According to the notes I’ve kept over the years, the evolution of the sculpt colours in the A&A games (I have all of them from the Milton Bradley edition onward) went more or less as follows:
United States: In the Milton Bradley edition, the U.S. troops were dark olive green and the equipment sculpts were dark brownish green. The current basic U.S. colour of medium green was first used for both troops and equipment in AAEurope. The medium green colour has seen a few shading differences over the years, especially in the troops sculpts, but the biggest variation in this practice was the use of two U.S. troop colours in AAPacific: medium green for standard troops and dark green for Marines.
Great Britain: The A&A rules have generally described the British pieces as being “tan,” but the actual sculpts that have come with the games have used different interpretations of this colour over the years – and have deviated wildly from it in some cases. In the Milton Bradley edition, the British troop sculpts were medium tan and the equipment pieces were what could be called pale beige. In the AAEurope and AAPacific, the British troop pieces stayed medium tan and the equipment pieces now matched them in colour. The British troop and equipment sculpts then went all over the place for a while: they were pale cream in D-Day, pale lime green in Revised and salmon pink in Bulge. Things finally settled down with Anniversary because from that point onward British troop and equipment pieces have been issued in a light tan colour almost identical to the pale beige of the Milton Bradley equipment pieces. (They’ve also been issued in a so-called “dark tan” version to depict ANZAC forces in Pacific 1940, but that’s another story.)
Soviet Union: Russia’s troop pieces in the Milton Bradley edition were dark chocolate brown and its equipment pieces were a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. In AAEurope, all the Russian sculpts were a medium shade of burgundy purple; since Revised, they’ve been a darker shade of the same colour.
Germany: In the Milton Bradley edition, Germany’s troop sculpts were medium grey and its equipment sculpts were a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. Beginning with AAEurope and ending approximately with Revised (my notes are a bit unclear about this point), German troop pieces were a kind of gunmetal bluish-black and most German equipment sculpts were similarly toned (though a few were also issued in dark grey). The use of outright black for all the German pieces seems to have started with Bulge and continued thereafter.
Japan: The colours used for Japan in the Milton Bradley edition can be described as amber (or medium butterscotch) for the troops and pale butterscotch for the equipment. All of Japan’s sculpts were cherry red in AAPacific; they’ve been dark burnt orange from Revised onward.
Italy, China, ANZAC and France: All of these are recent additions to the A&A sculpt range. Their respective colours are medium brown for Italy, lime green for China, “dark tan” – actually more of a grey colour – for ANZAC and dark blue for France. There has been no colour variation either between games in the case of Italy and China (which appear in both Anniversary and Global 1940) or between the troop and equipment sculpts of a given country (which is a non-issue in the case of China because it only has troop pieces).
