I hate Avalon Hill's choice of colors!

I’ve been doing a lot of painting (mind you, not highly skilled… mostly “here’s a can of primer and here’s a can of color”) for other games, and I’m coming back around to my copies of A&A.

While I don’t play Global, I did combine 1941 and 1942 unit bins, and I’ve been trying to “trick up” my copy of 1942.2 as much as possible… tons of extra units, industrial complexes, custom maps, battle boards, dice, IPC chips, etc, etc…

One of my customizations has been to national units for nations “not really” in the 1942.2 game, but ya, they kinda are. Italy, China and ANZAC have their own forces in Global, of course, but aren’t individual nations in 1942.2. As a “fun flavor factor” I went ahead and picked up pretty full sets of Italian, Chinese and ANZAC units (from Global, ordered through HBG) just to use by the “parent” nations that control these areas during 1942.2 play.  So I would throw “Italian” units in Italy and the Med to represent Italy, even though they would be 100% fully integrated into the German players units and turns, “Chinese” units in China, even though they were 100% fully integrated into the US players turns, and ANZAC units, would be, of course under UK control.  None of them are treated any differently, no extra rules, these are just 100% flavor units to make Italy, China and ANZAC look a little more unique, even though its still a five-nation game.

Here comes my gripe about Avalon Hill…

While Chinese units being a different shade of green from the US units, really makes me happy… Dark Brown for Italy and Grey for ANZAC, really just makes me scratch my head in disbelief. I know, its probably my OCD kicking in here, and maybe I’m the only guy on the face of planet earth that this bothers (about 99% sure of that, I’m quirky that way), but I just hate… Hate… HATE the color choices of brown Italian units and grey ANZAC units.

I personally believe smaller nations/powers closely tied with “big brother” nations/powers should be a different shade of that bigger powers forces.  China was handled great in this manner… a different shade of green for a nation closely tied to the US whose forces are green.  The UK is basically the parent power of ANZAC, why not make ANZAC a different shade of UK Tan… like, I dunno… maybe a dark brown?  I suppose that “50 shades of Grey” might include black on the far end, so if Germany is black, shouldn’t Italy be grey?

Wait a minute…

By default, Italy is dark brown and ANZAC is grey… but I think Italy should be grey and ANZAC should be dark brown… oh, what a conundrum my OCD has created.

Utterly lacking the fine talents and patience of some of this board’s “let me hand paint each individual soldier from each nation to have these perfect uniforms that they wore during the war”… I think I’m going to ham-fist this project and throw some primer and paint at my collection of Italian and ANZAC units and reverse the atrocity that Avalon Hill did with poorly researched color choices.

Yes… I think I’m just going to take all my Italian units and paint them grey (infantry, tanks, planes and ships), and take all my ANZAC units and paint them dark brown… call me crazy, call me paranoid, call me OCD… whatever… I think I’m going to run with this… it’s bothered me for far too long…

I’ll save the next couple reply posts for my pictures of the end result… as terrible as they might turn out… but who knows, maybe i’ll do a good job.

Comments, concerns… calls to the OCD help line… feel free to post your thoughts.

[RESERVED] for Italian units days of future past

[RESERVED] for ANZAC units days of future past

@Leatherneckinlv:

My Italian paint scheme is “Warm Caramel” by rust-oleum which resembles very closely the OOB colors of Italy, ANZAC I use Krylon Camo paint series Khaki…It is the darker color of tan…there is another color I use for the Brits from that series called Sand…The ANZAC color also is close enough to OOB ANZAC colors…I just paint all my units…to also appease my OCD in colors too…they are flat …Italian is Satin

Thanks for the tips Leatherneck… i’ll be sure to look into those… and here I thought I was the only crazy OCD person obsessed with color schemes on the forum.

Don’t suppose you have any pictures you’d like to share of your work?

Your painted ANZAC units look (from what I can tell) to be a match for the OOB UK Tan… is that what they are? Do they match OOB UK Tan or is the shade significantly different?

The “Warm Caramel” of the Italian units does seem to be a pretty decent color… of course, I fully intend on some sort of shade of grey for the Italians in my copy… I just don’t like the OOB Brown they come in… not only does it look odd for a German Ally, its very close in shade/color to the OOB Russian Brownish-Maroon color, which I find doubly-annoying.

For my own ANZAC units, I haven’t fully decided, but definitely some shade of tan/brown… anything from slightly darker than OOB UK Tan on up to a “Warm Caramel” for ANZAC.  I want Italy and ANZAC forces to have their own color, but have it “themed” with their host-nation in 1942.2 (much like the Chinese green is a different shade to US Green).

Thanks for uploading your pictures, I love the customization forums, always nice to see what other folks are up to when they upgrade their game!

Did you repaint the UK? cuz the UK unit looks different from my memory and the ANZAC kinda looks like I thought UK should be…

Ah, okay, gotcha… what’s your process?  Spray Paint, Primer and Spray Paint?  Out of a can, or airbrush? Or (gulp) handpainted with an old-school brush!?!? lolz.

@Imperious:

I prefer the original Milton Bradley German Grey, the MB Mustard Yellow for Japan, and the Milton Bradley Brown for Russia. All other colors are fine, except Anzac should not be grey, but cream or whatever.

I kinda like the current German Black, but MB’s German Grey wasn’t bad either… the other MB colors were also pretty good, but they probably had to ditch the Japanese Yellow for PC reasons.

You didn’t mention the Italians though… in your perfect world, what default color would the Italians be?

@Imperious:

Yellow Japanese is represents the rays of the rising sun, not the color of skin.

Italy should be the green from their flag, or very light grey

But by that same thought, the Japanese flag isn’t yellow… and green Italians would look terrible when the Green Americans invade North Africa and Italy