Painting - Challenge XIV - B1 Battle Droids

This post is two'ish units of B1 battle droids for Atomic Mass Games' Star Wars Legion. they are a mixture of store bought and 3D prints. There is a blue unit, a red unit and two lone droids for a future purple unit. 

22 Battle droids. Their only virtue is mass.

B1s are the worst unit in Star Wars Legion. They are also the cheapest. Think of them as the skeleton infantry of an undead army. They can carry some useful upgrades, both in the form of healing units and special weapons.

The back view. You can tell the 3D prints by the smaller backpacks.

The box set comes with a unit leader, which is the key model in the game for movement and shooting. It also comes with a missile launcher and a larger gun that throws a few extra/better dice. To get the other weapons and additional droids (healing) you have to buy upgrade boxes that come in sets of four. I have bought one of those for the weapons set so this blue squad is the only one that will have all of the options the unit can take.

The two on the left come with the unit. The two on the right are an upgrade box.

Sniper rifle and radiation cannon

Most weapons in the game shoot to range 3. The B1s will always lose a range three gun fight. The sniper cannon adds some much needed stand off range so they can plink at enemy units before they charge gloriously to their destruction. 

The radiation cannon is short range, only range 2, but it allows them to throw 2 red dice, which are the best shooting dice. It also poisons the unit it hits, killing an extra model at the end of the turn.

As a rule I don't like to paint different colors on the models or bases to tell units apart. Sadly, the rules and tactics of this faction mean they have to be standing right next to each other and you have to have a quick, obvious way to tell them apart on the table. I bit the bullet and made this unit blue, the second one red, and two B1s for a third unit purple.

Here you can see the 3D print and the company model side by side. En masse they tend to just look the same on the table, but up close the print is noticeably less sharp and detailed. I was willing to accept this because these are terrible models to assemble, coming as two legs, two arms a body and a head. their attachment points are tiny. If I only needed a couple it would be fine but since you can take up to 64 of them there was just no way my sanity would have survived that.

3D print on the left.

I've now painted units for each of the armies I'm interested in playing during this challenge. Rhys has all of the clones and, while I have the models, I'm just not able to find an empire list I like yet. I'll keep rotating through armies to make some progress towards having a painted total great enough to game with for CIS and Shadow Collective.