So I know that it is legal to repaint your ships and such, but I was hoping to get recomendations on diffrent paint products to use for adding little accents or just base colors to my ships. Any help,recomendations, mistakes to learn from (( i.e. Melting a ship with the wrong paint )) appreciated and welcomed. Thank you in advance.

Most brands of acrylic paint (Citadel, Reaper, even the cheep Apple Barrel craft paint) do a good job of covering over the generic paint. I've also used colored Sharpie pens to "paint" new stripes over existing ones or to add accents to ships. I know one guy that "repainted" his entire squadron/fleet with sharpie pens.

A common re-wash is the Citadel "Nuln oil" to bring out panel lines and recesses.

Most disasters I've heard about (melting plastic) came from trying to chemically strip the factory paint. Keep your paints thinned down and work carefully and you shouldn't have to deal with that.

As a novice painter, I've had the best results with Vallejo Game Inks.

The X-wing minis seem to really like ink.

I liked Vallejo and Reaper paints. Be sure to thin them a little bit with water, and use multiple coats, this will give you a much better result than painting one think coat. Also, when you're done you should apply a varnish, which can be sprayed on or brushed, depending on what you get, I like a Satin finish, which is the mid point between Gloss and Matte. I have hear or people doing a gloss finish before applying the Wash (citidel's Nuln Oil is popular), then once the wash is dry, they give it a matte or satin finish.

As the others has already stated, Acrylic paints are the easiest to use, seeing that they are water solvable, and they work really well with X-wing minis. No need to strip the factory paintjob, in fact it works quite well as a primer. If you do end up stripping the paint, I recommend methylated spirits but I know that there are MANY methods of stripping paint, some better than others, so it comes down to personal preference.

I mainly use Vallejo's line of acrylics, but they are more fragile then some other ranges, especially the Vallejo Model Colour range. On plastic models it's not very noticeable but on metal and some resin materials it can be a downright pain. During painting, some VMC colours comes off just by rubbing your finger over it. Several coats of varnish are needed to protect a model painted with some Vallejo colours.

I cannot recommend Games Workshop's line of paints due to the price (About twice the price of most other ranges. I paint a lot so it really adds up!) but they are beginner friendly and probably has the greatest tolerance to bumps and scratches during play. At least that's the way it used to be. I have almost no experience with the new range of GW paints, other then that you shouldn't really use them for airbrushing.

Gw paints are pretty good since they released the new ones, the washes are much better as you don't need to thin them down.

Gw paints are pretty good since they released the new ones, the washes are much better as you don't need to thin them down.

Really? Most people I've talked to seem to think that the new GW washes are slightly worse than the old ones. Of course, I'm about the most anti-GW person you can find so I'm probably rather biased.

A good article to get you started : http://handcannononline.com/blog/2011/03/04/tutorial-getting-started-in-miniature-painting/

Well you can still get the old ones, the new ones as long as you don't put them on too thickly give much better shading, the older ones were better for certain effects like leather using flesh wash and the black was better on metallic effects but too dark for cloth or anything else.

Thank you for all the links and advice, but it is legal to repaint the ships for sanctioned play?

Thank you for all the links and advice, but it is legal to repaint the ships for sanctioned play?

Yes

dont underestimate formula P3, i have used it on several occasions and it works extremely well. because its a liquid pigment, the colors blend really well, and their color range creates a natural progression from grey to white, burgandy to orange and yellow, and midnight blue to lightning like blues.

excellent color range.

Gw paints are pretty good since they released the new ones, the washes are much better as you don't need to thin them down.

Really? Most people I've talked to seem to think that the new GW washes are slightly worse than the old ones. Of course, I'm about the most anti-GW person you can find so I'm probably rather biased.

Macross may be biased but he's one of the best painters/modelers on the forum. I'd say is advice counts more than most of ours.