Star Wars Legion: Imperial Royal Guards

Star Wars Legion: Imperial Royal Guards, Emperor's Royal Guards

A slightly out of order post today – I have some stuff from January I still need to post but like an idiot I forgot to photograph them the other day, so instead we have some of this month’s models. The Imperial Royal Guard from Star Wars Legion. If you’re of a certain vintage lile myself, you’ll think of these as Emperor’s Royal Guard instead, but I guess it is what it is on that one. I don’t really care, but given that the official name of the models is “Imperial” we’ll go with that in the post title.

Star Wars Legion: Imperial Royal Guards, Emperor's Royal Guards

Much like both Palpatine and Vader, these guys are predomonantly one colour. Which obviously this time is red. So again, it was time to try to vary the colours and use different finishes within that to show the different materials and textures, though there are some comics and action figures and such out there to give ideas.

Star Wars Legion: Imperial Royal Guards, Emperor's Royal Guards, Emperor Palpatine

Despite being out of sequence, these were indeed cleaned up and built in January so they count towards Anne’s 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge, and of course they’re completed before the end of February, so they also count for Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 25-26.

Star Wars Legion: Darth Vader & Emperor Palpatine

Star Wars Legion: Darth Vader & Emperor Palpatine

Somehow, Palpatine returned.

Cringe dialogue from a terrible film aside, I’ve painted my first Star Wars Legion models, starting with the two Biggest Bads. Darth Vader from the original core box, and Emperor Palpatine from, well, the Emperor Palpatine box.

Star Wars Legion: Darth Vader

I watched a couple of YouTube videos to get ideas on how to paint Vader, and used a lot of the ideas from Sonic Sledgehammer’s video in order to get him painted reasonably quickly.

Star Wars Legion: Darth Vader

Attempting to use different textures and very slight variations on blacks and greys to show the different materials on Vader’s armour and clothing.

Star Wars Legion: Darth Vader

As always, the flaws really stand out when the photo is blown up to this size, so the drybrushing looks rough and I can see some mould lines that made it through my extensive cleanup process. These PVC models in the Legion range – particularly the early ones are certainly not my favourites!

Star Wars Legion: Emperor Palpatine

Papa Palpatine was a similar kind of paint process. No video required for inspiration, I just googled some images to re-familiarisie myself with the particular pallor of his skin in RotJ and copied the purple-hued grey.

Star Wars Legion: Emperor Palpatine

Adding red-rimmed, yellowed and red-pulilled eyes that you can’t really see because of his hoodie. Slightly-differently-toned black that you can’t really tell apart, and a coat of gloss on his walking stick completed the model.

Star Wars Legion: Emperor Palpatine

Something that you can see in these photos are the …chunks of paint on the sides of his robe, and a hair in the middle. All of which are basically invisible in hand, but have now been shaved off with a scalpel now that I’ve seen them in these massively blown up photos. As with most of the stuff I’ll be posting for a bit here, these models count towards both Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 25-26, and also Anne’s 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge.