"speed - painting 500 6mm ACW figures" Topic

I did 1000 10mm in a month. For confederates I used light grey primer then mounted 10 on a popcicle stick and painted them all the same butternut pants black hats belts etc then paint another 10 with dark grey pants brown hats then when they were all painted I mixed them in together when I based them for a random look. One thing I would do differently is try to use a navy blue flat paint for the Yankees as there wasn't a good option 15 years ago when I did this project. I got it down to a system where I could do 30 men in an hour and that's 10mm 6 should be just as easy
I worked one color at a time for the whole brigade when you paint 30 bedrolls in a row you get faster and more consistent than you would going stick by stick . Good luck!

On the whole, ACW armies were generic. Unless you find an odd-ball regiment, the uniform details were the same.

I painted 1,000 Baccus generic Union troops in about three weeks approx. 10 years ago. Haven't painted a 6mm figure since!

Your Majesty, I agree with 79PA overall: most of the distinctions were at a lower level. A few suggestions:
On the Union side, you might get away with dark blue "regular" trousers for Sykes' "Regular Division" in the AOP V Corps.
On the Confederate side, twice Longstreet's 1st Corps AOV was re-uniformed just prior to a major battle, and was so uniform with so dark a "Richmond" gray that they tended to be shot at for Yankees by the other Confederates. That would be Hoods' and McLaws' Divisions just prior to Chickamauga: same divisions and different commanders prior to the Wilderness.
You might also consider flags. One division--formerly Cleburne's--of the Army of Tennessee refused to transition and went on carrying "Hardee" flags after everyone else went to the Battle Flag. (Or, consider giving one Confederate unit Hardee flags, one Polk and one nice square ANV battle flags?
But you're actually talking about brigades per side rather than divisions. On your next expansion buy the Iron Brigade for the Union. And when you do cavalry, remember Custer's Brigade with red kerchiefs.

Go forth and conquer!

Here's what I learned with 10mm (of which I can do about 100 per week in off hours). As you know, color primers are your friend! But I would use Navy Blue for the Union too. Also, in terms of uniform variety, especially for the Confederates, the color of the hats, canteens, and blankets can do a lot to give the visual impression of variety (as well as throwing in some variety in hats and caps) – 90% of my Confederates are in uniform grey jackets and pants, but they look more varied on the table.

I agree Grossman. Painting them in an assembly line process on popsicle sticks is the way to do it. Use a primer color that can be utilized as a final color on as much of the figure as possible.

Don't sweat the small stuff and at 6mm it's all small stuff. Just grunt through them and get them in the table. It is a very rare painter that can make a difference in quality in 6mm.

When you are finished its a great tale for speed dating nights as well!

Other than the occasional Zouave unit in the first half of the war, there is not much to distinguish regiments. And divisions are just a collection of a dozen of so regiments. The Iron Brigade had their Black Hats, but just one brigade in one division. The Union units also had color coded and shaped had badges on to of their kepis, but you won't have much luck with distinguishable shapes on the top of a kepi that small. You could just use different colored dots if you are using it for unit identification. Confederate units, that's even tougher. There were a variety of different uniform variations issued throughout the war. But again it would be at a regimental level, so one might have been issued gray pants and most of the other units light blue. I tend to do my 10mm Rebels as a hodgepodge of several grays with blue pants and butternut mixed in.

You could try something like color coding the paint of the bedrolls on a unit. But not much fact to that as a real distinguishing feature.

Although this is meant for my 10mm line, it may indeed be helpful for your 6mm. As Christopher mentioned, I find it fairly easy to get 250-300 figures done in a weekend using these methods. And the come out looking great.

Confederate Painting Tips
link

Union Painting Tips
link

Bill Moreno
crackerlineminis.com

Confederates tended to stay away from the yankee blue pants color and when used, they tended to dye them a different color.
No body wants to be shot at by there own.

2 cents
MG

Where did you gain this insight? There are many stories of Confederates taking blue britches and wearing them immediately. Access to dye of any kind was difficult even in the depots. How would a Confederate soldier have pulled that off while in the field? I respectfully disagree.

The official stance was to not wear captured uniforms (for obvious reasons). That said, there were some instances of CSA troops wearing captured USA pants, if only for a short time (as some memoirs mentioned). And I do recall one memoir that mentioned dying captured sky blues using old coffee grounds once back in camp (all very much at the unit level and not officially sanctioned). Exactly what color that would result in is a mystery.