- Tattúínárdǿla saga, Chapter 36: Concerning the Norwegian Fleet
I made my first ever Star Wars: Armada purchase in 2018, when we first played Star Wars: Rebellion. That game ended memorably when the Emperor himself led a single assault carrier to the just-relocated rebel base. In honor of the Imperial victory, I bought an assault carrier pack for Armada, which served as a TV table ornament. Because my co-commander is a big TIE Fighter player from back in the day, I also bought the Imperial Fighter Squadron II expansion on a whim, as it includes Maarek Stele.
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Eventually, the pressure to buy the actual game became overwhelming - especially as it was dramatically cheaper at our friendly overseas gaming store, and I finished painting Star Wars: Rebellion. However, the lockdown scrapped our gaming plans - especially when our table was taken over by the Reformation. But I found painting the little starfighters surprisingly good fun, so for the moment, I guess I'm mostly just collecting the models.
I don't know why I got such a strong sense of deja vu spraypainting them, though!
I finished the X-wings first. It's very satisfying how much better they look with just a simple paint job compared to the unpainted models. I did the same here as I did with the Rebellion ones: Black details, Gunmetal Grey guns, Ivory hull, the squadron stripes and a Smoke wash over everything.
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On the Imperial side, I started with the VT-49 Decimators and Lambda-class shuttles. I tried to keep things simple, so I started by painting the windows and whatnots black, and then giving them a base coat of Dark Seagreen and a Light Grey drybrush.
Again, very simple and very effective. The Rogues and Villains pack was somewhat more interesting because of the variety of the models, but I'm quite happy with how I did.
The Falcon, for instance, is just Ivory with black details and a Smoke wash, but I think it works excellently. I never really had any particular feelings about any of the rebel hardware from the movies - I still don't - but painting the Rebellion miniatures made me appreciate how important the worn and scuffed aesthetic is to the rebel side. I'm thinking about some Tau in rebel-like broken white for Warhammer. Incidentally, I'm really happy with Boba Fett's ship:
The YV-666 is in yellow because that's what it looked like on the squadron card? Anyway I don't know how much use we'll ever make of these things, but it's nice to have a tiny little Millenium Falcon, and they were fun to paint. Now if only we could get the Ebon Hawk!
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During the quarantine, we found a good deal online for the Corellian Conflict expansion. I was interested in it for the campaign rules, but it also comes with squadron cards for Norra Wexley's Y-Wing Squadron and also Poe Dameron's mother. So the sensible thing to do was put in an order for the Rebel Fighter Squadrons pack. I painted the Rogue Squadron X-wings, Poe's mom's A-wings and the Y-wings.
I said earlier I don't have any particular feelings for any of the rebel hardware from the movies, and that's still true, but I'm discovering a real affinity for the Y-wing. It kind of reminds me of the one-man spaceships in Frontier: Elite II, which was a pretty big experience for me as a kid. I repeated what I did with the Rebellion models, so black and gunmetal for the nacelles, copper for the dorsal wiring and, of course, Ivory and Smoke. Norra Wexley flew for Gold Squadron, and I'm painting the other squadron green because I like green.
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Oddly enough, during all this Armada squadrons have become my favorite thing to paint right now. I wasn't originally very interested in Rebel Fighter Squadrons II, but painting the Y-wings got me thinking about a Rebel fleet with lots of cheap fighters, and the Z-95 Headhunters would be perfect for that. But I mean I really got it for Ketsu Onyo. Look at her!
As an added bonus, there's a VCX-100 freighter, and even E-wings. Bizarrely, I got two extra E-wings! Not sure what to do with them. Looking at pictures of the VCX-100s and Lancers online, their base color seems to be grey, but I've taken the liberty of painting them with the same Ivory/Smoke scheme of the other rebel ships.
And here are the E-wings, Z-95s and Wedge Antilles' X-wings.
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Finally, yes, I did also eventually get around to painting all the gazillion TIE Fighters that came with the core set, and the TIE Phantoms too. I did what I had done with the Rebellion TIEs as well and started with a Neutral Grey drybrush on the hull, but I did the edges and "spokes" on the wings in Light Grey this time.
And the TIE Defenders, including Maarek Stele's squadron. On the one hand, I could have done better with these; on the other, I never want to see a single Defender on my desk ever again.
Then I made it worse for myself by getting the Corellian Conflict expansion, because it meant I had the squadron card for Ciena Ree's TIE Interceptors, so I got the only squadron expansion I was missing: the Imperial Fighter Squadrons.
And here they are.
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So yeah, apparently a thing that happened during the pandemic was that I ended up owning every squadron expansion to Star Wars: Armada. I still haven't painted everything, but I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. This has been a really good reminder that my first love in miniatures was 6mm Epic, and I still really enjoy painting the tiny stuff. Now, I still have piles of Warhammer things to finish, but I should really look into more smaller-scale miniatures.
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