How To Paint Everything – Appetite for Destruction Squad Pack for Star Wars: Shatterpoint

Welcome again, Star Wars: Shatterpoint fans! Is it time for you to paint everyone’s favorite blender with legs, General Grievous? Maybe his droid underlings? Read on to see how I approached the Appetite for Destruction Squad Pack.

Want to see equivalents to paints I use here? I personally use and recommend this series of conversion charts.

General Grievous

Author note: Goonhammer previously published a guide to painting General Grievous that I wrote. This section is adapted from that article.

My first step on almost any model I paint is to prime it with white spray primer. (For those in the U.S., I recommend Duplicolor Sandable Primer in Flat White. Your best bet is to look at auto supply stores.) Grievous was no exception. I especially wanted that bright base for the khaki/whitish armor panels in particular.

Armor and Undercarriage

• To start, I blocked out what was exterior armor paneling and what was the interior undercarriage or skeletal structure. For exterior panels I used GW Morghast Bone.
• After blocking out the armor, I switched gears and moved to basecoating all of the metallic undercarriage. I did a coat of black first, because I wanted the metal parts to look darker than my usual metallic silver style. Over the black base I used my standard Scale75 Black Metal. After that, I applied a heavy wash of GW Nuln Oil to really darken that metal down.
• I did some edge highlights on the metal with Scale Color Heavy Metal, and moved on to his cloak.

Cloak

• I started the interior of the cloak with 2-3 thin coats of GW Mephiston Red, followed by a wash of GW Carroburg Crimson. The wash wasn’t settling where I wanted it to though, down in the folds of the cloak. So I took advantage of my magnetized bases to get the wash to go where I wanted:

• When the wash dried, I highlighted the interior cloak with a combination of drybrushing and a few edge highlights. I started with a drybrush of Mephiston Red again. I then mixed in more and more orange (P3 Khador Red Highlight in this case) and drybrushed successively smaller raised areas of the cloak. I did a few edge highlights with a brush, but the drybrushing did most of the work here.
• The cloak exterior is a sort of weathered, ratty black, so I wanted to emphasize that in the paint as best I could. I based the cloak with VMC Black Grey plus a bit of Huge Miniatures Pale Rose (think very desaturated pinkish grey) at about a 4:1 ratio, just to warm it up a bit. The whole cloak got washed with Nuln Oil. When that dried, I started doing brush highlights by mixing in more Pale Rose, then as they got higher and smaller, I started mixing in VMC Offwhite.
• Once these major areas were done, I moved back to the armor plating. After another coat or two of the Morghast Bone, I gave the armor a wash of GW Seraphim Sepia. I should have used a lighter touch with this, as the wash pushed things more yellow than I intended
• That meant I had to do more covering up of the wash than expected. But mini painting is 90% about fixing your mistakes, right? I started layering back up with Morghast Bone. As I moved to raised areas that would get more light hitting them, I started mixing in GW Ushabti Bone. I did some edge highlights here and there with straight Ushabti Bone as well. After that, it was details, blacklining, and basing left.

Details

• I base coated the lightsaber hilts with a thin layer of GW Dawnstone followed by a wash of Nuln Oil. I also hit a few of the greebly bits on the lightsabers with some other colors, mostly a dot of red or a bit of gold, just to differentiate them a bit and add a little character.
• I based the lightsaber blades with either P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight or GW Warpstone Glow. I then layered up, adding more and more P3 Menoth White Highlight to the original shade to get a glow effect. A blue or green wash was applied right at the base of the blade as well.
• I added some basic OSL effects to a few spots on Grievous as well.  First, I drybrushed an area where I felt light from the saber would hit. I started with a darker color than the original basecoat. So, for the blue this was P3 Cygnar Blue Base. I’m missing a note for the green here, but it was likely P3 Iosan Green. Ultimately the point here is to represent light hitting a farther away surface that is then less bright, so just find a slightly darker shade if you use this method. Then I drybrushed a smaller area within that with the original base shade. Last I did a line highlight of the base shade mixed with P3 Menoth White Highlight.
• After blacklining the model and painting the eyes, it was time to base.

Basing

I used my standard desert/alien soil scheme here, but first I had to take care of the statue. I wanted a light colored, sandstone sort of look for the statue rather than a gray stone. Looking back, I think a gold or bronze statue could look nice here as well, especially with some tarnish and weathering.

• I basecoated the statue with GW Tallarn Sand. I then mixed in a little P3 Menoth White Base and ultimately Menoth White Highlight as I drybrushed more and more lightly and with more focus on raised areas.
• From there, I painted the soil with GW Skrag Brown, followed by successive lighter drybrushes of GW Deathclaw Brown, GW Tau Light Ochre, and P3 Menoth White Base. Be sloppy with this step by the way- getting some paint on the statue and helps tie it in more to the base. Crevices and cracks got lined with P3 Battlefield Brown. I glued down a few Army Painter grass tufts, painted the base rim black), and that was that!

Kraken, Super Tactical Droid

Kraken, like Kalani, can be tricky to paint. He has some fiddly details and both interior and exterior bits that like to get in the way of painting each other. Take your time and remember that 90% of mini painting is fixing your mistakes.

Armor Panels

• To start, I base coated the armor panels with P3 Iosan Green. I’d recommend something like GW Sybarite Green instead to be honest. I like P3 paints quite a bit, but Iosan always fought me when I used it. Once I had a good base of green, I washed it with GW Biel-Tan Green.
•  I wanted to darken the green some more, so I also hit it was Nuln Oil. That step is up to your personal preference. For highlights, I started with drybrushing and edge highlights with the Iosan Green. I then mixed in P3 Necrotite at about 1:1 with the Iosan for smaller/higher highlights. Final edge highlights consisted of pure Necrotite.

Undercarriage

• The metal undercarriage for Kraken involved the same steps as Grievous above, except I didn’t go as heavy with the Nuln Oil here

Blaster

• Kraken’s gun followed my standard scheme for blaster type weapons in Shatterpoint. I based it with P3 Coal Black, then did a wash of Nuln Oil. Depending on how thin the paint and/or the wash was, I may do a second wash of Nuln. That’s about it, really. When done correctly (never a guarantee with me), it produces a bluish black with natural edge highlighting that is distinct from black uniforms or details on some models.

Trim and Details

• The yellow trim started with GW Averland Sunset, which I then washed with GW Seraphim Sepia. I highlighted first with P3 Sulfuric Yellow, then did final highlights with the Sulfuric Yellow and P3 Menoth White Highlight mixed at about  a 1:1 ratio.
• I did some clean up and blacklining, then decided to try and add a bit more visual interest to the model with some OSL. Following the same basic steps as with the lightsabers above, I did a red glowing OSL emanating from Kraken’s eyes.

B2 Battle Droids

I wanted to avoid having a plain metallic look on these droids. They’re often depicted with a blue-tinted metal look in various media, so I took a stab at that here.

Armor

• To start, I basecoated the entire model with a 1:1 mix of Black Metal and Scale 75 Cobalt Alchemy (a blue tinged metallic I rarely have use for, but worked great here). To keep the blue tint and not drown it out in black, I then washed it with a mix of Nuln Oil and GW Drakenhof Nightshade. My notes say I used a ratio of 5:6, which is an insane ratio to write down and publish in an article. The point here is I wanted more of the blue wash than the black.
• When the wash dried, I first drybrushed with the base paint mix. That was followed by a more selective drybrush after mixing  in two drops of Heavy Metal. (My notes are insane for this box. Just brighten the mix up some.) I finished with edge highlights with Heavy Metal.

Weathering and Details

Let’s face it, these are pretty plain models. They need some help to be visually interesting. To that end, I added some weathering in the form of scorch marks to their wrist-mounted blasters. I used a very old school technique from my 40k days.

• First, I drybrushed the area around the blasters with a gold paint. I didn’t write down which one because it doesn’t matter much here, honestly. After that I drybrushed over almost all of that with a brown. Again, the specific color is not super important here, but keep to a medium darkness at most. If you need a specific recommendation, try something like GW Balor Brown.
• Next I mixed my brown about 1:1 with black. I drybrushed closer to the gun ports, followed by pure black drybrushing directly adjacent to the gun ports. The idea here is that you get more and more heat damage as you get closer to the heat source. This is hard to screw up here, so play around with it!
• I did the eyes and the big glowy gubbins on their chest in red using the same OSL effect I did on Kraken’s eyes. I kept it subtle, and it doesn’t show up well in photo, but it’s there.
• Lastly, I finished with basing, touch ups, and my usual blacklining.

And that’s that for Appetite for Destruction. Did this article help whet your appetite for getting these painted? Share the results in the Goonhammer Discord! I’d love to see them. Thank you as always for reading!

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