Star Wars Legion Snail Tank painting guide

While about 2/3rds of my CIS army is 3d printed due to my entering the game just at the point when everything was out of stock before the new edition this model is newly acquired and built.

This was not a joyous process for me as while the parts fit and instructions were really good, 105 pieces was about 100 pieces more than what I like to put together. I do not enjoy the build process at all and this was too much. I will not be assembling another one. However that aside once built it is a nice model and so I decided to paint it up properly. My basic method for vehicles is based on that of the painter Heresybrush https://heresybrush.com/en with extra bits from Night Shift https://www.youtube.com/@NightShiftScaleModels

The model was bult in a few sub assemblies to ease the painting and allow me to paint the visible internal bits before enclosing them in plastic and gnashing my teeth afterwards. As I wasnt sure exactly what would be visible I probably overdid it a bit. Below is a dry fit showing lots of grey plastic within the outer casing which might look poor later.

To avoid this I primed and metal coloured the insides so that at least the visible bits would look like machinery even where a brush might not reach.

Uncertain at this point how much of the trackes would be visible and hard to reach I also did the same to them while on the sprue but in retrospect I am not sure this was necessary. Better safe than sorry.

With that done the rest of the model was onerously built and primed black as usual. As can be seen some bit left unattached for ease of painting. Had I realised how easily the side tracks attached I would have left these off as well.

To match my CIS desert army https://my-star-wars-legion.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/set/c2685d69-c5d1-4ae9-a75c-8643edb5cc0a

I would obviously need to continue the same colours so step one was to spray everything external with Vallejo Flat Earth. Unless otherwise stated all colours are Vallejo Model Colour which I spray by thinning with flow improver and a drop of thinner. Angling the airbrush against the edges avoids spraying the internal areas where I dont want to. This is quite dark but is essentially the mid tone of the camo.

With the base colour sorted I now spray in the shadow by adding dark brown to whatever is left in the airbrush until it looks shadowy. I use German Camo Dark Brown but any dark brown or even a bit of black is fine.

The shadow is applied even where logically there is no shadow to ooomph the contrast! This method is straight from Heresybrush and is not realistic at all but then neither is a sci fi tank shaped like a snail so its rule of cool! If you dont like this method just put the shadows where they would be with the sun overhead. If you do the key is to use a bit of card to minimise overspray by spraying on the card and letting the spray then drift onto the model when you have control, as below.

With the shadow sorted its time to start the highlights with Desert Yellow. Using the sun overhead and the bit of cardboard method described above the first highlights are placed. When adding these I usually make the front part of any panel lighter than the back and any upper part lighter than the bottom except where an obvious shadow is cast. Again its not realistic but it adds a nice contrast.

A second highlight covering the same areas but in a smaller ares was then added with Iraqi Sand. I had intended to put a disruptive brown stripe across to match my tank but was liking what I had here so decided to keep it as it is. I also remembered that the reason I had put a disruptive camo on my tank was to conceal the slight warping that had occurred during 3d printing!

With that the last thing to do at this stage was a solid coat of Gloss varnish as a basis for any decals i might add but also to help with the oil pinwash I was going to use for the panel lines.

The panel lining was done in the quickest way known to man - an oil / thinner mix which capilliary action on the glossy suurface runs along the crevice. It even runs uphill which is crazy. In the picture below you can see the effect but also a few blobs of the oil mixture where it was applied - especially on the complex area of lines on the top surface of the smaller track.

These blobs and any overspill are easily tidied up with a brush just moistened in thinner and drawn across the mark. Do not draw along the crevice as it rectivates the mix and makes more mess! After 5 minutes of clean up it looks like this. This then gets a coat of matt varnish to protect the panel lines and against future errors.

Next up are the tracks which i painted with a product called track wash which is an enamel and I think was from AK or Mig Ammo. You could just paint dark brown but having put a bit of metallic on them early doors when I thought it might be necessary - it wasnt - I used this as while it is dark it isnt totally opaque and lead to a bit of variety in the base track colour..

Once dry the tracks were drybrushed silver as they look metallic to me and would get scratched up in the desert. This literally took a couple of minutes including the edges at the bottom.

You could leave them like this or give them a quick spray with some dust colour but I decided to add some pigments that I hadnt used for a while. These were a yellowy ochre and a red soil - last seen on a vietnam model -plus dust. These were just randomly dumped on with my oldest and tattiest brush and then fixed with a pigment fixer liquid which tones the pigments down to the state below. I may repeat the process but dont want to overdo it.

Chipping is next. The desert will be throwing all sorts of stones and rocks against the structure and removing bits of paint. Additionally droids will be banging metal against metal at the most contacted areas adding to the chipping. I am not a fan of tons of chipping however so will not be going overboard. Chips are added using the sponge effect and then 'improved' with a tiny brush. I used a dark brown adding chips where i imagined would recieve most wear.

To add some contrast I added tiny dots of Iraqi sand on the edges of all the larger chips using a fine brushpoint. I also went back and popped a dark sand highlight on all the raised bolts that i had earlier popped an oil wash on.

Entering the final straight we need to sort the weapons and antenna/googly eyes. These were sprayed with a dark gunmetal as a base and then a zenithal of vallejo aluminium to give some quick depth. The following shots show both the base colour gun and the gun with the highlight. It's not hugely obvious in the photos but in real life it's a nice effect.

and on the antennas

The same process was used on the internal metal shenanigans and struts with edge highlights added by brush but essentially identical process.

I wasnt 100% happy with the guns so washed some dark blue into all the recesses wiping away the excess from the raised areas with my finger as i went and also added some random blue in a couple of panels... The raised parts were then highlighted in aluminium. Again I'm not sure its visible to a great degree in the pictures but it looks nice.

The googly eyes were painted quickly with burnt red, scarlet and orange in diminishing areas like a snake eye resulting in the below.

This then had white centre added which was covered with two coats of orange fluo paint to get a really bright effect.

The last thing to be done was a toning down of the bright clean engine metals which looked a bit too shiny. Just a few days ago I took a train trip and was struck by how not shiny the metal parts are and considered using lots of streaking effects to grime it down but decided that i would rather have an oily effect. To this end I applied an AK product called Engine Oil which genuinely looks like engine oil. I thinned it down and slapped it all over the silver metal of the engine then cleand some of it off with a brush damp with thinners. Again the effect is subtle but if you scroll between this photo and the one 4 pics above it is visible.

That was that. I toyed with some extra effects such as streaking dirt and rust but felt that there was enough variety on the model already so decided against them. Similarly I was in two minds about adding a dust effect around the lower surfaces but didnt want to obscure the already painted effects which I liked. I have some Imperial heavy metal in the pipeline so may go further on those.

The finished Snail Tank