The Deploy the Garrison Squad Pack (our review here) presents some interesting challenges for the Star Wars: Shatterpoint painter. At six models it has the highest number of individual figures, and while the Death Troopers have a very simple color scheme, the Shoretroopers are fairly complicated, with several options to look at for their color-coded armor pieces. And of course, the infamous Director Krennic presents that most formidable of garments, the white uniform…
How to Paint Death Troopers
by Jefferson Powers
With their all-black armor and matching weapons, it seems like the Death Troopers should be easy to paint, and they are…sort of. As pictured on screen, they have glossy black armor from head to toe, including their weapons, and matte black accessories such as shoulder pads and belt pouches. Their belt buckles and a bit of tech on their forearms are silver, but apart from that the only splash of color is the green eyes.
Assembly
The Deploy the Garrison box includes two different Death Trooper units: a single Death Trooper Specialist Secondary and a two-figure Supporting unit. The Specialist is the only one with a shoulder pad and row of pouches, but I wanted an additional way to easily differentiate them on the table so I used the base with the grating for the Specialist and the one with the curved metal flooring panels for both of the Support units. The models themselves were easy to assemble by Shatterpoint standards, with only seven parts each (seven for the Specialist) plus an optional blaster pistol sidearm that I decided to include on all three.
Black, Black and More Black
Naturally I primed these in Vallejo black. I decided to do the bases first – painting these models will involve a lot of imprecise drybrushing, and it will be easier to touch up around the feet before I start on the figures, as opposed to cleaning up any of the base’s lighter colors that might “splash” onto the figures if I did the bases after.
For all three bases I did a base coat of Army Painter Deep Grey. Then I drybrushed them first with a heavy layer of Reaper Cloudy, Grey, followed by a lighter layer of Reaper Misty Grey. After all the drybrushing was done I filled in the lines between the floor plates with Deep Grey mixed with a little Reaper Pure Black to darken it a bit. On the Specialist’s base, I filled in the recessed areas of the grating with Pure Black, touching up the edges with Cloudy Grey where needed. To finish up the bases I painted around the edges in Pure Black.
I started the figures themselves with a coat of Pro Acryl Coal Black, followed by a drybrush of Deep Grey to reveal the texture and details. After that I did a lighter dusting of Reaper Misty Grey, concentrating on the edges of the arms and legs and the curves of the helmet and shoulder pads – the artwork on the activation cards is a great guide for this, since it picks out the glossy highlights in such a way that’s easy to figure out where to put them on the model.
I was hoping that this would be it for the Death Trooper models, but what I ended up with was far too light – the Pro Acryl Coal Black is more of a very dark grey, made lighter by its extremely matte finish. I decided to course-correct with some Army Painter Speedpaint, which can work great as a sort of heavily pigmented was if you thin it with a bit of Speedpaint Medium. I did a coat of Grim Black, and after that had thoroughly dried, I re-did the bright highlights by drybrushing another layer of Misty Grey, followed by a lighter pass with Reaper Pure White.
Final Details
Even though they won’t really be visible at tabletop distance, I decided to do the eye lenses in Army Painter Eternal Hunt. I first mixed with a bit of Reaper Pure Black to darken it down, then after applying that darker green to the eye lenses I gave each eye just a dot of straight Eternal Hunt. I decided not to do the similar green glow in the two round areas at the base of the helmet, reasoning that they were too small to be visible at gaming distance, and also that those spots are blocked by arms or weapons on all three models, so even getting a brush in there would be excessively difficult and not worth the effort.
The final touch for all three Death Troopers was a bit of Army Painter Gun Metal for the belt buckles and the tech detail on their left forearms. After painting these in I hit them with a touch of Army Painter Dark Tone wash to fill the fine detail back in. After everything had dried overnight I gave them a coat of Army Painter brush-on Matt Varnish. The finish on this varnish tends to be a little inconsistent from bottle to bottle. The current batch I’m using is more of a satin (semi-gloss) finish, which I don’t always like but looks good for what is supposed to be high-gloss armor.
How to Paint Shoretroopers
by Jefferson Powers
Where the Death Troopers were almost absurdly simple, the Shoretroopers were by far the most complicated troopers I’ve painted so far. Unlike the plain white and occasional orange shoulder pad of your regular stormtrooper, the Shoretroopers have an elaborate system of color patches on their armor that denotes rank. I found a few really helpful guides online – unfortunately they’re not credited so I won’t post any of the images here, but if you do a Google Image Search on “Shoretrooper color scheme” you’ll find everything you need.
Assembly and Bases
Assembly was about as easy as it gets for Shatterpoint models. For these two I used the two bases that show a bit of ground, thinking I would paint it in a sandy beach color. I painted the bases first on these as well – I am finding that I like getting this somewhat routine part of the process out of the way early. I did the metal flooring the same way I did for the Death Troopers, a base coat of Deep Grey followed by drybrush layers in Rainy Grey and then Misty Grey. For the exposed ground I started with a base coat of Army Painter Leather Brown, then a drybrush of Army Painter Paratrooper Tan followed by Army Trooper Ancient Stone to add more of a yellowish beach sand tone. I filled in the two rocks with Reaper Mountain Stone, thinned with a bit of water so the highlighting would show through.
Starting Colors
For the figures, I started with a base coat of Reaper Shield Brown over the black primer. After giving that ample time to dry, I followed up with a heavy drybrush layer of Reaper Desert Stone over the entire model, and then a drybrush of Reaper Yellowed Bone, which got me pretty close to the base sandy color of the Shoretrooper armor. I filled in the details with Army Painter Speedpaint – Satchel Brown for the pants and spaces between the armor, and Hardened Leather for the boots and belt details.
Every Color Means Something
The card artwork has both Shoretroopers done up in captain’s colors, but having two captains in the same unit didn’t make sense so I decided to do one as a captain and the other as a grunt (this had the added benefit of being much easier to paint).
Both ranks have a red bicep on the right side, so I did that first, in Slaughter Red Speedpaint so I wouldn’t have to do any extra shading work.
The captain has a light blue left shoulder and upper chest, as well as a stripe down the left side of his abdominal plate, and one at the top of his left forearm – this would require a bit more fine control that Speedpaint is usually capable of, so I used a mix of Reaper Nightsky Blue and Sapphire blue as a base coat for the blue areas. I followed this up by painting in highlights over most of the area in Reaper Ashen Blue, leaving just a little of the darker blue around the edges of the chest panels and along the ridge on the shoulder pad. The captain also has a yellow stripe next to the blue one on his forearm, which I did in Army Painter Barren Dune. This stripe was too narrow to worry much about adding any shading to it.
Both ranks have a white stripe outlined in black on the left shoulder. I started with a wide stripe of Army Painter Brigandine Brown, then followed with a narrower stripe in Reaper Polished Bone over it, leaving space at either side for the dark outline. Since the stripe goes over the ridge on the shoulder pad I wanted to add just a touch of shading, so I mixed a bit of Brigandine Brown in with the Polished Bone to create a warm grey mid tone, and then put just a dot on either side of the shoulder pad ridge.
Finally, the captain has a couple of dark grey vertical stripes along the abdominal piece. This is a small area but it didn’t require much precision, so I did it using Gravelord Grey Speedpaint.
Final Details
To keep things simple I painted in the rifles on both Shoretroopers with Grim Black Speedpaint, which eliminated the need to do any shading. I also used Grim Black for the eye lenses on the helmets, and Gravelord Grey Speedpaint for the nose-and-mouth section. In addition to the other livery, the Shoretroopers each have a small red crescent shape on the right side of the forehead pieces, which I did with a quick dab of Reaper Carnage Red.
The blues and tans were still looking a little dark compared to the card artwork, so I hid all the armor areas with another drybrush in Army Painter Ancient Stone, which is just a little paler than Yellowed Bone and brought the highlights up a bit more. I used the same Army Painter brush-on Matt Varnish to give these a consistent finish with the Death Troopers. Recalling all the greenery we see in the background during the battle on Scarif in Rogue One, I added a few bits of Army Painter Jungle and Swamp tuft to the bases, and that’s Director Krennic’s stable of troopers done.
In order to explain his somewhat larger than life stature, I painted my Krennic model as a hologram, which I covered in a separate HTPE article. So for this one I’m going to turn you over to my esteemed colleague McWhat, who will show you how to paint Krennic’s normal colors.
How to Paint Director Krennic
by McWhat
Thanks Jefferson. Big of you to ask me to jump in on this for this giant of an Imperial leader. Many Empire models can be challenging with all their monochromatic uniforms. Krennic certainly fits the bill here. Here’s how I went about it.
For the uniform, I did a modified version of the steps for Thrawn in a previous painting article. I’ll copy those steps here (modifying as needed), but definitely recommend checking out that article for some WIP pics and more context.
- I started by basecoating the uniform jacket with Vallejo Stonewall Grey. When that dried, I continued painting the entire model with Stonewall Grey mixed with a little PA Ivory (changed from Vallejo in the Thrawn version).
- I repeated the previous step multiple times, adding in more Ivory until I got to a moderately bright white. I used both painting and drybrushing from here on out as needed.Towards the end, I switched to just the Ivory. I also directly painted a few highlights here and there, such as the folds in the pants.
- For Thrawn, I did some washes near the end to add a little more contrast and shading. I didn’t feel a need to do that here, but it’s an option. (More details in the article linked above.)
- Krennic goes for a white on black ensemble, a massive change from Thrawn to be sure. So his uniform pants got base coated with a mix of Scale 75 Eclipse Grey and PA Coal Black. I washed this with PA Black Wash. Highlights were painted on with Eclipse Grey, then Eclipse Grey mixed with a little highlight paint left over from the white jacket.
- I wanted to contrast the leather belt, boots and holster from the pants. To that end, I basecoated these with a mix of Coal Black and PA Blue Black. This also got Black Wash, but highlighted with with a mix of mostly Blue Black and a little Coal Black. The goal here was to have a cool toned black. If you wanted to really sell the effect of leather, consider painting a layer of satin varnish on these areas after sealing the model.
Ok so the flesh tones. I’ll be honest. I’ve been trying some new techniques for flesh tones following a class I took with Dallas Kemp at Adepticon. I learned a lot about getting more realistic flesh tones, particularly by integrating greens and magentas (no really) into shades and highlights for light toned skin. It’s been a huge learning process. For Krennic, that meant lots of trial and error. I’ll mention specific paints I used for shades and highlights, but there was a lot of experimentation and redoing of steps for my specific model.
- The basecoat was easy enough at least- PA Tan Flesh. For shading, I mixed some Tan Flesh with PA Light Umber and just a bit of an olive green. Highlights were fundamentally about mixing Tan Flesh with PA Peach Flesh along with a tiny bit of PA Magenta Wash. Light flesh does have varying amounts of greenish tinge to it. The magenta helps warm up highlights and counteract the green a bit. Ultimately these should all work together to create a more vibrant and lifelike flesh.I still need to work on it, but that’s the idea anyway!
The last major part to cover here is Krennic’s hair. Depending on where in the timeline you’re looking at, as well as lighting and whatnot, his hair can look sandy brown to almost totally grey.
- To try and capture the fading brownish blond look, I started with a basecoat of PA Beige Grey mixed about 1:1 with Vallejo Dark Sea Grey. I washed that with GW Seraphim Sepia to bring in a bit more blond. I then drybrushed the hair with the base color, then once more with the basecolor and some Ivory mixed. The end result was still a bit too yellow, so I gave it one last coat of Black Wash.
- After that, it was just a few details like the rank badge, eyes, and basing then Krennic was done!
Thanks again Jefferson for letting me jump in here. Krennic (and all the Rogue One characters) looms large in my Star Wars fandom, so I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this article.
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