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This tutorial shows you how to paint a complete army of Battle Droids ‘quick and easy’. This approach is really for gamers and oriented to creating large armies that they are ready for the battlefield in record time. The goal is to paint a large number of miniatures in a production line, using the same colour at the same time on all of them to save time. The techniques though are applicable to painting full stop, whatever aspect of the hobby takes your fancy.

For this tutorial, I have used the Battle Droids from the Star Wars Legion tabletop game.

Lets start!

1.- I began by priming all the miniature using Surface Primer Desert Tan (70.613).

2.- I then applied a custom was mix across all the miniatures. Thanks to this recipe, we will achieve that the paint settles in the nooks and crannies. three drops of Game Color Wash Sepia (73.200), two drops of Game Color Wash Shadow (73.203) and two drops of Flow Improver (71.462).

3.- I then applied a quick dry brush with Model Color Pale Sand (70.837), to highlight the details.

4.- On the weapons I applied Game Ink Black (72.094).

5.- I then moved on to the shoulder pads of the Battle Droids. I wanted to paint them in different colour for each of the squads, to differentiate them on the battlefield. For the red shoulder pads, I used Model Color Hull Red (70.985) as the base color.

6.- Then on the upper part of the shoulder pads I applied a mixture of Model Color Hull Red and Model Color Flat Red (70.957).

7.- Finally, the upper part was outlined using Model Color Flat Red.

8.- If you want to paint a blue squad, follow the same process as before, but using Model Color Dark Prussian Blue (70.899), Royal Blue (70.809) and Model Color Deep Sky Blue (70.844).

9.- For the green one, Game Color Heavy Black Green (72.147), Intermediate Green (70.891) and Green Blue (70.974).

10.- The leaders of each squad were identified with yellow marks. For this I followed the same technique as before, but using Game Color Heavy Gold Brown (72.151), Gold Yellow (72.007) and Moon Lunar Yellow (72.005)

11.- Now I added some wear and scratch effects using a small piece of sponge and Model Color German Camouflage Brown Black (70.822). You can also use a paintbrush to create other types of scratches.

12.- A mixture of Model Color Silver (70.997) and White (70.951) was prepared and I carefully painted it in the lower area of all the scratches created in the previous step, generating an 3D effect of damaged armour.

13.- Finally, the bases were prepared, and we would have the droids finished. The following tutorial will show how to create these bases in a matter of seconds for our entire army.

You can also see the complete tutorial on how to paint combat Droids quickly and easily in Fantasy Figures International magazine (issue 21).