"To me, she's royalty."

Everybody loves Princess Leia but not everybody loves FFG's Leia miniature for Star Wars Legion. he sculpt seems a bit odd from certain angles. The hairpiece doesn't quite work from the front, the right hand is huge while the lefthand is tiny, the blaster is ridiculously large... You name it... 

I was not massively impressed by the sculpt either when I got my hands on it and decided to keep my eyes peeled for alternative models. Although I'm still searching for a nice "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" version of Leia and Luke, this Marvel style Leia by Skull Forge Studios is the best I've seen so far.

Although my first impression was that she was on the rather short side, I soon realized that the FFG Leia wasn't the tallest herself. Furthermore, most of the detailing on the Skull Forge Leia is rather delicate while the FFG Leia's details seem to be quite crude. I became curious how this would look on the finished miniatures and decided to just paint both.You be the judge... Which version do you like better?

Abregado Fusiliers: 2nd Squad

Just before the temperature in my flat made Mustafar look like a chilly place, I fled the city... Not before I managed to finish the second squad of my Abregado Fusiliers, tho:

Blue Squad of Abregado Fusiliers' Besh Company

All the squad's members were converted from regular Rebel troopers as described earlier. An easy head- or armswap is already enough to make your forces look more interesting. Nevertheless I went a bit further and sculpted new heads and limbs for the Mon Cal captain and the Ithorian Z-6 trooper.

Terrain Speed Build: Explosions and Smoke

 

On the one hand terrain is key to an interesting game of Legion, on the other hand good terrain takes time to make. So what happens if you want to play but haven't finished your 1:1 replica of Coruscant yet? You have to improvise...

Explosion and smoke markers are terrain building at its simplest. Materials are cheap, building takes no time at all and storage is easy.

All you need is:

1. Polyester Fiber Fill/ pillow stuffing

2. LED tealight candles

3. cheap black spray paint

4. glue (I use spray adhesive but a hot glue gun or even superglue would work too.)

Just rip off some of the pillow stuffing and pluck it into a shape you like. Then cover the tealight in adhesive and attach it to the stuffing. Finally spray the stuffing with your black paint. (I went darker at the bottom and only sprayed the top of the smoke clouds lightly.)

This is it, you're done... Simplest terrain project ever... Shouldn't have taken you longer than 10 minutes...

Skull Forge Studios: Downed Pilot and Starkiller

I already praised the awesomeness of Skull Forge's Downed Pilot but there's another mini I just finished, the Avenging Acolyte.

Again, I'm really surprised how few cleaning up is required to get these prints prepped for painting. I had some problems painting the pilot because I just gave him a quick rinse which obviously wasn't enough and made the painting process quite tedious. This time I thoroughly scrubbed the leftover residue off the miniature and had much nicer results.
I concealed some printer lines in prominent spaces like the face or the chest, using Vallejo Gloss Varnish but I actually think that applying the paint in slightly thicker layers might already do the job.

Although realistly scaled, the Acolyte's lightsaber is quite flimsy. Since I wanted to replace it anyways, I took the opportunity to apply some of Thorin's LED magic to this guy as well...^^

Abregado Fusiliers: Fleet Trooper Conversion

If there's a classic Star Wars species that's underrepresented in Star Wars Legion, it's the Twi'lek. Naturally I can't have a Rebel force without some of those guys...

Legion: Downed Pilot Objective

After my postive experiences with Imperial Terrain, I took another shallow dive into the Legion back market. 3D printing has already been popular with FFG's X-Wing and it seems that Legion will have a massive Shapeways 3D printing community as well. While everyone knows Mel Miniatures, I hadn't heard of Skull Forge Studios before and ordered a couple of their miniatures for testing. First one fnished is this downed Rebel Pilot which will be used as an objective marker:

While amazingly detailed, I think the material is quite challenging. Although the model itself barely needs any cleanup at all, the material is super brittle and makes any conversions (new antenna made from a guitar string) rather difficult. Furthermore I had quite a problem making my paint stick to the model. Neither spray paint nor regular paint seemed to stick very well. I was having massive chipping problems while painting and I'm worried that paint might just rub off even after spraycoating the whole miniature...

Any advice from experienced 3D printers would be highly appreciated...

Jedi Wear Their Sunglasses at Night

I finally came around to try out Thorin's LED saber mod tutorial... What can I say? It works... and it's an absolute blast to see the lightsaber of your tiny Luke light up. I can't thank him enough for sharing this brilliant idea.

I'm going to burn through quite a few batteries the next days...

Again: I can fully recommend Thorin's tutorial. It's easy to follow and has brilliant results.