“TK-421 what aren’t you at your post?”

“Sir, if by post you mean ‘in the box on the shelf gathering dust’ sir. Then its because Dave’s been playing Imperial Assault with us.”

A long time ago in a gala… *cough* well… err …at the end of 2015, I bought myself a copy of Imperial Assault (EG link). I opened the box (mmm new box smell), popped out all the card tokens and board tiles, read the rules, messed about with the minis, taught myself to play. Bought the Wave 1 releases. Tried a couple of skirmish games with other people… and then let it sit on my shelf for ages 😦 .
Why? Well I’d been enjoying playing lots of X-Wing (EG link), my first Fantasy Flight game, and thought a Star Wars skirmish game would be just as cool. It was just as cool, but at the time there just wasn’t enough time to slot it in amongst my regular games. I also really wanted to play the campaign side of things too, and that would require a group of us dedicating a significant amount of time to the game. Add to that if I was the Imperial player then I’d be running the games too. That was something I’ve never had to do, as I’ve never played that style of game before – I didn’t want to mess it up (for my own enjoyment as much as for the other players). Also if the campaign was to require a decent amount of time to play through then I was damn well going to play it with painted models. So the game went back on the shelf unto I got round to painting the models.

<< Rewind A Second <<

“going to play it with painted models”

<insert side splitting laughter>

Yes, if you have gleaned anything about me from the various posts on this blog, or know me at all even slightly, you’ll have spotted the flaw in the plan right there.
After all, according to my New Year Resolutions, I should be painting either Infinity Panoceania or Guild Ball Masons. Yet here I am waffling on about Star Wars Imperial Assault.

I can’t explain why but the other day I felt the urge to mess about with Imperial Assault again. I reread the rules, and decided to play through the opening missions of a campaign to get myself used to how the campaign system side of things work. That’s right I’m playing solo, being both the Rebel and Imperial player. I just intended to do a couple of missions to see how the system worked but I’ve enjoyed it enough to continue further (and I always win regardless lol). This is mostly what has rekindled the interest in painting the models.

Enough Waffle Already!

There are some very good resources on the internet about painting imperial assault models. Here are two of my favourite:

• Sorastro’s Star Wars Imperial Assault Painting Series You Tube play list.
• Agis Neugebauer’s website.

Sorastro’s videos are really good and informative, and are mostly responsible for inspiring me to get the models painted. Agis’ miniatures are just pure eye candy, and are something to aspire to (if any one wants to split a box of Eisenkern Heavy Troopers let me know – not even I can justify that expenditure for converting two models).

Of course there is some activity on the FFG IA Painting & Modelling Forum too.

I started by cleaning up most of the imperial models. The models are made from some form of soft plastic, and I find it really annoying to work with. Mould lines can be cut off successfully with a sharp hobby knife, but scraping and filing do not work as well as I’d hope. Although it doesn’t seem quite as bad as the first plastic miniatures that Privateer Press came out with. The casts aren’t that great either with some loss of detail in some areas. However I can live with that – they are after all primarily board game pieces rather than miniature gaming pieces, I suppose.

Once I had a large enough batch cleaned up I primed them with AP White spray primer. The first batch consisted of:

• 9x Stormtroopers.
• 4x Royal Guard.
• Royal Guard Champion.

I haven’t primed any models white for years, but it seems like a good idea if I want to get these models painted quickly. Especially the Stormtroopers who, of course, are primarily white.

You may have already noticed the 3 Stormtroopers in the image above who have have acted as my quick test pieces.

More on how I painted these in a later post. I’ll just add a final useful link; this site, Docking Bay 416, has some excellent reference pictures for Stormtrooper armour. In particular the helmet which is probably the most defining part of Stormtrooper armour and over all focal point of the model, hence I think its really important to get right.