Commander Skywalker, Reporting In

I avoided getting into Star Wars Legion for several years. In fact, my buddy Tim (aka TK-15054) offered to give me the Rebels from both of his starter sets if I’d play. I resisted, not wanting to get into yet another army-size game and hours and hours worth of large painting project.

Years later, I was browsing Mel’s shop on Shapeways looking for Rebel Ships to add to Null Fleet (SW Armada, coming soon, for reals — I’m working on it now) and came across a Gamma-class Assault Troop Transport. I thought, “that would be cool to add to the fleet as a dropship for Lt. Page and the Katarn Commandos.

…in fact, Lt. Page and the Katarn Commandos would be a pretty cool theme for Legion. Backed up by Rogue Squadron. Aw, crap.”

Aaand that was that. I hit Tim up — he’d moved hours and hours away by this point, but like a true pal (and devious Star Wars junkie enabler) he was still happy to send me his spare Rebel stuff. (Thanks again, bro!)

I decided to start with Luke. I already had a T-47 that I purchased some time before just to have a cool model, and I knew that would be Wedge. I started thinking about converting some other unit to Rogue pilots on foot, but that would come later. Now, Luke needs some special attention to turn the Bespin fatigues figure included in the starter set into a flightsuited badass for my force.

I liked the idea of him wearing a sort of bomber jacket over his flightsuit, so decided to focus on his legs. Plus, the older Legion models are cast in a cruddy plastic that’s a bitch to work with, so the less modding in that regard the better. I shaved down his boots in an attempt to smooth them out to more closely resemble the black jack boots, then had to “fix” a bit of his right pant leg using green stuff. Already you can see that I’m no pro sculptor. I rolled out some sausages & smooshed ‘em flat, then cut strips to create his ejection harness straps and the band of flares around his calf. Some thin styrene rod made for decent if somewhat bulky flares.

After basecoats everything is looking good enough for me! I won’t get into specific colors too much here — while I do have it written down (because I do keep paint records… obviously) I actually went back & forth a bit trying to get the right shades, particularly on the orange. This ended up being a mix of Citadel Jokaero and Troll Slayer Oranges, a Sepia wash, then layered up with the base mix plus successively more Troll Slayer, topped off with pure Troll Slayer highlights.

I cut a tiny rectangle from a thin plastic gift card to make the rank badge and dotted it for Naval Commander. Gotta love the WEG Rebel Alliance Sourcebook. The badge should actually be on his other breast, but I felt this worked best for the model.

For the Rogue Squadron logo, I blocked-out the basic shapes with very thin paint, then filled it in. Meh, it works.

A tiny Alliance patch on the shoulder and he’s ready to rep the best fighter unit in the galaxy.

Question, comments? Let me know below.