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How To Paint Everything | Star Wars Legion

How to Paint Everything Star Wars Legion: Rebel Commandos and Troopers

by Beezer | Dec 04 2025

Greetings Legionnaires! In today’s How to Paint Everything, I am going to walk you through how I painted my Rebel Commandos and Rebel Troopers.  Big thank you to Atomic Mass Games for providing the models! To begin with, I wanted these groups of models to look more like uniformed soldiers than a rag-tag group of people opposing the Empire like I did for my Rebel Sleeper Cell models.  Because of that, I went with a color palette that was much more drab than I might choose for other models within the range.

Additionally, because you will probably want to have several units of these models in your army, I had to come up with a scheme that could be replicated pretty quickly across both Commandos and Troopers.  I have to say, I really enjoyed building these kits, because they provide enough head variety for you troops to represent several different groups within the Star Wars universe (Human, Twi'lek, Mon Calamari, and Duros).  This also has the added benefit of bringing some color to what would've otherwise been a very drab-looking unit.  And you can't really make a wrong choice for skin color, either, because it's Star Wars. 
  1. The two major areas of these models were going to be green and brown, and I decided to tackle the brown areas first.  I started with a base of GW Thondia Brown and then highlighted with Vallejo Model Color Ochre Brown. These two colors provided enough of a contrast for the models to look nicely highlighted, but only do it in two colors.  I love Thondia Brown as a base for most brown areas because it's so dark that it can really give a subtle transition from my black primer to the layers on top of it.  
  2. For the green areas, I started GW Death Korps Drab and then highlighted with GW Death Guard Green. Much like the brown areas, I wanted to create the illusion of extreme highlighting in as few steps as possible, and I knew I was going to apply an oil wash later, which would do a lot of the heavy lifting of shading the recesses of the model.  
  3. I painted the weapons black and then stippled on Scale75 Black Metal. Quick and simple.
  4. For the blue alien skin, I used GW Macragge Blue as a basecoat and then used one of my favorite paints to highlight them: Vallejo Game Color Magic Blue. Seriously, if you've never used this color, give it a go.  
  5. For my basic human skin, I used GW Cadian Flesh highlight with Vallejo Model Color Basic Skin Tone.  For a browner skin tone, I used GW Catachan Flesh and GW Balor Brown.  It will look awful when you first apply that highlight, but it will dry much darker and look just fine as you apply it in thin layers.
  6. My favorite color for skin is purple, and to achieve that end I used Pro Acryl Purple highlighted with Vallejo Model Color Blue Violet.  That highlight pops.
  7. For my final skin tone choice, I decided I wanted something in the turquoise family.  So instead of reinventing the wheel, I decided to go with the same recipe I used to paint my Sons of Horus for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy.  I started with a base of Scale75 Arphen Jade and then highlighted it up with Scale75 Surfer Orc Flesh.  For my SoH, I would have an additional highlight layer of with an ivory paint mixed in with the Surfer Orc Flesh, but I decided not to use it for these models.  They were highlighted enough as it was.
  8. The last painting step for these models was purely for gameplay reasons.  I knew that these units would eventually get mixed in with each other during a game, so I decided they needed some way to identify the different units.  My solution was to give each unit a spot color on their uniforms that I (and my opponent) could more easily differentiate between units on the table. I don't really recommend doing any shading or highlighting with these areas, I would just go straight to a fairly vibrant color from the get-go.  It makes them easy to identify from the table, and doesn't add a large amount of time to the painting process.  Colors like Pro Acryl Bold Pyrrole Red, GW Fire Dragon Bright, GW Moot Green, or Vallejo Game Color Ultramarine Blue work great for this task as they are all very bright and visible colors.
With the changes AMG has made to Legion, I hope this guide helps you get some more Rebels on the table and playing more games with painted models! Play painted, y'all!



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Tags: How to Paint Everything | star wars legion

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