Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Friends,

I start this thread with no small amount of trepidation. While I'm no stranger to posting on forums of one sort or another, this is likely to be a very long, demanding and personal endeavor if I do it justice. I ask you for your patience and apologize in advance if I too often wax philosophical... it is my nature. I do promise lots of photo's of miniatures and projects in process and a lot of opportunities to give feedback on what you see and read. So hopefully even those of you without kids will find something of value. There will also be discussions of things particular to guiding a child through the ups and downs of 40k, dealing with losses, setting standards for your own conduct, learning to model and paint, placing value on aspects of the hobby besides just winning the game. You are welcome to comment on these issues as they arise, or bring them up on your own for others to respond to, whether you have a child or not. Wisdom is not the unique possession of those who have bred successfully (often it's just the opposite).

I'm hoping that this topic comes at a rather unique time in the hobby. At around 20 years old, 40k has reached (by several years) a natural point of generational turnover. The kids, like me that were playing it in HS or in college, are now old enough to have children of our own who might also be interested in playing. While this offers wonderful opportunities for parent/child togetherness, it does offer specific challenges as well. I'm certainly not above asking for help or a second opinion when faced with a difficult situation, neither am I above saying "Lookie what he did!" when one of my boys do something cool. Sorry, you'll have to put up with that once in a while, I am a proud father of two wonderful boys.


Enough of that... let me give you a very brief bit 'o background, then we'll get to the interesting stuff.

I've been playing 40k since the Rogue Trader days back when I was in college. I had two armies back then, Mantis Warrior space marines (beakies), and pirate eldar (which eventually became craftworld eldar). Two principles have always guided me in 40k; have a good time win or lose, and have the best looking army on the field. I almost always succeed in both. NOT that I'm a great painter... I'm a good painter... but I always field fully painted armies where every figure is painted to a good standard... so the effect of the whole is greater than my skill with any one figure. About 6 years ago I stopped playing, not for any specific reason... new state, new house, new job, new kid... life just got busy. About a year ago, my two sons (6 and 9) came home from school with a "library book"... an old... OLD copy of White Dwarf (how this got into the school library I'll NEVER know), and were all excited because their friends were playing this cool game with space marines, etc. In the midst of excited begging and pleading about letting them start to collect figures and play, I walked them downstairs into the basement and pulled out some old boxes containing several thousand points of fully painted Marines and Eldar, vehicles and all.

The rest, as they say... is history.


(more to come... need a fresh cup of coffee)

Up next... "Chapter and Verse": the first two units of Doom Eagles


NOTE: My Necron painting process can be found here. (This note is mainly for me as I keep forgetting and am tired of trudging through the blog looking for it.)

Wow, what a story. I wonder what your kids' expression was, when they saw all those figures. I hope to see pics soon!

"Chapter and Verse" : Choosing the Doom Eagles


After we'd played my two armies against each other for a while it was only natural for both boys to pick army's of their own. The youngest chose orks... since I'd harbored a long suppressed desire for a Bad Moon army and we had the orks from the Black Reach set to get started, that was fine. I'd been hoping my 9-year-old would choose something equally interesting... something with expensive troops so I didn't have to buy a million of them and easy to paint... like Necrons. In the end though, he decided on Space Marines. This vexxed me a bit because we already HAD a fully painted space marine army... having the same army in a different color scheme doesn't really get us anywhere. In the end I relented however, and agreed to let him build a Marine army with the following caveats. 1) It would have to be a color scheme he could paint himself. 2) He would have to be satisfied with hand-me-downs and extra's from my SM army, or use his own money to buy them as I would be d#$%ed if I was going to spend thousands of dollars buying yet another SM army! (I didn't swear but you get the idea.)

Luckily for him, I had accumulated a LOT of extra's over the years, had written all tracked or wheeled vehicles out of my Mantis Warrior list so he could take what I had, and had a good friend (the guy who got me into 40k all those years ago) who donated some more guys & even painted up some command figures for him. Oh, and we had the Black Reach figs too.... so he was set. Lastly, I gave him a special job around the house the payment for which he is allowed to spend on 40k. If he completes his tasks on schedule, it could amount to around $300 a year, plenty for him to spend on a hobby. Money he gets from relatives and such as presents is not to be spent on 40k.


The Great Debate

So... what chapter to choose. My son chose his chapter the same way I chose mine 18 years ago... paging through pictures of marines until you found one that you liked and thought you could paint. We looked on the web, found an old poster with a bunch of different chapters on it, found my old scans of the pages from the 1st Ed rule book that had chapters on them... the whole bit. There was a great back-and-forth debate as he would select one incredibly complicated chapter paint job and I would summarily veto it. Finally we settled on these silver guys with black and red highlights. Striking yet simple to paint... all good.

The fluff we found for them is here: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Eagles

Clinically depressed space marines... 50mg of Lexapro would do these boys wonders.


When it came to painting, I saw no reason why his models couldn't be as well painted as mine at the very least. He's younger with better eyes, and though his coordination is still developing, he's more than capable of performing the basics (spray priming, dry brushing, washing and basic color selection, detail painting). Our goal is to have his army be one of the better painted armies out, regardless of the age of the painter. There was nothing in your average Doom Eagle, that he (or any other kid his age) could't do if taught properly. It should be noted that the 6-year old can do everything I've mentioned above... he just can't do it on a single figure scale yet... so he paints terrain and the old gorkamorka trucks, of which we have several.

Anyway, here's a photo of the very first figures my son painted... a Doom Eagle terminator squad.


I'd like to break the narrative for a sec here... is this image too small for what you'd like to see? I'm trying to use as little space in my gallery as possible with each image, but looking at it in my preview... it looks a bit small.

To continue:
Here are 5 of the 10 members of my son's Doom Eagle terminator squad. If you're old enough you might recognize the terminators from the original Space Hulk game... I just cut the antenna off. Straight-forward but attractive color scheme that is easy to paint and looks good on the table top. Two shades of metal were dry brushed over black primer, then washed with Badab Black (GW). Black and red details were then painted and washed. Gold eagles and such were drybrushed on. I helped out with the detail on the sergeant (I can never make a face this good on one of my own figs) and the heavy flamer. There's still a lot to do, but rather than forcing him to add detail at this stage, we called them done so he can play with them. Later on, when he's motivated and a little better painter... we can come back and work on adding fine detail to each. Since getting my Foredom up and running again I've been drilling the gun barrels on everything, easy to do and makes a difference... but you have to be careful! It helps to put a little dent in the middle of the barrel with a punch or small nail so you have something to center the drill bit on before you start drilling.

The rule when it comes to painting at our house, is that you can't start the next squad until you finish the one your currently working on. This helps him to stay focused and field completely painted models rather than a bunch of half painted ones. I get final say as to if they're done or not... so I can make sure he's not rushing from one project to the next. Once the termies were done, we cobbled together a bunch of bits out of the bits box into a 10-man assault squad. Here is the result.

The troopers in the 10-man squad were all assembled from random bits left over from my Mantis Warrior army. The sergeant is from the Assault on Black Reach tactical squad. We stuffed jump packs on them all and viola! Instant assault squad. There are at least two different era's of bolt pistols represented in the squad (some are chopped down bolters from the original plastic beakie-marine sets), and only a couple of them have been given any detail yet. Personally I wouldn't have made the entire weapon red... but it's my son's chapter and that's where he wanted to go with them, so I butted out.



Close-up of the sergeants showing detail. Again I did the head and some of the other fine detail, but my son did everything else. This is a good example of a figure that still has a lot of room for added detail. That's O.K. I've been trying to impart my ethic, which is that I never field an unpainted figure... so rather than paint all the little details on each figure from the get-go, we paint them to a good standard so they can be played, knowing that he will eventually return to them when he can relax, take his time and finish them right. On top of that his brush control isn't quite fully developed yet... so I figure waiting on the fine detail as he develops as a painter is probably a wise idea. The assault sergeant also benefited from a little extra attention since at the time he and the termie srg were the closest things to characters in his army.

Next: "The Objective (marker) of My Desire"

Wow, those termies were your son's first models! Those are excellent for a begginer. For me, the pic is just right. I think the termie heads should be a different colour (like white) to provide relief from all the silver. It also makes the heads easier to spot. Again, looking great!

This is a short post when compared with the last two. This is a Doom Eagle objective marker that I made for my son's army depicting a battle brother pinned beneath wreckage and fighting fro his life, on his last clip of ammo. The whole scene was scratch built from bits and pieces. Unfortunately it went to a big gaming birthday party last night and did not come home... so it may be lost. But... it is my first attempt any any type of diorama and is a reasonable approximation of my level of modeling skill and at least my attempt is now immortalized in the electronic ether of cyberspace.


So now you have a bit of context. Like I said, I'm not a great painter... but if I apply myself I can turn out a pretty good looking figure and see no reason why my son can't do the same.

That looks excellent! I'm not really sold on the position of his legs. But if it's lost, well you can't really change it. Looking awesome!

I think I just used the standard beakie legs from the original set, so that's just the positions they were in. The one thing I think I was proudest of, which you can't see in the photo is that his left arm is actually going straight down to the ground with his hand flat out like he's pushing himself up to get a better shot. I like doing objectives... have an involved eldar/chaos one I'm working on at the moment. I'm sure I'll have lots of opportunities to refine my modeling technique in the future based on what I learn on the forum, so I'm all smiles.

Good idea on the terminators, I make the suggestion to my son.

Your son is a pretty good painter , even though hes only 9

One thing I want to add though is dry to have the drybrushed layer a bit more even . If you take the leg of the termie sgt. and then his chest you can see that the legt has a way thicker drybrush than the chest

Can we see your other sons Orks ? I would love to see progress from them both

Cool story, cant wait to see some more!

This next one is something I'm really hoping to get some help with. This is his first vehicle... an old Mantis Warrior Predator, decommissioned and given a new lease on life with the Doom Eagles. Problem is that I was never any good at painting vehicles... it's one of the reasons I wrote them out of my Mantis Warrior army (love Dreds though... lots of Dreds). So when it comes to teaching my son to paint them... they end up looking like my vehicles... not so good, just different colors. That being said, I thought he did a fine job with what he had... I've just never had the knack of turning out good tanks so he didn't get much useful information from me. Any good ideas or links would be most welcome. Since I just joined the forum I haven't had the chance to dig around for good articles, I'm sure they're out there though.




As far as the little one's painting, I can share a couple of things. I've been doing most of the ork painting as I've always wanted an ork army and his attention span is NOT that of his older brother. But he did a bang-up job on one of the pieces of terrain I gave him (one of the GW pre-formed pieces) and one of his little gorkamorka trucks was really impressive considering he got NO help or input from me... he just did it. Will include shots of those in the next post.

That vehicle is great! If you want it to be even better, try wethering it. Also, try getting the "How to paint citadel tanks" book. It helps alot as my friend insists. Sorry, but this is all I have to offer.

OK here by popular demand... the painting efforts of my 6-year-old... otherwise known as "Thing 2".



My 6-year-old's first piece. Guided by me but he did most of the work himself, I just touched up the pod and added the center dome. Still needs flocking. He did the priming, base painting, highlighting and washing. We had to go back to it a couple of times with each step to make sure he got everything... but he stuck to it and turned out a pretty nice piece.



My 6-year-old's second attempt. He did this one with no guidance or involvement from me what-so-ever. I don't know about you, but I was impressed... I don't look at this as an end-point but as a starting point, and a pretty good one for that age.

My six year old couldn't do that, although he does the odd interesting conversion. Really like the use of classic models, especially the termies. Kind of fits the doom eagle "hard luck chapter" theme.

Wow, good work. As a father of two (9 & 5) I gotta say it's awesome when they take an interest in Dad's old models! So far mine both have a couple of multicoloured Space Marines (they love playing with the B&C SM painter), we also have games of Mighty Empires running on rainy days (even 75yr old Ganddad has been known to join in on this...) This year both the young 'uns are joining me and my gaming buddy on our annnual pilgramage to Salute, they already have shopping lists longer than mine!!

I wish i can get my younger sister into warhammer sigh... Anyways your kids are doing great so far, be sure to post their completed armies.

Heres an article for painting vehicles , I can imagine a 9 year old doing that with help from his parents

To represent the hard luck of the Doom Eagles , you can weather them with this article , also you can use GW's toutorial as a guidance .

Love that tank... I've got an old Predator myself I'm rebuilding for my Space Wolves.

A couple of things your son could do on the pred:

Some brown and black washes to create a scorched effect around the holes in the exhaust pipes.

also, a couple of cheap spray paint cans, one in a very dark brown, another in a more medium shade.

hold the tank up and spray the underside with the darker shade, then put the tank down and spray, but don't hit the tank directly, spray a little off from the tank, along side. you're mainly looking for the back splash from when the spray hits the surface near the tank.

don't overdo it, go slow, and until it looks good to you, targeting areas on the tank that would normally see the abuses of overland travel. Then come back with the lighter shade and do the same thing, but a little less liberally, and you'll have something resembling a general weathering/dirty look on the lower parts of the tank.

After that, if you wanted to take something like graveyard earth and a good stippling brush and stipple in some of that in places, it can help the effect.

The main issue with his, and any tank really, is you've got what amounts to a large block of <insert chapter's main color>. It gets boring. Use the weathering to break it up without over doing it. As he progresses, he can start doing some chipped paint effects to the red parts of his vehicles (which is really easy, too) as well as some freehand, as he gets more adventurous.

Hope that helps.

I wanted to let you guys know that I've run all your ideas by my son and he's very excited about it all. I must say I'm excited too, never had help before really... not like you folks are providing. Got a tidbit here and there of course but to have a number of accomplished individuals looking over and providing helpful advice is a tremendous experience. Thank you!

So I started with something simple and took Munch Munch!'s advice and fiddled with one of the terminators. I figured I'd experiment with one first before setting my son to the task. Here's what I came up with...



I painted the head skull white, washed with Valejo "pale wash", then went back over the ridges and such with white again. While I was at it and because I'd been digging around GW's site looking for their painting tutorials (thanks again for alerting me to these), I made an attempt to paint his eyes using their technique (my son picked the color). When all was said and done it looked good, but something was still missing... so I painted the power fist to match.

My son loves the way they look, and so do I. Problem is that a fair amount of this is above his level yet (the eyes stretched mine to be sure). But he can do the white, the red trim on the PG and the washing for sure. Who'd a thunk that these cheezy old plastic terminators would turn out looking this decent? Unfortunately the storm bolter is just kinda... yech. But hey... they were free. What do 10 termies cost now-a-days?? Few bucks I'd guess. We'll stick with the free ones & spend our sheckels on things we don't have.

He is a good painter (he as in both for their age). but i would like to see some background on this "storm eagles" chapter.

The link to the background info was in my second post. Here it is again though...

The fluff we found for them is here: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Eagles

Did a little more fooling around with the terminator... found a great article here about using green stuff to do a bunch of things including making purity seals... something all terminators should have. It was easy and worked really well. Will update the photo in the earlier post with the final results tonight.

Terminators are $50 for 5 of em retail. you can pick up the AoBR termis of eBay much cheaper, but they dont come with any extra weapons (assault cannons, etc).
If your interested, i have bunches of extra dark angel assault cannons from the upgrade sprus, I'd be happy to send one your way, and they are easy to put on the AoBR termis

That's very generous, thank you! At the moment the only heavy weapons he has for his 10-man squad are the flamers, so something with a bit more range would be greatly appreciated.

Tell your kid he's better at painting than I am, and I'm 12!
I'm doing something similar to you Gitsplitta with my little sister, who wants to take up IG after seeing the Rough Riders.

I must say, those are incredible for a nine year old, and they are certainly better than my first attempt (which was made at the age eleven). You had better be reading out this feedback to him.

looks like a great start!
cool that your useing older models XD

You inspire me... but my sister breaks models not paints

She got mad at me and stompped on My Best painted ever land raider

Thanks everyone, he does do a good job... though if I didn't re-focus him from time to time I think he'd be rushing through some of this stuff so the results wouldn't be quite as good.

Here is, I think... the final version of the terminators. For those of you going "wow!" please keep in mind that the picky little details (head, eyes, purity seals) on this version were done by me (the dad). Look at the original photo's of the troopers and tanks (and read the narrative) to sort out what he's done vs. my contributions. That being said, I expect that he will be doing the heads and power fists on his own from now on... I'll do the eyes and make the purity seals. I have a really neat idea for making a "banner" for one of the terminators that will be a golden rope baldric with campaign ribbons and purity seals hanging off of it. I'll start playing around with it tonight and will post pics if it works out.

And yes, we go through the posts together so he can see everyone's comments and read the advice for himself. We've both learned a lot in the last few days since beginning this blog... and it's been fun to work together on improving the models. It's been even neater than usual because he get's to see ME learning new things too, rather than just me always teaching him.



Ah yes... the "raging sister" special attack... devastating. The only defense is to have your Land Raider "hull down" somewhere in the back of your closet or hidden under the bed.

Looking awesome!

One advise on the eyes . Instead of doing a pure skull white dot on the lenses , try micing together Skull white and Bleached Bone(ratio Skull white 2:1 Bleached bone) . It will look way better , imho , and always has

EDIT : Also , this might be the photos , but the white on the powefists a bit uneven . Try to build it up using Dheneb Stone > Bleaced Bone > Skull White

As usual , your sons models are way better than most , if not all , 9 year olds models i've seen to the date( and since I often go to the painting lessons to hang out with my friends at the FLGS , I've seen what cannot be unseen ) .