"When is the last time you just "guessed" at uniform color?" Topic

And by "uniform", I mean any clothing our little action figures wear.
I don't mean Imaginations, where you're making it up anyway. Chartreuse with claret facings? Sure. Your army.
Ditto militia. Or civilians. Or fantasy. Or SCIFI.

I mean a real honest to god unit that existed, and you had no clue what they wore, but wanted them.
Again I will add a rule. "Well, it's a dragoon unit, and Slobbivian Dragoons wore dark green." Nope. That gives you a clue. I mean a real wild guess.

Bonus points. Did you stumble on a reference afterwards? Were you correct or wrong?

I came close when I had a Polish army.
I just guessed that Sobieski's Janissary Guard wore green caftans. I was wrong.
With my winged hussars and pancerni, I winged it too. But they were aristocrats!

Technically, I suppose most Ancients and Renaissance figures would fit the bill too, so let's confine this to Post 1700.

I have done it for ACW. I was wrong on the cuffs. The unit did not have colored cuffs. I was just starting the era and wanted to paint up units fast. I did not own many reference books as that took money away from figures. It was a very long time ago.

Are you kidding? Slobbivian Dragoons wore bright green jackets with black facings and blue trousers with a pink stripe down the side.

I don't even "guess" with Flintloque.

Every single Ottoman unit I've ever painted.

Northwest frontier Pathans. I have some very colorful tribesmen.

I've never guessed about my horse & musket figures, but the people who painted the used collections I bought sure did.

- Ix

Sidetrack – never outright "guessed", but I have 'researched' insufficiently.
I've researched Jannisary uniform, and assumed it was universal.
I've researched South Carolina Zouave Cadets, and completely missed the red epualettes. I mean, bright red. Right there, on the shoulders. FFS.

every time, 24/7
I really dont give a rat's patootie about historical accuracy on the table as long as everybody enjoys the game.

I guess a lot of facing colours etc when there is no record of the real ones!

Ditto Norman D. Landings; faulty or incomplete research on occasions I've had cause to regret.

But what's worst of all is having reliable sources that conflict with each other and you can't find a resolution. THEN what do you do?

Thursday

When you have reliable conflicting sources, you do have a clue.
Then you are making a judgement call. Sure, that's a guess, technically…..

Those buttons were silver not pewter. I'll never forgive myself, what an oversight. I am dumb!

When I started 35 years ago lots of things, major last was a couple of landwehr batteries. Very nice conversions I thought only the batteries for the landwehr were not landwehr. So they got sent to Russians as cossack batteries.

83475934875 years ago when I was a teenager and building a 25mm Brit 7yw army.

I found a book in the library with some colour plates which showed a uniform with buff facings and their cross-shoulder belt in the same colour. The book listed other facing colours, which I assumed also meant the belt was in that colour.

So I painted units with, blue, grey, green cross belts rather than a buff-leather.

DB

David b

30 years war Wurttemberg infantry. still don't know for sure. Know the field sign info but not the coats, if actually uniformed.

Airfix ACW figures way back when. Painted some Union Infantry as Confederates in Kepis all grey with red kepi and cuffs. Completely wrong except I later found a unit from the early months of the war who wore exactly that. I want to say Charleston Zouaves but it was a long time ago and I was about 14 as I'm 61 now I don't recall exactly🤔

I've tried to match paint colors with the illustrations on the box, but sometimes you can only get "close enough"… :-p

Any Romans that weren't painted in red tunics. All of my Fall of Rome Goths and Huns. My Vendee rebels.

Today, when painting 28mm Mayans

Not uniforms, but artillery carriages. Bought Airfix in about 1978, painted the French gun carriages wood brown and the British ones wood brown likewise. Should have been khaki and mid-blue-gray. A few years later, guessed grey for Russian carriages when they shoulda been green.

I guessed at the equipment colours too but to be fair the Airfix figure designer was also guessing at the uniforms himself.

The current Airfix instructions on how to paint the cuirassiers and artillery are also a guess, seemingly based on what the Life Guards look like today.