Fleet File garage kits and how to paint your own LOGH ship models

It's been a while since my last update and that is because I have been busy painting up the remaining of my Imperial and FPA ships. Roughly 30 FPA and 40 imperial standard (battleships, cruisers, carriers) ships were added to both rosters.

What are the Fleet File Garage Kits?

Garage kits are basically resin model kits produced usually in limited numbers, in the past these kits were mainly produced by hobbyists in Japan in their own homes and sold at conventions or in small circles. 

In the case of the Fleet File series they the unpainted and unassembled (slightly more than the normal kits which require minor assembly of antennas and fins) versions of the main series. 

They come in these brown simple boxes with no art and include significantly more models (usually 20) than each individual standard kit.  One of the main benefit if you're someone like me that is trying to get models to beef up armies for a tabletop game is that it's very easy to paint named ships as standard battleships and leave out their markings.

Each kit comes with models and all the parts required for each one separately wrapped in plastic bags. An instruction sheet is also present with a list of all the ships, how to assemble and paint them. Lastly two sheets of decals are also included, all the ship markings that you will need are included in each sheet.

Some of the kits also have pins of the Goldenbaum dynasty crest as a promotional item.

One thing of note is that the bases included in the 6th Garage kit have labels for the specific ships that you're supposed to paint but all the previous kits do not and have blank bases.

 How to paint the ships?

• After assembling the first step is priming the model. This is necessary both to create a good surface adhesion for the paint as well as to make the surface more opaque as some of the resin is fairly translucent.

• Next apply an even layer of the main green or gray color to the whole ship. Airbrush is the preferred method but painting multiple thin layers with a brush  will also work if you don't own an airbrush.

• Once the paint is dried up I painted with a brush the details in different colors like the antennas and the silver and gunmetal grey bits  of the imperial ships. Better yet to not paint the exhaust as the panel lining is likely to dull or smudge the color if done now. 

• Apply a first layer of varnish to seal the paint, this is required to aid in the next step and prevent paint flecks from coming off the model during the cleaning. I use Testor's dullcote as it gives a really flat finish. I have heard that using satin or maybe even gloss in this step might be better as to give a smoother surface for the ink to flow when painting the black recesses.

• This next step is what will make the model pop and look exactly like the official ones: panel lining. This is a technique mainly used when building gunplas to highlight the ridges and details between panels, the technique is somewhat similar to a wash in traditional miniature paining. For this i highly recommend buying the Tamiya black panel line accent color as well as the x-20 thinner. There are multiple excellent guides on how to panel line with these products on youtube.
  
  
  
   
• Once the panel lining is done paint the exhaust in orange.
• If you wish to add the decals now is the time. Once that is done simply finish it off with one last layer of varnish and the model is done.
  

Now the colors listen in the guide are from the  Mr. Color line but I mainly use Vallejo so i had to find the closest alternative which does not completely match. Luckily the difference is not distracting and could just represent some of the ships having newer coats of paint. 

In the below image on the left is the ship that I painted myself from a garage kit while on the left the same model from a Fleet File Collection. Following are some closer up images to highlight the minor difference. The model painted by me is the one without the piece of yellow tape on the back of the base.

 

The difference is much more noticeable in the imperial models as the grey is more bluish instead of having a vaguely greenish tinge.

The last step needed to finish off all the miniatures and to allow them to be transported to meetings and conventions is to glue magnets on all the bases.

For clarity. as there might be some people that play the game that are not that familiar with the ship designs I will be making cuztom stickers to put on the bases in english, on the opposite side of the japanese ones.

Below are some of the typefaces I tried and while the middle gothic ones look just like the style in the show, they are not very legible when scaled to be 2-3 cm in width. Because of this I'll probably go with the second from the top or the bottom typeface to prioritize legibility.

These last steps will take me a little bit and in conjunction with some planned travels I'll likely not be able to come back to this project for the whole summer. But after that I will be sure to start posting more updates on the rules and hopefully some feedback from playtesters at my local club.