Category Archives: Star Wars

Look Sir, Droids! Star Wars Imperial Assault: C-3PO, 0-0-0, HK Assassin Droids.

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Star Wars Imperial Assault: C-3PO, 0-0-0, HK Assassin Droids

It’s been quite awhile since I posted any Star Wars stuff here. To rectify that, I painted a little batch of figures from Imperial Assault over January.

Star Wars Imperial Assault: C-3PO, 0-0-0 Droids

First up, we have the rather well known C-3PO as well as the not-so-well-known 0-0-0 aka “Triple Zero” (an ironic name if you’re an Aussie, as you’ll see). I’m not going to explain 3PO, but 0-0-0 is “Evil C-3PO” and is some sort of sadistic torturer droid.

Star Wars Imperial Assault: C-3PO, 0-0-0 Droids

I didn’t have time to paint R2 in January, and the robot figure I alluded to in the Raptor post when I was talking about looking for a missing model is Triple Zero’s partner. Evil R2-D2 or BT-1 “Bee-Tee” (yes, I did have to look these names up) is currently MIA, so …one day.

Star Wars Imperial Assault: HK Assassin Droids

Now we have the HK droids. If you played the PC RPG Knights of the Old Republic, you may recall the sarcastic assassin Droid known as HK-47 (not to be confused with the Soviet assault rifle). Anyway, like anything in Star Wars that is mildly interesting or gets mildly popular, the army of hacks that put together the majority of the EU over the decades that it was a thing kept returning to this particular well. And so we have a small batch of them for Imperial Assault. As always, IA (or Star Wars Descent) uses red-based models to designate “elites” and so I just paint them differently. These ones didn’t take much imagination to differentiate them.

All six of these count towards both Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 25-26, and also count towards Anne’s 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge. Well, not assembly in the typical sense, but I did have to clean up the mold lines on all of these models, so annoying prep was certainly part of the process performed in January!

Star Wars Imperial Assault: Nexu + Contrast Paint Experiment #7

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Star Wars Imperial Assault Nexu

Back to Star Wars Imperial Assault today, with a pair of Nexu, originally seen in Ep2: Attack of the Clones. They only vaguely fit into the Imperial Assault campaign, as for some reason it appears that both the Imperial Forces as well as “Scum” forces have a whole lot of these things as attack-dog style pets. For those not familiar with them, in the film they’re depicted more akin to Lions or Tigers – and used as wild gladiatorial beasts.

Anywho, they sat around on the desk, entirely unpainted but annoying me for ages before I decided to knuckle down and get them done recently. As with a bunch of things, the most effective motivation was to play with the Contrast Paints.

I followed the “official” scheme for these for the most part, with just the smallest bit of variation between the two so they could be told apart on the tabletop. One is a little darker on top and in its stripes and also has a dark snout.

Star Wars Imperial Assault Nexu

As far as the actual painting went, thinned Snakebite Leather Contrast was used for their fur, over Wraithbone. The stripes were done with only-slightly thinned Snakebite Leather on one, and 50%-thinned Cygor Brown for the other, including the snout. The tails were done with a thinned mixture of Gryph-Hound Orange and Fyreslayer Flesh. The dorsal spines were 50-50 Cygor Brown and Black Templar, highlighted with thinned grey. Mouths with Volupus Pink and tongues touched up with thinned red paint. I still gave the fur a final drybrush to unify it all a little more.

Overall, the stripes using Cygor Brown don’t blend quite as smoothly with the rest of the fur as those with Snakebite Leather, but it was overall easier to do all of this, especially on areas like the overall fur, the tails, the mouths and the spines with the Contrast Paints than it would be with traditional washes, due to their physical properties – less viscosity, and the stuff adheres a little better rather than all pooling via gravity. It did also help with overall speed, and especially, with motivation to paint models I wasn’t all that keen on doing.

I’ve got some upcoming models that I’m actually keen on painting, that I also think will also make good Contrast Guinea Pigs. They’re still a ways off, though – all I’ve done so far is select them from a set, so don’t expect to see them too quickly. 🙂