Today’s post is all about Imperial Probe Droids.
Regular visitors to the Bitz Box will be aware that I painted up a single Imperial Probe Droid from Imperial Assault last month. The reason I didn’t paint all three is because, well, all three of the Probe Droids were broken, right out of the IA box – one had one leg broken off it’s base, the next had two, and the third.. well, you see the pattern here right? Yep, it was broken completely and clear off it’s base. I contacted FFG, who were kind enough to send me out …a single replacement Probe Droid.
So I contacted them again, with a bit of an “ahem – all three are broken, but you replaced only one.” – and resent the original photos. No problem, they said that they’d replace the other two, and in the interim, we started playing, and as the Probe Droids appeared to be a unit type that was turning up in every scenario, I painted that one model, so we could at least represent the elite with the proper model rather than with a T-800 Terminator model.
Fast forward some time, and the others finally turned up, and I’d been thinking about mounting the broken ones on flight bases, which (I believe) Alex Faust also suggested. So last week, once Jewel of July was over, I got cracking on all five of them.
Pretty quick to paint, all up. I ended up painting the secondary lights on them in different gemstone colours in order to differentiate them on the table. The Elite of course having the main lens in red rather than black.
A few small details on them in burnt orange. I hadn’t noticed those details from the films, but all official models and statues of them from Kotobukiya, Sideshow and everyone else seem to have the markings, so I can only assume that they’re on the original screen-used props but didn’t end up visible in the films. The final shot here shows the five additional Probe Droids reunited with the originally painted one, along with an Emperor’s Royal Guard to provide scale.
In a way, I think the formerly-broken ones actually look a bit better, raised on their flying stands, though they are also a lot more fragile in a way, held on by that little peg.
I know I’m way behind on replying to comments here and keeping up with other people’s blogs. I’ll catch up when I can. Lots on IRL, especially with longer hours at work right now.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Every cloud has a silver lining and it looks to me that you’ve ended up with the best of both worlds. Very nice.
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Thanks! After a lot of stuffing around, the models have finally worked out well in the end. Shame we’re pretty much at the end of the campaign – hopefully they make an appearance in the expansion campaigns as well!
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These look great, i really like the hovering droids. My brother painted his with different coloured eye lenses but then thought the looked like Christmas decorations. He’s never Happy with anything he does though, which is a shame. He is 40 tomorrow so i bought him the 3 expansions he was missing, hoth, jabba and imperial sector i think. Lots more minis to paint now! 😰
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That’s pretty cool of you to do! I’ve now gotten hold of all of the IA stuff, possibly sans one single figure expansion (inquisitor?) Of course, there’s a new expansion and individual models out next month..
I think my droids run a risk of looking a bit skittles when placed all together like that, but when separated on the table as individuals (which is how they play) the different coloured lights will look much more natural.
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I think I actually like the ones on flying stands better. On the others, it’s too obvious that the bases are their support, so it looks like they’re walking on what (IIRC) are supposed to be just dangling sensor/manipulator arms. They’re all very nicely painted, tho. I really like the lenses, very shiny!
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Yeah, that’s my leaning as well now that they’re all done.
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Excellent work. The simple colour scheme works well and adding different light colours makes it easy to differentiate the droids. On the metal you achieve enough contrast to deliminate details. All in all beautiful and very evocative.
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Thank you – just enough edge wear and odd scratches to act as an additional highlight of sorts without looking like the Empire uses steel wool to clean them!
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I like all these, though the broken ones have been brought back to form nicely. Just curious, can you provide a link for the flying bases by chance?
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These ones: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Citadel-Flying-Stems-with-32mm-Flying-Bases
I think they have the taller stems that usually come with these ones, tho: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Citadel-Flying-Stems-with-60mm-Flying-Bases
You always get extra stems with anything that uses those bases, so people who’ve been playing GW games for a while usually have plenty of all four stem lengths on hand.
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Wow, surprising that GW is cheaper than what I found. I picked up one of these for the Beholder (uh yea, I will get around to attaching it to a base, any day now):
https://www.miniaturemarket.com/ltkjpl1310-gry.html
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like MiniatureMarket carries the flight bases. I could probably ask them to order it though.
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Do you have a GW store near you? Might be one of those occasions when it’s easier to just stop in.
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Yeap. I was cleaning up in the other room when I just found a baggie of flight stands, some of which got repurposed here. No idea which minis they were supposed to belong to originally…
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Yep, Alexis covered it nicely!
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They look nice- FWIW I prefer the flying stand ones.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete – and yeah, I do tend to agree.
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I have to agree the ones on the clear stands look much better . This droid always gave me the creeps when I was little , it was the sound it made as it hovered around.
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I agree – They did a great job with that. The distorted speech sounds were what got me. Creepy sort of like listening to a numbers station.
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Very nice. Even though there’s not much going on with the colours, what you’ve done really gives them a lot of lift.
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Thanks mate. Star Wars Imperial stuff is pretty much black-white-grey for the most part, with red as the occasional spot colour.
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You could always go against the grain and do hot pink
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I *could* do that, but I won’t. 🙂
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They look pretty awesome. I was the one who suggested the “flight pole”. Why I said “flight pole”, who knows!? I think Star Wars folks would know they are supposed to be flying, but other people might mistake them for walkers. So it’s good to see them on flight stands.
Question(s) for you on the gemstone paints. Have you ever mixed them to get different colors (since they only come in three colors)? Would you recommend against decanting them? I don’t usually decant the technical paints, as they tend to have a textured consistency. But with the gemstone paints, I imagine it might be possible? I picked up all three colors recently, and plan on using them to paint gems on the Dwarves (someday), plus other stuff. So that’s why I’m asking. And thanks for pointing those out to me in the first place! 🙂
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Ah, sorry. I couldn’t remember (and I’m very tired lately).
I haven’t mixed them myself, but I picked up these awhile back to add some more options to my range.
http://www.warcolours.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=66&product_id=115
They’re pretty much identical, but in some different colours, so I’ve used a couple of them here (except the yellow, which is thin Air Flash Gits Yellow over white, with a spot of lighter yellow in the middle before gloss varnish to finish.
You could decant the gemstone paints, but it seems like dropping them onto a palette could lead to a lot of waste? I guess it depends on how fast they dry up. Mine are all still fine, and I got them on release. So they’re doing better than a lot of GW’s paints there.
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Very cool – the flying ones look way better!
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Cheers, Alex!
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