Hi guys,

I finally decided to set up this place for my Armada repaints. X-Wing and Armada not only brought me into miniature gaming, but also made me dive back into model building and painting. After some practice and try-and-error (on and off over the last two years) I'm more and more happy with the results. By the way, thank you all for your tutorials, guides and tips. This helped me so much!

Taking good pics has been a bit of a challenge. I'm still figuring out my new photo setup, which is still very amateurish, but at least is much brighter than taking photos on my office desk :).

I started playing Armada in 2017 mostly with Imperials because I already focused on Rebels in X-Wing. But our local Armada community is rather small (mostly 2, sometimes 4 players), and there already where 2 other Imperials and only one Rebel player with little spare time. So I switched sides after some months and joined the alliance. During my time serving the Emperor I decided that I really needed to make those Imperial Fighters more pretty, so i dived into painting tiny Amada Squadrons (also, Imperial squadrons are rather easy as a beginner projects - uniform colors, easy ship geometry!).

Lets start with these squadrons! (I just now noticed that some are rather dusty...)

Good old plain TIE Fighter, followed by Howlrunner and Mauler Mithel:

TIE Interceptors - always fast, sometimes furious! Followed by Fel Soontir himself (yes, those lines are a bit wobbly, things improved a lot on later squads :)) .

TIE Phantoms. Never really used them, but the model is really neat.

Tie Defender prototype! I always loved that color scheme!

Tie Advanced, always a willing escort. I still need to finish my Darth Vader squad - one TIE Advanced escorted by two TIE Fighers, ANH style...

And finally, Major Rhymer:

The specialist squadrons are a bit more interesting to look at:

Generic Lambda Shuttle:

Colonel Jendons Shuttle:

Generic Decimator:

Hero Decimator, aka Morna's ship:

Dengar's Jumpmaster. I really spent way too much time researching the color scheme, but I'm still very pleased with the result:

Boba's Firespray. Another one of my favorite painted squads:

Bossk's "Hound's Tooth":

And finally, the IG-2000 (It seems i forgot to paint blue stripes... ?!)

When I finally switched to the Rebel side, I quickly decided that light beige colored rebel fighter just wouldn't do it. They just looked way too uniform and boring (and that's the Imperial way of life, as we all know ). So..... where to start? Well... what's the best known Rebel fighter, already generously provided in the core box? Yup, I wanted to paint up some T65 X-Wings, and I decided to go as close to the original Red Squadron from ANH as humanly possible (within a certain limit).

Which in retrospect, after having painted every available rebel squad, mostly in multiples, was not my brightest idea... the model is terribly sculpted almost without any detail (cockpits? what's that?), there was a lot of flash between the s-foils from aging injection molds, and there are laser cannons sticking everywhere. Enough to crush the spirits of a hopeful noob... . Almost any other Rebel squad is easier to paint.

Luckily I found a handy guide on how to paint the cockpit windows, so I didn't have to wrap my head around that problem. But still, doing these with a tiny brush was one of the most annoying and nerve-wrecking things since I started painting again...

A blurred WIP shot I found on my phone:

After extensive research on Wookiepedia and several of my own SW reference books I found enough material to recreate the original ANH T65s.

Featuring:

- Wedge's squadron : Wedge himself is in the middle as Red 2, with Red Leader on his right side and a fictional Red 9 on his left side

- Biggs' squadron : Biggs as Red 3 is leading this wing in the center, with J. Doe (Red 4) on his right side and a fictional Red 7 on his left

- Luke's squadron : Luke is leading this wing from the middle, with Jek Porkins as Red 6 on his left and a fictional Red 8 on his right side.

- Finally there is Blue Squadron , loosely based on their namesakes from Rogue One

Nice work. Your shuttles, in particular, look terrific. Every time I think about painting my squadrons, I remember how small they are... and how many I have... and I think better of it. 😂

2 minutes ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

Nice work. Your shuttles, in particular, look terrific. Every time I think about painting my squadrons, I remember how small they are... and how many I have... and I think better of it. 😂

Thank you so much! Honestly, I only paint small batches every few months. I can't do it all the time, but when I dive into another group I find it very relaxing and almost meditative. Personally I find the tiny scale very liberating - you don't have to paint every detail painstakingly (quite differently from X-Wing minis, for example). And if one particular squad just doesn't turn out well on the first attempt (sometimes I need more than one try to "figure out" the model) - off it goes into the 99% isopropanol vat. Not much work lost, and a clean slate to start anew!

Still need to edit my backlog of photos - in the meantime, a small holiday side project:

Command in style!

It's time for some Rebel starfighters! Ever since the good old X-Wing PC games two ships held a special place in my heart - trusty old Y-Wings and agile A-Wings! A lot of the things I learned while painting the X-Wings above went into these, and overall I think it really payed off.

Introducing: Norra Wexley (green squad), Gold Squad (yellow squad), Dutch Vander (back row, yellow squad with red accents) and a generic Blue Squad. At some point I might add some engine glow, but couldn't get myself motivated yet.

Continuing with the A-Wings, from front left to back right: Green Squadron, a generic Red Squad, Shara Bey in blue, and finally Tycho in Red with orange markings:

The last squads I painted (just a few months ago) were my B-Wings - this time I decided to go more colorful with some. From left to right: Ten Numb in traditional blue/orange, Blade Squad with red stripes and black accents, a generic squad with grey stripes and red dots, and finally Keyan Farlander in shiny red, loosely based on the B-Wing prototype markings.

Very Nice! Those A Wings are especially clean!

9 hours ago, Atromix said:

Very Nice! Those A Wings are especially clean!

Thank you! It really helps that their models are much better sculpted than for example the T65 one. But I also just love the ship - not necessarily as a squad in Armada, but still - so I had to get them "right".

Love your A- and B-Wings! And the yellow accented Defenders. It’s all impressive.

On 2/2/2020 at 9:04 PM, Rmcarrier1 said:

Love your A- and B-Wings! And the yellow accented Defenders. It’s all impressive.

Thanks! (I'm a bit late, sorry...)

I love the engine glow on your TIEs, not to mention most people put them on the wrong places.

Also your A-wings are indeed outstanding especially the Blue ones.

On 3/4/2020 at 12:26 AM, Gräfin Zeppelin said:

I love the engine glow on your TIEs, not to mention most people put them on the wrong places.

Also your A-wings are indeed outstanding especially the Blue ones.

Thank you so much! Don't tell anyone I spent 15 min to paint the triangles on the blue A-Wings just to notice that I had them point in the wrong direction... 🤦‍♂️

(and yes, wrong TIE engines - twin, it's in the name! - annoy me too :D)