Making Star Wars: Imperial Assault Tokens Sexy!

By StupidPanic, in Star Wars: Imperial Assault

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Yeah,
Star Wars Imperial Assault has a lot of cardboard Tiles and Tokens!
On the whole they are pretty OK.
But they are let down by the brown grey card board edge... yukky.
I decided to paint the edges.
I already had these pens from making my x-wing tokens sexy.
I spent 5 hours painting the Tiles and tokens!
It's bloody boring... however it's very easy.
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It makes them look so much better in my opinion.
I made sure that things like crates and terminals were painted grey and carefully so that their colours can be kept secret.
The pens are about £3 - £4 each... quite expensive.
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I used 6;
Uni Posca Slate grey
Sharpie 'Paint' Black
Sharpie 'Paint' Red
​Sharpie 'Paint' Lime Green
​Sharpie 'Paint' Aqua
​Sharpie 'Paint' pink
Only 2 tokens that have a yellow boarder so I didn't buy a yellow pen, I used GW citadel yellow paint I already had.
I'm pretty happy with them.
I didn't paint the tile connection edges, just the black side edges.
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The connection points are hidden once the map is assembled.
And the Map has a nice black border all the way around the edges.
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Lastly,
I found that for organising the cards and tiles small elastic 'Looms' are great.
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I didn't bother with the character tokens :(
I plan on buying the proper figures later :D
Panic...
Edited by Panic
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Nice! I like the idea of painting the edges of the tiles.

Question: Do you also paint the edges of the connecting portions of the tiles? I would expect that any paint there would get rubbed of fairly quickly.

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Nice! I like the idea of painting the edges of the tiles.

Question: Do you also paint the edges of the connecting portions of the tiles? I would expect that any paint there would get rubbed of fairly quickly.

I'm pretty happy with them.

I didn't paint the tile connection edges, just the black side edges.
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Very nice. You've made the whole set look very sharp, indeed.

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Looks good. Just having a look at some now with a local arts supplier, did you go for X-fine, fine, medium or bold? Thanks

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In high school I went to that Arts and Crafts class to meet girls and get out of track, who knew it would be useful decades later!

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yeah,

Looks good. Just having a look at some now with a local arts supplier, did you go for X-fine, fine, medium or bold? Thanks

I used the pens in the photo, they are medium for the most part.
I'd recommend the medium for the black.
- When doing the the tiles, the larger tip makes running the edges easier/quicker.
For the others you could use fine or medium.
- however the medium pens hold more ink which means they last longer and you can use them for other games too.

Question: Do you also paint the edges of the connecting portions of the tiles? I would expect that any paint there would get rubbed of fairly quickly.


I didn't paint anything on the connection areas as these are hidden when the map is assembled
The tiles have a black edge printed on the top surface.
I just followed that and extended the black down onto the sides..
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Panic...

Edited by Panic
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Brilliant work, Panic!

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I used the Sharpie paint pens for my X-wing as well and they really work great. Plus the oil based paint helps seal up the edges really well to protect them from any fraying.

Simple, pops out the tokens and protects them = all win. :)

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That's really cool! A "quick" and easy way to make the game just a litttle bit sexier :D

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thanks for the idea I will do this, I just used a regular old sharpie on my wxing stuff just to be easily identified in tourney's and they looked like poo, These look great thanks

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Especially ordered some paintmakers for this (I went for a pack of uniball posca markers). Now I just have to wait for my copy to arrive (have to wait until christmas to see if the gf truly loves me ;) ). Thanks for the inspiration; it looks gorgeous!

Edited by Vascopinto
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Especially ordered some paintmakers for this (I went for a pack of uniball posca markers). Now I just have to wait for my copy to arrive (have to wait until christmas to see if the gf truly loves me ;) ). Thanks for the inspiration; it looks gorgeous!

These are lofty expectations but you need to get her to buy it, and play it with you ;) .

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Is there a large difference between the water and oil-based sharpie paint pens? I picked a set of 3 water-based ones, but I'm wondering if I should switch over to oil before I really get into painting the tokens.

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Is there a large difference between the water and oil-based sharpie paint pens? I picked a set of 3 water-based ones, but I'm wondering if I should switch over to oil before I really get into painting the tokens.

image.jpg

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Extra tip: like the OP wrote: make sure to use a neutral color for the terminals, crates AND the neutral mission tokens (the ones with a swirly thing on one side and a colored circle on the other one. I made the mistake to use corresponding colors but luckily the colors are easy to completely cover with a new color so I paint them grey.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas

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I'm looking into doing this. Nice job.

I don't have any paint markers and I'm thinking of picking up the 15 pack of Posca Uni med pt markers. No Slate Grey though, but Silver would probably work.

Anybody have thoughts on this pack ??

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I'm looking into doing this. Nice job.

I don't have any paint markers and I'm thinking of picking up the 15 pack of Posca Uni med pt markers. No Slate Grey though, but Silver would probably work.

Anybody have thoughts on this pack ??

Looks like a very good deal. I'd go for a slate grey separately though. Silver might seem a bit too flashy in the long term

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I can say that the silver definitely is pretty garish. Go with the slate grey

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I ordered the Uni set. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be useful. I will now tokenzie the hell out of my games.

- Imperial Assault

- X-Wing (my first core sets arrived today!)

- The SW RPG's (also arrived today!)

- All three D&D Adventure Systems games (Drizzt, Ashardalon, Ravenloft)

- Anything else I own that has tokens

I think I'm going to need more markers.

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My markers arrived today. It looks like the colors I thought were silver & gold (cue Ranking & Bass song here) might actually be grey & brown. Unfortunately the color labels are in (what I assume to be) Japanese so I can't tell for sure. But a quick test on some paper will solve that. :)

Time to tokenize!

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My markers arrived today. It looks like the colors I thought were silver & gold (cue Ranking & Bass song here) might actually be grey & brown. Unfortunately the color labels are in (what I assume to be) Japanese so I can't tell for sure. But a quick test on some paper will solve that. :)

Time to tokenize!

Colors know no language, and yet a picture worth a thousand words :P

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I can read the Japanese if you want to post pictures.

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I can read the Japanese if you want to post pictures.

I might do that just for general interest purposes. The colors on the caps are sufficient for the most part. The grey could be silver but in different light it's looking more grey.

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Quick update

The grey is indeed grey, not silver. It's a nice, light grey. I did the edges for the crates, terminals, grey mission tokens, condition tokens, activation tokens and the castle ravenloft coffins last night. I think they turned out well. It might be a little too light for some so I'll keep an eye out for slate grey as well. But I'm happy with it.

I also used the light blue on the rebel deployment token and black on the doors & initiative token. I'm happy with the marker set and it seems like it was a pretty good value for 15 colors. We'll see how it holds long term but initial impression is good.

Thanks again to Panic and everybody for the ideas.