Coruscant Fashion Police is a series where I’ll be breaking down Canon and Legends paint schemes for various units within Legion. This game is all about creativity, so whether you want to be completely movie accurate or go rogue with your own style, these guides are a great place to start.

The bread and butter of the Galactic Empire, the first name in faceless baddies: Stormtroopers! One of the most iconic costumes in the history of Star Wars, these minions of the Dark Side are also a staple of Imperial armies in Legion.

Let’s take a look at some Canon and Legends inspiration for how you could paint your very own Stormtrooper army.

Imperial Stormtroopers

(Canon: A New Hope)

To begin: stark black and white can be a total pain to paint well, especially if you’re just starting out painting. It’s tough to get the lines crisp enough to mimic the clean Stormtrooper lines even for a steadied, veteran painter. But boy do these guys look clean when they’re on your table.

Note the black line above the eyes – a lot of people seem to miss this on their paint jobs. Obviously the choice is yours, but it’s easy to forget and will make your Stormtroopers look just a bit off.

You also have the option to paint the blue lines on the side of the helmet or keep them black. And if you dusty them up a bit with some sand and washes, you’ve got Sandtroopers from A New Hope!

For a general guide, I can’t recommend Sorastro’s video enough.

A Word on Pauldrons

You’ll also want to paint your Unit Leader’s pauldron (that bulky thing on their right shoulder) an appropriate color. I decided to paint all of mine the same vermillion for a matching army, but you could also follow the official Stormtrooper Officer designations as per Wookieepedia:

Enlisted Trooper Black Sergeant White Unit Leader/Captain Orange

Plus, a few other designations:

Snipers Blue Grenadiers Red

Death Troopers

(Canon: Rogue One)

The elite squad of the Tarkin Initiative, Death Troopers made their first film appearance in Rogue One and captivated goth-fascist hybrids everywhere. If you get tired of painting all white, you could always switch to all black with light green accents.

It’s worth saying, of course, that’s we’ll probably get Krennic and the Death Troopers at some point, but I also thought they would have already been announced. Choose wisely.

Alternately, you could just leave off the green accents and call them Shadow Troopers.

Inferno Squad

(Canon: Battlefront 2)

Technically we’re looking at TIE Fighter Pilot outfits here, but we’ve seen crack commando Iden Versio pop up in games like Destiny and X-Wing as well, so it’s more than worth exploring as a paint scheme for Legion.

In true Empire fashion, we’re looking at more blacks and reds here. All black undercoat, two red stripes on the side of the helmet, and perhaps red stripes down the raised bumps on the arms and legs. The decal might be too tiny to fit on well, but it’s worth a shot!

Magma Troopers

(Legends: Misc.)

Despite being a popular choice for alternate Stormtrooper color schemes (if you’re already tired of all white or all black), the all red Magma Trooper variant isn’t actually in canon right now. The current Battlefront variant is the all white look plus a black pauldron and some nifty grey shin guards, but obviously this all red look is pretty pretty cool.

You could also add some bling and a boombox as an homage to my favorite cosplay of all time.

Nova Troopers

(Legends: Star Wars Galaxies)

There are few games that I consider as formative for me as Star Wars Galaxies. I remember setting up a house and moisture farm on Dantooine, and practicing my Teras Kasi on an outpost of Tusken Raiders on Tatooine (spoiler alert: one of my favorite parts of Solo was that particular name drop.

I think this is one of the most rad, underrated color schemes out there and I’m so sad that I haven’t seen more of it. Be bold, use gold!

Old Republic Marines

(Legends: The Old Republic)

I only recently got into The Old Republic MMO, but I’ve been a pretty big fan so far. I’m very much one of the “fashion is the end game” players, and so I love the amount of customization available to me.

But I was struck early on by this really slick Imperial Marine look, if only because I knew it would fit extremely well in my own army. You could easily go for a dark grey-blue armor plus the red stripes and gloves, and have a look that is both distinctive and within bounds.

Shock Troopers

(Canon: Revenge of the Sith)

Perhaps the most common alternate paint scheme, Shock Troopers provide a really distinct red pattern while also sticking to current canon. Another of Palpatine’s elite squads, the Shock Troopers were called when a job necessitated speed and skill.

It’s a bold look, and sure to impress on the table.

Bonus – Clone Troopers

(Canon: Attack of the Clones)

And last but certainly not least, now that we know that the Clone Wars is on the way (late 2019? early 2020?), we’ve got dozens of possible inspirations to draw from to satiate our clone-lust until then.

The easy choice is Vader’s Fist, the 501st, pictured here. A great blue scheme to compliment the red Shock Trooper or gold Nova Trooper. But of course you can’t just stop there.

Queue one of my favorite YouTube channels, Star Wars Explained:

Go crazy! The whole galaxy is yours.

So there you have it, a brief introduction to the wide number of possible Stormtrooper armors you could model your minis after. If you use this article in your own painting, I’d love to see your minis! Post some photos in the comments or tag me on the Facebook group or in Discord. I’d love to see your work.

Happy painting, Commanders!