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Hey everyone, I have a question for my friend who is about to join the 40k world. I personally paint space wolves but I wanted to know what army would be the easiest for him to paint as a beginner, preferably not orks. Even easy chapters. Any advice would be great. Cheers

I don't have personal experience, but I've heard that Necrons are pretty easy to paint.

Necrons, Marines, or even Orks and Tyranids can all be painted simply to a decent standard. Focus more on beginner techniques than what's easy to paint.

Orks and Tyranids can be done nicely with simply base colours, some ink and a bit of drybrushing.

Necrons can be primed black and drybrushed metallic with a few details picked out in other colours.

To go super basic, Black (Primer) Templars. Spray them black, some white in the shoulder pads, red eyes, done!

Necrons and SMs by far,

Thanks heaps for all your advice guys ill relate it to my mate

Necrons - spray silver, black or a brown wash over the top and a silver dry brush = done.

I've got through painting 50+ in a week, I work 39+ hours a week, so a couple of hours a night and they're all done and based. I painted the heads/shoulders gold and the chest symbol in Sotek green. They're looking alright as long as you don't look too closely lol

I think the general consensus is that necrons are the easiest to paint. I think regular marines are next, followed by dark angels and blood angels. Space wolves are the hardest to paint of the marines, but thats just because of the bare heads.
Next level of difficulty I think includes orks, tyranids, guard, grey knights, and tau. More difficult than marines, but with enough drybrushing and a washing its possible to get some decent models rather quickly.
Hardest I feel are eldar, dark eldar, chaos and demons. Eldar models require some pretty exact brush strokes to do them justice, especially on their heroes and tanks. Chaos and demons have..well.. demons, which I think would be difficult to get right.

I personally find necrons the easiest, followed by tyranids, followed by guard and then marines. A properly highlighted marine takes a decent amount of skill. Necrons can easily look good without using anything but an airbrush, which means you can burn through dozens of models in an afternoon

Don't start your friend on Guard. The temptation to do camo is far too great...and once you've finished one goodnight! Only a 100+ figs to go to match!

Necrons, Tyranid, then most spacemarines.

Primer in your base colour, quick dry brush to high light, Wash to shadow, dab in a few details..let dry over night ..base them and the army is done

Grey Knights.

 SheSpits wrote:
Grey Knights.

Not even close. Necrons are the easiest by far. Even their vehicles are easy to paint.

Easy Space Marine chapter to paint? Relicters. You really only need two colors, grey and black. Silver if you want to paint the Aquila. Whole figure grey, black on the shoulder pads, silver Aquila, and done. I suppose since they have the same colors, the Space Sharks would be just as easy to paint. I'd imagine the White Scars are actually the hardest to paint.

Carcharodon Astra have the fiddly white mouthplates and Space Sharks have that red stripe that's a pain to do without masking tape. I'd say Relictors are easier.

One of the 'Eavy Metal painters never painted marines before joining GW and for his interview he had to paint the SM Commander. He said it was the hardest model he'd ever painted since he wasn't used to painting marines.

I'd say Orks and Tyranids are the best for beginners to paint since Orks are fairly minimalistic like marines, but they also get you used to skin tones and cloth folds. Tyranids are really easy to wash. Space Marines and Necrons, while flat and easy to paint, won't really help you improve as a painter, IMO. Low skill floor, low skill ceiling.

Grey Knights are the way to go if you want easy, they are also the way to go if you want a challenge to do them right. They have tons of detail bits and you can use them to learn the ins and outs of painting metals.
You can field a fun 1500 point army of just 14 models. So you can take your time and try new stuff on each one. Or you can mass produced them with boltgun metal, brown or black wash, a highlight of bright silver, then some red and white for the trim.

Thanks for all your help guys. I looked into Grey Knights for him (his in America ATM on holidays) but the concern was the price. In Australia you pay $55 for a pack of 5 grey knights when you can buy a pack of 10 chaos space marines for $62. Heaps better value for money. I thought Iron Warriors looked easy to paint? There a tough looking army. I've made the mistake on committing an all white paint scheme for my space wolves and it is an absolute mission hahaha

I appreciate all the help, I'm thinking Grey Knights will be the go.

Grey Knights do have loads of fiddly bits though as keep that in mind and power / force weapons can also be a challange to paint first off.

Grey knight armour can look quite decent quite quickly, but they do have loads of details that can take up a lot of time to paint well, not to mention all the force weapons.
Necrons are probably the easiest to paint army in 40k, though some marine chapters can be easy as well...
If he gets the basic techniques down there's not one army in 40k he couldn't paint to tabletop quality

I think most armies can be easy enough to do a basic paint scheme on them, It depends how detailed you want to go. Table top qual doesn't need to be complicated. I, personally, think he should look at which models look cooler coupled maybe with which armies are easier/fun for newbies to play.

Definitely Necrons.

All White isn't hard...you just need a can of grey primer and an airbrush...prime grey, airbrush white. Done, smooth finish and all.

That Necron hint is only valid if you don't start to develop high standards I would never have thought that Necron vehicles have so many edges which can be painted as if green energy is running along...

Pretty much any Space Marine except Chaos or Space Wolves. Tau, Necrons, or Eldar are pretty simple and Nidz are too to a certain extent.

Orks are not easy. They have so many tiny details even on the Boyz they scream PAINT MEEEEE!!! while space marines, unless you want to do battledamage or edge effects or secondary lightings, are nothing but 1 basic color, black parts like armpits or behind the knee, red/yellow eyes, different color for the shulder/chest decal. Its easy to blanket paint space marines to table-top-quality simply because majority of the very good SM paintjobs are heavy battle-damaged, secondary lighting effects, or have an insane base or both for that matter...not attention to detail.

A buddy of mine managed to get his 8000 point necron army 90% done in 4 days, without a spray gun.

I paint Space Wolves and let me tell you they have a lot of details to paint. All my wolves have their helmets on because I don't like to paint faces. Eventually I'll have to paint faces though such as Arjac, Njal, and Logan Grimnar. Fun times.

Iyanden Eldar. Prime white, add cassandra yellow wash. paint blue parts. pick out 2 or three spirit stones and your done in a decent tabletop standard to boot.