Since our next campaign will be based on Hoth, I decided to tackle one of the least interesting groups of miniatures that I have, and painted the Snowtroopers.

I find it funny that their main color is cream, rather than white - after all, they are supposed to blend in the snow, and I think regular Stormtroopers are probably better at that than they are! Regardless, they provided a bit of a change from regular troopers and I wanted to have the bunch of them ready to be put on the table ASAP, which is why I didn’t really spend too much time blending and glazing, but tried a slightly newer approach. Also, I painted these in batch - which was honestly a bit tedious and something I hadn’t done (at least, not for more than 4 miniatures) since my first Lord of the Rings army of Uruk-hai, back when I was a teenager. These were the times!

Obviously, I primed them white - small side note here, I’ve decided to drop Army Painter spray cans in favour of Citadel. Even if they don’t match exactly with the array of colors I use, the experience with AP cans is just horrible lately, with spotty coverage even after two passes, a nozzle that keeps obstructing and overall paint going everywhere but the miniatures. So long.

I started with the coats. I wanted to follow the movies as closely as I could, so I tried to create a cream/brown look for the textile parts. I think it turned out ok - I decided against weathering in this case because I wanted them to look more pristine.

In terms of the process, I changed it a bit and instead of the usual process of basecoat, wash/glaze, highlight I applied the base coat, then applied a full layer in the recesses, then highlighted the raised areas, and only then glazed between these with two or three rough and heavier glazes. I think the result looks really good on the table (especially since I think I nailed the zones this time,) and less in the pictures, where the rough transitions show more than to the naked eye.

I also applied a dark brown wash to all the other areas casting shadows, and to split up the belt accessories further from the coat.

After that, I painted the boots with three color schemes:

• a green/grey mix for the upper part of the boot
• a brown/green mix for the main shoe
• a diluted black wash to bring the two together and add depth.

In this case, I thought about adding highlights, but since they were on the lower part of the miniature, it felt unnecessary and I opted to skip the step instead.

Then came the armor. I knew from experience that painting white armor is NOT fun. So I tried yet another approach that showed mixed results.

In this case, after basing again all armor in white (thank you, useless primer,) I proceeded to dilute a black wash in wash medium and water with a rough mix of 1:1:1. I really wanted it to be thin and to only apply to the recesses, which, to a degree, it did.

However, white is still a pain in the ass, and no amount of wishful thinking prevented me from having to go back to all armor parts and re-highlight the central areas that had been darkened. So it took another 2 layers (even 3 in some cases) to bring the highlights back to a state I was happy with. The advantage of this technique is that I could leave the darker areas untouched, and even if in the pictures they look messy (as with all washes on plain surfaces,) they create a decent contrast that looks pretty good on the table, so I’m happy with the result overall.

To finish the miniatures off, I painted the weapon, added some rough highlights to it, added some red lights to the front and back, and based both groups. I wasn’t entirely sure how to differentiate them other than the ring color, so I just decided to place the elite group inside of the Echo base, with a metallic floor and some snow on top of it, whereas the normal group would be outside still in full snow. The effect turned out good!

After that, I varnished and painted a couple of thinned down layers of gloss varnish to all the armor parts, to make them stand out from other white areas such as the face cover or backpack.

In retrospect, these are not the best miniatures I’ve produced, and that’s ok - I wanted them done soon-ish, and they were. The positives (things like the color selection or overall look) outweigh the negatives and I’m quite pleased that I was able to take 6 miniatures off my to-do list in a relatively short amount of time.