Painted pieces. Take a look!

Hey, this looks very interesting, BUT I think the Allies stand little chance since the UK cannot put any units on the table in time. They start first, granted that, but having to build an IC first will just spell disaster on India. Japan has 5 transports, 10 units in total, and using all their fighters, India should fall turn 2 or 3.

But I will gladly try this one out and maybe I will be proven wrong!

@cavestone I also use vallejo paints. The key question here is are you brush painting, or using an airbrush, or both?

The Vallejo paints have a “Model Air” line that comes pre-thinned. You can buy a thinning product (from them) to add to the “Model Color” series paints, which are the exact same thing, just more concentrated and thicker.

If you’ve never used an airbrush, its a bit finicky–it requires regular cleaning and a without a good brush and compressor the paint will flow very inconsistently. The process will be very frustrating unless you use the pre-thinned paints because the brush can only blow paint that is within a certain set of thickness parameters that are difficult to achieve, especially if you are trying to mix the air in the brush’s reserve or in small quantities. That’s why having copies of both Model Air and Model Color is fine by me–unlike Warhammer 40K I’m using primarily earthy colors, greens, dunkelgelb and dunkelgrau… other AFV and camoflage colors and so i don’t need a collection of primary or bright colors.

But I recommend it. The airbrush creates a sublime, beautiful layer and slight mix variations can be used to create shadows, grades, etc. Then you go back over with your brush, adding highlights, lines, details. Then, back over again with a drybrushing…then back to the airbrush to blast Flory Wash all over it.

Can’t see your photos, you can’t post photos until you have a certain post count. I wouldn’t use water to thin paints, they are water soluble but the mix and viscosity is all wrong (though water is obv. cheap and easy to clean up)

As for oil-based paints, these require thinner to clean up, they are much more difficult to drybrush with and are not used for airbrushing. The days of the old testors paints is long behind us–even apple barrel paints are easier to work with and cheaper. The early painting methods were much more about glomming thick layers of paint onto lead miniatures and the modern approach with water based paint and a series of different techniques creates much better results.

Part 4: Starting the ships, adding decals to the tanks, skin tones on the soldiers

Today spent some time adding paint to the sprayed ships, including painting the water jettisons on the subs black (this was very tricky and ended up looking a little sloppy). Advice for painting the jettisons: toothpicks are not small enough! If you do use toothpicks, you’ll have to dab a dot of black for each tiny jettison.

The battleships were a bit easier, and painting the decks, bridge, and smoke stacks were all done in silver. I plan on adding the final grey coat last after the deck and stacks/bridge dry. I experimented with how to add the national emblem, and will probably opt for a white background with a red dot on the bow of the ship. In the future I may do that with the rear end of the ship.

I painted the tranny smoke stacks silver and added a white background for the emblem on the destroyers. All in all, the Japanese navy is coming along nicely.

The armor is pretty much done. I added a white flag to the front side of the armor and will be adding the red dots later. For the aircraft, I’ll be adding a red band around the rear part of the plane. I was debating between sky blue and red and may alternate just for some variety.

The soldiers got some skin! And I just want to say that adding the paint alone brings out the contours of their facial features in an excellent manner on their own. I may add a touch of black to certain areas of the face but that will be a last step. The next step will be panting their uniforms, rifles, and helmets.

After all this is done, I will be spray painting the japanese bombers white, the aircraft carrier black, and then will add the details to those. The Japanese are about 55% done all in all and I’m pleased with the results so far even if they do look a bit amateurish. Stay tuned.

IMG_6405.JPG IMG_6404.JPG IMG_6403.JPG IMG_6402.JPG

So the rules me and my crew have been using for the last 5 or 6 years have worked for us so far.
Atomic bombs are a two part tech: require both heavy bombers and atomic bomb its self. Its a time consuming and expensive proccess. Although it is not listed here we have contemplated adding resource requirment for radioactive materials. Listed bellow is how our text appears in weapons and development:

*Enables nuclear Bombs. It costs 5 IPCs to build each atomic bomb. Must be loaded at an airfield aboard a Heavy Bomber. An atomic
bomb run can only be shot at by Anti aircraft fire. Each bomb may be used in one of 3 ways.

Infrastructure target: automatically destroy a grey infrastructure target of your choosing as well as roll a D-6 to decide
how many enemy units die. Strategic Nuclear Bombing: roll a d-10 to decide IPC property value to be destroyed and a d-6 to decide how many
enemy units die. The property value will increase by 1 IPC per turn until it is returned to its starting value. Naval Bombing: Automatically destroy your primary target, regardless of hit points; also roll a d-6 to decide how many
ships are destroyed. You may not damage ships.

(Explanations not in text)
.Bomb is destroyed from its single use
.no limit on bomb stockpile or building
.one bomb per heavy bomber
.loading a bomb consumes bomber movment for that round
.bombs can only be loaded at airfields
. a stategicly nuked territory can never deplete value below zero. Every following round its value will climb by 1ipc value per round until it reaches its original value

i just started painting mine.  Use spray paint.  Use Krylon grey or white primer.  After it primed spray it with the color you want as the base gray, green, earth, etc.  Then add the finishing touches the cockpit, nose, tail colors, etc.  The spray paint gives you a nice even coat.  Go light and fast over the piece about 6 inches away .  if you go slow you’ll put on to much paint.  no good you lose detail.  If you really want a sharp looking piece add decals.

look at some of my pieces on combat miniatures face book site.

Jeff Cam.

Thanks for the advice!  I will try a different primer.

Excellent job. I also love the subs.

Wicked!!!