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Why do we, and I mean as gamers/hobbyists, paint bolters, lasguns etc with Boltgun metal paint?

Even Flames of War paintguides say to paint barrels with the equivalent color.

But if you LOOK at guns, they aren't silver....they are black with a bluish highlight....

Should we change how we paint guns? Now, for aesthetic reasons, yeah, silver looks good. But surely there aren't more or better ways?

i don't use acrylic paint ,never got the results ,durability,&sucks to airbrush, i have been using testors for 25+ years. anyway most guns are given a corrosion proofing treatment called blueing. testors makes a paint called gun metal blue, also they make many realistic metal colors , but you need to use thinner to clean brushes & airbrush.

If you want to paint your guns black and highlight them to replicate the gleam of light across black steel, you go right ahead. Since I'm lazy, I'll stick with the metal.

Why? Because it looks good, especially from a distance. NMM usually only looks good up close, and painting NMM black is not only hard, but simply looks like primer when viewed from acouple feet away.

I've seen plenty of shiny metal guns in my life. And besides, boltguns and lasguns aren't going to be around for another 25,000 to 30,000 years, so who knows what they'll look like?

Tactically, having shiny weapons is daft. Especially sniper rifles gleaming away - there's a reason snipers often wrap the barrels of their weapons! But on miniatures it just looks better as it's some contrast, plus it's easy to paint. I'm sure you could cook up a colour scheme that worked with black steel though.

yes, having shiney weapons is dumb, but then so is having bright blue armor with huge flags on your sargents and painting the parts of your guns that aren't shiney bright red... if wh40k were real life the ultramarines would be a footnote that reads "and then there were the 'ultra marines' they were a group of 'special' troops who got wiped out while trying to sneak up on a bunch of orks wearing bright colors in broad daylight"