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I'm new to Warhammer and was wondering if the units in my army (in my gallery) would be considered tabletop quality?

I'll repost a slightly edited version of what I posted in another thread recently...

"Table top quality" is a meaningless term. Every army I've ever painted I consider "table top quality" and they have all varied wildly in quality.

What a commission painter calls "table top quality" is a higher standard than what many people can paint even for character/centerpiece models.

But IMO, "table top quality" is basically just what you can paint reasonably quickly to put an army together... that's why it varies wildly from person to person. The quality I can paint in an hour is not the quality you can paint in an hour and is not the quality a commission painter can paint in an hour and if you have a lot of free time on your hands you might consider an hour per model too short of a time anyway.

TL;DR.... table top quality has no strict definition and even if it did, it would vary from person to person.

More specific to your models:
Do you want to be able to paint them better or are you already struggling to get them painted and ready for a game? There's a lot of room for improvement, I'd start out by adding some shading and highlighting to models. There's a ton of tutorials out there so I won't bother giving a lengthy description. Also either drilling the gun barrels or even just painting a black spot where the barrel hole would be.

That said, if you plunked your models down on the table, I'd be happy to play against them.

Hell, they're painted in more than just a base coat which makes them better painted than many of the armies that I've seen at the FLGS.

To me, tabletop quality = as good as I can paint for the models I need painted in the time I have available.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'll repost a slightly edited version of what I posted in another thread recently...

"Table top quality" is a meaningless term. Every army I've ever painted I consider "table top quality" and they have all varied wildly in quality.

What a commission painter calls "table top quality" is a higher standard than what many people can paint even for character/centerpiece models.

But IMO, "table top quality" is basically just what you can paint reasonably quickly to put an army together... that's why it varies wildly from person to person. The quality I can paint in an hour is not the quality you can paint in an hour and is not the quality a commission painter can paint in an hour and if you have a lot of free time on your hands you might consider an hour per model too short of a time anyway.

TL;DR.... table top quality has no strict definition and even if it did, it would vary from person to person.

More specific to your models:
Do you want to be able to paint them better or are you already struggling to get them painted and ready for a game? There's a lot of room for improvement, I'd start out by adding some shading and highlighting to models. There's a ton of tutorials out there so I won't bother giving a lengthy description. Also either drilling the gun barrels or even just painting a black spot where the barrel hole would be.

That said, if you plunked your models down on the table, I'd be happy to play against them.

Thanks, I assumed that was the case. I'm far from being an artist so the level they are at now took quite a while. Thanks for the tips about how to improve their looks. One problem I've had with the white ones is that i have to do several layers for it to to get a decent coat but then once it dries the paint is rough.

Are you using an undercoat? If not, you should be. Use a white undercoat for models that are light colours and/or have poor coverage (bone, red, yellow). For things that are meant to be dark like the dark green ones, use a black undercoat.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Are you using an undercoat? If not, you should be. Use a white undercoat for models that are light colours and/or have poor coverage (bone, red, yellow). For things that are meant to be dark like the dark green ones, use a black undercoat.

ya i did a thinned out undercoat of the white and let that dry and then started doing the base coat.

Use a white spray primer, will speed things up, makes it smoother and gives a nice solid base you can apply colours on top.

Army painter also sell coloured sprays, I personally haven't used anything but the matte varnish though, so can't really advise on their quality. But if you want to lay down a nice smooth bone colour, you could try that.

You can also look for acrylic spray paints that might work. Gunze make a line of coloured sprays that work very well but aren't that cheap.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Use a white spray primer, will speed things up, makes it smoother and gives a nice solid base you can apply colours on top.

Army painter also sell coloured sprays, I personally haven't used anything but the matte varnish though, so can't really advise on their quality. But if you want to lay down a nice smooth bone colour, you could try that.

You can also look for acrylic spray paints that might work. Gunze make a line of coloured sprays that work very well but aren't that cheap.

I'll have to try that on my next group of terminators(if i don't change my mind about a primarily deathwing army).

For anything with a white base, you could also try a khaki or almond primer. I use either the Krylon or Rustoleum Camo Khaki and the Rustoleum High Heat Almond. You can find any of these at your local home improvement store.

The more you paint the faster you will get. From my first few models to now I would say takes half the time.

I have heard good things about Krylon. I use the GW spray primer. It has been better than most but is expensive. Spaying really is a time saver, and helps move past the featureless gray plastic stage. Also it reduces the number of brush coats you need later

Dessorag wrote:
Spaying really is a time saver,

Yeah, all the kittens and puppies are a real time waster.






(Sorry, couldn't help myself )

You want a time waster? Waiting until your cat flops down and rolls in your glue.

Back on topic, there are number of good reasons to think about colored primers. If you are doing red, a brown primer coat will complement the red and require less coats as well as providing more complementary shading. The standard black primer coat will fight to show through your red.

They're not tabletop till they're based!

I think you just need to base them and do some highlighting and then you will be ready for the table top!
Basing really finishes a model if you have just black bases it screams unfinished but when you base them you will be fine.

To me table top is anything that looks decent from where you stand by the table. Obviously that means different things to different people....my Skaven are at my table top quality now but when I started my Space Marines were table top quality (which are in my gallery but are not as well painted as my Skaven).

As your skills progress your opinion on table top quality will increase most likely so keep trying to learn new techniques and you'll be super proud one day with that one model that looks like butter bread! (alright bad analogy)

My def of TTQ is for it too look nice and clean from about 3-4 feet away which is about the angle from your eyes to the table top.

So clean smooth coats, painted within the lines, with at minimum highlighting

I give it a rattlecan out of 10.