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I really want an army of Guardsmen. More specifically, an army of Death Korps. I love the idea of a WW1 infantry army backed by rough riders, heavy weapons teams and artillery. But man... thinking about painting that many figures really puts me off.

Does anyone have any pointers for painting horde armies and keeping with it/ enjoying it? Any tips on painting it relatively quickly but keeping the quality intact?

Cheers

I use rewards, two units done, I then do something special after, tank, character, special unit etc. Also finding ways to speed up the process helps, for example, I'll paint 30 bases at once, then when it comes to painting the model, a big job is already done. I do find though that you get to a point where just seeing the army grow becomes motivation enough.

Same way i walked 500km in 2.5 weeks. Concentrate on now, don't think how much remains to be painted! That way despair lies.

i break my units up into batches of 5 marines (reguardless of rank) put them in baggies and label the baggies with whos in them. My work station only allows me to work on 10 at a time.. so i limited myself that way.. instead of using a pair of 4x6 tables to paint on.

Don't.



I'm sure some people have the patience to deal with horde armies, but I've proved I suck at it. Took me a couple of years to paint my Night Goblin army which only consists of about 120 Night Goblins (which are some of the easiest miniatures to paint) and something like 3 or 4 years to paint my Tyranid army which only has about 100 models in it.

Repetition drives me crazy. I can paint a unit of 20 models in a week, sure, but after that I lose any desire whatsoever to paint the next unit of 20

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Don't.



I'm sure some people have the patience to deal with horde armies, but I've proved I suck at it. Took me a couple of years to paint my Night Goblin army which only consists of about 120 Night Goblins (which are some of the easiest miniatures to paint) and something like 3 or 4 years to paint my Tyranid army which only has about 100 models in it.

Repetition drives me crazy. I can paint a unit of 20 models in a week, sure, but after that I lose any desire whatsoever to paint the next unit of 20

This is what I find. I start off pumped to get an army done and after the first 10 models I'm done haha. But the idea of the army is so cool in my mind!

The idea of putting each unit in a biggie and then doing each baggie one at a time seems cool though. Would be satisfying to see the pile get smaller and smaller. But the idea of so much time spent painting so many minis still drives me mental. :(

Pick a simple color scheme, some of GW washes make things a lot easier.

Spray colour primer, additional block colours, wash

Dipping also good.

Oh and don't buy gazillion models at once. Big pile of bare plastic kills motivation!

Yeah, don't forget making a horde army is nearly as much effort as painting...

I just can't get myself to paint huge batches personally... and let me tell you:

The Death Korps models are a HUGE pain! ...they are some of the worst casts you can get from FW, tons of flash, lots of re-bending required, lots of greenstuff fixing, all the extra resin steps washing etc... yuck!

I have only built 9 DKoK models and it took me forever and it was a miserable experience.

 Gunzhard wrote:
I just can't get myself to paint huge batches personally... and let me tell you:

The Death Korps models are a HUGE pain! ...they are some of the worst casts you can get from FW, tons of flash, lots of re-bending required, lots of greenstuff fixing, all the extra resin steps washing etc... yuck!

I have only built 9 DKoK models and it took me forever and it was a miserable experience.

Yeah I built 10 of them and painted about 8 and it's just tedious and fiddley and annoying. But they'd look so good! So frustrating

1) See how many methods you can use to cheat. (i.e. Army Painter sprays for the base colour of their coat...paint details...then dip = done)
2) Only buy one unit at a time, and paint one unit at a time. This way if you give up (as you're apt to do if you're a mortal) you only have painted stuff and not a mountaing of 250 bare plastic/resin guys which you'll lose money on when you eBay them.
3) The reward system as mentioned above. Two or three squads, then a tank.
4) Be honest with yourself. If you have such a high standard for your own painting that you won't realistically ever finish it...don't start. Same thing I tell the guys who say "I want to paint a whole Space Marine chapter!" and then they paint one figure a month. Don't do it. That's dumb.
5) Separate your "horde" into subsets to keep yourself interested. Come up with a cohesive look, but perhaps separate the platoons or types of infantry with minor differences, giving yourself a slight change of pace.
6) This is tha hardest one. Finish stuff. Painting an army is often a snow-ball effect. The more you finish, the more you'll paint. It's odd, but true for most people.
7) Do the boring gak first. Every army I do...I start with the basic bulk troops I'm the least likely to want to paint. That's both a way to get them done and a test of your patience/interest in the project.

The biggest one is simple: only do it if you know you have the discipline/time/patience to actually accomplish it. Don't start something because it looks cool, if you know (genuinely) you don't have the painting stamina/interest to see it through. You'll end up with a half-painted army you'll sell to someone at a loss in three years. Don't do that to yourself.

It's worth timing yourself and seeing how long it realistically takes you to paint a model, and also time how long different tasks take so you know where you might be able to save time.

I've never bothered with dipping for the simple reason I timed myself and found the wash stage didn't take me all that long anyway so dipping wouldn't save all that much time.

But all that said... at the end of the day I just find it too mindnumbing to paint the same model over and over again. At best I can usually paint models in 20-30 minutes and repeating that 100 times is so horribly unappealing, bump it up to an hour if the models need extra attention during assembly, cleaning and basing. I don't see myself ever collecting another horde army again. I have models in my collection that I've spent 100 hours on just the singular model, but the idea of spending the same 100 hours painting 100 of what is basically the same model again and again, urgh, no thanks, not again.

Thanks for all the awesome tips guys, but considering what Elbows has said leads me to think I just don't have the staying stamina for it. Mix that with not enough time in my day to devote towards it leads me to thinking it's unfortunately not going to happen. Not to mention how much it costs in Australia already, without buying from England! So I shall look at other armies.

Cheers everyone for all the tips and tricks, I'll keep them all in mind for if I ever do decide to do it.

I have 40 skeletons (23 of which are done) 20 grave guard (5of which are done, 10 black knights and 10 hex wraiths (only 5 of which are done) and the list goes on. I find that separating special units like the champions, musicians and standard bearers and doing them in their own corner while taking the rest and sticking them to a ruler. I then just go down the line, bones get bone color, armor gets armor color, wood gets wood color, pants get pants color. And then I'll get about 6 to 8 done in a sitting. I am continuously putting the ruler down and grabbing a hero like a wight knight and putting a color I just used on the skelis on him and so on and so forth. I might even have a friend's Daughter D&D miniature sitting near by too and I I will grab him and put some colors on him. I find it is very efficient, never be waiting on something to dry, always painting the next guy while the last one is drying.

Then, when the last guy has fresh paint on him, the first guy is ready for the next color!!!! Hope this helps[img]

You could choose the colours so that you have more colours that are highlighted by the same colour.
For example:
Yellowish green ork skin colour.
Orange ork armour.
You paint the orks in those colours, wash them in a brown wash, then drybrush with yellow. Now just paint the teeth and metal bitz and you're done.

Or you could hire someone to do it for you. Sure it's expensive, but let's be real here - you're gonna buy another army as soon as you're done with this one aren't you?