X-wing: Converting Corran Horn's E-wing

Hi folks,

The E-wing is a ship that I have always been fascinated with. I think it was the first new starfighter to be introduced in the Star Wars EU back in the day; I can remember reading about Luke flying one and missing his old X-wing, despite the E-wing's superior maneuverability. When it was released in the X-wing miniatures game I was thrilled to finally get hold of one, except for one little detail...

...that cannon:

Until now, I have resisted the temptation to do any X-wing repaints. I have plenty of other painting projects to do and X-wing was supposed to be a break from that. In the case of the E-wing, I really couldn't stand that cannon on top of the canopy, so I decided to do something about it. Here is the process:

1) I shaved the cannon off the hull with a sharp hobby knife. Watch your fingers if you plan on doing this, it took quite a bit of pressure. The cut part curled, so I had to bend it back gently with the aid of some hot water.

2) I added a small ball of green stuff (two-part modelling putty from Games Workshop) then pressed the cannon under the the fuselage. The amount of putty I used was intentionally excessive, so that it would fill up any gaps caused by the uneven join between the cannon and the fuselage.

3) I trimmed the excess putty with a sharp modelling tool and added some superglue to make the addition permanent.

4) The next challenge was to add an astromech behind the canopy: Whistler! I could think of a few ways to do this, but I settled on trimming a Krak grenade from my 40K bitz box. As you can see the size is pretty close to the astromech on an X-wing and it saved me rolling tiny balls out of green stuff.

Here it is before I got out the paint brushes:

5) I spent a bit of time mixing some paint to match the colour used on the E-wing. A combination of Ushbati Bone, Warp Stone Glow and Administratum Grey got me pretty close. This was used to cover the red stripe on the side of the fuselage and to do some touch-ups. Warpstone Glow was used to change the colour of the wing details and Mephiston Red was used to paint the nose-cone. I have no idea what colour it is supposed to be, Corran Horn's card is cut off at that point so I just went with my gut!

That's it! The scale of these miniatures is so small, I really had my heart in my mouth during the whole process. Compared to some of the other repaints I have seen, this one retains a lot of the elements of the original figure. This is good for my fleet, as it doesn't stand out, but I can imagine other people will want to change the pallet a bit more extensively. All I can say is good luck and may the Force be with you ;-)

See you across the table,

M4cr0