Three Diehard Chaos War Droids stumble into a bar...

Q: Should I tone down the dad-humor in my headlines? (A: No). Anyways, I painted these three chaos war droids by Diehard Miniatures over the Christmas holidays. A slightly too interesting start of 2022 prevented me from shooting proper pictures and blogging about them. Time to correct that I say. So without further ado: three Diehard Chaos War Droids.

"Evil wrecking droids, assemble!"

These three robots where part of the latest Kickstarter run by Diehard. Seeing the ABC-warrior lookalike gave the company a +3 to all sales rolls involving me. In other words: I had to get them. The three models are made from white metal and weigh (from left to right) 140, 80 and 100 grams. That is a nice bit of heft. Assembling them made me confront my belief that all superglue is created equal (it is supposedly basic chemistry). After having the arms of the red robot drop off repeatedly, even while painting, I asked the local pro-painter for advice. On his recommendation I invested in Zap-A-Gap green (medium CA+). As it turns out not all superglue is created equal. This stuff is like magic, especially after a decade of using 7 cent tubes of knock-off superglue. My bank account does not agree though. This one bottle cost more than my entire superglue budget from the past decade. And I even (occasionally) use the stuff to make the earth on terrain bases look interesting. 

I thought this droid had a real Fallout vibe, so I painted him in a fifties color scheme.

The first robot beneath my brush was Underbot-R2-Chaos War Droid. I like the 1950's sci-fi style this walker with guns exudes and I wanted to give him a color that matched. Going through my paint rack I found the oddly named Vallejo Model Air BS216 Duck Egg Green (Eau de Nil). No clue what possessed me to buy that one (well one clue: it has a very interesting name). Duck Egg Green looks quite a lot like all the metal casings you see on ancient technology (otherwise known as the devices on my dad's electronics and soldering hobby desk). Aside from picking a color, I added a small bit of plastic tubing to the top of the machine gun. Mostly because I was too lazy to drill out the barrel. then I went off painting.

I failed to properly picture the bolt cutters on its other arm. Trust me: they look quite intimidating. 

Most of these robots have been sculpted with a bit of wear and tear on them. I decided to practice sponge and scratch techniques while I was at it (going slightly overboard on this one). I only noticed the trim on the leg plates when the model was mostly finished. I used Decayed Metal by Scale Color as it is my recent go to for 'I don't know what to do with that metallic part'. I like the effect. 

Status? Bodyguard, Commander? Rico, Mission? War....WARRRRRR. (yeah I love that awful movie (and while I'm confessing to bad taste I'm very fond of 1998 Godzilla too)). 

Droid number two is the ABC-warrior lookalike known as Flat Head-Chaos War Droid I started off painting him red, got carried away airbrushing highlights, and ended up with a flat looking orange robot. It didn't work for me so off into the dip with him. On my second attempt I decided to go for white. I started applying VMC Pale Blue Grey to a black basecoat and just added white to the airbrush cup as I went more zenithal with every pass. The end result is quite a flashy white indeed. It left me with one problem. The scratch technique I use consists of drawing a dark brown/black line and then highlighting the bottom with white. As the paint on the droid is also white this didn't quite show. I solved the problem by not solving it at all, and just went along, hoping the white (sort off) showed up. I think it worked (slightly).

Painting scratches on white is a conundrum I haven't quite solved yet. 

I painted exposed machine parts with some basic silvery metallic colors and washed them brown. It helps to contrast (and pop) the white even more. The shoulder pads and oversized hammer (supposedly to flat-head everyone he meets) where given a VMC German Grey base. I just added highlight to make it look slightly more interesting. At that point my creativity fizzled. I briefly considered turning it into a fancy lightning patterned power weapon hammer. But honestly, that has been done to dead and I think a huge chunk of grey metal flying at you from someone named Flat Head should be intimidating enough.

I'm suddenly reminded of the final scene from The Breakfast Club. Now the Simple Minds are stuck in my head.

Rage-Chaos War Droid was the first and last of the three war droids on my paint station. In my first attempt to paint him I wanted to give his armor plates yellow and black chevrons. I took a long time messing around with 3mm masking tape. Unfortunately it all resulted in a gloopy mess. I failed to properly fold the tape around the myriad of curves. That made the stripes look messy. Then - to my horror - I peeled of bits of paint when removing the tape. I told the paint that shouldn't happen with modeling tape, but the paint firmly disagreed. Into the dip he went. 

You know what you get for spilling paint on the floor in the Rage-Chaos War Droid household? 

As I went for white on mr. Flat-Head I decided to go for red with this one. Now that is a color you can apply a lot of scratches to (applying rust is a different story). As I went overboard with my sponging of Underbot I decided I was not allowed to use a sponge on this one. I did have a lot of fun making his power cables look disturbingly radiant. It is a bit of a cheat as green contrasts rather nicely with red of course. Visiting the Diehard site today I discovered I glued him together differently. Not quite sure if that was supposed to be a possibility or  it was me being a bit of a dolt while assembling but here we are. It does prove the strength of my new glue though. Those arms did not want to be held in place by regular solutions but Zap-A-Gap saved the day (I am open to sponsorships ;) :D) . Anyway on to more blogging as I have a backlog of finished models to chat about.