"WW2 aerial gaming questions of scale and painting" Topic

Hello

New gamer with a serious dilemma. I'm wanting to get into ww2 miniature gaming and I'm using CY6 and Blue Skies/Red Sun rules.

Not sure what scale I want to use. I like the Raiden line of mini's….it would be pretty neat to have 20+ planes on a table, but I also like the look of AIM's 1/200 scale, but not sure how many you can fit on a table without it looking cluttered.

So, does anyone have pictures of their gaming tables using both scales?

Money is super tight so I can't buy both scales to see which I'd prefer. I have to go off what I can see online.

Also, does anyone want to share their painting techniques? How does one NOT get brush strokes showing on these mini's? How do you paint your canopies?

Thank you

I'd say the question of scale is really about the sort of fights you want to game.

Huge flights of bombers, squadrons on the table – 1/1200-1/600

A typical bomber box with escorts and attackers – 1/300

Small scale engagements – 1 or 2 bombers, 6 or so fighters – 1/144 to 1/200

one on one dogfights – up to 15mm

Obviously these all assume playing on a reasonable sized table. If you only have a small table skew your scale down. If you are willing to play outside in the yard anything goes. I heard of a guy running games with 1/48 scale planes mounted on metal spikes pushed into the ground in his back yard.

Leidang is right. You really need to decide what kind of game you want. CY6 is perfect for dogfights and small engagements. Blue skies is altogether a different game, where the focus is not on individual dogfights but rather on formations and larger squadron level actions. For CY6 , AIMs 1/200 aircraft should work perfectly well. For Blue Skies, scale down to 1/300 or smaller. Raiden's planes are very nice, but check out Blazing Skies 1/350 models; blazingskies.co.uk. They are not quite as detailed as Raiden, but if you are going to be using big formations they are an attractive option price-wise.

Check Pico Armor 1/600 planes. 4 to 8 planes for $4.25 USD. Good for the Blue Skies series. There is a very active 1/600 plane yahoo email list, which has an up to date spreadsheet of all available planes. Good painting advice too.

No reason to use other scales for CY6. Just change distances if you want.

If you love detail above all else, then GHQ is your friend. But it will cost 10x more. Ok for CY6 which uses few planes, but more expensive for BS.

Choices, choices!

If you're interested in Blue Skies and you're new to collecting, take a serious look at Black Cross/Blue Sky. Even though it's an expensive package, for that price BC/BS sets you up with complete sets of RAF and Luftwaffe airplanes for Battle of Britain, a couple of hundred planes. True, they're two-dimensional cardboard, but they're very good quality. They're perfectly usable for CY6 and other rules. And the Lost Squadrons package builds very well on BC/BS for early Blitzkrieg air forces. It's a very fast way to put a couple hundred toy airplanes on your game table.

I'd go with 1/300th if I were you, though 1/600th is an option, especially if you want squadrons of bombers (the smaller scale is more affordable, and conducive to large formations).

From what I've seen 1/200th scale minis are rather expensive.

Prime your miniatures and keep your paints rather thin. You might need to apply two coats to cover completely. Use a darker coat on the first pass, and a slightly lighter coat of the same color, with a bit of white in it, for the second one, especially for the 1/600th scale minis, since they're so small.

I prefer dark gray for the canopies, followed by a gloss coat for them, to make them shiny, and realistic looking. Some use light blue, instead.

Pardon me for hijacking this thread but what stand would you all recommend?

I'm going 1/300 scale myself. To the OP. Go get some Raiden 1/285 scale. They're perfect for what you're wanting to do.

You're going to want flight stands too.

I'm looking at the FightsOn ones or CorSec's.

Anyone care to comment on which they prefer.

As far as I'm concerned, the best way to avoid brush strokes is to not brush paint! ;)

Seriously, all my aircraft miniatures are airbrushed. Mind you, I've chosen the relatively large 1/100 scale, which makes masking camouflage somewhat easier.

Mako is, of course, quite right about keeping the paint thin, etc. Something I've discovered recently is that Tamiya and Gunze acrylics can be thinned with a Gunze product – 'Mr Levelling Thinner' – which allows these normally brush-hating paints to retard their drying time, and flow very, very nicely. They sit very flat, with almost no evidence of brush strokes.

If you can, by the way, airbrush on your primer at least. It will give you a much finer surface to work on, than one achieved with a spraycan primer.

Also, to avoid complex hand-painting, and the threat of brush strokes, consider your subject matter: Doing the Pacific War offers opportunities for finishing lots of aircraft (of both sides) in relatively simple schemes, often consisting of just a single topside colour, and another for the underside.

Tally ho!