Spray Day

Its time to roll out the big guns for the Republic and get these walkers in the fight.

I gave this spider droid a coat of liquid green stuff just to smooth over the armour plating a bit. The odd dent I'm not too worried about as these are machines of war.

It's finally time too to give this model a lick of paint.

Having spent many an hour on it, it's time to call it done and move on.

 

All walkers together, it's time to march through the spray booth.

This is light grey from Tamiya, as it happens it's the perfect undercoat for the Republic hull colour. I can use this spray on the speeders and smaller walkers too. Once given a Nuln oil wash then highlighted with a lighter grey, the job is basically done.

These large, heavy walkers may be a slightly darker grey, I'll have to do some more reference digging. If not though it should lead to some easy painting.

Target the AAT... maximum firepower!

I learnt my lesson with the droid tanks and covered the magnet sockets with blue tac. This hopefully will stop them getting paint on them which causes movement problems down the line. I have four of these monsters but have only faced building two at the moment. Let's use these two as guides for the others.

Right let's do some more colour research...

UPDATE: so I got some paint down on the model, I went for a quick and easy free hand, rather than mess around cutting stencils with masking tape.

This is a model kit picture I found years ago, I also knew it would come in handy for these walkers. The pattern is that of a mid/late war walker. It's just a bit more interesting than the plain ones.

 It was a bit of a challenge to do, but I'm using this one as a guide for the others. Trying to paint while keeping your phone from turning off and loosing the reference image, is a pain. So having one I can copy is a good thing.

Pattern done and looking okay, I plan to weather the paint work so the wobbly line doesn't bother me at this point.

The scary bit...I thought I'd just jump straight in and oil wash the model. The benefit over Nuln oil is that I can remove the oil wash, as it never really drys. So a brush with turps can wipe the oil away, this makes it a lot more workable.

I used a bit of brown oil paint too to put around the joints and feet.

I didn't realise that two of these weren't oils at the time.

The scary moment of truth, no holding back now...slap it on all over.

UPDATE: So after a few hours I have gone back to the model and removed some of the oil with some thinner on a brush.

It's starting to look better now that the big panels are being cleared. While the oil is still movable, I've added some streaks going down the hull.

The light Tamiya grey looks good now it's starting to shine out from the grime. So the Tamiya priming spray is also a great starting point for this Republic armour as well as all the speeders etc, as it turns out.

Oil streaks add nice detail.

Just need to wait for the oil paint to dry now...could be a while.

UPDATE: Next up comes the weathering. I put various sand tones on the feet and legs. I also put a slight sand oil wash in areas where sand would collect, like on the back and in hollows.

The light sand oil is great because it's not too strong and gives just a hint of weathering.

Clone Mortar unit

I put these together just for the reason of using scatter dice in a game. Recon troopers used mortars so I ordered some 15mm ones from Alternative Armies. 

Some of the Recon troopers had nothing in their hands and I thought this was too good to waste. I made some little charges and glued them in place.

I also have some 15mm containers kicking around and used them to represent ammo chests.

Three makes for a nice sized detachment to back any company level force. I imagine rolling the scatter dice first for a template location, then rolling six dice for damage. Terrain will not have any effect unless the enemy is in a building etc.

 Together with the sniper bases, I'm building up quite a bit of company support. The droids have the weird and wonderful designs, while the human clones have a more WWII structure, should be fun to game.