How I paint irregulars and militia

Never fear, my new found addiction to 3d printing has not stopped all progress on my 3mm Eastern Front, Double-Blind game project. 

I have the support troops for the Soviet Tank Corps done and almost finished basing, they are not quite camera ready. It includes the motorcycle battalion, artillery in 76mm, 122mm, and Katyusha flavors, and attached assault gun and anti-tank regiments including SU-76, SU-85, and SU-152.  Additionally, I have 3d printed some custom markers to help me keep up with firing units and motorized movement.

I do have to admit that Kaptain Kobold's WW1 games are tempting me to get my Trench Hammer stuff out again.  I think after I get the Soviets, I will take an intermission, finish painting and prepping my 3d printed trenches I have scaled for my 10mm troops and get a couple fo games in, to clean my palette, then on to start painting the Panzer Division in 3mm.

Meanwhile, I wanted to get something posted, so here is a short entry.

Painting regular troops, at any scale, is much easier to do in assembly-line fashion than irregulars or militia.  One of my half-completed projects is my 6mm AWI Skirmish troops for Rebels and Patriots or Sharp Practice 2.  This requires a LOT of militia and I find that I have "analysis paralysis" when trying to decide how to paint them.

So... I have developed a method to make it easier.  I had thought it was an amazing, original idea, but I have seen a lot of variations on this.  What I do is this:

1. Identify what you are going to paint for your batch of figures, pants, shirts, etc.  I paint my 6mm in batches of 16 (4 x Baccus strips) glued to a piece fo wood.
2. Pick a set of colors, 6 works best.
3. Put a sample of each color on an index card and assign it a number from 1-6
4. Get your paint ready by lining up the bottles or preparing your palette.
5. Roll 16 x d6 and line them up in a row
6. run through the dice left to right and paint the figures left to right with the color indicated by the die.
7. I mix up the dice sometimes if I have 3 or 4 of the same color in a row, but otherwise, I ruthless force myself to use the color indicated and not think about it too much (so I don't slow down)
8. When done, I repeat the same process for the next article of clothing.

I use a similar process for painting horses and it really helps me just get on with it.

Here is a sample of my randomizer cards, you can see how I set the frequency of the horse colors, and I actually use a d10 for the coats/shirts, giving a lot of variety, without having to think about it.

I hope this is helpful.

Now I am going heads down to work on grad school, but until next time, good gaming!