Colours Of War: How To Paint World War II and World War III Models (WWIIWWIII) Hardcover – 5 May 2018

Before I get to the review, I should point out that this is not intended to be an historical reference. It is a book for players of tabletop wargames (specifically Flames of W.), so that they can paint their armies reasonably accurately and consistently, without obsessing over the finest details.(I have avoided the use of certain words in my reviews as I have found that they upset the bot which scans them, resulting in the review being rejected, and I get a warning. With a product like this, it's hard to avoid certain words, but hopefully you can still figure out what I mean.)This book uses colour reference numbers relating to the official FoW range of paints, which are currently manufactured by Vallejo, and use the same numbering system as the rest of Vallejo's paints. They are available in convenient nationality-specific sets, most of which I own and will review separately. You can also buy the paints individually. Unfortunately, the book doesn't provide equivalents for different paint manufacturers, nor does it reference Flames of W.'s older 'Quartermasters' paints. A conversion table is available on the FoW website, if you dig about a bit.It's worth noting that the names of the colours are fairly arbitrary, and you occasionally find strange anomalies - for example the colour suggested for British tanks (924) is called 'R*ssian uniform'. Don't worry about this - it's the right colour, it's coincidentally also the colour of the R*ssian uniforms.The book starts with a guide to assembling your models, and a basic technique guide for those new to painting. This is very well done, and puts a lot of emphasis on shading and highlighting techniques, which are essential on models as small as the FoW range.There's then a section on basing, then the book becomes increasingly detailed, going into weathering techniques and application of decals.All of this is extremely well-done, with clear photographs throughout. Although I'm a very experienced painter of fantasy miniatures, these small-scale vehicles and realistic paint schemes are new to me, and there is plenty of useful stuff in here.With the painting techniques section finished, the book then turns to individual nations, and the camouflage schemes used by them. The first part references 1939-45, and the second part a hypothetical future / modern scenario.Each nation is given its own chapter, which also includes winter and desert camouflages where appropriate. It outlines the organisation of an armoured division, unit codes, where to apply decals and which ones to use on which vehicles, and a selection of historical examples. Naturally, it also shows which colours to use, both for the basecoat and for any shading and highlighting. This applies to vehicles and to uniforms - if anything, there is even more detail given over to the uniforms than there is to the tanks.For someone getting into the FoW hobby, this is an excellent book. The models are small, so it's not necessary or even possible to go to extremes of accuracy. More to the point, they are 'gaming tokens', intended for use in a tabletop game. With this book, you will be able to paint your models to a standard which will satisfy the vast majority of gamers, and also achieve a good level of historical accuracy. Better still, if you are part of a group or club, you should all be able to produce models which cosmetically match if you follow this book.

Very helpful when painting my miniatures and vehicles.

This is not the what i call the middle book(book#2) which has silly names for the paints,and this covers the Model color Range of paints which all of us should have.I started this Game in 2006 so i have quartermasters and Model color paints i dont need any more.This book is even better than the first red discontinued book.I used to own that.If your emember the FoW supplements that came out roughly every three months for a couple years where the pages fell out real easy?well this book contains important parts from those books like how to paint the ss camo and other nations camo etc i remember those being the best bits of the supplements this has them all in one place.The best of the three books that ive seen so far.

Whilst I'm sure this is an excellent guide for 15mm based flames of War players and modellers I bought it in the hope it would be useful to me in my use of 28mm ww2 models and figures and found it a little wanting. Please don't get me wrong, it does have plenty of useful information about camouflage types and unit markings, information that has been hard to come by, and a really useful ww2 history (named event and battles) timeline together with fairly useful vellejo colour guide which I'm sure will save a newcomer a lot of money otherwise wasted on buying wrong paint shades etc, overall there wasn't really enough there for more than a single read through (and maybe the odd glance back in the future).So all in all I would have to say as an experienced modeller of WW2 it isn't really what I was hoping for. But that's not to say I was disappointed. For the price it is good value when you consider the price of modellers magazines these days, which often have one or two relevant articles per mag at around 5 pounds a go, this is by their standards a pretty good buy.I'll be putting mine on a shelf somewhere and pulling it out when I do the odd decal perhaps or want to pick out a vehicle or uniform base colour from vellejo and get the name right. It will have its uses I'm sure but like I said it hasn't quite been the comprehensive guide to things ww2 and modelling them that I'd hoped for. I definitely would have loved it if I was into 15mm tho that's for sure.

Great book covering flames of war and team yankee painting guides

I didn’t realise when I bought this book that it was specifically aimed at war gamers not scale model builders but having said that it contains a wealth of information regarding uniform and vehicle colours especially if you use Vallejo paints which is want I wanted. It would be even better if Vallejo could bring out a similar book but aimed at scale model builders and covering WW1 as well.

The book itself is an excellent reference source for painting WW2 and modern miniatures and vehicles. On a negative note I was disappointed to see that Battlefront have introduced new colour call outs for their modern range and appear to have discontinued their Team Yankee paint range. They now appear to be well down the GW route in introducing a product and then replacing it every two minutes to get customers to replace the original.

Great reference for painting military figures and vehicles,good clear pictures and step by step advice on camo etc