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I only play with 50%+ painted armies. The rest I base coat, keep the colour uniformity going.

My painting queue is also determined by who did well in the last game! It's a fun little thing to do, I recommend it.

So yeah, under and base coat as much as you can, and then they'll look a lot better than Naked Grey. This will encourage you to work on them too. Good luck.

It depends on the unit.

My HQ, cult troops, vehicles, etc are all painted to a high standard. I would not consider putting anything less on the board. My cultists are basecoated with some paint on the flesh and weapons. I never seem to have enough time to focus on them.

I have passed on a couple games with unpainted armies recently, primarily because I could not tell what was on the models. Besides aesthetics, too much unprimed plastic is actually pretty confusing. Have been in situations where an opponent gets confused about what's in his own army.

So paint then play, except for anything that is supposed to leave the table quickly.

I don't care about unpainted models, if they are completely assembled and absolutely WYSIWYG they're fine to me.

I also suggest not to paint very fast only to field painted models. Spend the time you need to have a decent result. I see a lot of players who litterally put three colors on their armies only to have a list that is allowed in tournaments. I prefer grey plastic models that bad painted ones to be honest.

I play Guard. Every week a I have a few less grey plastics and more colorful fighting men of the Imperium on the table. It's hard, especially when starting out. I say just play, as long as you show continuing effort, with some exceptions.

A friend and I just recently got back into the hobby after a 15 year hiatus. Back then we played primed minis with just a handful painted. So far we have played with unpainted minis, but each week we have made more progress such that in a couple of weeks everything should be painted, and from there it will be painted minis only for myself in an effort to control spending on the hobby.

I'm happy to play against an unpainted army, but I'd prefer to see some progress over time. Even just primed minis look better than bare plastic.

But being a fun opponent to play against is what is most important.

I hold myself to a higher standard than those I play with. My first army is the Dark Angels and I still have a large degree of "doneness" across my army. I'm starting a Tyranid army and I will not play an unpainted model for that army. But for others, I'll tolerate most things because I don't know what kind of time they may have.

I prefer to have at least 3/4 of any set I'm using painted...

Assemble, play, paint later.

I make a point of painting every model I want to play with. Gets everything painted and feels better.

No problem with mine or my opponent's army being unpainted but it's my thing.

When I was starting out, I'd play unpainted figs. Now, since I've collected a few forces for various games, I only play (with) painted dudes. It's ok if you don't paint your guys (although I'd rather you do, everyone knows painted figs play better )

Even when I was a teenager starting out with D&D Chainmail, I just always had to do it. A couple of those terribly painted guys are even still around, sitting on my desk, with the rest of my "Inspiration Squad".

Paint and play. I will however heavily skew my lists to include my painted models because I love the look of them on the table, so they end up usually about 70-80% fully painted with the rest between primed and base coated. It's hard for some to get them all painted first, especially for horde armies. I'm also a slow painter so it takes a lot of time to paint all of my Boyz! I also love building models and playing more than painting, so that will usually mean I have plenty of models on my "to paint" list that I field a few times because I'm eager to build and play. I prefer to fight painted armies but a game is a game to me, it's still fun. It's just cooler to see painted armies battle it out.

For a long time I played with and against unpainted armies, with things like egg cartons and cardboard cutouts as proxies. It got really bad and the games were a mess. It didn't feel like 40k anymore so I decided I'd only play with fully painted minis. That... didn't really work in my favour. I'm a very very slow painter, tabletop quality at best, and I found myself losing games because the choice of (painted) models I had available was so small.

Nowadays I play with unpainted and half painted minis. If I didn't I'd never get a game in and when I do I'd lose pretty handily. I draw the line at being totally WYSIWYG in terms of what weapons, equipment etc I have modelled - I just feel it's in bad form if I'm both unpainted AND not modelled correctly.

Yeah, I feel at the very least you should assemble your minis before you play. Or have good proxies. Having a terminator with one arm is like... what, you're not gonna take the two minutes it takes to glue the power fist on?

I'm not going to say anything as long as the person is clear and consistent. But there's a difference between assembly and painting, for me.

I prefer to have at least the three colour minimum on my models, even if the bases aren't done (I'll be honest...I rarely get around to the bases). I have fielded base coated models a handful of times, but only because a game came in at more points than I expected.

That said, I get a lot of satisfaction fielding a fully painted army. One of my armies was entirely converted too (Ad Mech before the Ad Mech were an army), which was cool. If that's not your cup of tea, then don't worry too much about it.

 Peregrine wrote:
Paint then play. If you're painting your models correctly you're almost certainly building them in sections and painting them before final assembly, so playing before painting means having unassembled "models" on the table. And really, paint your models. I don't want to see your gray plastic monument to laziness.

Not all models require you to paint them in sections before assembling them, and on some doing so only makes the painting harder. That said I choose not to play with unpainted models because holding to that rule motivates me to get the models I really want to use painted,

Paint and Play.

The last thing you want is for your army to turn into a chore.


As a side note, paint your stuff as you assemble it. It helps.

I can't put unfinished models on the table.

Since I got back into it I've only fielded one unpainted model. I needed a second librarian, but only had one painted. I was only playing 500 point games, so it was easy enough to field a painted army.

I spend a lot more time painting than playing. I must have painted up about 6000 points in the last 18 months or so, but only played 7 or 8 times. I still haven't had a game of 8th Ed, but hopefully I'll win more than the one game I won playing 7th.. lol

I find I'm spending more and more time on each model now. I should never have started reading all those WIP blogs of GD winners!