Painting Squadrons

Posted on January 15, 2020

I finished the display board, but we won’t get to that for a couple days.

After I finished the board and put all my ships on it, it was exceedingly obvious that my squadrons had no paint on them. The main ships come out of the box painted, but not the tiny little squadrons. I had to fix this before the Armada Prime this weekend.

My fleet is now set, not in stone, but in a stone-like substance that could still be changed but is unlikely to. So I grabbed the 12 tiny little space ships and set to painting!

I started with white primer, as is my tradition, and then split the painting roughly by ship:

VCX – Drakenhof Nightshade all over, drybrush Fortress Grey, drybrush Ulthuan Grey, drybrush white highlighters, Trollslayer Orange spot.
Y-Wing – Drakenhof Nightshade, drybrush Fortress Grey, drybrush Ulthuan Grey, Dwarf Bronze spot, Nuln Oil over it.
Shara Bey/A-Wing – Rakarth Flesh, Trollslayer Orange triangle and some spots, Bloodletter glaze all over, Scar White on the wing tips and guns.
Lando Calrissian/YT-1300 — Nuln Oil, drybrush Fortress Grey, drybrush Ulthuan Grey, Dwarf Bronze spot.
YT-2400 — Nuln Oil, drybrush Fortress Grey, drybrush Ulthuan Grey, Trollslayer Orange spot.
Black + ‘ardcoat for shiny cockpits, and Ice Blue for all the engines.

When I got half way through the A-Wings, I was pretty sure the colour combination was not going to work. I had this feeling that Rakarth was a lighter beige than it really was, and when I put the orange over it, it was pretty bad. That’s when you start experimenting! The Bloodletter was an attempt at bringing the two colours together, and the Scar White really gave them a great pop.

Before starting, I scoured the FFG painting forums for examples of how people painted these things. While I could have “just started painting”, I think the old adage about knowing the rules before you break them is a solid one. See what others have done, then try to improve on it.

Here are two links to some painting threads of folks on FFG who are doing a phenomenal job, and who’s style I attempted to emulate:

And last, here’s a couple photos of the squadrons.