Thing is, I do have some Zeros too, and I've been painting them up over the last few days.
The models are the "bendy" plastic from Warlord, sourced in China. This gives me no end of anguish, because as I have often repeated, these really are the "wrong" Zero imho. The problem is the Warlord model is the A6M5, which entered service in 1943. I did a couple of posts on these a year or so ago when I first got a glimpse of them. The M5 is the last main production version, which is really a mid war aircraft, so didn't' sit well with the 1940 vintage UK, German and Soviet models in the starter set, and was pretty much dog meat against the 1944 P51D the US got, particularly as the points in the starter were a bit off and made the Zero rather more expensive than it should have been. If Warlord had done the A6M2 of early war Coral Sea \ Midway fame I would have been much happier.
The other problem is the model itself - not wishing to over stress this, but it is a fair bit under scale, something closer to 1:220 than the nominal 1:200 it should be. Like all the "Bendy" (tm) BRS plastic the Zero is a bit prone to, well, bending, and several of mine have some strange wing and fuselage shapes. I know this can usually be corrected with hot & cold water, but it does irritate. It should be said for all of that the model is perfectly serviceable, and 99% of the players wont be bothered by it.
Painting them should have been a fairly easy job. The Japanese don't really have complicated colour schemes, and after 1942 Zeros usually have a simple two tone light grey undersides and green uppers, so what could go wrong? Quite a bit really it turned out. Deciding on what colour green was a bit more complex. You can spend many an hour researching and the best answer is "green". The problem is as much the real WW2 paint was not that standardised anyway, and standards slipped as the supply shortages kicked in. In the Pacific theatre there was the added complication of exposure to the elements which meant paints weathered very quickly, so in reality any green that is near enough is probably good enough. I therefore took the cheapskate option and rifled through my current paint collection until I came upon Army Painter "Greenskin". It looked about right and I figured once it had been dulled down a bit with the Darkshade wash I was intending to use for the panel lines it would be ok. Not sure what went wrong but the bloody stuff took three coats to achieve anything approaching a consistent coverage. The undersides were easier, and the engine covers and canopies were my now standard patterns. It took me a while to block the eight Zeros, and a second session to tidy them up and wash them, but at the end they were looking quite nice, or at least I think so.
So decals. Here I had a cunning plan. I was going to use Warlord's Zero decals. I usually use MiscMinis, and indeed had ordered some in preparation, but as Warlord did a dedicated set and MiscMinis were designed for use with the AIM model I decided to give Warlord a try. This was partly a response to my knowing that the Warlord model was under scale, so I didn't want to risk the MiscMini decals swamping the models, if you follow. There is an added complication here in that Warlord decals are actually for Zeros based on the carrier Akagi, but the Akagi was sunk at Midway, which was in June 1942, and the A6M5 Zero wasn't even in service until the following year, so Warlord are producing decals for a model they don't make - I got nothing.
That plan went out the window fast. The Warlord decal sheet doesn't have enough of the white edged "Hinomaru" (aka "Meatball" roundel) to complete all eight models. Actually they don't have enough to do the six in the Squadron box, which was a pain. I probably should have done a bit more research and bought two sets. They do include the un-edged Hinomaru to be fair, but that wasn't what I wanted. Luckily, between the left over decals from the Ki44s and the MiscMini sheet I had enough to do the upper wing markings of all eight. The side markings were another issue. Again there was not enough decals but in my "spares" box I had some 1:300/1:285 ones from I-94 Enterprises, and between them there were enough. The tail numbers came from the Misc Minis set, and the under wing Hinomaru came from Warlord. So it was a bit of a collaborative effort in the end. I should add here it was also quite instructional. The main issue with MiscMinis is they are sold as a single sheet, so you have to carefully cut each item, trimming it as close to the decal as possible. This is a major pain in the arse. Both the Warlord and I-94 decals are very different. with each decal being separate. I have to say this made a massive difference in time and general fiddle factor. I will keep using MiscMinis as their range is superb, but maybe in future I will check what Warlord do as well.
So that's about it. Eight Zeros painted up and ready to hit the Blood Red Skies. I think they look "good enough" - in fact I quite like the way they have ended up. I still have one more to paint - that for the Ace Saburo Sakai. I am lucky enough to have a resin pre production Zero from Warlord, and I plan to paint that up as Sakai's mount. It will take a bit of fiddling to get the tail number correct, which is one of the reasons I didn't go ahead and paint it with the rest, but now I have the experience with these under my belt, I don't think it will be too much of a challenge - I may even try to add some weathering. Famous last words.......
One last thought. Nothing has been confirmed by Warlord, but there is a persistent suggestion that they may not be happy with the bendy Chinese models. They have not repeated the process since the starter set, and anything after that has been either the FAR superior UK produced hard plastic as seen in the Mosquito, Hurricane, Bf110 and Fw190 models, or metal. This could be an issue as they are already sold out on a number of "bendy" Ace SKUs and the implication is they will have to either get more from China, or switch to metal or hard plastic. Given the quality of the hard plastic this would be a great opportunity to rejig the moulds and reissue, hopefully taking the time to remaster the 109 in particular. That would be my ideal solution, however the current preference at Warlord is to use their tried and true metal spin casting skills. I rather suspect given the lead time to make plastic they will end up going metal just to fill the gap if it happens.... All idle speculation of course but possibly something to watch in future.
Links
Warlord BRS Zeros
Armaments in Miniature
Warlord Zero Decals
Misc Minis
I-94 Enterprises (available in the uk from Minibits)
If you like this sort of thing why not click the follow button up there on the right?
Lovely looking formation of models!
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