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Hey everyone! I am a new aspiring 40k player (or soon to be!), and I plan to be commanding the unstoppable hordes of Chaos. Me and a few friends are getting into the hobby, and I plan on purchasing the Chaos Battleforce. It looks like a well rounded army for a beginner, but GW seems to have deviously misplaced the required HQ unit, forcing me to pay out another... $12 dollars (?) to field a chaos lord and participate in games. Awesome.

Also, does anyone have any suggestions on a cheaper alternative to the GW paint set? I feel like if I bought a 3rd party paint I would be getting more for my dollar. From what I have gathered, I will need:

Primer (apparently even cheap generic brand primer works fine. I would like to verify this...)
Paint (looking for brands like testors and Apple Barrel)
Ink Wash (not sure if this is a necessity, but i have heard you can make it by diluting normal paints)
Sealant (again, not sure if this is a neccessity)

Any advice from experience players, especially on how to pick up minis on the cheap and about the painting process, would be much appreciated!

Get a daemon prince....just do it. Don't ask why. That is all.

Many people swear by generic primer that you can pick up at your local Walmart, but I have never used it.

Apple Barrel is also good stuff, but stay away from their metallics.

I would recommend staying away from a full ink wash and going with a ink based wash. Here's a great recipe: http://bursleylb.tripod.com/id30.html

Sealant is only necessary if you play your army often and harshly.


Ebay is your best friend for finding cheap armies and bits. If you are willing to shell out $150-$250 you can pick up someone else's army that is actually valued closer to $300-$400 MSRP.

Right.
I can definately afford that.
I was thinking something a bit smaller.

That was the general advice I got abou the paints, that i needed to be careful with metallics. Is the ink wash really neccessary? I think my crappy painting will just about ruin the model anyway, so why bother with something so small detailed. Also, do you apply the wash before or after painting?

Hi there! You can make a wash with paints by watering them down, but it's not exactly the same as an ink wash. In paints the tiny color particles are opaque. Inks are tranlucent. That' being said, I use paint washes all the time. I thought the Chaos Space Marine set was fun, I painted up a set once. If I remember correctly I was a little worried about not having enough anti-tank weapons, but a real chaos player can advise you about that. Congratulations on your introduction to 40K! It's a grand hobby, very exciting! Great that you've got friends going into it too, gaming with friends is the best!

Primer: I use automotive spray can primer, it works just fine.

Sealants: Definitely! I suggest a can of testor's semi-gloss and a can of Testor's dull cote. Spray with the semi-gloss first for good protection and then with the dull cote to take off the shine.

--- Be well, be blessed!
---- Frankie

Craigslist and Bartertown are also good for finding cheap army deals.

Games workshop makes some of the best metalic paints, I have recently switched the rest of my paints over to Reaper Master Series, but I still love and use the GW metallics.

Non hobby specific primers and sealants work great, you just have to be careful with the sealant, as alot of them wont work right on a mini.

eoinmorgan wrote:Hey everyone! I am a new aspiring 40k player (or soon to be!), and I plan to be commanding the unstoppable hordes of Chaos. Me and a few friends are getting into the hobby, and I plan on purchasing the Chaos Battleforce. It looks like a well rounded army for a beginner, but GW seems to have deviously misplaced the required HQ unit, forcing me to pay out another... $12 dollars (?) to field a chaos lord and participate in games. Awesome.

You could always make your own. The Battleforce has enough different sprues that you can pick the most appropriate bits from each to make one of your 28 CSMs a unique-looking leader.

GW does something very devious with battleforces, and it's why I've stopped buying them. They're honestly and truly, in my opinion, not as good a value as coming up with a small, basic 500 point army list and buying the box sets.

Nine times out of ten, battleforces come with one or two useful units and two or three trash units. And they almost never come with an HQ choice.

You're going to buy the battleforce, then buy three or four box sets.

Why not just buy five or six box sets instead and get what you actually want in your army?

As for paints, I can't really add anything, since I use only Citadel paints. The way I feel is while other brands may be a bit cheaper, $3.50 a pot isn't expensive - and the difference between paying $20 for some paints and paying $16 for some paints is not going to break me. I prefer to have all my color schemes correct, rather than try to match colors using another brand of paint. If I'm painting an Ultramarine, I want to use Ultramarines Blue. That way I know it's as close to being "correct" as it can be. Then again, that's me.

Generally the Battleforces don't come with HQs. As for paint you probably want Acrylic based rather than Oil based. Easier to clean, quicker to dry.

Sealent generally isn't needed unless it's metal models. Then you want a brush on Gloss Varnish and a spray Mat Varnish. The reason for getting brush on gloss is you won't need it much and when you do you have the control you need. Mat Varnish is generally the best sealent.

Man, when you entered 40k, you should have known you'd be spending thousands of dollars.

I swear by gw paints, i know this doesnt help, but they really are, even for a crap price, the best out there.

No battleforce has an HQ to my knowledge. My advice:

Buy one of the new plastic daemon prices, they're just a better choice.

Don't use possesed, they're bad, just mix their parts in and make cooler looking regular CSM (chosen maybe?)

Walmart flat black or flat white spray paint works greatbasbprimer and only runs 96 cents a canj.

Shas'O Dorian wrote:No battleforce has an HQ to my knowledge.

Except, as I stated earlier in this thread, the Tau battleforce.

This is my fiance's Chaos Lord:
Link because the picture is big

He made it entirely from parts in the Battleforce box.
But I still suggest adding a Daemon Prince, (or Princess, like mine) just because they are fun. Careful though, some are demonically possessed.

As to paint, I had a friend who swore by Apple Barrel paints. Those have too crafty a reputation for me, so I use the Citadel paints. I only recently started adding Citadel washes to some stuff, because that was the only way I could get an appropriate purple shade on my Daemonettes.

Also, have you seen the Privateer Press brand paints? They have some shades beyond what Citadel offers, that might be nice and Chaos-y, and it's cheaper for a larger quantity, at least at the local store. [They also have a nice hobby knife I picked up that fits my hand better and cuts small things more easily than the big one my fiance has.)

For Primer, my fiance swears by Miracal Spray Enamel. I've picked up Wal-mart spray paint before (they cost about the same) and it worked fine, but last time we used the Wal-mart spray paint it globbed up all the details.

I've never used a Sealant on my models, so I can't help you on that one. Miracal apparently makes a lacquer too, but my fiance didn't care for it on his models- too shiny.

True Battelforces do have a lot of nice bits.
For my Eldar I made an Autach, Warlock, Farseer, Eldrad, Yriel and pretty much an entire Farseer on Jetbike and Jetbike with Shuriken Cannon (these two needed me to buy one Jetbike ).

1. The battleforces are supplements. they are not meant to be a starting point for an army [though, they do so well.]

2. try online alternatives if you don't feel like forking out money for GW models.
www.waylandgames.co.uk does well, I've only used them twice, but they've been pretty fast, and I've gotten massive discounts [450 AUD [415USD] becoming 215AUD [200 USD]]

3. You will need:
Plastic cutters
Plastic glue
[surgical knife is a maybe, depending on your age. but not necesary]
Files
Your chosen paints. once again, try online variants of GW. For me, a 6$ [5.50 for you?] paint is only about 1$ [92c] on wayland.
Paint brushes. Try to get a fine brush, a standard brush, and a medium [largeish brush]. If you plan on doing tanks, which by being chaos I assume no, think about that pesky large 1" paintbrush.
Alcahol swabs [pre-injection swabs]. I remember when I started, forking out about 100$ on paintbrushes, because I couldn't thin the paint that had dried carelessly on my brush. MY current brushes have lasted me a year. [from GW,] and I'm actually only getting new ones tommorow.
Plasters. [bandaids] are a must. I've more then once almost sliced my fingers off. Keep them close at hand. [if you cut yourself, you can clean it with a pre-injection swab.]
Paper, like towelette. to wipe off a bit of excess paint
A paint pot to clean brushes in. [the GW one is actually really cool - the ends fit the brushes]
A paint pallette for mixing paint and removing excess paint. if you don't plan on mixing, I just use my thumbnail [easy enough!]
A nice, comfortable, clean place to work, probably good if it's temperate.
A place for spray paint and to undercoat models.

To answer your other questions.
sealant is not necessary. it is useful, however, as it keeps the model from chipping or getting worn.
Washes [inks are slightly more viscous] Are to give a professional little bit of colour inside recesses. it works effectively on metalics, and skin.
[good colours to start with would be Ogryn flesh and badab black]

I'll argue that sealant/clearcoat is absolutely necessary. Your figures are going to take a beating on the tabletop, they are going to get dropped and people are going to be picking them up with god knows what orange-like substance on their fingers. You will notice more than your paint starts to dull if they are not clearcoated, especially if you are painting brighter colors.