The Army Painter provided several of these historical paint sets to Goonhammer for review and evaluation purposes.
I’m just going to be up-front with it – since I stopped playing GW games over a decade ago, I have largely become a “Vallejo man” as far as paints are concerned. Sure, I still keep a pot of Mephiston Red around, and I make use of Carroburg Crimson and Drakenhof Nightshade for my Infinity N5 Shasvastii. And I’m still nursing along a pot of Ral Partha Steel that’s almost 40 years old, but for the most part my paint rack is packed with Vallejo paints. I like their consistency, I like the dropper bottles, and between the Model Color, Game Color, and Vallejo Air lines I have pretty much every conceivable shade of brown, beige, tan, and green I could possibly need for pretty much all of my historical gaming projects. So when I agreed to do a review of one of the new WW2 sets from The Army Painter, I wasn’t too sure what I’d be getting myself into.
The Set
The Army Painter recently released three separate kits for World War 2 historical forces – the British, the Americans, and the Germans. Each kit consists of 20 bottles, with each set’s paints specially chosen to best cover the respective nation’s gear and uniforms. Today I’ll be talking only about the American set – I think MommaNegan will have an upcoming review of the German set that she has been putting through its paces doing her excellent HTPE Eastern Front articles.
For the sake of specificity, the American set contains Matt Black, Matt White, Flag Red, Ensign Blue, Life Vest Yellow, Rosy Skin, Light Drab, Medium Drab, Dark Drab, Boot Brown, Rifle Brown, Paratrooper Tan, Canvas, and Dark Olive standard acrylic paints. Steel metallic color is included, and there are four different washes (Black Tone, Brown Tone, Warm Skin Tone, and Military Shade). Finally, the Rust technical effect paint rounds out the set.
The box also includes a painting guide, and when I first read this I was really excited, thinking that it would be a color guide showing which paints might correspond to which bits of gear or uniform kit. These kinds of guides are always useful, as they save you having to trawl the internet for photos or pick up Osprey Men at Arms books for examples (but you should do that anyway, just because they’re cool). Sadly for me, the included painting guide was the basic, generic Army Painter “how to paint miniatures” guide rather than something specific to this set. Still, that guide is actually a pretty good resource, with information on priming, basic paint techniques, tips for applying washes, etc. If you are a brand new player just making your first foray into a game like Bolt Action and haven’t done miniature wargames before, the tips are well organized with helpful photos.
My test subjects for this review were some old Black Tree Americans I had stashed deep in my backlog bin – a 3-man 60mm mortar team, two paratrooper snipers, and two paratroopers armed with flamethrowers. Black Tree has been around for a long time and their sculpts have loads of character. They are definitely on the “heroic” end of the scale, with large heads and hands. The faces are sometimes a little goofy, and the mortar crew especially qualify as “mugs.” But the uniform details are nice and the clothing and gear have recesses that are well suited to both drybrushing and washing. I mounted these guys on my usual steel fender washer bases and gave them a quick coat of light grey Tamiya surface primer.
As much as possible, I wanted to paint these miniatures using only what was in the set, as I figured that would be a good acid test of how well the set met the needs of painting these particular figures, as well as force me to try some different (read: less lazy) approaches or techniques.
Skin Deep
When painting miniatures, I always go by the maxim that it’s easier to paint a raised detail without slopping on the lower stuff than it is to paint into a deeper area without slopping on the raised bits around it. As such, I almost always start with the “deepest” areas, and on most historical military figures that’s the skin.
I am also super lazy and am mostly looking to get troops on the table quickly. My approach to skin tones is rarely more than basecoat + wash. If I’m feeling frisky, I might drybrush a lighter skin tone over the base tone before the wash for a little more definition. This set came with the appropriately named “Rosy Skin,” which is a very light salmon pink. It’s much more pink than the Vallejo “Flat Flesh” I’m used to using, but I’m going all-in with this so I charged ahead.
It was here that I got my first pleasant surprise – The Army Painter thoughtfully includes mixing ball bearings in all their paints at the factory. NICE! The loud clacketa-clacketa-clack noise was a reassuring sign that the colors would be well-mixed every time.
After the base skin tone was dry, I hit the skin areas with the Warm Skin Tone wash, and it was here that I got my second pleasant surprise. While I had used Strong Tone way back in the day, it had been a long time since I’d used a wash from The Army Painter, and I’ve got to say I really like the texture/consistency of these. They are thin enough to run into recesses, but at the same time thick enough to stay where you put them. That’s a really nice combination of features, and while it wasn’t super important here when working on the first color, it was much more important later when more of the colors on the mini were blocked in.
The resulting color, however, was redder than I really wanted. While the wash settled perfectly and brought out all of the texture of the sculpt, the overall effect produced a skin tone that read to me as slightly sunburned.
To help address what felt too red to me, I first went back over the skin areas, highlighting raised areas with the original Rosy Skin. That helped quite a bit. And almost as if they already though about this eventuality, this Army Painter set came with a bottle of Matt White. A quick mix of that with the original Rosy Skin gave a lighter, less saturated color. A few quick highlights on the most prominent places (noses, knuckles, etc) and I had a skin tone I was much happier with.
Aside: I rarely paint eyes anymore, as they are almost never visible on the table. Also, eyes are hard to do well and easy to mess up. I am not nearly as good at painting faces as MommaNegan – her figures often convey expressions that imply the model is having tactical insights or thinking clever thoughts. I’m not so good at eyes, so mine often convey expressions that imply the model has “seen too much combat.” But I wanted to include eyes here to give you a sense of what a finished face might look like. End of aside.
In the end, I got to a skin tone I was happy with. I am largely derived from Northern European stock, so I could serve as my own reference point to see how well it came out. The result was pretty good:
While the overall process included additional steps, it was pretty quick and only added a few minutes across all 7 models to get me a good result. Kudos to The Army Painter for forcing me out of my lazy ways!
It’s worth noting that while each of the three historical sets from The Army Painter includes the Warm Skin Tone wash, each has a different skin tone paint. The English set has Fair Skin and the German set has Weathered Skin. I was limiting myself to just what came in the WW2 American set, but The Army Painter Fanatic range has a very nice range of skin tones from which to choose. They’re definitely worth checking out.
Uniform Colors
There is a nice triad of olive drab paints (light, medium, and dark drab) that have you pretty much covered for the kinds of green you’re going to see in period American uniforms. The set also includes Dark Olive, which is super dark and which I think might be best used to shade or panel line vehicles.
But the dirty secret of American uniforms in WW2 is that many of them weren’t actually green. Indeed, in the earlier stages of the war (especially North Africa, Sicily, and Italy), the typical American field jacket and trousers were various shades of brown and tan. The brown tones that are included (Canvas, Paratrooper Tan, Boot Brown, and Rifle Brown) are all nice, but I want to make special mention of Boot Brown.
My typical recipe for leather is three colors – with Vallejo German Camo Dark Brown as a base and Vallejo Flat Earth as an edge highlight. The mid tone varies, and for a long time I’ve loved the color of Craftsmart Espresso – especially for horses as mentioned here. But it’s a shitty craft paint with poor consistency and low pigment density, so using it is always a little bit of a pain in the butt even if I like the color.
But Boot Brown from the Army Painter is exactly the color I wanted. I love it. It is an almost perfect match for my beloved Espresso, but with beautiful consistency and great pigment density. I am 100% a convert, and even if I largely keep to Vallejo paints going forward, Boot Brown is always going to have a place in my paint rack from here on out.
Similarly, Canvas is a great color. Between Canvas, Medium Drab, and Light Drab, pretty much all of the various belts, straps, pouches, canteen covers, and web gear that comprised the typical US field kit are covered. As a kid, my cousin and I used to hike around in the woods with my grandfather’s WW2-issue web belt, pouches, and canteen, and I remember those colors well – this set nails them.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that one of the more critical colors seems to be missing. Worse, it’s present on the art on the front of the paint set’s box!
This dark brownish color (with undertones of both yellow and green) is “field drab,” and was a staple of the US Military uniform. And while its absence from the set is frustrating, it’s absent for good reason – The Army Painter’s entire Fanatic line doesn’t have an analogous color in it. There are some that are kind of close or capture elements of it – you could probalby get there with Desert Yellow and Obsidian Skin maybe? – but as a stand-alone paint bottle the American GI enthusiast is out of luck. I was able to mix something that I was mostly happy with from Paratrooper Tan, Dark Drab, and Light Drab, but I probably should have added a tiny bit of dark brown and yellow to it because it came out a little darker and greener than I wanted, as you can see here:
Because I am always trying to get painted minis on the table, I tend to take a lot of shortcuts. For WW2 historicals especially, recall that basecoat + wash is the order of the day. So ideally, I can work with a single paint color for each element and go from there. This is Boot Brown for the boots, Canvas for the gaiters and jackets, Medium Drab for the web belts, and Dark Drab for the helmets (and the mortar shell). The lack of an equivalent to field drab threw a bit of a wrench into things, but once I’d mixed up a suitable equivalent for the trousers and shirts, I moved on to the wash step.
It was here once again that The Army Painter delivered. Hitting everything (except for the skin) with Brown Tone gave me a really nice effect, shading the cloth, catching the texture of the web belts, and giving everything a nice, dirty, field-worn look. And again, the consistency of the washes really pays off here as it was easy to keep the wash on the clothing but off the skin.
When compared with some similarly-garbed American GIs I’d done previously, the results were pretty good:
Hot damn, they turned out really nicely! I think for the GIs I used something more akin to Strong Tone than Brown Tone (Strong Tone has more of a reddish sepia color), but the overall effect is close enough that I think they match well enough. And on reflection, I think I like the look of the jackets with The Army Painter Canvas more than the previous GIs (which were done with Vallejo German Camo Beige). The Canvas is a shade lighter and survives the wash step more distinctively than the Vallejo color. I think I made the mix on the mortar crew’s trousers a little too dark, but, uh, they’re freshly issued! Yeah! I might also consider doing the web belts in Light Drab versus Medium Drab, as the brown wash darkens them down considerably thanks to their texture (it’s hard to see from the photos, but they have a series of grooves that catch the wash really well).
But what about green uniforms? Well, as mentioned the set comes with a triad of drab greens, and it turns out that these are spot on for the kinds of green used in later uniforms (especially some of the airborne kit). A basecoat of Medium Drab followed by a quick drybrush of Light Drab produced a really nice green color:
If you wanted to, you could totally stop here, secure in the knowledge that you’ve got a pretty good match for the standard issue green uniform. Pick out the details as you want and call it a day.
Or, you could bust out the Military Shade provided in this set. Military Shade is to greens what Brown Tone is to browns – a nice, rich, dark green shade that you can use to tie your base color and drybrushed highlight together just a little bit more (which is what shades and washes are best for!). A quick hit with Military Shade (which has the same pleasant consistency as the others in the kit and stays where you put it) gives an even better result:
Wow! This was the first time I’d used Military Shade and I’ve gotta say I’m pretty impressed. It does a fantastic job of reinforcing the folds/shadows and when combined with the Medium and Light Drabs it captures that iconic American green uniform color more or less perfectly. Getting these minis to this point was incredibly fast and easy. From here, it’s just details (though of course that’s sometimes the most time-consuming part).
Aside: I’ve long thought about doing US Paratroopers at some point (as evidenced by the fact that I had a couple hanging around in my backlog), but had been putting it off in favor of other projects. But seeing how easy they are to paint up using this set, I may have to buy yet another big box from Warlord Games. Curse you, Army Painter!~
Other Details
The figures that I was painting this time didn’t have standard-issue rifles, but the Rifle Brown and Steel colors are more or less spot-on for doing stocks and barrels. Steel is a hair light for my taste when it comes to gunmetal, but of course having Black Tone in the kit will let you darken down your metallics to whatever suits the look you want. And if you want to paint tanks or other armored vehicles Steel will be a perfect color for the tracks. Similarly, the inclusion of the bottle of Rust effects is really nice for doing vehicles. A base coat of Boot Brown with spots of Rust will work perfectly for things like mufflers, springs, and bits of vehicle undercarriages constantly exposed to heat and/or moisture.
Finally, in addition to basic black and white, the set also comes with a bright red, a bright yellow, and a dark blue. These are all great for things like unit insignia, rank patches, and the like. You’ll likely only need these for tiny bits and bobs, but their inclusion is a nice touch.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this is a pretty nice set. While the lack of an equivalent to field drab detracts from the utility of the set in terms of ease-of-use (and covering the earlier period of the war), I think supplementing with a single Vallejo color (US Field Drab, #70.873) pretty much gets you exactly where you want to be. And there’s no question that the combination of greens in this set are great.
Once again, I think the excellent texture/consistency of the shades is worth highlighting. They are just thick enough that they are really easy to control on the mini, avoiding slop or overrun that you can get with other, thinner washes or oils if you’re not careful. This slightly thicker consistency does reduce the working time a bit, and I found that I needed to work quickly to prevent them drying out in my cup. I suspect using a wet palette would help prevent that and prolong the shades’ working life if you were batch painting. With only a handful of figures it just meant I needed to keep up the pace and not dither.
Similarly, the inclusion of agitators in the paint bottles themselves is a really nice touch. Shaking one of The Army Painter’s bottles before use is alarmingly satisfying. On the bottles themselves I did notice that they were a little harder to squeeze than I was used to – but then again I am just three days out from shoulder surgery and only yesterday regained full feeling in my hand, so that might just be me.
In terms of value, each of the WW2 Historical sets on offer from The Army Painter retails for around $87. The regular bottles in the Fanatic line retail for $4.70, while the metallics, washes, and special effects like rust are $5.00 each. As such, the total value of the paints in the set works out to $95.80. That’s about a 10% discount – not a huge savings, but there’s definitely some utility in getting everything at once, especially if you are just getting started with WW2 gaming.
And if you are getting into WW2 gaming – especially if you want to do airborne troops in Normandy – then this set will really get you going.
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