SWA: How to paint X-Wing Squadrons

The source of envy - X-Wings for Star Wars Armada painted by fellow blogger Ica.

Recently, among me and my friends Star Wars Armada got really big. As I have little to no money left for wargaming, I was lucky enough to receive the rebel models from my buddy Sven's starterbox. That being said, I wanted to paint them up nicely yet efficiently.

In terms of painting tutorials for Star Wars Armada, I didn't find a tutorial I found helpful for myself. On the one hand there's this super awesome painting tutorial by Ica that produces awesome squadrons, but this is beyond my skill level and not efficient enough for these models. (I am sorry to say it, but their quality when compared to other game companies isn't the greatest and they're so tiny that I don't wanna waste hours to paint them in detail. They are good enough for the price tag they come with, though.) On the other hand I have found some really basic painting tutorials that made me think "ok, I don't want mine to be that simple".

So here is my stripped down painting tutorial which uses Ica as an inspiration, but is meant for the artistically challenged like myself.


Step 1: basecoat the model with a white primer spray.

Step 2: prepare your palette. You don't need many colors, mostly light grey, white black, and a black wash.

Step 3: basecoat the model light grey. (I am painting here Luke Skywalker's Red Squadron because everyone among the local Imperial players hates him the most.)

Step 4: do the black wash.

Step 5: apply the same light grey paint again. However, now you should really focus on painting only the "easily accessible" areas so you don't remove the shadows you previously generated with the black wash.

Step 6: apply black paint to paint the cockpit windows and a black nose. (yes, I suck at freehands, too)

Step 7: tidy up your model with the same light grey paint again. On the nose, the X-Wing should now have only a small black lining and the tiny light grey frames should further define the cockpit.

Step 8: apply the white paint (they are flying for the good guys after all), but use a tiny bit more water than usual to water down your paint. If you are after a war torn spaceship, you don't want a pearl white spaceship. Applying a little more water when mixing up your white paint helps the grey areas to shine more through.

Step 9: add decorations and you are done.

This is how they look on their rear.

Overall painting time for this job was three hours on a Sunday night. I am a relatively slow painter, but I still believe I did something that both looks good and is efficient to paint.

From the very back in clockwise order: Red Squadron, Blue Squadron, Gold Squadron, Green Squadron.