Space Dinosaur Miniatures: Hobby | Pint-sized Squadrons

In Star Wars Armada, all of the big ships come pre-painted. I've been adding some of my own details to the ships, which has been good practice. You see, the little ships don't have any paint on them, and so require you to come up the paint yourself (I guess if you don't mind bare plastic, you aren't required to do anything). I've taken a quick stab at two of the "squadrons" that I randomly picked out of the box of tiny Star Wars fighters: the Millennium Falcon, an Imperial Shuttle, Republic V-19 Starfighters, and Separatist Vulture Droids. More after the hyperspace jump.

The first thing to note about these models is that they are tiny. And I mean it. That shuttle is about the size of a penny. While you may think that makes it more difficult to paint, it actually makes it much easier. A wash and a drybrush go a really long way. Details are really suggestions at this scale. You're looking at it from a table away. So dots of color are enough to imply that whole panels are painted.

Pictured: A thumbnail.

Secondly, none of these models are actually squadrons, at least in our military sense. The Falcon and shuttle are a flight of 1, and technically the V-19's and Vulture Droids are a flight of 3. Squadrons are composed of 2 or more flights. But, the Star Wars universe can make its own rules.

It's also fairly quick, a basecoat, wash, cleanup and then some detail paints that don't necessarily need to be washed. You can see the difference between the painted and unpainted versions below:

These V-19's got just a tad more detail. That's mostly a result of color scheme more than anything else. I followed artwork I found online, and I think it does a good job of approximating the look. No highlights on the engines or anything like that. Keeping things simple. I did a little bit of experimenting to get my Republic paints locked-in. All 3 got the same basecoat but with different washes. I have decided to go with the middle scheme as I think it looks most accurate, but the first scheme may be good for Rebel fighters.

The little stripes were fun to do though, just a quick dash across with the very tip of my paintbrush. The engine lights were fun too, just a dot paint. Really simple for great effect.

The Vulture Droids took just a bit more effort in the brush control department: lots of diagonal lines on such a small scale took some concentration. But they're color scheme was dead simple. I eschewed the of the roundels that would normally be on fighters, as they'd just look like dots at this scale, and it's not worth it (to me) to attempt to make those look good when they're the cheap chaff units of the game. Save that stuff for the big ships.