"Out Of Millions Of Soldiers, They Are Unsurpassed."

"Those were Imperial Guards, Lando. The Emperor's personal protectors. Handpicked from the very best..."

These four 40mm tall hard plastic protectors of Darth Sidious are produced by “Fantasy Flight Games” and can be found inside the company's Imperial Royal Guards Unit Expansion for "Star Wars: Legion". "An elite unit whose members served as personal bodyguards to the Galactic Emperor", the Red Guard made their first 'Silver Screen' appearance in Richard Marquand's 1983 American epic space opera film "Return Of The Jedi".

Despite initially priming this quartet with a double coat of "Vallejo" Heavy Red, and subsequently shading them using a healthy dose of “The Army Painter” Strong Tone Quickshade, I actually found myself having to repeatedly return to these multi-part miniatures to 'plug up' some frustrating gaps which I kept discovering during the painting process. Admittedly, I had somewhat quickly assembled and super-glued "the most skilled warriors in the forces of the Galactic Empire" in my eagerness to get them on the tabletop, but even so I was rather surprised by just how ill-fitting some of their limbs were, especially when they were presumably supposed to blend in with the swirl of their famous flowing robes.

Bloodletters WIPs - Having had their Hellblades dry-brushed the daemons' black flesh is being 'picked out'

Fortunately, once the odd application of 'Grey Stuff' had both cured and been pigmented, an enthusiastic dry-brushing with (more) "Vallejo" Heavy Red seemed to work wonders on the figures' overall appearance, and momentarily I was actually tempted to leave the soldiers' uniforms as was. Certainly I wasn't planning on following the "Fantasy Flight Games" official paint-job palette, which portrayed the Imperial Royal Guards with purple-hued undergarments and blackish gloves.

In the end I therefore decided to simply 'pick out' each bodyguard's armoured helmet with a combination of "Vallejo" Dark Vermillion and a generous splash of "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson. This seemed to break up the monotonous nature of the miniatures' colour scheme reasonably well, especially when mixed with the "Vallejo" Black, "Citadel" Ironbreaker and Nuln Oil used upon their hand-weapons.

Bloodletters WIPs - The daemons have all had their hand-weapons shaded and dry-brushed

Staying with my use of "Vallejo" Heavy Red and “The Army Painter” Strong Tone Quickshade, I have also begun slowly undercoating enough plastic Bloodletters by "Games Workshop" in order to double the size of my daemons unit for "Age Of Sigmar". However, rather than leave the blood-hungry warriors' "brazen Hellblades" until last, as I have done in the past, I've actually dry-brushed the weapons with "Vallejo" Gold before 'picking out' any of the Khorne creatures' other details in "Citadel" Abaddon Black, "Vallejo" Dead White and Heavy Ochre.

This should hopefully mean that I won't have to spend too long later tidying up each figure because all my previously finished paint-work has suddenly become infested with minute flecks of "Vallejo" Gold; something which has caused me a lot of frustration in the past. In addition, having spied in "The General's Handbook 2018" that a thirty-strong legion of Bloodletters only costs 320 points as opposed to 360 points, I have taken the step to assemble another ten of the multi-part furious fiends to help my "Blades Of Khorne" step ever closer to a future stand-a-lone force of 1000 points...