Modifying FMG's Italian Battleship

@fasthard thanks for sharing! Interesting idea to use 2 euro cent coins.

@AlphaKappa:

That is so helpful!  Thank you for the analysis!

It was my pleasure. A chance to pull out my games and admire them? If I must…  :-D

@AlphaKappa:

It’s too bad Avalon Hill didn’t print the new Anniversary Edition in the same colors as Europe '40 Second Edition.  I really like the lighter shade of those Italian pieces because they’re easier to distinguish from Soviet red-brown.

To be fair to Hasbro/WotC/Avalon Hill, all they promised was a re-print. And to a large degree, that is what the New A&A Anniversary edition was: a straight up re-print of the original go at things. Were there differences between the two prints? Of course there were. Were all of those changes for the better? I don’t think so, no. I especially wish they had kept the US F6F Hellcat fighters but instead we got more P-38 Lightnings. But overall, it was probably as faithful as they could do and a long shot better than either 1) not doing it at all (what a pity that would have been) or 2) just phoning it in and wholesale dumping all of the right pieces from A&A 42 and A&A Europe 40.1 Italy.

Instead, we got the original Anniversary Edition Italian tank, the M14/41. We got the Italian brown Japanese Betty bombers and Type 92 Howitzers (artillery). And they put them into a shade about as close as to the shade of the original Anniversary Edition Italians as they were going to get from two print runs separated by 9 years. And that meant that we got a bunch of Italian brown German ships and fighters. But we got a re-print of a game I didn’t think was ever coming back.

And for that, I don’t mind dark brown Italians. Even if I would have rather gotten the F6Fs and the Maroon UK Country class cruisers, I’m happy with what we did get.

-Midnight_Reaper

Thanks for letting me know, must have missed that other post. Looking forward to when they are back in stock.

Great Idea!

But it doesn’t work for me… same problems as Athlim had… Can anyone help?

@cyanight:

Everyone has their own unique way of painting the pieces.  No matter how we paint the pieces they must still be playable within the game.

And the nice difference between game sculpts and real military equipment is that sculpts are rarely lost or damaged in combat.  If that wasn’t the case, people might actually hesitate to risk sending their painted sculpts into battle on the game map, given the large amount of time they’ve spent on customizing them.  :-)

Following up:

I went out and bought a can of chrome spray-paint from a Blick arts-and-crafts store, and did a few tests on some B-17’s…

I’ll post pictures if anyone wants to see them.  It looks great.  Nice, even coating… very lustrous.  With some added details I think my late-war aircraft are going to look amazing.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

These are amazing, keep up the great work.

Paul - yeah… I applaud your stance on transport planes being separated from bombers.  I couldn’t agree with you more - my own rule is purely for simplicities sake for my 50th, it actually kinda bothers me still.  I only play A&A with my ‘old crews’ about twice a year (when I visit the states), otherwise my 50th hosts some players that haven’t played nearly as long as us - though all are interested in WWII history.  So I have to try and keep the piece differentiations to minimum.

George - no worries, they’re Italians so they should get a long with my guys  :wink:
Fantastic collection!  Like the individuality that those figs offer - I don’t own any, so are they pretty much the same size as the OOB?  Looks like it (except for the stands of course).  Gotta love those SS!  “HOLD ZE LINE!”
That one Italian bomber… would never thought that shade of orange could be pulled off, but it looks pretty cool.  Might have to give that one a try.