So, I haven’t painted anything for over 5 years (last was a converted Blood Bowl orc team), but with my children getting older and my wife hitting the gym several evenings a week, I am starting to find myself with free time. During those five years, I have continued buying games and now have lots of plastic, so I feel a strong urge to paint. Today, I am off to various stores to try and pick up what I will need to do three test stormtroopers. I’ve started this thread to try and maintain motivation as I have everything up until the last two boxes, so I have quite a lot to catch up on (not to mention Zombicide, TMNTs and Mice and Mystics...).

Haha you're brave to start with the stormtroopers (so much white!), but I wish you the best of luck! I got into painting with this game, and it's been a lot of fun so far.

I'm an average painter but my advice for stormtroopers is: Buy Lahmian Medium or some other medium for thinning paint. When thinning white, use a little bit of the medium and as well as water and it'll flow much more nicely than with pure water.

Also, when washing, mix in a little bit of blue into black wash and again Lahmian medium or some other glaze medium. It won't be as dark and you'll save yourself so much work highlighting. You can always darken some recesses etc. with added layers of the wash. It's way easier than using a darker wash and highlighting up.

And finally, welcome to painting Imperial Assault! It's a fun game to paint.

I bought an airbrush-citadel white for stormtrooper painting (it's way thinner than regular paint) and just apply it with a normal brush - that way, I don't have to thin the paint every time.

Stormtrooper wise, my current technique (much evolved from my core set troopers, which took forever!) is:

> Prime with a decent white (I use Wilko craft primer - Matt)
> Paint black areas (using Vallejo German Grey)
> Neaten any areas with white
> Shade with 50/50 Nuln Oil/Lahmian medium (so the wash isn't too dark).
(Optional: Detail shade any areas once dry, i.e. Helmet / leg / arm seams etc).
> Highlight / drybrush white if needed

Then gloss varnish if you want (I like to matte finish these days)

Hope that helps, I kind feels like cheating going straight over white primer, but it does the job and looks great

P.s. welcome to the hobby / painting rabbit hole you may find yourself falling down

P.p.s Look into using a wet palette. I just made one from a tupperware lid/sponge cloth and some greaseproof paper. It works a treat, helps keeps you paint at the right consistency and really cuts down on paint usage). Also mag-glasses will come in very handy for detail (and keep your eyes from exploding), you can grab a decent pair for around £15 on amazon etc, WELL worth it).

We have a similar method to paint the stormtroopers, 54NCH32. I use a different kind of shade nowadays.

>I prime the figures white (Army Painter Matte White)

> Paint black areas (with Army Painter's Necromancer Cloak as I can't find Vallejo paints in the local store anymore but Necromancer Cloak is pretty close)

> Cleanup areas

> Shade with 1-1 Nuln Oil / Lahmian medium Or, more recently 2 parts Nuln Oil - 1 part Drakenhof Nightshade - 3 parts Lahmian medium. The blue will not tint the figure blue but it will give it a colder, less "dirty" looking look which makes highlighting easier as you can leave the shade in some recesses and it looks like a shadow.

> Highlight

> Matte Varnish (Army Painter's Anti-Shine Varnish)

> Citadel's Ard Coat for the white armor pieces

The ideas are great. I have time to think as my Games Workshop was closed. I did go and look a Vallejo paints in a modeling shop, so am now pondering price and familiarity (I know GW’s stuff, but Vallejo is so much cheaper here in Japan). I’m also thinking about brushes as my unused-in-years ones look like they need replacing.

I also realized I need to give thought to post-painting storage.

This is my storage solution. I have a large aluminium briefcase which is made for tools. And I have all the stuff except the rulebooks and the map tiles which are in the game box.

The small figures are in a plastic sort box which is sold in stores usually in the tool section. They're probably meant for screws, bolts and other small things. The 2x2 figures (Nexus, Jabba) and Wampas are in a plastic box that's below the character sheets. It has a tray which is perfect for damage and stress tokens and below that is enough room for the figures. Jabba cannot be glued to his base though or the tray won't fit back in. And the large figures I have just somewhere in the box where there's enough room.

Here's a closeup of a rebel figure box:

Some figures share a "room". The varnish protects them well enough so that they don't stick to each other and rub off paint. I have similar boxes for scum and Imperial figures. And I have all my deployment cards in a collector's album to make browsing them easier.

This is my solution and it's a compromise between space saving and protection. For better protection each figure would need its own "locker" or "room" where it would go. But my briefcase wouldn't be big enough then. And this is already bordering on what I'm willing to transport with me. The game box with map tiles fits into my backpack and then I carry the briefcase.

So... I finally began painting, or rather, priming. Back when I used to paint, I undercoated in black or white paint, but now I’m priming in a primer. I don’t know if such things always existed and I painted under a rock, or if they are a relatively new thing, but heck, that was not much fun. I just spent about two hours turning my grey storm troopers into a lighter color grey that looks messy, which the internet says is fine. Why no spray can? Temperature, space,can’t go outside as I will probably always paint at night. Anyway, they are done now, and it has made me quite aware of the details on the figures at least. Now to let them cure. Hopefully, when that is done, I won’t find the detail has all vanished - there was some worrying pooling, but apparently this stuff contracts as it dries...

The above was posted in the early hours of the morning, so now adding that I primed using Vallejo Grey Surface Primer. Lots of scary stuff online about this, but it was the available brush on option I could easily get. About eight hours after priming, the figures are looking okay. Maybe there was a little pooling around the backpacks of two of the heavy stormtroopers, a mouth grill of one regular trooper, and the boot of an E-Web, but I’m not sure if my eyes aren’t just seeing problems because of the stuff I read online. Will leave them for another day or so before putting some base coats on. If I can’t see the details, maybe I will strip the primer.