Carcassonne Central

Hopefully, I will be getting my 2nd Tower expansion soon and I would like to paint the tower pieces.  Any advice (or is that advise?) regarding what types of paint I should use on the tower tiles?

PS. Tower tiles = unpainted, which I'm going to guess would save me the job of removing the original paint :)

You may want to sand them down slightly to remove the varnish. One of my tower pieces is missing a bit of the ridge, and the wood feels different.

As for paint, probably acrylic, because it dries fast and is fairly opaque. But that's assuming that you're hand painting tiles. But if you're buying acrylic paint, avoid Games Workshop's paint selections, as they are not good value for money (last I checked, they were £1.75 over here for not that much paint, and that was about 3 years ago). If you go to an arts and crafts store, you should be able to find bottles of paint that are about as wide as a D battery and a bit taller, and they only cost £1.

If you're spraying, then Joff is probably the person to ask...

Joff, can I spray you? :p

The 'official' way of painting meeples is using a solvent based paint... we can easily get a similar product... Nail Varnish. This is how I painted my second set of Tower pieces. My first set was painted with enamel paint (as were Jester and Minstrel pieces), which was not as good as when I used nail varnish. The main problem with this is that finding the right colours can be the tricky part. Fortunately, black and white are very easy to find :) I have just purchased a brilliant gold colour (easily available around this time of the year) for repainting the Monopoly Ark piece.

My advice, use nail varnish, the results are much better.

Is that nail varnish mixed in with the paint, or just put over the top of the paint?

Thanks.  I guess I will have to start pretending I'm goth or something to get black and white nail varnish...

No, just plain coloured nail varnish, instead of any other paint or, put another way, the nail varnish IS the paint ;)

I have painted the nail varnish straight over the top of my meeples... they may need one or two coats, but the results are really good.

Use black nail varnish for the black tower pieces and white nail varnish for the white tower pieces (after removing the apex ;) ). I did not need to sand the tower pieces.

Here is a side by side comparison of a painted and unpainted Ark for The Ark of the Covenant:

(http://www.john-warren.co.uk/carcassonne/images/gold_ark.jpg)

Because of the glitter added to the nail varnish, it loses a bit of the fine detail that is apparent in the unpainted version, but looks excellent when it is on the playing area.

I have also just painted a cow, ready for the Moses and the Golden Calf expansion ;)

Is there a particular technique for painting with nail varnish?  How many coats do I need to use (for the pieces, not for my nails)?  How long does nail varnish take to dry?  Is there anything I should know about nail varnish?

this is something your gf, wife or mother could answer :-)
drying doesnt take that long ... depends on how thick you paint, normal nail polish takes about 5 minutes to get in state to touch without seeing the fingerprint (according to my gf :-P)

About 3 coats of a colour should do the job well. However, when I used my white nail polish it took about 4 coats to finish. Drying doesn't take very long, but I left my work overnight between each coat.

...and just remember - It stinks to high heaven (I guess that's OK for Ark pieces then!!)  ;D ;D ;D

Very good                          ;l4 ;l4 ;l4

Well, I just painted the first trial black piece.  It needs only 1 coat.  Pink needs 2 coats, and I'm on the 3rd coat for gold (but I think that would need another coat).  So I guess it depends on the colour being used.

Today I got my orange and white meeple-sets from eBay, and while they're not as perfect as the original ones (which - of course - was stated in the auction), they look okay. The paint isn't 100% covering, but also a little thick in creases, which would've been worsened by more coats of paint I guess.

thats strange, my orange and white meeple are of the exactly the same quality as my big box (the one with 5 expansions, without the tower)

I'll take it back, you're right... now that I got home I could compare the new ones to the original ones, and actually they look just as good. I was especially fooled by the "doors" of the barn, as I was sure the tops were corners, so I thought the round doors of the new ones were actually due to paint that ran into the creases.

So, everything fine here, sorry for the confusion :)

I believe the white coloured paint is actually the undercoat before the actual colour is applied to the wooden parts.

or the color of the fairy, no?

I have no complaints with my figures from him.  I do have complaints about the figures I'm painting myself.  *sigh*  I can't seem to get them to look as good as the "real" meeples.  I must be doing something wrong.  3 days later and my test black tower tile is still not complete.  I noticed that a second coat really helps cover up "spots" in the paint the first time around!  Hopefully it'll be ready in 24 hours.

No, the colour of the fairy is a different shade.


My second black tower pieces (white and black) took well over a week. They were done in stages over the Christmas/New Year period. I don't think you'll ever get them as good as the original painting technique.

Edit: That includes me also, Novelty... see next posting ;)

I don't think I will ever get them as good as the original painting technique either.

My Mom used acrylic craft paint on my city and road pieces for the King expansion and they look just as good as the actual meeples that come with Carc and other expansions.

There're meeples included with King???

Not included. I had my brother replicate a city and road pieces from Settlers from some scrap wood.

If starting with the unpainted wood meeples one might try RIT dye. There is a good thread on BGG about using it for dyeing wood discs successfully.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone painted their meeples with acrylics? I'm curious as to how the paint has held up to the wear of handling.  I have oodles of acrylic bottles from my miniature days (that i didn't use too much) and am thinking of improving some of the base colors. I have lots of Metallic colors that might be very cool.

Pretty sure that my city and road pieces are painted with acrylic paint, but they've not had much use so I can't really say how it's been holding up.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/646372/customizing-meeples/new (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/646372/customizing-meeples/new)

These are my meeples! hope you enjoy!

Nice - thanks for sharing!