X Wing: Millennium Falcon mod - making the Stellar Envoy

The Stellar Envoy

While my true love as always been the X Wing itself I've always had a fond spot for the Millennium Falcon. I've already reviewed the Falcon here...

Millennium Falcon Review

This post looks at making some modifications to the existing FFG model to make the "younger" version of the Falcon.

As you may or may not know ILM has a history of placing Easter eggs in many of the movies they work on. As a result the eagle-eyed observer might catch a glimpse of R2-D2 in the last Star Trek Movie or the Falcon herself fighting the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact. For very obscure trivia points the Falcon also appears as a building in Blade Runner!

 One such Easter Egg took place in Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. In a docking scene at the Republic Senate a tiny little Falcon can be seen landing in the background. The man himself, George Lucas, has confirmed that this is indeed the Falcon and not "another" YT-1300 transport.

The Stellar Envoy is the Millennium Falcon before she was the Falcon. She was used by the Republic as a Transport way before Han Solo ever got a hold of her.. The most striking thing about the Stellar Envoy is it's unique blue color scheme. I thought it would serve as a great painting Mod for an FFG Falcon and a good way to distinguish having two YT-1300 transports in a game.


Painting the Stellar Envoy

First I needed a sacrificial Falcon. Once I had my intended victim I used Tamiya masking tape (I love that stuff) to mask off the blue markings, covering everything not BLUE in tape.

One donor Falcon and some masking tape 

I used a Tamiya Blue/Grey spray and hit the top of the model. Once dry I peal off the tape and start work on touching up the blue.

After base blue spray, no wash or touch ups yet

There are a couple of areas where the spray paint got under the masking tape so those are cleaned up with some watered down light grey. Using the same light grey I also paint out all the Red Panels on the ship. I also take the opportunity to paint out some of the darker grey panels as well, just to give the ship a little variation when compared to the Falcon.

Next up, the Wash.  I used Games Workshop Nuln Oil wash to go over all the blue markings. This worked beautifully and filled in the panel lines and highlighted the details, giving me a good match to the original pre-painted shading. once the wash was dry i touched up any blue or grey paint that got too much wash.

Wash applied to the Engine deck and markings

I  noticed the battle damage on the upper saucer of the Falcon. I didn't want this on the Stellar Envoy as it seemed silly that the ship would be practically rebuilt over the intervening years but they would leave recent blaster damage. I filled the blast craters with some GW putty, sanded it down and repainted the blue and grey that were obliterated during the sanding process.

yeah, I probably should have done this first

Green putty is awesome

On the Stellar Envoy there are a few rather bright red markings. I used a pencil to trace out the design and then went over it with Games Workshop Blood Red and highlighted with some Orange. And Red/brown ash toned down the color just a little bit.

hand painted markings, yeah, not the best.

I also painted the Engine with Ice Blue with some white highlight ( I did this for the Falcon as well) as the default paint job there made it look like the engine was turned off. Nothing Fancy here as the engines are hard to see.

Engines are a go!

Finishing Touches.

finally I needed to re-apply the weathering on the engine deck. The 6 exhausts located above the engines must run very dirty based on the amount of soot and grim found here.

Those are some dirty, dirty engines!

I used some Mig Black pigment mixed with some rubbing alcohol and applied this to the ship. I used a q-tip to rub away the excess pigment till I was happy with the result.

Last but not last I covered the ship with a matt varnish to protect the paint and lock in the pigments.

So there you have it. With minimal work you can really customize the FFG Falcon and make it unique.

Stellar Envoy meets it's future self