Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

How does assembling and painting flames of war models compare to 40k? I have been looking at the Flames of War website and the idea of collecting World War II or Vietnam armies appeals to me. I know the vehicles and troops are quite a bit smaller than a 40k tank or trooper. I was wondering are the flames of war models difficult to assemble or paint? Do you use less detail because it is a smaller model?

They're not difficult to assemble although BF don't always have good instruction so you might need to google a picture of the piece you're assembling in order to get it right. BF use several different materials. Metal, resin and plastic. Plastic should be no problem for you but resin and metal might be new depending on when you started up 40k.

When painting I do paint less detail than 28mm. I just do block painting, a wash then 1 layer of highlights. Of course if you want to you can do all sorts of things. Some players use the same techniques as scale modellers for vehicles.

I find the resin-and-metal Battlefront stuff a pain (their metal casting tends to blur details). Their resin-and-plastic kits are pretty good, and their plastics are a step or two below perfect (the occasional model has parts that are difficult to assemble).

An advantage you'll find with FoW over 40K, however: if Battlefront doesn't make a specific model, or makes a model you don't like, Plastic Soldier Company, Zvezda, and a number of other manufacturers probably have what you're looking for.

Advantage #2: 40K models are for 40K - you can get some more milage out of them by proxying in generic sci-fi games like Rogue Stars, but they're pretty much just 40K. A 15mm WWII army, however, can be used for just about any WWII game - some rescaling may be required for some games, and there may be some multi-base vs single-base issues, but these tend to be minor considerations.

What are 'Flames of War' models?

While there is an official supplier called Battlefront you can get WW2 miniatures from anywhere and out of varied materials. Flames of War have never tried to enforce use of official Battlefront miniatures only, and realise they have no IP over the background.

Now the principle difference between 40K assembling and painting with Flames of War is that you can't use your imagination to convert. If you want to give your space marine captain a shoulder mounted bolt pistol reminiscent of a Predator plasma caster then that is a valid way of depicting a bolt pistol and frees up hands to do other things like hold an auspex or wield a power sword in two hands. Rule of cool sets in and people will vote up your conversion. However if you want to have a german motorcycle and sidecar and have the passenger doing drive-bys with a panzerfaust in each hand, you would certainly hit rule of cool, but then immediately find it doesn't apply in that type of game. You don't have to go all the way and become a 'rivet counter' or a 'button counter' but it is expected that you don't play fast and loose with history in your modeling. If you still want to do so, play fantasy WW2 instead there are a number of rulesets, normally involving such things as SS werewolves or WW2 mecha.

Durecellrabbit and Carlson793: thank you for the information. I have worked with Games Workshop's metal, resin, and plastic 40k models. I don't mind the metal or plastic, but don't like their resin kits. Luckily there are fewer of them these days.

Do the Flames of War kits come with transfer sheets for insignia and markings, or do people paint those on?

Could Games Workshop's citadel paints be used on Flames of War models, or would I need to buy battlefront's paints? I have a bit of citadel paints sitting around and would prefer to not purchase another range of paints.

Orlanth: I know that 40k is set in a fictional world while flames of war is historical, and that there is more freedom for conversions with 40k. My question was about the differences in assembling and painting the Flames of War models to the 40k models due to the scale differences? Are they more difficult to assemble or paint because they are smaller and their parts are smaller. Do people use a different technique or level of detail because the models are smaller? I have no interest in fantasy WW2.

Size mans nothing as the smallest model parts are about the same real world size.

1:700 warships are a small scale, but the smallest parts you get are fairly large AA gun turrets, and sometimes those are molded on.

28mm is a large scale but the smallest parts are thinks like grenades.

With 15mm you have about ten parts to a tank rather than about sixty, and stowage is in large chunky pieces or molded on the model. infantry are in one piece with gun team miniatures sometimes in two.

Assembly is about equally as fiddly, or not, placing a single piece tank commander on a Sherman is it is to glue the binoculars to the tank commander on a Leman Russ.

If you hav any experiece of 40K assembly, or Aifix or Revell kits, you will find the skills and rough difficulty level translates to 15mm WW2.

Some specific tips.

1. Paint your infantry miniatures before you base them on multibase, to base coat the bases fix the models with tack.

2. When gluing resin metal and plastic models for the first time use your choice of glue on two pieces of sprues first, see if it works and the bond holds.

3. Buy army specific basecoat, it makes the work of painting much easier if your tanks are half the right colour before you even start.

4. Thin your paints as much as you can, as historical models dont exaggerrate ine details in order to make painting easier, or if they do, they do so far less than fantasy models can get away with.

Do people paint eyes on the infantry, or just paint the skin and hair? I am assuming their heads and faces are smaller than say an imperial guard or a space marine. I hate painting faces on an imperial guard and the eyes give me so much trouble.

bbekins wrote:
Do people paint eyes on the infantry, or just paint the skin and hair? I am assuming their heads and faces are smaller than say an imperial guard or a space marine. I hate painting faces on an imperial guard and the eyes give me so much trouble.

Some do, most don't, from the other side of the table you can't tell.

I've got some factions with three layer painted flesh and some with base & wash, I can tell them apart, no one else has ever commented.

To be honest an easy way to do the flesh is just base colour, wash then dry brush, you don't see enough of it generally. Hair? maybe a bit around the back, black or dark brown, done and forget it.

Decals.. Some of the BF boxes come with some pretty generic decals, the blisters don't, 3rd party decals are generally better, BF have had quality issues on some decals and you don't always get enough (E.g. the Soviet armour in Team Yankee having nowhere near enough vehicle numbers)

Paints..

GW paints will work fine, if they are the colours you want, avoid the BF paints as they don't supply individual colours, get the Valejio model colour paints, they are pretty much the right tones (aimed at 28mm so they are all slightly too dark), but work well enough and its easier than mixing your own, they also do coloured primers.

Assembly..

BF Plastics are generally pretty good, PSC are 'finer' but can be a bit more fragile. BF metal/resin has more character as typically if there are five tanks in a box the hulls are all different and the sewage stuff actually fits. All pretty easy to assemble.

The only awkward ones are some of the metal HMG teams where you have say three models carrying the tripod - the new bases with the holes are useless here..

Its cheap enough to experiment with, get an infantry platoon blister and have a play

bbekins wrote:
Durecellrabbit and Carlson793: thank you for the information. I have worked with Games Workshop's metal, resin, and plastic 40k models. I don't mind the metal or plastic, but don't like their resin kits. Luckily there are fewer of them these days.

Battlefront resin is far worse than Forgeworlds. It's the brittle 'Chinese recast' type resin rather than Forgeworld's rubbery resin.

bbekins wrote:
Do the Flames of War kits come with transfer sheets for insignia and markings, or do people paint those on?

The older ones do, but my last purchase (plastic Tigers) did not. There are, however, a number of companies you can buy correctly scaled decals from: Battlefront (if they didn't include them in the kit), Plastic Soldier Company, Dom's Decals (though Dom is a one-man operation and can be a bit slow)...

bbekins wrote:
Could Games Workshop's citadel paints be used on Flames of War models, or would I need to buy battlefront's paints? I have a bit of citadel paints sitting around and would prefer to not purchase another range of paints.

Honestly, paint's paint. I use a mix of Krylon/Rustoleum primers, Citadel (mainly washes), Vallejo, Reaper, and cheapo craft paint (Apple Barrel, Americana... the $1 bottles from Walmart/Hobby Lobby). It comes down to finding the color in your collection that comes close-enough to the historical colors.

Battlefront has a good if simple painting guide in the Open Fire! Forces PDF on the Flames of War site. It lists paints from the Colours of War line, but its paint splotches can give you an idea of what to look for in your Citadel line.

Agree the newer resin infantry are horrible.. the older tank resins are fine though, typically you have two pretty robust chunks (hull & turret) two which metal or plastic tracks and guns are attached.

I gather but have yet to open the box to check, the new gun crews are the crappy resin

 Carlson793 wrote:
The older ones do, but my last purchase (plastic Tigers) did not. There are, however, a number of companies you can buy correctly scaled decals from: Battlefront (if they didn't include them in the kit), Plastic Soldier Company, Dom's Decals (though Dom is a one-man operation and can be a bit slow)...

I got decals with the new Brits however they're all the same (40 and red squares). If I got my Brit markings right unless you want all your tanks to be from B squadron of the senior regiment in the senior brigade you'll need to get additional ones.

 Carlson793 wrote:

bbekins wrote:
Do the Flames of War kits come with transfer sheets for insignia and markings, or do people paint those on?

The older ones do, but my last purchase (plastic Tigers) did not. There are, however, a number of companies you can buy correctly scaled decals from: Battlefront (if they didn't include them in the kit), Plastic Soldier Company, Dom's Decals (though Dom is a one-man operation and can be a bit slow).

Which version of the plastic Tiger did you get? All of the one's I see on their website should come with decals.

Tiger I E Platoon (GBX90)

Tiger Heavy Tank Platoon (GBX99)