"50 Shades of ACW Union Blue" Topic

Does everyone here like just one shade of blue coats for an ACW union army?

Or, is there a margin of art that some union units can have different blue coat shades?

Or, that the jacket blues within a given unit can vary in color/shade/hue to represent fading vs newer coats? Sort of a Union version of ragged rebels.

I think I prefer them uniform.

I'm going to paint my Union in varying shades as I think that's how they would've looked, especially after being in the field for a while.

I used GW space marine blue. Bought a bunch of bottles in the 80's & used them forever. Not sure if the new blue would be the same.

I have 2 shades of dark blue for the coats and tops / hats..
I have 2 shades of light blue for the pants.

they're not drastic differences in the colors but it's there.

I use them indiscriminately. So on the whole the army looks uniform but there's also variation. I also vary the colors of crossbelts, canteens, etc..

15mm and under, uniform shades are uniform. At 25mm and up, I generally grab whatever I have which is in the ballpark, trying to get a different number of bottles for coats and trousers. If I have five bottles of dark blue, every fifth coat is the same color, If I have six bottles of trousers blue, it's every six bottles and only one casting in 30 has the same two shades.

My 15mm ACW collection is a mixture of paint jobs by different painters, so naturally it varies in shades and styles (and consequently also in poses and sculpting styles). I tend to compose units of figures with similar paint jobs, poses and sculpting styles, which makes it easier to identify unit boundaries on a crowded table full of vast fields of blue and mixed gray/browns.

- Ix

I used Howard Hues Union Blue for dark blue and Pants Blue for pants for my 28mm figs. For Union overcoats however I used a craft paint deeper blue just because I liked the way it looked

All colors would have faded in the ACW over time due to weather (rain and sun), plus the known cheap quality many manufacturers got away with. So a longer in line unit would have looked different from a new one.

Dan

I use three colours of blue for jackets, for the trousers light blue, a darker blue, grey and blue with a bit of green in it.

There were multiple shades in real life. However, at the level of miniatures, I would say they would be enough of a difference to be noticeable in 28mm figures, but not in 10mmm.