Repainting old Wizard of the Coast Star Wars miniatures

Little tiny people ("Robots are peeeeople!") from a miniature galaxy far, far away

Years ago, in The Before Time, in The Long Long Ago, I played Star Wars: The Role Playing Game from West End Games (WEG). It was popularly known as D6 Star Wars, and it was a blast to play. Admittedly, it did require totalling up large numbers of dice, especially as players became more skilled. My math challenged brain actually rather preferred Traveller's even more simple system, which had fewer problems with scaling. At least from my experience.

I also had Star Wars Minatures Battles, also from WEG, which had a system more like Traveller: just roll 1D and add bonuses. It, too, was a blast to play, although I never had enough little metal miniatures to really do much, being perennially cash strapped.

Years later, Wizards of the Coast came out with a line of Star Wars miniatures. These were relatively cheap, if you bought them second hand, with resellers at the time letting the less popular miniatures go for as little as 25 cents. And since I was buying them for the old WEG miniatures game, I didn't care about how good the miniatures were for the Wizard game, which meant I could pick up excellent, cheap sculpts because they weren't the best performers in the Wizard system. Booyah!

So I picked up a small pile of them. 

They're made of bendy plastic, which has pros and cons. 

On the con side, they don't hold as much detail as harder plastic minis. They also came pre-painted, which was a big plus for me, as I'd become more time strapped than cash strapped, BUT the paint jobs weren't... amazing. 

On the pro side, they are tough and resilient, and don't break easily. Bends can be fixed by putting them in hot water, tweaking the pose, then running them under cold water. Boom! Good as new. The pre-paints mean you don't need to spend a huge amount of time painting them. They also printed a long line of figures, with a lot of variety. And as it was also made for the Wizard incarnation of the role playing game, you get figures that aren't always focused on combat. That's great for the RPG side. 

There's a new line of figures under the Legion banner, but these are only for a miniature combat game. Those figures are more detailed, come unpainted, break easily, and are hella expensive. 

Meh.

So pick your poison. 

I recently dug out some of my old figures, having gotten back into RPGs over COIVD, and wondered if I could improve them with a little speed painting, washes, and dry brushing. 

And you know what? 

It works, and it doesn't take a lot of effort.

I used a pack of speed paints from Army Painter, plus some old acrylics for flats... although those are a little thick for such tiny figs, even when thinned. The set above were a dramatic improvement on the pre-paints; the photos don't really do them justice.

This is what the Acquilash (Acqualish?) technician looked like before the repaint:

The conservative Acquilash

No colour difference between the kneepads, rope, equipment, hair, jacket, etcetera. So I added silver to his tech gear and had fun filling in details and an eye catching red jacket.

The Bothan (which never appeared in the movies) was painted with flat, glossy colours that looked garish and plastic. Yes, I know the mini IS plastic, but I don't want it to LOOK like plastic. Dry brush on the head, washes over the arms and boots, and voila! See above. Not so plastic.

The glossy Bothan

The Kel-Dor bounty hunter (honestly I don't remember this species in the movies at all) was kind of flat. Some speed paint to add depth really spiced things up (IMHO). 

The flat Kel-Dor