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Hi all,

before you throw stones at me: I myself love painting and modeling very much. But I have a coworker who I might convince to start playing. The problem is only that he is so inartistic that the idea of having to paint his army is putting him off. On the other hand he does not want to place unpainted plastic/metal models on the table.

And that why I ask you: What do you think is the army that can be made playable with the least effort? And can you recommend something for people who do not like to take a brush into their hands. Spray gun and then some of that armypainter stuff (never used it myself)?

Quickest to paint? Marines - there is no cloth and very little flesh. Most parts are straight, regular and blocky which make them easy to shade and highlight (little blending needed). they also look good in one colour (i.e. Ultramarines, blood angels, salamanders etc.). And in my experience they can be very easily 'drybrushed' to table top standard in a matter of minutes (with any colour).

Second marines, as for which chapter: Ultramarines are pretty easy.

Just dont choose Imperial Fists, they're taking me forever.

I would have thought for a basic paintjob it would be necrons. Bolt gun base, black/devlan wash, mithril drybrush. Probably takes about a minute a figure.

necrons! spray black then silver, wash black, put green in eyes, done.


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god damn ninjas

Necrons or Black templars.

It all really depends on how high his standards are going to be. I think in terms of your opponent not minding and you looking as good as possible, take Marines. of any sort actually.

I agree with Necros. MUCH more than Black Templars.

If you are painting Black Templars right at all, you have lets see, Chaos Black, Boltgun Metal, Mithril Silver, Shining Gold, Burnished Gold, Skull White, Bleached Bone, Gore Red, Blood Red, your pick of a brown for belts, Badab Black Wash, Devlen Mud Wash... and honestly that is at a minimum if you want them to look worth a crap. Easily add in some bright greens/yellows/blues for the weapon hoses, buttons and lights.

If you are using just black and white... you have Crappy Templars, not Black Templars...

Necrons without a doubt.

How can you go wrong? Spray the guys black, then drybrush heavily with Boltgun Metal. Leave the gun black from the spray and paint the piping a solid green. Incredibly basic, but you could easily churn out squads of them in no time.

Definitely Necrons, spray silver and throw at black wash, done.

From what i have read, if you go the Army Painter route it opens a lot of options for the artistically impaired.

You get the base colour, spray it, then dip the model for shading. Done. After that you coudl add more detaisl i guess.

Never used it myself but the website makes a convincing arguement.

Yep, Necrons for the win followed closely by a dipped tyranid army! :-) so damn easy to do!

Necrons: black undercoat, boltgun metal, black wash, scorpion green eyes and any other washes or details you fel like.

Tyranids: spray white, paint carapace color of choice, add dots of paint to mottle skin, black eyes and dip!

I woudl steer clear of starting necrons for now seeing as the new codex is rumoured to be out in the next few months.

Well, my own Necrons took me some time, but I am a perfectionist who often dumps his old models into acetone. Whether I will recommend Necrons to him depends kind of when the new release will happen. Atm, you can't really start an army even if it was viable, cause models and codices are withdrawn from shops. Dipped Tyranids are an interesting idea which I didn't think of so far.

thinking about it, BOW did a really awesome tute on painting nids ^^ used it for mine and got half my army painted in about 2-3 days

Working from a white undercoat, you can use washes to quickly and effectively paint imperial guard.

Devlan mud/gryphonne sepia wash over the cloth, a couple of coats of thraka green over the gun and armour and ogryn flesh over the skin. A coat of badab black on metal areas and chaos black for the boots and you're good to go.

I was able to crank out a squad of 10 using this method in a little less than an hour and a half. Sure, they don't look amazing individually, but en masse they look great. Besides, if you're making a guard army, "individual" shouldn't be a word you should stress too much about.

Necrons are still the easiest by far, but conversely, also one of the harder armies to make look good.

No way, Id say Tyranids are BY FAR the easiest/fastest to paint. Base coat, wash, color claws/talons/teeth if they have either of those. Presto preston your done

I would say Black Templar. Prime them Black and you are 80-90% of the way done.

I don't agree with all the talk of black templars being easy.

It could just be me , but if you just prime them black and then paint the shoulders white, you're going to end up with a pretty awful looking army. Especially considering what a female dog of a colour white is to work with.

KingCracker wrote:No way, Id say Tyranids are BY FAR the easiest/fastest to paint. Base coat, wash, color claws/talons/teeth if they have either of those. Presto preston your done

I haven't painted any of these myself but I'd tend to agree - a while back somebody did an article on dipping Tyranids and they looked really good - apparently this is easy and quick to do.

From what i have heard, 2 of the most difficult schemes to paint are black and yellow (or Templars/Raven Guard and Fists).

Highlighting black is an absolute mare to do well.

I woudl go with the dipped'nids myself. He can cut is painting teeth on some of the little munchers and then make a project out of his first 'fex.

I would still say Necrons are easiest. Also take into account just how many models are going to need to be painted. Right now, with Necrons, you definitely have one of the lowest model counts, but then again I can't speak for the new codex. Sure, dipping nids could be easy, but there will be a lot of them, how much effort is this guy willing to put into an army?

Necrons definetly I churned out a Battleforce for a friend Just under a day. It only tome roughly 3-5 hours for every model

Through my personal experience i would say tau is another army which is easy and does not take much time to paint, take for example the tau fire warrior with a simple paint scheme all it requires is a quick black prime, paint armour with tausept ocre and fill in all the little details. I would say it was not as fast as necrons but still fairly quick and easy to paint.

It depends on how much detail, how many layers of highlights, and how much you can be bothered really.....If you want to be quick just do 3 colours basic and paint the bases. I wouldn't say any one army is 'easier' to paint than any other.
Colour scheme comes into it, as does the sheer amount of detail you want to put into a project. You get out what you put in thou. So if you slave for 5-6 hrs over a single rank and file trooper, painting him and his squad mates to the very best of your ability then you will have an army that you can be proud of and that may start conversations at your LGS or with friends. Similarly, if you paint every mini with a 3 colour basic and spend no time at all with details, then you would have a finished army. It would be a little dull and would not be a conversation piece, but it is yours.

If he wants fast and decent results you can't beat dipping.

DPBellathrom wrote:thinking about it, BOW did a really awesome tute on painting nids ^^ used it for mine and got half my army painted in about 2-3 days

I think i remember that
did they have blue carapace?

I would say dipping tyranids is the easiest. Spray the whole model 1 color, paint the carapace another color and dip. Add a couple details as needed and done.

Necrons for sure. If you do tyranids in the Kraken scheme, you could probably get away with priming in Almond, painting the red carapace, then dipping the entire figure. You'd be about done after that.

DPBellathrom wrote:necrons! spray black then silver, wash black, put green in eyes, done.


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god damn ninjas

Agreed, My necrons were just a black primer. Blot gun, and some green.