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Building on the Gundam model of multi-tone plastics, there's still a market for paints and converting within the line. One FLGS in my area sells both Gundam and 40K and many of the people buying the Gundam models are customising them with paint, decals, weathering, and conversions.

Just because the plastic of a model is one color (or two, three, or more) doesn't mean that you're unable to prime them and paint them in the scheme of your choice. Killkrazy isn't talking about pre-painted miniatures, he's talking about colored plastics.

I wouldn't mind seeing Land Raiders available in Original Grey, Ultramarines Blue, Dark Angels Green (or Ivory), or Blood Angels Red. Especially if decals could be used to add additional detail.

Gavin Thorne wrote:Just because the plastic of a model is one color (or two, three, or more) doesn't mean that you're unable to prime them and paint them in the scheme of your choice. Killkrazy isn't talking about pre-painted miniatures, he's talking about colored plastics.

I see.

Sort of like these old Space Marines that came in the boxed set with the purple genestealers? Instead of blue, make the guns silver or something? As long as they took to primer just as well, I wouldn't care.

I could see prepainted miniatures of some degree being a good marketing idea for starter armies, particularly for people who are interested in getting into the game but not sure if they will like it and don't want to spend time painting. Or even a selection of horde type armies.

Gavin Thorne wrote:Building on the Gundam model of multi-tone plastics, there's still a market for paints and converting within the line. One FLGS in my area sells both Gundam and 40K and many of the people buying the Gundam models are customising them with paint, decals, weathering, and conversions.

Just because the plastic of a model is one color (or two, three, or more) doesn't mean that you're unable to prime them and paint them in the scheme of your choice. Killkrazy isn't talking about pre-painted miniatures, he's talking about colored plastics.

... .

I'm talking about both, really.

I started the thread because I was impressed by the quality of painting on the Star Wars kit. I've posted about Gundams before. (And about Matchbox, who did two-tone kits in the 1970s.)

It obviously would be possible for GW to combine both techniques, and produce some kits that would build into really nice multi-coloured models right out of the box.

As you say, it wouldn't stop people from painting them if they liked. I've bought Halo Clix and AT-43 models and painted them.

I just think it would be great if people could assemble nice looking armies without painting etc.

I don't really get the line of thinking that says that pre-paints = pact with Satan

Personally I wouldn't like my miniatures to come pre-painted(colored) and built since I'm a modeler not a wargamer. Having pre-built takes the fun out of it. Some of the pre-built stuff (Like Dust) aren't assembled poorly.

Gundam models are a little different from GW stuff. Bandai designs their kits to make it easier for anyone to build. Almost all of the parts on their kits are molded in the original color of the model. The parts also breakdown by color for easier painting. . This way people who are not good a painting still can have a decent model without painting. Bandai makes their kits easier to build for anyone of any skill level both young and old. For GW to do something like this, it would drive up manufacturing costs of the kit. Also, why would you want the sprues pre-colored when you intend to paint the model?

If GW followed the same suit at Reaper having both painted and unpainted, I'd be fine with that. I just won't buy the painted stuff.

My experiences with prepainted game miniatures has so far all been negative.

1. Prepaints so far have been craptastic. When MONGOOSE decided to spout off at the hole that "thier minatures were going to be 80% better then most people can paint," and then proceeded to pee all over the place with what actually came out, THAT was the nail in the coffin for prepainted minatures.

2. AT-43, the darling of the gaming circuit, ended up a blithering mess. Nevermind the designers own bad accountability, but the models were on par with soft toy plastic, that was spolched with some dabs of paint for a "Just good enough" to play with, without having to contribute or sweat for your effort. Admittedly, by the time the game was falling so far down the black hole of Sqatted, the quality of the paint job, specificly on the ONI faction, was excellent, but by then the damage was done. They could not continue to mass produce, then paint the product at the rate that they wanted to.

3. The particular models in question were part in parcil of Lucas's douchbaggery of mass produced hype. The movie was not even meh, yet the pounding that people have taken on product overexposure helps to generate a false sense of importance to the "Toy" in question. I for one thought that the model was garbage. No amount of paint is going to help that joke. thats why they are all relegated to the bargin bin, now.

No one wants them.

Name a fairly good example of "Prepainted games" and it ultimatly boils down to "!@#$clix, AT 43/ confrontation, WOTC boxed shlock of WYSIWYG starwarsmini's, or any of the numberous varation of a theme from them.

I was playing Axis and Allies for a few months, and then moved on down to FOW.
nearly the same scale, but the effort that I contributed to the FOW stuff was 100X more then open a box of six guys to get MAYBE 1 that I could add in to the party was paramount to lighting my money on fire and throwing it in the air for fireworks.

FFW has an infanatly superior game in thier same scale WW2 game then Axis and Allies did, yet was molded in green and grey plastic. ( Hmmm....)


When I hear "Prepainted gaming...." I always return to the phrase "80% better then most people can paint..." then the obiquitous BS spindoctoring that ensued. Even when I outright called them on it, they pretty much told me to shut up, and eventually crushed the game.

from an award winning game to oblivion- in the space of a year.


the glory of prepaints.

To sum up, you don't like any of the good quality pre-painted models and you think the bad quality ones are too low quality.

Do you know what? I just had a possibly brilliant idea.

If I get some straight out of the box sprues of SMs, maybe I could design and cut a set of stencil masks for spray painting them.

Many posters have criticized pre-painted models. However, they do not consider the abominable hobby efforts of many people who play the game. Take a look around your FLGS, or even auctions on e-bay. You will probably find miniatures that are painted far worse than pre-painted ones.

There was the comment that GW did not have the sales volume to produce pre-painted minis. I do not know if this is true, however I suspect that pre-painted minis have a much larger potential market than unpainted ones. I think it would be a way for GW to grow the business, and make it more mainstream.

I think that there is room for both unpainted and prepainted stuff. In fact, Reaper has demonstrated as much.

spaceelf wrote:
I think that there is room for both unpainted and prepainted stuff. In fact, Reaper has demonstrated as much.

I agree completely. I think that pre-painted miniature wargames is a massive un-tapped market.

Grot6 wrote:No one wants them.

Actually Grot6 I think you are being a little unfair there. I don't think the problem with AT-43 was specifically down to the pre-painted miniatures, which I think were generally quite popular, and from my experience were actually pretty good. In fact, the game was pretty popular in clubs at least around my area of the UK for a while. I even thought the game system was pretty good TBH, certainly better game mechanics than 40k. And come on, power-armoured gorillas?!
Instead it was:
- Crappy release schedule, not making units from the books and then releasing them really late didn't help.
- AFAIK absolutely zero marketing. GW can get away with it as they are the king in the castle. For a game that was going head to head with 40k they needed an aggressive marketing strategy.
- Losing distribution with FFG I think really hurt them.

The failures of Rackham over the years have been very well documented, and TBH there are people a lot more informed on the topic than I am. But, all in all they left behind a very aggrieved (and perhaps mostly sad) fanbase who had fallen in love with their rules and games. At their best, they were most certainly a rival for GW, and I think it was a big blow to the industry as a whole not least because I think their absence has allowed GW to become fat and lazy.

Anyway! AT-43 didn't fail because of the pre-painted minis, there were a lot of other factors in play.

Kilkrazy wrote:The technology exists. I would like to see GW maintain their reputation as a leading model figure manufacturer by using that technology.

It's just a matter of investment in the equipment and mould design.

It's also a matter of patent, which is owned by Bandai...

As was mentioned earlier, the Dust prepaints are gorgeous. I'd much rather look across the table at a prepaint army than a grey horde.

I also agree that it's an untapped market for GW; just think of all the people unwilling to spend hours painting and modelling when they just want to play a game.

I'm a fairly indifferent and terrible painter and prepaints are at least as good as I can do, if not better; I know I'd pay for a prepainted army. My wife might like it too since I've ruined 3 good t-shirts from spilled paint (did I mention that I'm fairly clumsy with small object?)

Prepainted models woould stop the grey hordes. It would just be replaced with the minimilst horde. People who dont paint their pre-painted will be looked down on aswell.

lord_blackfang wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The technology exists. I would like to see GW maintain their reputation as a leading model figure manufacturer by using that technology.

It's just a matter of investment in the equipment and mould design.

It's also a matter of patent, which is owned by Bandai...

Well, some years ago there was talk of Bandai buying out GW (I believe when the shares were at a low, following the LoTR bubble bursting). So, that would solve that one!

Patents can be licensed.

The Bandai patent covers multi-colour injection in one sprue, which is an awesome technique.

Pre-coloured models can also be made using multiple sprue colours -- each sprue is one colour and there are several sprues in the kit.

Another way is to spray paint the unassembled sprues with masks. That is what I started this thread with.

Manchu wrote:Can you imagine the argument on Dakka if this was the case?

"Are you willing to play against someone who uses mismatched color schemes?"

I like the painting and modeling (I can't really play 40k because I have no one to play against where I live). Getting rid of the art side of would turn me away.

Pacific wrote:But. that's just me. I know there are a lot of wargamers who don't have the time and/or disposition to paint, something that has become an increasingly tall order considering the size of army needed for a modern 40k/WFB army. Even a lot of players at my club, who you would say are a notch above casual in terms of the amount of time they spend playing, have armies of unpainted (not even undercoated) plastic and metal.

The problem with this is GW only shows stuff painted by Eavy Metal in White Dwarf and codices. Occasionally they show stuff from others in the studio, like they did with Tyranids with the Tervigon release. This reinforces the idea that your stuff has to be top quality. If all you see if Eavy Metal stuff, and yours isn't up there, then you've failed as a painter.

For a lot of armies - even Fantasy armies like VC with voer a hundred models, it's perfectly easy getting a tabletop quality army done, especially using colours primers and washes. Prime the main colour, pick out other details in other colours, apply overall washes, and relayer colours where needed. You can knock out a batch of 5 in short order and it looks great on the table.

GW have just - probably without realising - reinforced the idea of 'paint to the best possible quality or don't bother' by not putting more averagely painted models in White Dwarf. While we mostly like to see great paint jobs, it's also refreshing to see some not quite so awesomely painted armies, which still tend to look great when all put together on the table.

Pre painted isn't the answer, the answer is encouraging people to paint, even if the end result won't look like a Golden Daemon winner. Remember the Inquisitor book, with some of those terribly painted models by Brian Nelson, stuff by the studio, and decently painted stuff by other people? Yeah, stuff like that.

DoctorZombie wrote:

Manchu wrote:Can you imagine the argument on Dakka if this was the case?

"Are you willing to play against someone who uses mismatched color schemes?"

I like the painting and modeling (I can't really play 40k because I have no one to play against where I live). Getting rid of the art side of would turn me away.

Pre-coloured models wouldn't get rid of the art side, because you can repaint them.

The main argument would be that pre-coloured models might be expected to be more expensive than plain models.

That is certainly true if the models are assembled and painted by hand, however my suggestion is that the colour effects would be achieved by a combination of multi-colour plastic injection, and spray painting complete sprue frames using masks.

These processes would be automated and therefore quite cheap to do once the initial design and equipment had been done.

It would require GW to invest in a new set of production machinery and to revise their sprues. That needs to be done anyway as the old machinery wears out gradually. The whole range would not need to be converted over simultaneously.

If I were GW I would start with basic Tactical Marines. They must sell more of those kits than any other in their range.

I agree with Loki's paint about getting people to paint more. I've felt for a long time that people are often discouraged by the awesome professional work shown off in White Dwarf, etc.

I do think, though, that many people do not paint because they just want to play the game as quickly as possible. (See the arguments around Ard Boyz.) This kind of customer would definitely be helped by pre-coloured models.

I think it would eventually cause GW to just saw feth it and convert over to prepaints. Painting and modeling is a part of the hobby of wargames, and I think it should stay.

DoctorZombie wrote: I think it would eventually cause GW to just saw feth it and convert over to prepaints. Painting and modeling is a part of the hobby of wargames, and I think it should stay.

Prepaints doesn't preclude either of those, though.

When I was into Heroclix hardcore, my roomate at the time and I spent hours repainting and converting figures because the ones we wanted weren't available.

The amount of conversions and repaints on the AT-43 boards when they were active also went a long way to proving that prepaints didn't suddenly somehow mean an end to modelling and painting.

GW will never do prepaints because they make money selling painting supplies. They couldn't care less about the quality of the paintjobs out there. They just want people painting the minis with GW paints and brushes.

Sure, the market is untapped, but GW has a financial motivation for KEEPING it that way.

I don't really see a problem with multi colored plastics...not like you can't prime them if you wanted to. I also think that GW would never do it, citing a slew of reasons it'd never work. If GW did do it, I'd expect a huge increase in current costs because " ...red AND grey?!?!? You mates don't know how hard that is to pull off on one sprue!!"

Prepaints...meh. Not for me but I'm all for it if gets more people playing. If that were the case I'd like both an interchangeable unpainted and prepainted lineup for the same game. That way Joe Prepaint could play me and my army of half primered/half fantastico space elves. But I don't see an unpainted and a prepainted lineup for one game happening.

I guess when it comes down to it, for as big of a company as GW is they really just don't have the brains or balls to pull off anything spectacular. They really are just a minatures company.

gorgon wrote:GW will never do prepaints because they make money selling painting supplies.

So do Privateer Press, but it didn't stop them from selling Pre-painted models.

The issue with the grey hordes (not my issue, mind you) is that people buy the minis and then play, and it takes away from the immersion of the battle for the people who want an epic visual. Granted, there are people who just want to play, and either do not like/have no talent/do not want to paint.

Pre-coloured would just be the new grey horde. It's not about "are they a colour other than grey", it's about two different mindsets within the hobby that clash with each other; the side that customizes, paints and plays, and the side that just wants to get to a table and play.

I'm actually less bothered by the idea of grey horde than I am by the idea of pre-coloured, because in my opinion there's at least a level of honesty in the grey.

I have to be honest, the 'grey horde' is something I only ever seem to encounter with 40k. At my club, of the 30 or so people who play, about a quarter of them usually turn up for 40k - of the 7-8 guys I would say only 1 or 2 have fully (or at least mostly) painted armies. The rest are a collection of sometimes half a dozen marine chapter colours in one army, unpainted GK or BA, sometimes even marines with no arms, or just a pair of legs running around the battlefield

And it can't be just a 'GW' thing, as a lot of the guys who play WFB (around the same number), or the few LoTR/WoTR players always seem to field painted armies.

Then, you get the historical players who take things a step further, and it's not uncommon to see the rather cool site of small countryside and villages/roads for FoW, or Medievil village for Saga. Whether it is something to do with the setting, but that has often been my experience of historical players, and TBH it is something I really like to do myself!

So, for those guys who have unpainted 40k armies - I would love some pre-paints, it would make the experience that much better. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but given the option I would much rather play someone who looks like they have spent at least some time and care on the force they are fielding. My painted stuff isn't the best in the world, but at least I've made an effort and TBH I wouldn't have the gumption to put down an army of just WFB movement trays for Orc Warbuggies for example.

I'm actually less bothered by the idea of grey horde than I am by the idea of pre-coloured, because in my opinion there's at least a level of honesty in the grey.

It may be more honest(?!), but I would argue it is a lot worse looking

Pacific wrote:I have to be honest, the 'grey horde' is something I only ever seem to encounter with 40k.

Is that to say that you've seen other systems (PP, Infinity, HGBlitz) with less of a grey horde factor? It would stand to reason, WFB and W40K both require a lot of pieces to partake in a standard size game (and I'm thinking 1850 as I write this) compared to the other aforementioned systems which are more skirmishy when compared to GW.

Or were you referring to miniature wargamining in general?

Mass historical wargames require more figures than 40K. You typically need from 150 to 300 figures for an army.

There is a very strong culture in historicals of playing with painted armies. In my experience it's practically unknown to play with bare metal. It's just a wargamer thing.

For people who don't want to paint because of skill/time/fun objections, I've got no problem with buying painted armies -- I have four of them. I also have armies I painted myself.

The visual spectacle is a large part of the game for me, so I do object to playing with unpainted armies.

I'm all for modelling and painting, and I do a lot of it. I don't think the availability of pre-coloured models would destroy the modelling/painting culture. You could say that the terrain model kits are destroying the DIY terrain culture.

Ultimately it's a hobby with various aspects to it and the basic point is to have fun without spoiling it for other people.

Just to remind people, the origin of modern wargames was Little Wars (H.G. Wells) which was played with ready painted 1/32 scale toy soldiers from Britains.

MightyGodzilla wrote:

Pacific wrote:I have to be honest, the 'grey horde' is something I only ever seem to encounter with 40k.

Is that to say that you've seen other systems (PP, Infinity, HGBlitz) with less of a grey horde factor? It would stand to reason, WFB and W40K both require a lot of pieces to partake in a standard size game (and I'm thinking 1850 as I write this) compared to the other aforementioned systems which are more skirmishy when compared to GW.

Or were you referring to miniature wargamining in general?

Yes, as I said just with 40k. There are a lot of guys at my club who play other systems (inc. WFB and WoTR), both of which with massive model counts, yet the grey horde is relatively rare for those systems. There seems to be a lot more regard for the overall aesthetic of how the game looks, and an almost complete disregard by the 40k players (with a couple of exceptions).

Not to twist the topic into a painted vs. non-painted discussion, but I think it would be great to have the option. I suppose the question would be - for those people who haven't painted their stuff, and have no intention of doing so, would they then buy pre-painted instead?

And, is someone who is comfortable fielding assault squads of marines with just legs or bodies with no arms, or WFB movement trays for ork buggies (to give just 2 examples of things I have seen in recent months) going to be bothered at all by what their opponent thinks, and pay the extra money for the pre-painted option?

If GW did introduce pre-coloured models there would not be an option.

1. It doesn't make sense to offer coloured plastic and plain plastic kits. You have to retool each kit for the new injection technique.

2. At the risk of being controversial, GW use nearly any excuse to raise prices anyway.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, I'm going to rethink that a bit.

If GW licence the technology to injection mould multi-colour sprues, they also need to retool their moulds to use the colours effectively.

That doesn't stop them from offering single colour mouldings from the same moulds, so perhaps grey plastic would be offered alongside coloured plastic kits.

MightyGodzilla wrote:

Pacific wrote:I have to be honest, the 'grey horde' is something I only ever seem to encounter with 40k.

Is that to say that you've seen other systems (PP, Infinity, HGBlitz) with less of a grey horde factor? It would stand to reason, WFB and W40K both require a lot of pieces to partake in a standard size game (and I'm thinking 1850 as I write this) compared to the other aforementioned systems which are more skirmishy when compared to GW.

Or were you referring to miniature wargamining in general?

I have seen other systems, but I'm referring specifically to 40K as that's what I play. I don't care for the small skirmish games, and thus they don't concern me.

Pacific wrote:Not to twist the topic into a painted vs. non-painted discussion, but I think it would be great to have the option. I suppose the question would be - for those people who haven't painted their stuff, and have no intention of doing so, would they then buy pre-painted instead?

I don't think I would. I have a lot of stuff, but also work a lot right now so I'm taking the long, extended view on getting stuff done. In my case when I actually do get a chance to sit down and do - I paint way better than prepaints. Grey, or primered, or partial paint jobs don't bother me enough to buy prepainted stuff "in the meantime" because even though I'm (let's be honest) years away from goal, it's the goal I've got in mind.

For me painting is way too fun. It's the bulk of why I buy and play when I can.

I think AT-43 were some of the best prepaints I've seen and they weren't bad. I think if GW release something like that for the Ard Boyz they'd be wildly popular. I just don't want the regular line of plastics to disappear wholesale if this were to happen. For the gundam type multi color sprues the bigger the model the better they'd work. I don't see them working too well on troop size models. The global disadvantage is that players paint in wildly different colors and I don't see GW releasing the same model in (minimum) three different colors to appease different faction participants (ex. Land Raider/Rhino/Razorback in Blue, DA Green, Red, and SW Grey) much less the people who make their own color schemes....grey is just way too easier.