Hailfire Droids 15mm

It was actually quite hard to find reference for these tank destroyers. As always with Star wars, sometimes it's the toys that can be the most useful when it comes to reference material.

This toy of the droid is very colourful and doesn't quite match the rusty brown ones from the film. So, I plan to do a mixture of both and see what happens.

I did a fair bit of under painting with the idea of using some GW Contrast paint to shade it.

A close up of the toy taken from a YouTube video. I was surprised to see all the colours being used.

There are quite a few subtle shades on the droid, so I tried some under painting to show these.

I like the idea of the body of the droid being slightly greenish, so I gave the models a green ink wash. Being a fast moving droid with big wheels, I coated the model in a heavy earth wash to weather it. This should tie some of the colours together as well.

 A detail of the patterns that will hopefully come through once the model is painted with Contrast paint.

UPDATE; Done! The tank killers are fully loaded and ready to bring hell to the Clones.

I've included some greens and blues into the browns, hopefully this looks a little more interesting than just brown all over. I've really weathered and chipped the paint work, I figure these large droids are throwing themselves around at great speed. I imagine they will get pretty knocked about bouncing around the terrain.

I painted all four at once so the colours wouldn't vary from model to model.

The eye lenses are in and the droid is now awake!

My ruleset for this conflict has some scary rules for these droids. The first time they fire they get ten attack dice. The second time, they get eight, then drop back to six dice like most tanks. This all seems terrifying, however, they only have four wounds. This makes them fairly brittle compared to the other tanks on the battlefield.

I had another play test of my Clone wars rules last night and it resulted in a very good game. This time I was the game's master with my son playing against a friend.

The droids had the numbers and inflicted heavy casualties on the Republic forces, including bringing down a AT-TE. A team of elite ARC troopers was also destroyed from heavy tank fire.

However the objective of the game was to grab and hold supply posts. This the Clones managed to do by the end and so won the game.

A Clone company with E-Web and walker support. The large walker turned into a fire magnet and was finally brought down. It had thick armour plating but this failed to save it from the storm of blaster and rocket fire.

Everyone had a good time and it was a lot of fun. I think I'm ready to take this to the wargames club now...

UPDATE: The Hailfire Droids are now painted and have got their coat of matte lacquer from Halfords. I now swear by this stuff now... highly recommended by the way.

A battalion of B1 battle droids has also been finished so I can base the two units at the same time.

These are going to be a nightmare on the battlefield with their rocket volleys. I quite like the fact they are droids and not just tanks with crew operating them. These things have a very basic mind of their own. 

The commerce guild created these rolling weapons platforms and they were quickly added to the armies of the CIS when the war broke out.

These B1's are classed as green for their skill level, but have had their hit points increased because of the vast numbers. So a battalion of these droids may not be the best shots but have increased staying power because there are so many. 

To help the look of this, these droids are based four to a base and are in battalions of six bases. Clone troopers are three to a base and are in a platoon of five bases.

Quantity has a quality all of its own...

Captain Fordo and his ARC Troopers

 

I managed to finish these guys up today and get them based.

The Cian blue is a perfect match to the cartoon, however, they are very similar to troopers from the 501st legion. The shoulder pauldrons really help to make stand apart from the normal clones. 

The decals look good on the backpacks now the matte varnish is dry.

Heavy Z-6 firepower covers the team as they advance. The team also sports a rocket launcher and a sniper.

Captain Fordo leads the way.

Here we can see troopers from the 501st legion, they look very similar but not quite the same.