Federation Commander

I remember at the old site there were some downloadable painting guides for SFB minis. Are those still around in some sort of format? I think I have them in some archives somewhere but I can't seem to find them right now.

In addition... I've noticed a grey vs green difference in Klingon ships. Which would be considered the "official" color, if any? I've gone with a metallic green and a flat green, both of which have worked well enough. I was thinking however that TOS was grey and that may be the way to go to get that "authentic" look.


Thanks for any help.

I went old-old school. I use Testors Gunship Grey for mine - it's a blue-grey color..I really like it.

http://www.colorserver.net/showcolor.asp?fs=36118

The painting guides are all located here:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/miniatures.shtml (you gotta scroll all the way down, past the contest winner pictures).

I did my Klingons in a blue-tinted grey. Green is very TNG to me and I am old-school in a big way.

Thanks! That's what I was looking for. I didn't think about looking for the older site.

I did mine in CeramCoat Pewter grey:

http://www.geocities.com/scoutdad13/Kli ... nfleet.jpg

color shown here: http://www.colorserver.net/showcolor.asp?fs=36251

That's a pretty good color for them (and nice paint jobs btw).

I'm leaning a little more blue for mine. I used to custom-mix my own color, but that was when I was only dealing with 4-5 minis and a little Testors bottle could do the whole batch.

Is CeramCoat an enamal? I'm trying to get away from solvent-based paints to avoid killing the few brain cells I have left.

No, it's an acrylic. It's one of the generic craft paints that I get at Wal-Mart. Most of my miniatures have been painted with either CeramCoat, Apple Barrel Paint, or Folk Art brand acrylics from Wal-Mart / K-Mart / Michael's / etc.

I tend to use them for several reasons:
1) they are inexpensive (~$2 for 4 oz bottle, as opposed to $4 for 1.5 oz of Citadel Paint)
2) they are readily available. If I run out of pewter grey at 2:30 a.m. - I just go to Wal-Mart and get some more, unlike the Citadel paint that I get from the FLGS (almost 25 miles away)
3) they come in many, many shades. With over 2 dozen shades of grey, I can get Pewter grey for the base coat - light grey for highlights - and quaker grey for shading. This means no mixing paints for the shading/high-lighting and if I paint 36 Klingons this week and then do 12 more in 6 months, the colors match because I didn't have to custom mix them.
4) they taste better then the expensive paints. OK, laugn if you want, but I have a habit of using my tongue to reshape the tip of the paint brush while painting - and these paints have little or no taste... unlike the Citadel stuff that just tastes horrible.
5) flexible plastic bottles that bounce and give when dropped, kicked, stepped on, etc. - less mess to contend with.

As for the color, I wanted to go Panzer Grey as I picture the Klingons as being similar to the Third Reich, but the Pewter Grey is almost the same color as the molded polastic of the 3 D-7 Battlecruiser models I got in the early 80's and once I started painting them, I wanted them all to match.