Hello all,

Seeing the great stuff going on in this subforum, I decided to share my work here as well, might get some feedback and great ideas from the paint&mod community!

Being a Shadows of the Empire fanboy since the long hours I spent playing the N64 game and generally liking the gray area of Star Wars (I was so happy when Scum was announced) I started putting together a small Black Sun themed fleet.

I started shyly (felt stupid painting over already painted minis) by just getting rid of the pinkish hue on both the Scyk M3A interceptor and the Kihraxz (and keeping the factory green) but then had tons of fun repainting the YV-666. The last one I made is the Shadowcaster.

I obviously didn't touch the Z-95s and Starvipers (since they both fit the theme already) but might do something about the latter eventually.

You might be wondering about the title (assuming someone is actually reading this) but as a side project, I also did a small "atmospheric" table inspired by Bespin. I live in a pretty small place so needed to have a solid flat surface to set on our small dining table when friends come over to play.

This is not meant to be incredible (the whole thing was done in two evenings including the kitbashed Tibanna gas refinery plus gas collectors) but I'm pretty happy about the result. It needs finishing touches, especially the paintjob on the surface.

That's it for now, sorry for the less than great pictures, hopefully I'll post some new things here soon, I have a second Shadow Caster (loving that ship) I'd like to mod to look more like Assaj's Banshee as well as a couple other scum ships that require my attention.

Awesome work, they look fantastic. Your weathering on the Shadow Caster looks excellent. I have seen a few where it's been overdone, but I think you just nailed it. Any chance of some close ups of the other ships?

Agree, the Shadowcaster looks outstanding, and the change to the M3A and Kihraxz is a simple yet elegant scheme to bring them into line...and love the refinery - might be tempted to make up some 'arms' with magnets on the ends, so you can attach/detach the collectors to the central hub for different scenarios ?

Looking forward to seeing more

...oh, and out of interest, what greys did you use for the Shadowcaster ?

EDIT: Forgot to ask - do the 'clouds' act as obstacles of any kind, maybe like debris without the crit, so you lose your action perhaps?

Cool ships and a great "action shot" with the terrain. I'm loving it like McDonald's!

Love the Black Sun logos bleeding off the edge of the ships. That's instant cool in my book.

So you actually play with all those real obstacles on your board? Very cool. I don't think I've seen that before. As ianmiddy asked, how do you play them? Can you land on them? Do they block ships? I gotta know!

Thank you all for your kind words!

Awesome work, they look fantastic. Your weathering on the Shadow Caster looks excellent. I have seen a few where it's been overdone, but I think you just nailed it. Any chance of some close ups of the other ships?

I will definitely be posting better pictures of all the ships, I just need to build a better photo setup (I've seen a quite clever one on the forums with a black sheet of paper with a few holes and a light behind, can't recall where though).

Agree, the Shadowcaster looks outstanding, and the change to the M3A and Kihraxz is a simple yet elegant scheme to bring them into line...and love the refinery - might be tempted to make up some 'arms' with magnets on the ends, so you can attach/detach the collectors to the central hub for different scenarios ?

Looking forward to seeing more

...oh, and out of interest, what greys did you use for the Shadowcaster ?

EDIT: Forgot to ask - do the 'clouds' act as obstacles of any kind, maybe like debris without the crit, so you lose your action perhaps?

Funny that you mention the "arms" it's hard to see but the refinery piece has a set of three arms that were imagined as docking arms for ships (you can barely see them where the Shadowcaster is docked). But it could just as well simulate that the central hub is connected to the smaller collectors for various scenarios! Thanks for the idea!

Love the Black Sun logos bleeding off the edge of the ships. That's instant cool in my book.

So you actually play with all those real obstacles on your board? Very cool. I don't think I've seen that before. As ianmiddy asked, how do you play them? Can you land on them? Do they block ships? I gotta know!

Thanks a lot, for the logo placement, I can't claim ownership of the idea, as it comes from the look of the Black Sun Gozanti image that you can find online.

As for the rest, well, we have a narrative campaign started with a bunch of friends, and it got me motivated to try to create scanarios and missions.

To answer both you and ianmiddy we playtested one, and the rules for the obstacles where something like this:

Bespin Terrain WIP rules

All obstacles (even the clouds) have a clear plastic base so that ships overlapping them can be placed by removing the terrain but leaving their base. A ship or maneuver template is considered overlapping the terrain when it effectively overlaps its base (ignore the "cosmetic" terrain).

Tibanna Refinery

Treated like a friendly ship in terms of overlapping ships and maneuver templates

No Hull or Shield value (not destroyable for the mission played)

Docking: Any ship may dock to the station (using Heroes of the Aturi Cluster docking rules) provided there is no other ship docked already (the docking area is represented by the square zone close to the docking arms).

Effect and purpose of docking varies depending on the scenario (in this one, there was some valuable data hidden in the refinery to retrieve)

Tibanna Gas collector

Treated like an asteroid in terms of overlapping ships and maneuver templates. Ships may acquire Target locks on collectors.

2 Hull, 1 shield.

Unstable contents: When the Tibanna Gas collector looses its last hull point, each ship at range one rolls one red die and suffers any damage or crtitical damage rolled. If the attack that made it loose its last hull point inflicted more damage than its remaining hull value, increment the range of the blast by one for each extra damage (to a maximum of three).

Heavy Tibanna Gas Cloud

Untangible: This obstacle has no effect on ship maneuvers whatsoever, it does however obstruct attacks like any other obstacle (+ one green die to defender).

Reactive particles: Any ship performing attacks (primary or secondary) while its maneuver template overlaps a Heavy Tibanna Gas Cloud recieves one damage for every critical hit result obtained (regardless of damage being inflicted to the target).

It is all a work in progress, and I know this is the "painting and modification" section but feel free to share any feedback since this was tested only once! It was pretty fun though.

I was maybe thinking about making the collectors a little more tanky, but the explosions with variable area of effects provided lots of fun (especially since one side's secondary objective was to blow them up). It encouraged things such as, "mmmh, maybe I'll shoot at it with a puny Tie to make sure I don't get my other ships in the blast" or even using target locks to reroll a hit that was "too good".

As for the clouds, I was also hesitating in making them actually boost the power of ships firing from within them (in the lore Tibanna makes ship weapons more powerful) but decided against it to keep things simple. It was fun to have obstacles that you can "hide in" and that werent harmful unless you shoot.

Thanks again for your comments.

I really like your shadowcaster. I really dislike the stock paint scheme. Good repaints make me like the ship better.

I will echo ianmiddy, what paints did you use for the white/grey? Curious what you used on the Kihraxz and Scyk.

I really like your shadowcaster. I really dislike the stock paint scheme. Good repaints make me like the ship better.

I will echo ianmiddy, what paints did you use for the white/grey? Curious what you used on the Kihraxz and Scyk.

Oh, sorry, forgot to answer that! Well, depending on which parts you are talking about, the gray actually might be the stock paint scheme. I masked some parts with masking tape before painting, so the cockpit plus some parts of the engines are stock.

The rest is black highlighted with GW's charadon granite and Adeptus Battlegrey if I'm not mistaken.

These are awesome! I love the theme. Good job on the repaints, and the map. It looks pretty awesome for what it is.

The YV-666 kinda looks like it just got out of the car wash and immediately ran through a puddle of sludge that splashed all over the front.

That Lancer is incredible!

Amazing repaints!

Everything... is... just... soooooo... awesome!

very impressive for 2 nights of work - a really cohesive looking fleet sir!

It's so good it hurts! The shadow caster has served me well through many conflicts and deserves a shadows of the empire worthy paint job. How much to buy a lancer just like that?...I may NEED this in my x-wing life.