Hello all! So I've been wanting to do this for a while. Now that I finally have a sizable amount of Epic Scale stuff actually painted it can happen. I hope this guide helps you get your own pile of Epic Scale sprues built and painted.
The moment I opened the starter box back in February, I knew there was potential for me to burn out just a few sprues in. I immediately knew that this set was enthusiastically purchased by many excited people and that a lot of them would end up getting through half a sprue and then throwing the whole thing in the closet, never to see the light of day again. Great potential to become a graveyard of unpainted, second-hand Ebay.
My first plan was to spray prime each army's sprues in blue and gray so that the coats would be instantly done, then I could paint the other details with regular mini. paints.
About half-way through my first sprue I realized this was a terrible mistake! Spray priming the sprues in blue and gray actually saves little to no time, and actually prevents you from being able to do shading and highlighting on the coats because they start out dark.
So I switched tactics and realized that the way to go would be to spray prime all the sprues in white or off-white, and then abandon regular paints for the most part, and use Citadel Contrasts instead.
Bam. I instantly realized that this was the key to getting through all these thousands of tiny guys. With the sprues primed in white, I could use Contrasts on everything.
Another important decision I made was that I painted all the strips while still attached to the sprues. This was the first time in my modeling career that I did this. The reason I chose to paint them on the sprue was because it was a huge time saver, it allowed to me hold onto the frame and paint them much easier in an assembly line fashion. I didn't have to mess with cutting them off, sticking them individually onto craft sticks, or whatever else. Just made sense to paint them in place and then just touch up the tiny areas where they are cut from the sprue.
And I can't stress enough how valuable Citadel Contrasts are for a massive historical mini. project like this. I'm estimating that the Contrasts are allowing me to paint a single sprue about four times faster than if I was using regular paints.
If you have the patience to actually paint the entire set with regular paints, and then do shading, and then highlighting separately, god bless you – seriously. You have far, far more patience than I do!
Personally I just wanted to get them all and done relatively fast and have them look good. There was no way I was going to make it through all of this painting the traditional way. It would have taken forever and I would have lost my sanity.
The Contrasts are absolutely perfect for this kind of scale and for historicals in general. You can begin to go seriously whacko after you've painted your 350th blue coat or 400th musket, etc.
The Contrasts made this process so much more efficient and enjoyable. The coats and trousers were all done in one pass. The muskets were all done in one pass. There's almost no separate highlights or shading done except in a very few select places. Nearly 100% of the details were all done in one pass where the Contrasts provided the base coat color, shading, and highlighting.
***One special note here, however. The primary sky-blue trouser color for the Union and some Confederate soldiers is NOT a Citadel Contrast. It is actually a Citadel Technical paint from 2018 called "Nighthaunt Gloom". GW released it along with their "Hexwraith Flame". They were produced for painting the undead models that came in the Age of Sigmar 2.0 Soul War starter set.
I still had nearly a full bottle of it sitting there, and quite by accident noticed and realized that it made the perfect light blue trouser color for ACW! It works pretty much the same way the Contrasts do, shading and highlighting in one pass. Amazing stuff, allowed me to the lines of trousers super quickly.
Unfortunately, GW no longer sells this as far as I know. You could try to find it on Ebay I suppose. And there aren't really any Contrast colors that are good for that Union sky blue color. I was lucky I still had this stuff on hand!
That aspect alone of a single pass for each color saved mountains of time and energy. Uniforms, equipment, faces and hands, only had to be passed over once.
I got the process down to where I am now able to get through and entire single sprue in just an afternoon. That's using about seven Contrast colors on each infantry sprue.
For the artillery it was the same deal. Contrast colors allowed me to get through the carriages, barrels, and limbers very quickly.
Horses, same deal. There are a number of excellent shades of Contrast browns that make perfect horse colors.
For all the casualty markers and command stands/personalities, it was all the same Contrast colors I used on everything else.
And the end results I think were pretty good. After a few weeks working on sprues on and off, while painting some buildings and terrain in between I've gotten through about 10 of the 30 sprues that come in the mega-starter set.
Below are a series of pics. showing what this scale looks like when it's done in Citadel Contrasts. I also included several photos showing the exact Citadel Contrast colors I used on the Union and Confederate infantry, the horses, and the artillery.
I hope this Contrast technique works for you! I highly, highly recommend going this route if you are afraid of burning out with a project of this size.
Union infantry Contrast colors
Confederate infantry Contrast colors
Artillery Contrast colors
Horse Contrast colors