Star Wars: Legion Paint Guide - Schemes & the Pots to Buy

Search for Legion paints and most of what comes back is a shop listing for a paint set that has not been made for years. The official faction sets - Core, Imperial, Rebel, Republic, Separatist - were a 2019 Fantasy Flight Games and Army Painter collaboration, they went out of production when the game changed hands, and what is left is old stock and collector listings. They answered a genuinely useful question: which colours do I actually need for this faction? This guide answers the same question with pots that are still in production, each one linked to its own page so you can see who stocks it in your market.

Nothing here is official. The colour descriptions are our own, the recipes are sourced from published community and tutorial work (named as we go), and where those sources disagree we say so rather than pick a winner quietly.

What the official sets contained

The five sets, as sold:

• Core - eighteen colours including two washes, plus two brushes: Tusken Raider Tan, Jundland Wastes, Endor Green, Bounty Hunter Yellow, Endor Timber, R2-D2 Blue, Rebel Fatigues, Blaster Bolt Red, Blue Lightsaber, Mimban Mud, Sith Robes, Consular White, Sandtrooper Pauldron, Jawa Robes, Durasteel, Astromech Silver, Shadow Wash and Strong Tone Wash.
• Imperial - ten: Stormtrooper Armor, Imperial Walker Grey, Imperial Uniform, Death Star Grey, Sullust Stone, Imperial Cargo, Speeder Bike Brown, Royal Guard Crimson, Shadow Wash and a plastoid gloss varnish.
• Rebel - ten: Rebel Flight Suit, Rebel Camouflage, Fleet Trooper, Fleet Trooper Blue, Green Squadron, Duros Skin, Rodia Clouds, Sandcrawler Rust, Dune Sea and Strong Tone Wash.
• Republic - ten: Christophsis Crystal, Rishi Station, Dathomir Skies, Kamino Stormclouds, Jedi Order Robes, Jedi Temple, Captain Rex Blue, Naboo Plains, Shadow Wash and a gloss varnish.
• Separatist - ten: Ryloth Cliffs, Umbaran Shadow, Saleucami Sand, Separatist Blue, Geonosian Soil, Grievous Mask, Sensor Silver, Destroyer Droid Bronze, Strong Tone Wash and Shadow Wash.

An honest caveat about the mappings below. The sets were made with The Army Painter, but no cross-reference from the licensed names to Army Painter's own Warpaints names was ever published, and we have not found one. So these are equivalents by job and appearance, not claims that two labels hide the same paint. Where a set colour is genuinely distinctive - Royal Guard Crimson, Destroyer Droid Bronze - we say what it did and give the closest thing currently sold.

Those five pots plus a black do most of the work across every faction in the game. Everything after this is refinement.

Stormtroopers and the Galactic Empire

The whole army is one problem: white armour over a black bodyglove, repeated across dozens of identical figures. Pure white paint is the wrong tool for it - it covers badly, it kills the shadow you need to read the shape, and it makes the model look like a bathroom fitting. Every method that works builds white from a shaded off-white, and there are two schools.

The fast route (three steps). Prime white - Citadel Corax White or White Scar if you spray - then flood the model with Apothecary White, letting it settle into the recesses without pooling on the plates. Once dry, edge highlight the armour with Vallejo Dead White. This is the method both The Brush Wizard and The Fifth Trooper published for troopers in white plastoid, and it is the reason a squad can be finished in an evening. Edge highlighting is the only skill it asks of you.

The controlled route. Prime dark, build up through a grey - Sorastro's Legion stormtrooper episode works from Mechanicus Standard Grey with Ulthuan Grey as the light tone and white kept for final highlights only, with Nuln Oil doing the recess work. Slower, and much better on a character or an AT-ST where you want visible modelling.

The rest of the Imperial palette:

• Bodyglove, boots and gloves - Army Painter Grim Black or Citadel Black Templar as a one-coat black, then Nuln Oil in the recesses only. A grey highlight of Stormvermin Fur on the headband and gloves reads as worn fabric rather than plastic.
• Blasters - Army Painter Gun Metal or Citadel Leadbelcher, shaded hard with Nuln Oil. Leave the barrel with its sheen; it is the one part of the model that should shine.
• Vehicles and walkers - Administratum Grey for the light grey plating, Dawnstone for panels a shade down, Mechanicus Standard Grey for the deep interior grey.
• Officers - the olive-drab uniform is Death Korps Drab or Vallejo US Olive Drab; the black naval version is better as Vallejo German Grey than as true black, so the folds are visible at all.
• Royal Guard - a cold deep crimson, not a fire red: Khorne Red basecoat, Mephiston Red on the raised cloth, or Vallejo Carmine Red in one bottle.
• Sandtrooper pauldrons - flat colour blocks. Black, white, Wazdakka Red and an orange-yellow such as Averland Sunset cover the ranks, and the dusted look over the armour is a light drybrush of Vallejo Iraqi Sand.

Clone troopers and the Republic

Mechanically the same armour problem, tonally a different one: clone plastoid is warmer than Imperial white, and the markings are the entire point of the unit. Get one white recipe you trust, then change nothing but the stripe colour from one legion to the next.

For the armour, the published recipes split on warmth. The Fifth Trooper's Phase I guide primes with White Scar, bases Vallejo Dead White, shades with Apothecary White cut roughly three parts to two with Contrast Medium, and edge highlights back to Dead White - a cool, clean white. GamingTrend's clone tutorial deliberately warms it instead, mixing an ivory into the mid-tone and finishing with Monument Bold Titanium White; Monument Ivory is the pot for that middle step. Both look right on the table. The warm version photographs better, the cool version is faster.

• Bodyglove - Citadel Black Legion over the white primer is the one-coat answer, with Nuln Oil into the recesses.
• Visor and lenses - Abaddon Black with a hard Ulthuan Grey sliver where the light would catch, then a spot of gloss so the eye reads glass.
• Markings - thin the colour and expect two coats over white. 501st blue is Calgar Blue (or Macragge Blue for a darker parade version); the 212th's marks are an orange-yellow, Averland Sunset into Fire Dragon Bright; the 41st's green is Elysian Green; Coruscant Guard red is Word Bearers Red shaded with Agrax Earthshade and lifted with Evil Sunz Scarlet.
• Battle damage - chips and scratches scribbled onto coloured plates with a pale grey like Ulthuan Grey is the trick that sells clone armour, and it takes minutes.
• Jedi and robes - undyed cloth, not brown: Karak Stone or Vallejo Khaki with a brown wash, Rhinox Hide for the leathers.

Rebel troopers, fleet troopers and commandos

The Rebel Alliance is the easiest faction in the game to paint and the hardest to get right, because it is all mid-tone cloth and no single strong colour. Vault Games' Legion rebel-trooper guide is the most complete published recipe and it is worth following closely: helmet, jacket, boots and gloves in Rhinox Hide; trousers and bandolier in Steel Legion Drab; the shirt and the top of the cap in Screaming Skull; a drybrush of Longbeard Grey, then Agrax Earthshade over the lot to tie it together and a second pass of the browns to bring them back.

Two things carry over to everything else in the faction:

• Skin - Cadian Fleshtone shaded with Reikland Fleshshade, which is two pots for every human head in the army.
• Kit and weapons - Mechanicus Standard Grey with two thin passes of Nuln Oil rather than one heavy one.

Variations worth naming:

• Fleet troopers - the navy jumpsuit is Macragge Blue with a Temple Guard Blue highlight and a Drakenhof Nightshade wash, over the same Vallejo Off-White helmets.
• Rebel commandos - the camouflage is the interesting part. A khaki base of Vallejo Khaki or Army Painter Desert Yellow with irregular blotches of Death Korps Drab and Rhinox Hide reads as field camo at arm's length; do not try to paint a pattern, paint a mess.
• Pilots and specialists - the orange flight suit is Vallejo Orange over a white undercoat, shaded with Army Painter Soft Tone so it stays orange rather than going brown.

Battle droids and the Separatist Alliance

The fastest-painting faction in the game, and the one where a one-coat approach is not a compromise but the correct answer - a B1 is a stick of tan plastic with a wash's worth of shadow in it, and forty of them painted identically look better than forty painted lovingly.

B1 battle droids. Three published routes, all good:

1. One coat over white. Prime white, flood with Citadel Skeleton Horde or Army Painter Bony Matter, then a light drybrush of Screaming Skull. Wargamer's tutorial and Burning Beard Studios both land here; Burning Beard adds an Ushabti Bone drybrush before the Screaming Skull for a longer tonal ladder.
2. Primed tan. Prime or base Zandri Dust, shade with a thinned pinkish-brown - The Painting Pirate uses Darkoath Flesh cut half and half with Contrast Medium - then drybrush Karak Stone and finally Ushabti Bone. Warmer and more organic, which suits the battered look.
3. The dropper-bottle route. Vallejo Bone White, a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, drybrush Vallejo Deck Tan or Iraqi Sand. Cheapest per model across a horde and the easiest to mix more of.

Whichever you choose, the guns are the contrast: Black Templar or Army Painter Grim Black with a grey edge. Squad-marking flashes on the torso and head are usually red - Blood Angels Red as a one-coat, or Evil Sunz Scarlet if you want them bright.

B2 super battle droids are a cooler grey-blue rather than tan: Dawnstone or Army Painter Gravelord Grey, shaded with Nuln Oil, with the red chest plate as above.

Droidekas are metal, and worth the extra step. Base with Army Painter Plate Mail Metal, glaze the shell warm with Citadel Hashut Copper or Brass Scorpion, shade the recesses with Druchii Violet - a purple wash over bronze is what makes it look like metal and not like paint - and catch the edges with Sigmarite. Gloss varnish afterwards; a droideka should look wet.

Grievous and the command models get the ivory-bone treatment: Vallejo Bone White plating, Rhinox Hide leather cape, Vallejo Silver for the limbs, and the eyes as the one warm spot on the model.

Where the sources disagree

Worth knowing before you commit an army to one method:

• White armour, from above or below? Prime-white-and-shade is faster and gives a brighter model; prime-dark-and-build gives better modelling and takes several times as long. Community tutorials split roughly on how many figures the painter has to finish.
• How warm is clone armour? The recipes above land in different places on purpose, and the film reference does not settle it - lighting in the source material does half the work. Pick one and keep it across the army; a legion painted in two whites looks like a mistake, either white alone looks deliberate.
• Rebel fatigues: khaki or grey-tan? The official set called the colour Rebel Fatigues and the community recipes reach for warm khaki, cold grey-brown and olive with equal confidence. All three are defensible; the trousers-and-jacket contrast matters far more than the exact hue.
• One-coat or three-coat droids? Nobody argues about the look on a B1 - the argument is whether it holds up on a character. It does not, quite. Batch the rank and file with contrast, slow down for Grievous.

Seed a scheme from a faction colour

Every colour above will open in our scheme generator with a full cross-brand ladder - shade, layer, highlight and a supporting palette - so you can build a recipe in ranges you already own rather than the ones a tutorial happened to use:

• Imperial off-white armour and Imperial officer olive
• Royal Guard crimson
• 501st clone blue and 212th marking orange
• Rebel fatigue khaki and fleet trooper navy
• Battle droid bone and droideka bronze

If you would rather work from a pot you already have, the paint matcher goes the other way - name the paint, get its equivalents in every range we track.

Painting the same schemes at a bigger scale

The other Star Wars miniatures game on the shelf uses the same troopers, clones and droids at a larger scale and a higher finish, which changes the method more than the palette: fewer models, so the slow white and the visible modelling become worth it. Those recipes are in the Shatterpoint paint guide, and the pots overlap almost entirely - one white, one black, one bone and a wash will start either game.

Tips

• Buy the white you will actually thin. A dropper bottle of Vallejo Dead White outlasts several pots on an army of troopers, and white is the paint you will use most.
• Two washes, not five. A grey-blue for white armour and a brown for everything else. Apothecary White and Strong Tone cover the whole game.
• Batch the troopers, single out the characters. See slapchop for the batch method and washes and shades for controlling where the shadow lands.
• Markings last, and thinned. Two thin coats of a stripe over finished white beats one coat that you then have to tidy.
• Do not varnish the visor. Matt varnish the model, then put the gloss back on lenses, blaster barrels and droideka shells by hand.
• Compare before you commit. Every pot named here has its own page with live prices from the shops that stock it, and cross-brand equivalents if your local shop is out - start at every paint range.

Painting a different game? The same scheme-to-pots treatment exists for Star Wars: Shatterpoint, Lord of the Rings and BattleTech.