I’ve been busy lately searching the world for the little plastic soldiers that I used to play with when I was a little boy. I just happened to come across them only a couple of blocks from my house at the hobby store. They didn’t have all the ones I wanted so I went online and ordered the rest. I’m not sure if I got exactly the same brand that I used to have as a kid but these look just like them anyways. Check them out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omPptc9C2_4
Man those are cool. I have some Amazon gift cards from Christmas that have been burning a hole in my pocket….hmmmm. Do they all come in a “base” color for painting? What paint to use?
So did all your infantry need repainting or did any of them work straight out of the box? You had to paint them all to match the default colors of the in-game units? How did you paint the infantry, spray paint or with a brush? Maybe you could list the different colors you used to match the in-game units, that would be helpful.
One thing that’s always kinda bugged me, the “Italian brown”… looks too close to the Russian maroonish-brown to me. If I had the choice, I would have made the Italians grey, which goes better with their close German allies and makes them look nothing like the Russians. One of these days I might repaint all the Italians, but I’m pretty lazy about that.
None of the infantry came in a colour which is consistent with A&A and all of the colours are different. The Germans didn’t need to be painted but the rest certainly did. I chose to paint the Germans because I liked the colour of metallic black more than I like the OOB colour. I was able to find a paint that was pretty close to the UK so I didn’t need to paint the rest of the pieces. The only paint that was even close to being Japan was the perfect colour but it was a clear paint so it needed 2-3 coats to get it the colour that you see in the video. Luckily the pieces were a light brown to begin with or that wouldn’t have worked. The Aussies were green so a clear burnt orange paint would have given them a different colour I think.
The spray paints that I used were Tamiya Color For Plastics which I bought in the hobby store where they sell models. The colours were;
U.K. TS-46 Light Sand Very close match don’t need to paint everything else
U.S. TS-28 Olive Drab 2 I really like this colour so I painted all of the pieces to match
Japan TS-73 Clear Orange At least 2 coats
ANZAC TS-66 UN Gray Not sure I like it as much as OOB but went with it
Russia TS-11 Maroon Same colour but much deeper so had to paint rest of pieces
Germany TS-40 Metallic Black Turned out awesome
Italy I couldn’t match a Tamiya paint to Italy so I cheaped out and got a plastic paint from the hardware store. I regretted this decision because it goes on a lot thicker and does not give a good finish. The good side is it matches perfectly to OOB so I didn’t need to paint the other pieces. The bad side is I’m not happy with the finished product. The lesson is buy the right paint, pick a colour you like, and paint all of your pieces.
I was able to buy 6 boxes of infantry at my local hobby store in the model department. This is your best bet because you don’t have to wait or pay a shipping fee. I bought 2 boxes from Amazon. They have a great selection and quick delivery (type in “Airfix 1:72 figures” into the search box and see what they have). The Italians are out of print so had to get them from Ebay (paid twice as much for delivery as I paid for the box).
Airfix is not the only brand but those are the only ones I’ve tried so far. There are several brands and I found a website based in Atlanta that sells all of them. I have ordered 6 more boxes from them but can’t vouch for them yet because I have not received delivery yet (still too soon). Their site is;
https://www.hobbylinc.com/1:72-scale-world-war-ii-wwii-plastic-model-military-figures
Last thing is that you will have to trim them a bit with a utility knife. They are molded and come still connected to their shipping plastic thingy. If you want them to stand up straight then you have to shave the nub off the bottom of the base after you twist them off. Some might also have a bit more to shave off as well. It’s not that big of a deal though, you’re a big boy (or girl) you can do it.
Thank you for this information, it is very helpful… perhaps you should put a note like this in the comments of your YouTube video, as I’m sure it would be helpful there too.
I will do that thanks. I pushed the button on the publish video just moments before I went to work last night and didn’t have time to do all of that yesterday.
Great information! Thanks.
LOVE the idea of grey Italians. I agree they look too much like Russians.
Great find! Too bad for the 1000% markup since you were a kid!
I too like variants in the infantry, I just used a few from HBG, may have went your route, but im done painting, and not going back lol!
Too bad Sired cuz I would’ve been willing to trade you some of them for a deck of your cards. I have almost half of them left unpainted. :|
Too bad Sired cuz I would’ve been willing to trade you some of them for a deck of your cards. I have almost half of them left unpainted. :|
Your making the temptation too great!!
Thanks for reminding me though, I forgot about my deck haha, I need to fix a few errors and make the transport card and then ill release the files (lets shoot for Saturday). If your serious about using the deck though, id be super stoked!
I’ve got dozens of troops with your name on it. Hmm I wonder if YG wants to trade for his pending card deck too…
I’ve got dozens of troops with your name on it. Hmm I wonder if YG wants to trade for his pending card deck too…
Cant wait! I didn’t think I wanted to paint anymore, but I cant pass up more variants of troops! Thanks bro! 8-)
When removing these pieces from their sprues, I use clippers that I bought at CVS Pharmacy, if I remember correctly.
The sprue connections and nubs can sometimes be quite thick, especially for HAT pieces, which are also remarkably rigid by comparison with OOB pieces. (Like thicker versions of old Heroquest miniatures.)
Never tried painting any of mine. Did you use primer, General?
I didn’t use primer but I don’t really know what I’m doing though. I washed the pieces in warm, soapy water then dried them thoroughly. I found the best way to paint them was to lay them all face down on a piece of cardboard and spray them as per directions on the can. After about 10-15 minutes I moved them to a drier part of the cardboard using a toothpick to keep them from sticking to the surface. After about 2 hours I flipped them all over and painted the other side again moving them with the toothpick. Depending on the colour you might have to do a second coat but most of them only needed one coat. I waited until the next day to spray the glossy lacquer on the pieces because I found that they needed to be perfectly dry and hardened to get a good finish. I used the same method to spray that on as the paint.
Here’s the pic of Loco’s and Derricks. Let me know if you want some. I have so many pieces that I can’t remember what I have without looking now.
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I was able to buy 6 boxes of infantry at my local hobby store in the model department. This is your best bet because you don’t have to wait or pay a shipping fee. I bought 2 boxes from Amazon. They have a great selection and quick delivery (type in “Airfix 1:72 figures” into the search box and see what they have). The Italians are out of print so had to get them from Ebay (paid twice as much for delivery as I paid for the box).
Airfix is not the only brand but those are the only ones I’ve tried so far. There are several brands and I found a website based in Atlanta that sells all of them. I have ordered 6 more boxes from them but can’t vouch for them yet because I have not received delivery yet (still too soon). Their site is;
https://www.hobbylinc.com/1:72-scale-world-war-ii-wwii-plastic-model-military-figures
My infantry arrived in good condition and in a timely fashion. It took about as long as an order from HBG to get to me way up here in Northern British Columbia. Some things I’ve learned about these custom infantry that I should share with you;
1. Not all sets are created equal. The Russian Infantry and the Japanese Infantry had tiny bases on them and they don’t stand up very well.
2. Not all manufacturers are equal. Up until the time that I created my original post here I had only used Airfix Pieces. Since then I’ve purchased Caesar Miniatures and Pegasus brand pieces and they were better quality than Airfix. Not all of the Airfix sets were bad most of them I’m happy with. I’m going to do a video on all of my customizations and you can see the difference between them. I do have both in my R&D video, Greatcoat Germans from Caesar Miniatures and Greatcoat Russians from Pegasus but I don’t get up close to them and talk about them. Both have much better bases. The Russians you have to partly assemble but the end product is well worth it, they are the best that I have. I have just ordered some Japanese from Pegasus so I don’t have to keep picking them up off their tiny little faces.
There are hundreds of sets from different manufacturers at the Hobbylinc site if you want to check them out;
https://www.hobbylinc.com/1:72-scale-world-war-ii-wwii-plastic-model-military-figures
I didn’t use primer but I don’t really know what I’m doing though. I washed the pieces in warm, soapy water then dried them thoroughly. I found the best way to paint them was to lay them all face down on a piece of cardboard and spray them as per directions on the can. After about 10-15 minutes I moved them to a drier part of the cardboard using a toothpick to keep them from sticking to the surface. After about 2 hours I flipped them all over and painted the other side again moving them with the toothpick.
While I haven’t painted anything for Axis and Allies (due to the fact, I’m still kinda stuck on OOB units and nobody to play against)… I have been active in customizing Risk (classic) and Risk: Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition… yea… not Axis and Allies, my true love, but at least I can get my kids to play Risk with me (they’re getting quite good at it too). I have, oddly enough, done a lot of custom work for those games, painting capitals for classic Risk and Fortresses and Oliphants for LotR Risk… so painting multiple units of tiny size is something I’m kinda used to.
Here’s some tips you might find useful painting multiple tiny units on a mass scale that should save you some time and headache with the “paint on one side, then flip over with toothpicks and move to paint again” issue you described.
I paint all sides at once, because what I do is lay down some strips of masking tape, sticky-side up, the stick all my tiny units “standing up” on the sticky masking tape (I then tape the masking tape down to my painting surface so the tape doesn’t move either)… this keeps them from falling over during painting, but I can spray them from all sides in one go, without having to flip them with toothpicks… they just don’t move when stuck to masking tape, and they easily come off the masking tape when dry.
Here’s a couple of samples of how I tape-up some units (before and after applying some primer paint).
a couple of units I use for my Far East Command.
Nice!
Are those the WW1 Indian Infantry by HAT?
Colonial India British Infantry by Esci. I think there is another box called Kumar Pass.
