John Brown's Completed Painted German Forces!

Here’s another pic in dimmer light, which is a better comparison to the before picture above.

The silver pops nicely. Before, in the same lighting situation, I couldn’t see most of the border lines at all.

I used the Edding 5300 silver acrylic paint marker with a 1-2 mm tip
The silver seems to really catch what little light there is in the room.

As the paint the marker ran low of paint it was harder and harder to control, so I reccomend just stopping and using a fresh paint marker if this happens. A few of the last lines I did are fatter than I would like because of this.
But the overal result is a huge improvement.

IMG_20230304_154631.jpg

I just made my own bootleg Italians with Krylon “Classic Grey-” this was a $4 Walmart special.

Between my copies of AAR, AA42, AA41, and AA42.2, I was able to scrounge up more than enough ugly/unique sculpts to give those backward stepchildren of the Axis their own tantalizingly un-purchasable and 1942.2-ready complement of 3 BB (Axis BBs from 41), 5 CA (cut the masts off some small UK/RU BBs from AAR _, 6 TR (axis TR from 41), 8 art (japan AAR) and 4 Bmr (axis '41 bmrs). The rest of the forces are donated with love from AAR Germany, including the 88’s that finally get to serve their intended AAA purposes in the Italian army.

Pictures when I can._

@CWO:

Thanks Cyanight and John – glad you find the identification charts useful.  For an actual history of the evolution of the sculpts, I highly recommend knp7765’s photographic inventory, located here…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=23386.0

…because my I.D. charts approach the subject from a different angle: in almost every case, they simply show one representative sculpt for each nationally-distinctive design produced to depict each unit type that has appeared in A&A over the years.  The charts mostly ignore the many variations (some minor and some major) that have been seen in the sculpts – for example, the two versions of the Japanese field artillery piece, which was produced with the undercarriage either folded for towing or deployed for firing.  The only exceptions I made were for the Panther tank, the 88mm AAA gun and the Stuka dive-bomber (interestingly, all three being German units) because of the peculiar evolution of those three units over the course of A&A’s production history (especially in the case of the gun and the plane, which started out as completely different – and incorrectly-used – units compared to their current status).

Thanks again Marc, I had forgotten about his thread. this will be very helpful as well. :-)

john

So very true. When I first started painting my aircraft I had to include decal roundels for the players to distinguish the pieces from one another. My naval units are painted mostly with a color scheme for playability except for the capital ships like the Carriers and popular Battleships. All of them have a decal or flag to show which nation they belong too. I actually replaced the OOB British Cruisers because I thought they looked too close in size with the destroyers. I ended up replacing with some ships I found on Shapeways. The biggest problem I had with naval units is that they can exist in the same seazone with enemy pieces unlike land territories. Because of this I decided to keep the subs, destroyers, cruisers and non unique battleships following a color scheme. There are so many colors in the spectrum though we should be able to come up with a solution that will make them look more historical yet keep the pattern or color scheme for the nation. I really would love to paint all the ships historically and maybe I will revisit them again someday. Every time I go back and repaint my pieces I seem to get better at it. Or at least I think I do, hehe.

@jwo1984:

hey guys, so I was searching some camo desert schemes for HBG’s Valentine medium tank and came across this one. � However looking at the sculps I knew it would be tough to paint these blue lines in because most of the tank is all track! so I cut out and shaped some track guard armour like the photo below just using some clear flexible plastic and glued in too the sides…making these two tanks mk II’s which look to have had the side armour as a pose to the Mk V that HBG has sculpted.

I’m sure whatever you do too it, it will turn out great. Can’t wait too see it painted. Good luck buddy! :-D

“painted playing pieces” are just that, decals are way out of scale, not the emblem the plastic of the decal itself is too nasty on minis this size. These paint jobs are amazing!