Painting 30 tanks in one day (10mm, of course)

First, do a lousy job of cleaning them up a couple of weeks ago.  Pendraken do have some mold misfits that are impossible to file down without changing the shape of the turrets.

They were all primed with WalMart cheapo grey primer, with which I prime everything.
They were then sprayed with Tamiya AS-24 Dark Green (Luftwaffe).  The machine guns were painted flat black and the ends of the exhaust pipes in charcoal grey.

The louvers and grills were washed with P3 Armor Coat, and everything below the fenders including the front and rear glacis plates were painted with Plaid Apple Barrel (Michaels M20389) Spice Brown. If a little splashed over the fenders and glaci, so much the better!

The tanks were then hand numbered on both sides of the turret, and the rear, not standard practice, but to make the individual tanks easier to identify by the player. Checking a lot of wartime photos showed that as many tanks had two-digit numbers as three-digit numbers. That saved painting 90 digits!

Once that was dry, the entire vehicle was washed with my dark brown wash, made with the Magic Wash formula.

Now for the juicy bits, the photos.

The entire group, ready for action.  The photo was taken, hopefully, by a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft.

The IS-2's.  Not much to say, except that the barrels are supplied separate from the turrets.

The T-34/85's.  You can see the mis-molding on the turret sides that are impossible to remove without changing the shape of the turret.  It's not too noticeable on the table.  There are 15 of these.

T-34/76's. The same hull is used for all T-34's. It would have been nice if the 85's had been molded with external fuel tanks, but, oh well. There are 10 in my force.

The SU-76's.  There is a surprising amount of detail on these tanks. There are indications of the ammo racks in the interior, and the gun block has enough detail for you to know what it is.. There are only 3 of these poor, under-armored souls in my force. They seem to be a bit large in comparison to the other Soviet vehicles.

The entire force consists of 2 IS-2m's, 3 Su-76's, 10 T34-76's, and 15 T34-85's.  30 tanks.  How did I arrive at these quantities? Blame it on Two Hour Wargames "Hell Hath No Fury".
http://store.twohourwargames.com/hehanofutaon.html

It is a fast-play, tank only set of rules.  The rules only have US and German tanks, but there are free updates for Soviet and UK forces.  The time is D-Day to the end of the war.  There are only the tanks one is most likely to run into. The rules can be played solo, head-to-head, or players versus non-player forces.
The proportions are derived from the scenario, of which there are 10, mission forces.

AT Bayou Wars, the will be fighting 20 German tanks, also determined by the scenario mission forces.  There will be 6 StuG-III/G, 3  Panthers, 3  PzkwIII-M, 7 PzkwIV-H and 1 Tiger 1.  Last year's US vs. German was a fiasco, with the US tanks being neutered within the first 20 minutes.  Luckily for this GM, there were 2 souls who took a platoon of PzkwIV-H's vs. a platoon of M4-76's and played for an hour or so.

NSFW - Nude Amazons + touch-ups.

I got these Amazons on eBay a while back.  They were badly painted and chipped.  I removed all the paint with Super Clean, a purple degreaser available from auto parts stores.  It won't harm plastic or resin.  BIG caveat! Be sure to wear plastic gloves, because it will remove all the natural oils from your hands, and really dry them out. A very little work with a toothbrush after soaking for a little while removes the paint easily.  It may take a second soak in the same liquid to get completely through the primer.

The figures were painted with a variety of skin tones, and then washed with various flesh and brown washes, a single wash to each figure.  The metal parts were painted with IWM Bronze Metallic. The horse hair crests were painted and then washed with a very thin black wash. The shield designs were painted after referring to Thomas Hopes "Costumes of the Greeks and Romans", a Dover press book.

Once they were painted, and their bases flocked, I sprayed them with Armory Matte.  Once they were dry, I coated the metal and shields with Liquitex High Gloss Medium.  And gave their hair a coating of Pledge with Future. I find their faces a bit anime for my tastes.  There also were very deep mold lines that were impossible to remove in some cases.  Good enough for the table.

Here are 4 more of the painted "fantasy" rabble figure I bought painted a while back. I just touch them up and spray them with a dull coat, and cover the things that should be gloss with Liquitex. I see I need to do eyes.

And last, this figure has been languishing, painted, in among unpainted lead since Katrina (2005), So I finally took pity on him, touched him up and recoated his base with clumped static grass.

I figure him for an escaped lunatic who overpowered his guard and took his uniform and gun.

T-t-t-that's all folks!