Deciding how to paint German WW2 Vehicles

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

Hey everyone,

 

I figured this was the best place to ask. Whilst I am not a Historical gamer I am doing a Konflikt 47 army. I will proxy a Gundam for a mech in the game and have it primed black with a sand base with torn up coaster cork (painted a bluey grey) as a sort of stone or shale like debris.

 

I am not sure how to paint it to be honest. From browsing images it does not seem that too many tanks were painted in the same colour as the armoured cars (which look awesome).

 

Is the division of the army and theater of the war what influenced how vehicles, tanks and the likes were painted?

 

I’m not sure how I should do it but even though it is Weird War, I would like it to be semi realistic or believable and at the very least follow a logic.

[warworksdkParticipant 1221xp 0]

German camouflage varied a lot over the war, so the first question is what year you’re going for.

Some of it was dictated by the theater, such as the grey colour being replaced by yellow for the DAK. But a lot of it was up to the individual units and what supplies they had.

Also, don’t forget that a lot of the pictures we have are black and white, which makes it difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on with individual vehicles.

For a Weird War type paint-job, circa 1946 or 1947, you could potentially go with two variations:

The first is one where all the Germans had left were ad-hoc units, scraped together from whatever men and materials were available. In other words: everything goes and some tanks might be in simply red or yellow basecoat without unit numbers or insignia.

The second is a more structured approach where the Germans aren’t as hard pressed. In this case you might see tanks with a more uniform factory applied camouflage (as the Germans did do towards the end of the war) and with unit numbers and insignia clearly visible. This would likely be a version of the ambush or octopus schemes, though variations would certainly still be possible due to refits and repaints in the field.

[sundancer 42973xp 2]

Panthers need to be pink.  With fur!

[limburger 21704xp 0]

@mage Try looking at “colors of war” . It shows the various patterns abs it may help you pick one that makes sense

[torros 23816xp 1]

Tank encyclopedia  could be helpful

Home

[avernosKeymaster 33947xp 0]

^ This right here, go there and look at them, after that you can work out how to paint them once you’ve found a colour scheme you like

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

I really like all of these  🙂

 

I only own GW paints though

 

[warworksdkParticipant 1221xp 0]

Grey would be very early war. Plain yellow could be seen throughout the war, but camouflage was typically employed by most frontline units. However, for a large walker-type unit, you could probably argue that it’s too big to effectively camouflage anyway, so a plain yellow paint-job would be fine.

I’m not really sure if Games Workshop has a paint that’s a good match for Dunkelgelb. If you want to paint historical, I would suggest looking at Vallejo paints. Their range is much better suited for it – and it’s cheaper too… 🙂

[torros 23816xp 1]

@mage

This might help

 

https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart

 

From reading posts elsewhere  people seem to use Balor Brown  for the later war colour

 

[avernosKeymaster 33947xp 1]

@torros unfortunately GW have changed their range twice since then. So need to find GW to GW first and then use that. But it’s still my go to chart when I need to check things

[Anonymous 0xp 1]

Flames of War Germans (Slow Grow League)

Hope @noyjatat doesn’t mind me pimping his project, but Late War Germans painted in GW paints and I think they are rather splendid.  Gaz was even kind enough to list the paints he used here – https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1429562/#comments and he has other excellent tips and tricks in his project.

[torros 23816xp 0]

Bloody typical.  Gw says you can still buy Balor brown but not sure if it’s the same colour as before

[avernosKeymaster 33947xp 0]

that’s an excellent place to start from double thumbs up.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

I’ll check that out thanks

 

@torros

 

@warworksdk

 

@robert

 

@limburger

 

@avernos

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

This is the bad boy in question with the mandatory for scale space marine

 

[Author]

Posts