If you ever hate yourself a bunch, paint these! Just kidding.. It’s doable, just expect to get paint all over your fingertips or the flight stands if you prefer to hold them that way.
For today’s painting exposition, I will be presenting the B Wing in three different schemes. The classic movie (Episode 6), aces from the X Wing Rebel Aces expansion pack, and a hybrid to make spotting Ten Numb’s B Wing easier (doesn’t REALLY matter because he is part of a squadron, but it matters to me).
I used the following colors from Games Workshop’s line of paints. Once again this is not a promotion or sponsorship, I just really like their paints.
Starting out, I used Base Corax White for the Ace pilots and the named character(s). In giant games I want it to be easy to spot my heroes amongst dozens of B Wing Squadrons. For my cannon fodder, I started with Layer Karak Stone, painting them all over. Holding them was tricky. I started by holding the cockpit and then holding them by the autocannons as I wrapped up. The tan barely changes here, but it’s important to have that base coat since I am not priming.
Next, I used Shade Soulblight Grey on the Aces and Shad Nuln Oil on the sacrificial pilots. Soulblight is a very mild shade that compliments Corax very well and is fantastic for most white application including clothing. My Nuln Oil is still pretty full, so I didn’t have to worry about it going on to heavy, but if yours is getting dark dip your brush in water first to dilute it.
With my ships toned down just slightly and detail brough out along crevices, I used Layer Dawnstone to apply the mid grey coloring on the ships. For the originals, this included the cannon array hanging down, part of the hull there, the barrels, wing stripes, and the engine housing. Aces use more red, so they had minimal effects put in at this time. Note the heavy cannon array paint does sweep up intentionally onto the strut in canon.
Aces got the red paint treatment with Base Mephiston Red on the cockpit, cannon barrels, and the cannon array housing. A few other marks exist on the engine housing and just “below” the cockpit. For characters, I did the typically Grey in locations the tan ones had, but kept the hull white.
Movie paint jobs have slightly brighter red dots on the wings and struts, much like Japanese aircraft in WW2. I used Layer Wazdakka Red, but you can use the Mephiston Red and no one will probably notice.
Lastly, engines! I painted the back of the cowling with Base Khorne Red. These are not indented like the Falcon, so in some ways its easier. I then put Base Mephiston Red, a slightly smaller circle of Layer Wazdakka Red, and lastly a dot about half the diameter of the cowling using Layer Wild Rider Red to help give it that glow. Normally I would suggest a wash or contrast, but in this case it popped just right!
And there you have it! I was quite pleased with how this came out!
Intergalactic Empire Productions 