Painting 50mm Miniatures

Gundam Assemble miniatures ship unpainted, and Bandai sells a paint line for them: Gundam Assemble Colors, a brush-on range with Base and Shade colours, plus the Mr. Brush BS series for detail work. A Paint Pack exists that bundles miniatures, a brush and four colours.

The order that protects the model

1. Wash. Warm water with a drop of dish soap, five minutes, then air dry. Mould release and finger oil stop paint adhering.
2. Prime. Thin coats, two light passes rather than one wet one. Spray or brush primer both work at this scale.
3. Base colours. Block in the main areas. Two thin coats beat one thick coat every time.
4. Panel line. A fine-tip liner or a thinned wash in the panel gaps.
5. Details. Sensors, vents, weapon muzzles, eyes.
6. Topcoat. Matte for a military look, satin if you want the plastic sheen back.

The wash step is the one people skip. On a 50 mm model, paint flaking off a shoulder in game three is almost always a primer adhesion failure, and it is avoidable.

Panel lining on a small model

Panel lines are the recessed grooves between armour panels. On a 50 mm figure they are shallow, so a wash works better than a pen in most places:

• Gloss topcoat first if you want the wash to flow and wipe cleanly.
• Apply the wash along the groove, not over the whole panel.
• Wipe across the surface with a clean brush or fingertip before it dries.
• Reapply for deeper lines rather than using a darker colour.

Panel lining alone, on bare plastic, is the highest-value 10 minutes per model in this hobby. It reads at table distance and it costs nothing but a liner.

Keeping paint out of the joints

Paint in a ball joint is the most common way to ruin a finished model. Mask shoulders, hips and ankles with a small piece of tape, or paint the limb before final assembly and scrape the peg clean afterwards.

If a joint does seize, do not force it. A drop of isopropyl alcohol on the joint, worked gently, will usually free acrylic paint.

Painting to tell squads apart

In a two-player game the models are the only thing distinguishing your three units from theirs at a glance. Three practical schemes:

• Shoulder and head only. Paint one shoulder and the head in a squad colour, leave the rest straight-build. Fast, readable, and easy to strip later.
• Full scheme. Base, shade, line and topcoat. Roughly 60 to 90 minutes per model at this scale.
• Wash and line only. A single wash over bare plastic plus panel lining. Twenty minutes per model and it looks deliberate.

The Paint Pack includes four Gundam Assemble Colors plus a brush, which is enough for the shoulder-and-head approach on a full starter set.

What not to do

• Do not spray primer in cold or humid conditions. It fogs; at this scale fogging hides detail permanently.
• Do not use hardware-store enamel on bare polystyrene. It can craze the plastic.
• Do not varnish before panel lining. The wash needs a surface it can be wiped from.
• Do not paint the base of a snap-fit peg. It will not seat.

Time and cost

| Approach | Time per model | Extra cost |

| Straight build | 20 min | $0 |

| Panel line only | 30 min | ~$8 for a liner |

| Wash and line | 40 min | ~$20 for wash and liner |

For a starter set of six, a full paint job is a weekend. The rules do not care either way - see unpainted minis - so paint at the pace that keeps you playing.