Star Wars Armada is the latest high buzz miniatures game to come from Fantasy Flight Games. I’ve avoided getting into the other Star Wars title, but I’ve been looking for a playable capital ship game and I’ve got a lot of time for FFG’s writers and editors. As a result I’ve given this game a go, and I’ve got to say I’m very impressed. However, this post is not a review of the game, rather a short post about how I painted my Tie Fighters.
Now, Armada is a pre-painted game so you don’t have to do any painting; the big capital ships do come fairly well painted, but the fighters come in plain plastic. From a manufacturing stand point this is fair enough: they’re tiny and not the main feature. These facts make them an ideal spot to save a little money. However, most of the posts on this page revolve around painting very small things and so I thought I’d show some pics and describe how I did it.
I started by priming black and then a base coat in a very dark grey (almost black). Once this had dried I painted the central bulb, edges and veins in a light grey. I tried to avoid the inside of the engine on the rear and the large solar cells. There was a little bit of back and forth with the two greys painting and correcting errors. On the inside edges of the solar collectors I had to free-hand the grey support veins. I thought about skipping this step, but now I’ve finished it I’m quite happy I did it – I recommend this step. The last bit of careful painting was two green dots on the front lasers. I finished off with a wash and that was it.
One thing I did do was paint 3 of them in pastel blue: the original movies had both blue and grey ties. Grey was in the original movie, while blue was used in the 2nd and 3rd. I though this was a good way to make Howlrunner distinct from the rest of them.
The white splotches have been cleaned up (a small issue with the varnish), I’m pretty happy with how they came out. It took a little longer than I’d thought (most of an afternoon), but I’m happy with how they worked out. I used the following colours:
- Base Coat: Dark Grey Blue (VMA 71.054).
- Body: USAF Medium Grey (VMA 71.120).
- Howlrunner Body: Pastel Blue (VMC 70.901).
- Lasers: Cruiser Tank Green (VMC 70.700).
- Wash: NATO Camouflage Wash (A.MIG-1008).
