a great number of boxes for Imperial Assault, X-Wing, Armada and other games, most of them at least in German, English and French. Have a look at his blog to get an idea of his work. The templates are free and ready to print at home.

To make the boxes I used 240g cardboard. It proved to be thin enough to work properly with our inkjet printer but thick enough to ensure the needed stiffness for the boxes. Then I cut the templates with a sharp knife and a steel rules and glued them together with usual all-purpose adhesive. Really no big deal but afterwards I had some clean and tidy boxes to sort the different cards in.

Only the active cards of our current campaign are in a zip bag to have them ready for our next session. Altogether a simple and convincing solution in my opinion. Agreeing to this was our little one Anna who helped me to sort all the board tiles and the tokens. But especially the AT-ST caught her attention. Good girl!

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend !

Imperial Assault: Imperial Officers

During the last week I proceeded slightly with painting the miniatures of the Imperial Assault board game. After those Stormtroopers I took their officers to get some colour onto:

The figure are pretty straightforward. The details on the faces are nice for playing pieces but slightly behind high quality metal miniatures as we know them from Perry, Front Rank, Empress or other wargaming manufacturers. The figures clothes have no noteworthy details as you would expect from those rather simple uniforms.

Thus I painted them in a kind of quick and dirty undertaking during a really short time. As playing pieces they'll do well anyway I asume.

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

A happy first Sunday in advent !

Imperial Assault: Painted Stormtroopers

Actually I reserved the following Stormtroopers for my habitual weekend post as part of the 'Paint Table Saturday' venture. But somehow things never turn out the way I expect. Once again our weekend was busy with meeting family and friends and I didn't find the time to get myself to the computer and set a an appropriate article. To crown it all the signs of age exacted their toll and evenings I was too tired to turn my attention to the bloggosphere. Obviously I'm getting too old for three days of gatherings, beer and sports but I wasn't able to resist Rugby, Hockey and American Football...

Anyway with no further ado here's the humble work yours truly performed on some of the miniatures from the Imperial Assault board game:

As you see I started with the easiest figures in the box: Stormtroopers.

Those were my start of choice because I wanted to see quick results and I didn't want to withdraw my attention too much from our ongoing Plancenoit project. With the game come nine Stormtroopers representing three squads. To differentiate them I painted the edges of the bases in blue, red and green.

Besides the coloured edge I held the bases as simply as possible. Since the game works with a couple of different board styles like desert, woodland or space ship interior I was afraid that textured bases might look disturbing when hitting inappropriate underground. Thus I simply painted them dark grey with some slight dry-brushing with lighter grey tones.

Painting the Stormtroopers themselves was pretty simply as well. After a neat coat of white primer I used a dark grey colour on the joints, blasters and other more or less black parts. Then a coat of thinned Armypainter Quickshade: Dark Tone and some white highlighting.

As a result the Stormtroopers aren't as clean and bright as seen in the films but I prever them a little dirty because it brings out the details on playing distance. However those chaps are probably far from my best pieces but as simply rank and file troops they'll do well I presume. Next will be either the drones or the Imperial officers. But first back to Plancenoit. My progress there is small but constant and I'll be able to present another intermediate state later this week.

Unboxing Imperial Assault

During the last months I was lurking around Fantasy Flight Games's (FFG) Star Wars miniature game 'Imperial Assault'. It's more or less a tabletop board game hybrid covering small rebel operations against the Galactic Empire. Thus there are up to four players controlling heroes of the Rebel Alliance and one player leading the missions as a kind of game master and playing the Empire as well. Actually the game is designed to play campaigns of ten to fifteen missions but it has a two player skirmish variant as well.

Anyway after months of pondering I decided to invest in the game and actually wanted to order the German version which was released in late August. By mistake I ordered the English version instead but decided to hold it and rely on my humble knowledge of English. With around 80 € the game isn't cheap at all but you receive a thick and heavy box for your money:

As usual for FFG the cover art is top notch. Some rebels fighting stormtroopers and Darth Vader in person overwatching the battlescene. Excellent stuff so far. After opening the box I discovered the full content. It's really filled to the brim:

Of course there's some advertising material included but most impressive is the pure extent of the game material: