They come pre-painted and ready to rock but feel free to paint away. All expansion pieces come painted as well. Easy game to learn but made to play as a stand alone game, not recomended for the board games. Although you can use the infantry pieces.
WAS and AAM have enough units that using shapeways other other models/cards like team poseidon that you can have whats fairly close to a complete game.
Additionally, if you download the scenarios that you’ll find at www.axisandallies.com, they’ll actually list suggested units for you. It makes quick, pick-up games much easier to get started.
We usually play the 3 wide x 2 deep… but we don’t usually have a large enough table for more than that. I prefer the 3 wide because it spreads out the armies and allows more room for flanking.