Fleet Painting?

[jkd]

Greetings,

Just getting into VaS and starting to build some fleets. I'm mostly interested in tournament style play and I was wondering if people paint their fleets in one scheme, or if multiple schemes are the norm? (That sounds confusing... let me illustrate what I'm asking).

Example: US Navy
Would you paint a fleet in all one Measure or would you go for a Measure that was appropriate to each ship?

Example: German Navy
Would you paint the whole fleet in a scheme based on one ship (say Bismark with yellow turret tops) or would you paint each ship individuatlly to be appropriate to something they actually wore?

Example: Any navy
From the tournament packs, it looks like there are 4 eras of in-service dates for the fleets that are played. Would you take ships that served the whole war in only one (presumably a fleet) scheme or would you take each ship (assuming you're using the same ship in more than one game) in different paint by the year being played in the tournament?

Thanks!

 

[Wishbone]

you can do whatever you want. most ships had their own differences in colours.

pretty much every camouflage pattern is unique to each ship.
that's how I make my WWII ships stand out from eachother, they all have the same overall colour scheme, but the camouflage makes each one individual.

as for your kriegsmarine, i can't seem to find good infomation on turret tops. I get the feeling that each ship had it's own assigned colour (well, capital ships anyway. don't think cruisers had coloured turrets?) and served as aircraft recognition markings.

for the tournament, if you want each ship to have her proper markings for the relevent year, it could wind up being very expensive having to buy multiple examples. i'd say buy one, paint it to look how you want it to look, and keep it like that.
as a supplementary, I don't think that you need to have exactly the same ship choices for each of the four fleets. you can bring out whatever you like provided it was in service that year!

 

[jbickley00]

I have two approaches. My US ships are correct for both measure and period. This works well if you have different fleets for different era's, or if all your ships are in one era. My US ships are painted either 1941 or 1944, and I have a bunch of duplicates. If I am doing a 1942 battle, then I use the '41 ships and if I am doing a '43 or '45 battle I use the '44 ships. But each ship's paint scheme was actually worn by that ship.

With my japanese, its totally different. everything is sort of IJN Grey (not modelling the different greys from different shipyards). And all my decks are wooden, since I painted the fleet before I knew about linoleum. I also ignored that wierd green phase the Japanese went through with thier carriers.

Of course in 1/6000 some schemes are harder than others, and some look better. I can also afford a bit of duplication.

 

[jfox61]

I paint my ships based on historical accuracy for the ship name. Obviously some ships were painted in various schemes throughout their service life and if more than one scheme is available I choose the one I think is most attractive or saw most active service use. for decks I use various shades of browns to simulate various states of weathering apart from the Japanese for which I use a dark brown to simulate the linoleum decking where appropriate.