a little bit of flash (91st Recon Corps)

For many of us, hobbying motivation comes and goes, and for me, it's a lot of goes. Short bursts of intense motivation are surrounded by weeks (or months) of a lack of energy. Working full-time, graduate school, and trying to keep up some sense of a COVID social life doesn't leave many hours left for hobbies, and as an active distance runner, there's even less.

The scarcity of Phase IIs didn't help things either, as my second and third boxes didn't arrive until May. Two months without any minis to paint. When they finally did arrive, they stayed in their packaging on my hobby table.

And perhaps that's where they would have stayed.

But then, at the end of August, my shipping notification from Miniature Market came, and Padme and a box of Arc Troopers showed up at my door. Of course, knowing now the drought of Arcs, I wish I had pre-ordered a few more, but those two boxes arriving brought the motivation and shame necessary to open up those Phase IIs and get to work.

As a GAR player, I want to give each of my squads some personality. This is important both for quick unit recognition on the table, but also because a pure white-armor army is just boring (for me, if that's your thing, that's great). Unfortunately, I'm not a very skilled painter, so I'm never super thrilled about doing elaborate armor markings. So for this unit, I was trying to find a way to give them character without a fancy paint scheme.

Grabbing my tray of extra Clone accessories and my hobby knife, I got to work. Having a couple extra Barc Trooper helmets, I decided to base my Clones off the 91st Recon Corps. I ended up really happy with the result.

My paint method for Clones is simple:

Prime: Corax White Contrast Spray

Markings: Khorne Red (but obviously whatever color you want for your unit markings)

Wash: Nuln Oil (homemade black wash would work well) over the whole mini

- I am pretty liberal with my wash, as I like the grungier look it gives my Clones

Underarmor: Black Templar Contrast

- While the wash is still wet, I use Black Templar to fill in all the spots where the black underarmor is visible, I also go over their weapons as well.

This is based off of Zorpazorp's method, although he does a white highlight that I skip.

Commander Neyo, the unit leader for these Phase IIs, was a simple combination of a Barc trooper helmet and one of the spare right arms from the ARC troopers box. To still give him his valid weapons (and make him look that much cooler), I glued his DC15 to his back.

Using another spare Arc Trooper arm, this mortar trooper is ready to fight off any Seppies getting too close to his position.

Continuing the close quarters theme, I imagined our trooper here has overheated his Z-6 and is currently dual-wielding his DC-15 and a looted E-5 droid blaster (thanks Will!). The benefit of how this Z-6 Trooper is modeled is that thematically, dual wielding these blasters would give a similar rate of fire as the Z-6.

Don't look too close, or you'll notice this Clone has a droid left hand, maybe he's a relative of these guys.

I wanted this unit to look elite, so I grabbed a spare RPS-6 rocket launcher from the Barc Speeder, cut off the attached hands, and glued it to the back of this guy. I also grabbed an unused Arc Trooper helmet (I am modeling all of my Arcs with the Phase I fins) to give him all the helmet attachments.

The rest of the Phase II troopers all have helmet accessories of some type. This guy used the other Barc Trooper helmet I had. I'll never actually field the additional Barc Speeder I purchased, but just as accessories for other units (including potential for Clones riding the Saber Tank), it's been worth the buy.

And there we have it, no green stuff needed, just some spare pieces and a little creativity, we have a squad of Phase II troopers that adds some flavor to the battlefield without sacrificing much for unit recognizability. Can't wait to get these guys on the table!

Phil