In about two months I went from nothing to putting a fully painted Warhammer army on the table and playing a game. Let me tell you how it went.
Absolutely everyone in this hobby has had the experience of pushing unpainted minis around the table, imagining how great they will look when they are all painted up. This is an important part of the hobby journey, but we all know the end goal: to put a fully assembled and painted army on an immaculate table and play a game to rival GW’s marketing material. Sadly, this is a goal that many hobbyists never achieve. I should know, I was one of them until just recently.
I have been playing Warhammer Fantasy on and off since I was about 8. I have painted hundreds of miniatures, but I have never fielded a fully painted, 2,000 point Warhammer Fantasy army. I have played against completed armies. In fact, as friends have moved and downsized I have inherited more than one complete or nearly complete army, but none of them are truly mine; they are not my accomplishment. I have always been too flighty, had too short of an attention span, to focus on one project until it was done. It took a unique series of events for that to change, but once it did I discovered some things about myself and the hobby that I think might be valuable for others, and I wanted to share them.
Let’s talk quickly about my goals with this army, because they strongly influenced my method. First, I had a specific time frame: two months at the outside, with no wiggle room whatsoever (I had a plane to catch). Second, it had to be totally complete as it was going to be on camera, and I was planning on gifting it to my opponent after the game. What this boils down to is that I had to be fast and on time. Here’s how I accomplished it.
1. Ain’t Nothing Like a Deadline…
Anyone who has pulled an all-nighter to finish an assignment due the next day knows the power of a deadline. Unless you’re a tournament player, the hardest deadline you have likely experienced in your painting career is getting stuff done in time for the weekend game. There is nothing wrong with this, but having a hard deadline and a goal truly focused me in a way I have never been before. I started writing painting plans on my calendar, I took one or two sick days when I fell behind due to unforeseen circumstances. A hard deadline can be a real motivator, even if it’s just the next time you’re getting together with your friends or a club.
2. Base Messy, Base Ahead
Just about every painting tutorial I watch that includes basing does so as the last step. “Push some Reikland Street Sewage around on your base and you’re done!” I’ve tried this and I hate it. It’s not just the texture paint, but doing any kind of basing last (apart from static grass, obviously). For me, basing is part of assembling the miniature. I glue the mini together, glue it to the base, then glue sand to the base. Once the mini is primed I paint the whole base with a 50/50 mix of Raw Umber and Burnt Sienna, then drybrushed with Naples Yellow Hue. If you don’t recognize those colors it’s because they are from Golden Acrylics. They are good quality, a far better deal per ounce than Citadel paints and can be found in most art stores. Don’t use the expensive stuff on bases, y’all.
3. Minimize Unique Models
My army had the maximum number of Characters at 4, but only two of them were really unique models: the Wizards. My general was the unit champion for one of the cavalry regiments and the champion for the swordsmen was a Captain. This left me only two totally unique minis to paint, so I gave myself a full day on my schedule to make them look pretty. It was fun, broke up the monotony of other tasks and looks good. I also had two cannon and crew. While they are from different studios, they were similar enough to be assembly lined together.
4. Speedpaints Are Fast, Slapchop Not As Much
I love the look you get from traditional acrylics in the “base, highlight, wash, highlight” method, but that’s no way to paint 102 minis (122 if you count horses separately) in under two months. I needed to cut out as many steps as possible, so I turned to white primer and speedpaints. I considered “slapchopping,” but it really did not feel that much faster. I have seen the same videos you have, so maybe I’m just slow at drybrushing. Slapchop definitely looks better, but it just didn’t save me enough time. In any event, I opted to zenithal prime, speedpaint, and call it good in a lot of places.
5. Assembly Lines Are Good, Burnout Is Bad
Assembly lines saved my bacon, but they also are the single biggest trap, at least for me. Assembly line painting sucks for some people and I am one of them. To help deal with burnout, I never did more than one unit at a time, despite loads of similarities between them. My two cavalry units are actually the same models and so are the swordsmen and their detachment. Rather than assembly line 20 cavalry and 30 swordsmen I did the units separately and incorporated some different colors between them to add variety. It was still grueling at times, but I was able to get through it.
6. Find Shortcuts You Can Live With
A fully painted unit is more than the sum of its parts, and the same goes for an army. It’s easy to forget this looking at still images online rather than the real thing. It’s ok to cut corners where necessary to achieve that finished block of soldiers. Here are some examples of how I went about it:
There is a lot of platemail in this army, so I decided it would be the first thing painted on the minis and I would not worry about the mess. I slapped silver all over everything, gave it a heavy wash with Nuln Oil, and a quick drybrush of silver. It looks OK, but not loads better than just a straight drybrush of silver over a black prime, so I did that for the next unit. I had planned to field a 20 man regiment of halberdiers. When I realized there was no way to get them done in time and looking decent, I pivoted to Flagellants. They had fewer trimmings and really only needed their skin to look good. They were fun to paint and ended up being my most clutch unit! I finished varnishing everything the day before my departure and ultimately decided the whole army still looked unified and good without static grass. These are all decisions made out of necessity, but I don’t feel that they compromise the finished product.
And there you have it, my main takeaways from churning out my first fully painted army in a truly astounding amount of time for a father of two with a full time job. What’s that? More glory shots? Sure, twist my arm!
Do these ideas ring true for you? Have you set a deadline and painted a full army before? Let me know what your advise would be to someone attempting this for the first time. Happy Hobbying!
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