Hobby | Black TIE Event

Thanks to Andor season 2 (seriously go watch it) I've had a strong desire to finish up my Star Wars backlog. One of those projects that's just been sitting there is this pile of First Order TIE Fighters (TIE/fo) that I've had lying around. I had a total of eight of them, which unless I'm going to play Epic (I'm not), is more than I'd ever need for a standard list which can only support a maximum of 8 models. However, I only have a single special forces TIE Fighter (TIE/sf). So I've been letting these guys sit while I waited for an idea to strike on how to achieve the conversion. I finally decided that there's not a whole lot I'd have to do to make them look the part, so I just went ahead and experimented with a couple of materials to make them into budget TIE/sf.

Before getting too involved with this conversion it was important for me to lay out the why of what I was doing. I needed extra ships, but these are basically a step above the basic TIE grunt, so to me they shouldn’t take too much effort to make some disposable units. One thing I’ve taken for granted with fantasy miniatures is that conversions are much easier due to the materials and textures in play. Gaps can be covered in cloth or leather, which is very easy to sculpt. Sci-fi ships like this are very dependent on symmetry and sharp edges to look right. At this scale that just seemed like too much effort. I also don’t have a ton of bits for sci-fi minis to make it easier. 

So I decided to focus on just 3 things: the thicker wing attachment, the antenna, and the color scheme. I opted to ignore the beefier engines in the back since that would take too much effort (to me) using traditional sculpting methods for not a lot of gain. Honestly a lot of detail gets hidden behind the oversized wings when it comes to TIE fighters anyways. I do lose a little bit of the silhouette of the TIE/sf from a topdown/back gaming view, so the compromise is not entirely without fault. 

The hardest part were the wing attachments. I had to come up with an easy way to replicate the rounded cowling but still have the right look to it. I tried cutting some tubing at first, but it looked too smooth to look right. I did some scrounging in my toolbox and found some zipties that were perfect for the job. I trimmed them down, bent them into rings using a makeshift jig and glued them in place. You do have to pop the wings out to make it work though. I broke a few of the pegs, but they were easy to glue back on and the rings actually ended up making it a stronger joint anyways. 

The antenna is just a bit of brass rod stuck into a hole I drilled. No need to get much more detailed than that here, it looks fine from a distance. Finally, I added the red coloring to the left side of the TIE which I think really pulls the whole thing together and helps to sell this as a TIE/sf instead of the basic TIE/fo. Plus it helps make them much more identifiable. The TIE on the right is an Empire TIE, but it's almost exactly the same sculpt as the original TIE that I used as a base for the conversion, so that you can see the difference. 

With that I think it’s enough of a conversion to at a glance tell what is what and makes use of some spare minis I wouldn’t have used otherwise. Opponents shouldn’t really have an issue with it anyways unless they’re being sticklers, the two types of TIEs aren’t that different to begin with. 

-The Space Dinosaur