Let's Paint a Twilight Imperium Faction

Our first ever game of Twilight Imperium, The Assassination of Bug Jesus by the Coward Space Turtles, was won by the Barony of Letnev playing with the red miniatures in a very sort of sneaky, Dark Eldar-y fashion. I've decided to do the same thing as I've done with Scythe, which is to paint each faction, or in this case color, as they win. I enjoy painting board game miniatures, and I also feel that it's just so much more fun to play with painted minis. After all, my return to miniature hobbying was through painting Star Wars: Rebellion, a game very similar to Twilight Imperium. I've also been working on a lot of little ships lately. So I'm painting the red fleet.

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So, what we're looking at here is 59 units to paint. There are twelve infantry units, six planetary defence systems and three space docks, and the rest are spaceships: a flagship, two War Suns, five dreadnoughts, eight cruisers, four carriers, eight destroyers and ten fighters.

That's not even a lot compared to painting all of Rebellion in one go. As these are board game pieces, I do want to stick with red and avoid anything too dark, so as to make sure they stand out on the game board and are obviously the red faction. I'm thinking of something Word Bearers-ish, so a dark red.

I decided to start with the cruisers. They got a basecoat of Burnt Cadmium Red, with a drybrush of Dark Red. I then picked out some details in Gunmetal Grey, and painted the outer edges Dark Vermillion.

While I was working on the cruisers, I got an idea for how to paint the infantry bases: Gunmetal Grey and a Black Glaze wash, with red details.

I liked it, so I went with it, and added Dark Vermillion flags. I'm very happy with the result.

The Deep Space Nines space docks were fairly easy to paint.

For the war suns, I went with a very simple paint job that made them look a lot like Word Bearers Death Stars, which makes me happy. The models themselves, however, did not: they're so spiky that no matter how I tried to pick them up, some paint chipped off, even after a double coat of varnish. So I stuck them on 32mm bases.

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Next up were the carriers. I did the same as with the cruisers: Burnt Cadmium Red base coat, drybrush with Dark Red and pick out some details with Dark Vermillion. I also left the underside clearly darker than the top of the hull, so it's easier to tell which way is up.

I did a quick little paint job on the PDSes; I considered making the gun barrel metallic, but decided to stick with the board game esthetic.

Then it was time for the dreadnoughts, which, again, I kept very simple.

As well as the flagship.

I mean these are basically star destroyers and a super star destroyer, so that's what I went for, with the exception of the brighter edges to make them hopefully stand out on the board.

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I gave the destroyers a bit more detail, but they have the same overall scheme.

And finally, just in time for our next game, the fighters.

I went for a darker, slightly more Word Bearers scheme on them.

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So here's the red fleet!

This was fun to paint, and I even managed to finish in time for our next game! For someone like me, who constantly has about two thousand unfinished hobby projects going, it's very therapeutical to be able to actually start and finish something.