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Hello from a new poster (as of today: Introduction post) I’ve been reading this site and others, and seen a number of interesting ideas for collecting/assembling/painting models and armies. My question is - if you were starting this hobby today, knowing what you know now, what would you do (or not do) from the start?

As some examples of things that I found:
* pinning joints
* basing - certain types of decoration? consistent appearance? magnetic or weighted bases? etc.
* buying/not buying center types of units/models - In particular, I'm starting a CSM army, but comments for other armies might be useful for other newcomers.
* buying/not buying certain equipment - certain brushes, something to hold miniatures while working on them, etc.
* building models interchangeable arms/weapons/parts - for example, a friend of mine has a terminator with several different arms he can attach, based on the build
* subscribing to White Dwarf
* avoiding certain colors/combinations - for example, I read that white is tough to work with

I’m sure there are many more things than this that I have not yet found or thought of, so please don’t consider this an exhaustive list.

Thanks,
Neep
(I wasn't sure if this should be in 'General' or 'Painting/Modeling', given some of the ideas. Please move this if it is in the wrong place.)

It's really hard to say. 10 year old me had a very different view on the hobby than 20 year old me, and that is ultimately how I learned the game and developed both my hobbying and gaming skills. I'll give it a stab though:

I wish I had an army composition in mind instead of buying whatever looked the coolest (but always buy a few models just for the cool factor).
I wish I had magnetized pretty much every vehicle I didn't magnetize.

I would wish all sorts of things about 10 year old me's painting ability, but you learn from experience and develop a style through time.

My biggest suggestion...buy a carrying case. Now. before you buy any models!

I wish so much I would have had a real way to transport my models throughout 90% of my history in this hobby. It was always holding back my painting and modeling because I couldn't take them anywhere without worrying about them getting broken or the paint scratched off.

Stick to one army for each game system.

Learn about the removal of mold lines before getting in so deep.

Carry system, after many years of tissue filled cardboard boxes and ice cream containers I finally got my self a model bag. I used it for the first time a few days a go and now i need another one. Its such an important hobby "tool" I cannot reccomend it enough to any new player.

Magnetizing is big. Doing it from the start is a lot easier then ripping things apart and retrofitting. It lets you swap stuff around to make different lists with the same models, and helps you endure edition changes without having to shelf stuff due to bad weapon loads.

That’s the big thing I would do if I could go back in time and change.

Advice for new players: Have fun. This is a hobby, you should enjoy it. You love a unit? Buy and paint it. There are few things that are so bad that they have no space in a list. You might have to adjust things to cover their weaknesses, and you might not have the most competitive list out there. But if you are playing an army full of units you love, you can have fun even if your win/loss ratio starts to go south. That said, if you are a competitive person, do some research before investing and building. There are all sorts of people in this hobby, I don’t know which you are. YMMV.

Recognize that you are new, and make mistakes. But learn and grow from them. Both from a tactical and painting standpoint. Don’t loose heart because you got tabled on the battlefield, or ended up with a blotchy, smudgy paintjob. Ask questions, lot of people here willing to offer advice on how to improve.

Make up your own mind. There is lot of advice and opinions here, often contradictory. At the end of the day we can guess at the right answer for you, but you need to make the final call. If you are having fun and happy, that’s the important thing.

I don't think I would change anything . I got the units I wanted at best possible price , I could get at that time. Only thing I may have changed was how we started to play 1500 is even today a horrible points range to transport stuff. Vendettas are one of those models that make you hate w40k , when your in a bus and subway. If we had started at 1k or 1250 , I would have fewer to carry .

When I was 10, I knew what my collection needed but simply had no way to acquire the necessities. Inks on my flat paint jobs were desperately wanted, I needed a wide selection of brushes which I couldn't get, I needed a drill to pin stuff but was intimidated by what seemed like complex work at the time, and I definitely wish I primed models before painting.

These days though, I go all out on my gak. Airbrushes, a billion paintbrushes, every bloody shade and almost every paint in the Citadel line and from other lines, drills and different sized bits up the wazoo, so much primer I got paint companies calling MY ASS when they're out of stock. Yeah baby, top shelf work doin' right here. God I love this hobby.

Not throwing away my collection from twenty years ago...sigh...so much stuff gone forever...

Buying a ton of harlequin/eldar jetbikers when they still were available in the Bitz service.

Start truescaling from the start...

Gawd, it's a lot of going back and fixing now.

Realised that just because my opponent has been playing longer than me I should not trust his word.

 Jihadnik wrote:
Not throwing away my collection from twenty years ago...sigh...so much stuff gone forever...

Do tell! Colossal blunders made by other people always make me feel good inside because I know I'll never do the same thing.

Not buy any GW products.

I would tell myself to never try being a cheapskate because quality always suffers. You knew wargaming was expensive from the start so don't try looking back now.

For example, I tried using gloss spray paint for base coating because it was only a dollar per can. Yes, it looks like crap at first and is all shiny, but after you paint it up, dull it down with some washes and a good matte varnish, there's no difference.

The problem is that stuff is like liquid adamantium, and no amount of stripping will remove it. So you better REALLY like the coat you just put on your model because it's NEVER coming off and if you screwed up, your model is now ruined.

Wow, this is some great feedback. Thanks to everyone for your responses. They've prompted a few more questions.

Eldarain wrote:Learn about the removal of mold lines before getting in so deep.

This had been a bit of a frustration thus far. I've played with jeweler's files and exacto knives, with mixed results. The former is fairly accurate, but slow. It seems to work better for the Dark Vengeance pieces I have, which have some hard-to-reach spots. The latter is faster, but definitely wants to eat up plastic. I've been looking for articles about it, and trying to get some practice in, but if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

dementedwombat wrote:My biggest suggestion...buy a carrying case. Now. before you buy any models!

Definitely on my shopping list, though I'm not sure what I want/need yet. Right now I have a medium-sized flat box with gridded with cardboard. It seems to do ok, but things aren't too snug, and I worry about them banging around.

BrotherHaraldus wrote:Start truescaling from the start...
Gawd, it's a lot of going back and fixing now.

I hadn't heard of true scaling before, so I did a quick search. The idea being to reshape the models to show a more accurate size relative to each other (for example, making a terminator stand much taller than a marine). Is this primarily an aesthetic thing, or is it a a tactical issue (for example, you can see things or hide behind things you otherwise might not be able to)? How common is this practice?

Nevelon wrote:Advice for new players: Have fun. This is a hobby, you should enjoy it. You love a unit? Buy and paint it. There are few things that are so bad that they have no space in a list. You might have to adjust things to cover their weaknesses, and you might not have the most competitive list out there. But if you are playing an army full of units you love, you can have fun even if your win/loss ratio starts to go south. That said, if you are a competitive person, do some research before investing and building. There are all sorts of people in this hobby, I don’t know which you are. YMMV.

Recognize that you are new, and make mistakes. But learn and grow from them. Both from a tactical and painting standpoint. Don’t loose heart because you got tabled on the battlefield, or ended up with a blotchy, smudgy paintjob. Ask questions, lot of people here willing to offer advice on how to improve.

Make up your own mind. There is lot of advice and opinions here, often contradictory. At the end of the day we can guess at the right answer for you, but you need to make the final call. If you are having fun and happy, that’s the important thing.

I'm definitely a bit competitive (I want to win sometimes), but really do have an interesting in having nice, fun models. I've seen some CSM units that don't really appeal to me, even though I'm sure they're pretty powerful. Also, I'm already putting more time into the models than I expected, so I don't want them sloppy, and I do see part of the fun being the chance to use the right half of my brain.

Thanks again for all the input.
Neep

Buying 1.5mm diameter magnets, instead of 1mm cuboid.
Drill 1mm hole, expand to 1.5mm, and drop in magnet. Simple.

But, use opposing poles for shoulder-mount magnets. When gluing in SN-to-NS to either side of a torso, they repel and one will usually pop out before the glue has dried. Go NS-to-NS, and it'll help you mount the correct arms, too.

Magnetizing
Using a dremel
Using Vallejo paints rather than GW
Thinning paints with a medium rather than water
Building display cases and transport cases
Switching to good brushes rather than cheap brushes

 AesSedai wrote:
Magnetizing
Using a dremel
Using Vallejo paints rather than GW
Thinning paints with a medium rather than water
Building display cases and transport cases
Switching to good brushes rather than cheap brushes

Agree with all
Getting an actual quality case
Starting with the army I wanted and loved first and not just because of price. Sisters are awesome
Learned to basecoat properly and use ink/washes
Not to ever rush a paintjob.

Eldarain wrote:Learn about the removal of mold lines before getting in so deep.

This had been a bit of a frustration thus far. I've played with jeweler's files and exacto knives, with mixed results. The former is fairly accurate, but slow. It seems to work better for the Dark Vengeance pieces I have, which have some hard-to-reach spots. The latter is faster, but definitely wants to eat up plastic. I've been looking for articles about it, and trying to get some practice in, but if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Try "Back Knifing" (scraping the mold lines with the hobby knife with the blade pointing away from the direction your moving the blade) That way you won’t accidently gouge the model (I know it’s tempting to use the knife to carve the mold lines but trust me you will damage the model eventually :(

If you need pictures or further explanation let me know

I wish i bought a codex/rule book before i started collecting an army

Ended up with a tactical squad that had a melta gun, a plasma gun, a flamer and a rocket launcher

I wish I'd used the local gws resources, painting lessons etc would have meant I progressed quicker and not ruined too many models by trial and error

Buy more dice, for at least a month I used a combination of Risk, Monopoly, and Clue die for my games.
Also should have bought washes.

Go on a diet, exercise and tell 15 yr old me to get a grip, stop with the nerd stuff infront of the girls and ask out that soccer player.
Or more realistically, Buy a carrying case and learn not to inhale the glue

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Go on a diet, exercise and tell 15 yr old me to get a grip, stop with the nerd stuff infront of the girls and ask out that soccer player.
Or more realistically, Buy a carrying case and learn not to inhale the glue

Definitely agree on the army case, too many breakages

For the other one, I wish I'd been more open, it wasn't until uni I stopped caring about people that didn't care, everyone's a dork in some form

Army composition is the main thing, I think, and magnetizing or simply building units in the correct way comes a close second. I remember one of my first fantasy units, some Orc Boyz, I assembled with a myriad of different weapons, not knowing that every model in the unit must be armed with the same weapon.

I would scream at myself to magnetize my models! Crisis suits are a prime example of why this makes me sad, also learn to love painting troop choices instead of buying the sparkly new elite choices...you can't run an army with elite choices alone.

 The Shadow wrote:
Army composition is the main thing, I think, and magnetizing or simply building units in the correct way comes a close second. I remember one of my first fantasy units, some Orc Boyz, I assembled with a myriad of different weapons, not knowing that every model in the unit must be armed with the same weapon.

I did the same with my space marine army, tanks with everything, every marine loaded up like Rambo, then I got a codex and essentially had to scrap them all

I regret giving my Tactical marines ridiculous/ awesome/ illegal load outs on the model (like giving my tacticals as many special weapons as came in the sets). I also regret buying so many characters. For the first two years of 40k, I bought a grand total of 3 troops, and a ridiculous number of characters (close to 15).

1. Buy the army you really like. Don´t get too tempted by cheap offers. I started 40k with Dark Angels although I always wanted Space Wolves. Now I´ve got a bunch of stuff I´ll never use.

2. You won´t need every HQ character. Take the one you think is really boss & the "vanilla" hq of your choice e.g. a Librarian. This ain´t Warmachine, you don´t win with your HQ, you win with the rest of your army.

3. You start painting? Get "Nuln Oil". It´s like insta-skill and will improve your first painting steps in a heartbeat.

4. NEVER let paint dry on your brushes, don´t let the paint touch the metal at the end of the hairy part and always wet & form the tip with some saliva and your mouth. Feels sort of dumb at first but you´ll appreciate the effect, you´ll paint better lines and your brushes will live longer.