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I was looking at one of my more actively-played armies (Skaven) and took notice of the models that I actually had.
I was more or less looking at about 160 clanrats, a box of stormvermin, and a spare doomwheel I had and thought, "I don't think I'm ever going to paint these models or even put them (the stormvermin and doomwheel) together." I even have another plague furnace/screaming bell kit even though I have both the screaming bell and plague furnace.. (The plan was to build another plague furnace and try out a heavy-plague themed list).

However, the idea of painting and putting these models together sounds...well, awful. Not the big stuff, at least, but painting more clanrats, stormvermin, and plague monks sounds dreadful.

Has anyone else had thoughts like these? I've been thinking for a while that I should sell these extras I have and work on an additional army.
However, I know that Skaven is my most actively-played army, and it sounds silly of me to sell off parts of the army.

I just can't tell if I'm burned out with my Skaven, or if I'm actually thinking logically when I say that I will never put together and paint the spare Skaven stuff I have.

Well, for a Skaven army you're decidedly below average.

Most serious players I know would have 200ish slaves, 200ish Clanrats, and 40 Monks/Stormvermin. And thats before any other models they may have.

I think maybe you might just not like Skaven. You do kinda have to have the willpower to deal with 500+ miniatures to even consider the army, at least if you intend to build and paint yourself.

Don't sell 'em. If you're feeling burned out on Skaven, put them away somewhere safe and cosy. Use what you have painted or use one of your other armies for a while. If you're anything like most gamers, you'll get the ratty bug again and it'll help to have those unassembled minis at hand, rather than having to buy them all over again. (Which might be difficult during 9th ed)

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, for a Skaven army you're decidedly below average.

Most serious players I know would have 200ish slaves, 200ish Clanrats, and 40 Monks/Stormvermin. And thats before any other models they may have.

I think maybe you might just not like Skaven. You do kinda have to have the willpower to deal with 500+ miniatures to even consider the army, at least if you intend to build and paint yourself.

I think it's because I already have 300ish Clanrats/slaves, 40 Stormvermin, and 80 Plague monks haha. Only about half of it is painted though, but painting the other half seems awful. I just think I'm getting more in the playing-mindset than I am in the collecting-mindset.

And I agree with the second part. I think Skaven are just lacking for me nowadays.. Which is why I'm starting a second army. Building up slowly, but it gives me more variety in what I want to play and work on.
Plus, I'm excited to build and paint these new models. I just don't know if it'd be silly or not to sell off the extra Skaven stuff in my army. They're still going to be my most actively-played army for a while, but I know for a fact that I'm not going to use any of these models. I have plenty of models to play with already.


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 Vermis wrote:
Don't sell 'em. If you're feeling burned out on Skaven, put them away somewhere safe and cosy. Use what you have painted or use one of your other armies for a while. If you're anything like most gamers, you'll get the ratty bug again and it'll help to have those unassembled minis at hand, rather than having to buy them all over again. (Which might be difficult during 9th ed)

I think that might be the case. I just figured I might be able to sell the extras I had to build up another army. That's a good point about the minis and 9th edition though.

I got burned out painting my Skaven, have not even thought about painting any of them in 6 months. Picked up a bunch of them cheap off eBay and started working on them. About 100 in I hit burn out and it turns my stomach thinking I have another 100 to finish. One of the days Iam going to get the itch and start it up again, at least that's my goal.

 Chute82 wrote:
I got burned out painting my Skaven, have not even thought about painting any of them in 6 months. Picked up a bunch of them cheap off eBay and started working on them. About 100 in I hit burn out and it turns my stomach thinking I have another 100 to finish. One of the days Iam going to get the itch and start it up again, at least that's my goal.

Same thing happened to me when I started Skaven. Saw an amazing deal on Ebay, and did a trade with a buddy here with some of my 40k stuff. Ended up with like 4-5k points of Skaven. I was excited at first and painted like 3000 points worth of models. I stopped painting them (and in general, actually) and started focusing on playing. It was fun at first, but now my general attitude is, "Oh, you killed my cannons and hell pit? My general grey seer died? Well, now I'm going to throw STR 3 T3 bodies at you until I lose. Oh, and I'm even more excited to clean up 200-300 models after all my things get slaughtered" To be fair though, I think I'm just getting tired of playing Skaven, so I don't really try as hard to make effective lists or win.

Just need something different for a while I think.. I'm excited to start and paint this new army.

sco0terkidx wrote:

 Chute82 wrote:
I got burned out painting my Skaven, have not even thought about painting any of them in 6 months. Picked up a bunch of them cheap off eBay and started working on them. About 100 in I hit burn out and it turns my stomach thinking I have another 100 to finish. One of the days Iam going to get the itch and start it up again, at least that's my goal.

Same thing happened to me when I started Skaven. Saw an amazing deal on Ebay, and did a trade with a buddy here with some of my 40k stuff. Ended up with like 4-5k points of Skaven. I was excited at first and painted like 3000 points worth of models. I stopped painting them (and in general, actually) and started focusing on playing. It was fun at first, but now my general attitude is, "Oh, you killed my cannons and hell pit? My general grey seer died? Well, now I'm going to throw STR 3 T3 bodies at you until I lose. Oh, and I'm even more excited to clean up 200-300 models after all my things get slaughtered" To be fair though, I think I'm just getting tired of playing Skaven, so I don't really try as hard to make effective lists or win.

Just need something different for a while I think.. I'm excited to start and paint this new army.

Cleaning up and transporting 200 models is a real pain. I put mine all on magnet bases with metal movement trays to make life a little easier. i sometimes question my sanity on why I bought so many models. I guess after not playing for so many years after 5 th edition I thought it would be a easy task. But it has become a real pain. Lesson learned

 Chute82 wrote:

sco0terkidx wrote:

 Chute82 wrote:
I got burned out painting my Skaven, have not even thought about painting any of them in 6 months. Picked up a bunch of them cheap off eBay and started working on them. About 100 in I hit burn out and it turns my stomach thinking I have another 100 to finish. One of the days Iam going to get the itch and start it up again, at least that's my goal.

Same thing happened to me when I started Skaven. Saw an amazing deal on Ebay, and did a trade with a buddy here with some of my 40k stuff. Ended up with like 4-5k points of Skaven. I was excited at first and painted like 3000 points worth of models. I stopped painting them (and in general, actually) and started focusing on playing. It was fun at first, but now my general attitude is, "Oh, you killed my cannons and hell pit? My general grey seer died? Well, now I'm going to throw STR 3 T3 bodies at you until I lose. Oh, and I'm even more excited to clean up 200-300 models after all my things get slaughtered" To be fair though, I think I'm just getting tired of playing Skaven, so I don't really try as hard to make effective lists or win.

Just need something different for a while I think.. I'm excited to start and paint this new army.

Cleaning up and transporting 200 models is a real pain. I put mine all on magnet bases with metal movement trays to make life a little easier. i sometimes question my sanity on why I bought so many models. I guess after not playing for so many years after 5 th edition I thought it would be a easy task. But it has become a real pain. Lesson learned

Mine are all magnetized too. I think I just need to better organize my "dead pile" I guess haha. I think I just need to play an army with less bodies. Plus painting and building a new army sounds exciting to me.


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But I think my final decision will be to pack my Skaven away for a bit and work on a new army. I'll still play them from time to time, but I really just need some variety. I also think I'm going to sell off my extra plague furnace/screaming bell kit since I already have both and use it toward my next army.

The thought of painting more clan rats make me want to stab myself in the eye.

 redcell wrote:
The thought of painting more clan rats make me want to stab myself in the eye.

I'm glad I'm not the only one haha

I'll never even come close to having a finished and painted skaven army. Sheesh i may not even have all my weapons teams painted by the time i'm done with them. My goal is at least to paint the centerpiece models and characters though. I figure if nothing else the 30 or so centerpiece models deserve the paint.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I'll never even come close to having a finished and painted skaven army. Sheesh i may not even have all my weapons teams painted by the time i'm done with them. My goal is at least to paint the centerpiece models and characters though. I figure if nothing else the 30 or so centerpiece models deserve the paint.

Completely agree. And after painting 100 or so clanrats, I was actually REALLY excited to paint and put extreme details on my screaming bell, plague furnace, and hell pit abomination. I figured a change in army with fewer models would allow me to put that kind of work on every model rather than a select few.

And I felt burn-out painting 100 normal 40k Imperial Guard foot sloggers in one go. No right to complain I guess. Try something different for a bit, I have always regretted getting rid of models.

 Talizvar wrote:
And I felt burn-out painting 100 normal 40k Imperial Guard foot sloggers in one go. No right to complain I guess. Try something different for a bit, I have always regretted getting rid of models.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do; just pack away the skaven, except for some casual fun games.

However, I know for a fact that I'm selling the things I will never use.. Don't need a 2nd bell or plague furnace or 3 doomwheels. haha

Oh, yeah, I understand totally. It takes a certain kind of insanity.... er, I mean dedication to be a Skaven player. I started painting my army in early 6th edition... and didn't get enough together to play a game until early 8th edition.

Painting hordes of skaven kinda sucks, when you get right down to it.

I play skaven too and I have a metric button of models.
I enjoy painting the big stuff and I really like stormvermin but when it comes to my clanrats I don't care. I have a simple way to paint them quickly but its just tedious.

I haven't really had any time at all lately to even look at my paints so I don't think I'll ever get it done. I think you just have to do it in stages. Don't look at them all and be like "okay I want all these models painted by X day" just don't do that cause you will either get bored, frustrated or burnt out. Pick a unit and paint it up over a few weeks even if its just 20 guys.

I'm a skaven player through and through tho so I have multiple units (have 3 cannons, 2 wheels, 2 aboms etc etc) and I want to get a second furnace (I currently use my bell as a second furnace when I want to run that)
Just pick up another army or a few units at least to help breakup the rats. I have a few boxes of empire stuff and have painted up some demigryphs just cause it got me motivated to paint.

I don't think I'd ever sell an army. I'd regret it at some point down the road I garuntee it.

Talizvar wrote:No right to complain I guess.

I don't know about that. Some of the responses in this topic strengthen my view that WHFB (and 40K) have no right to demand such high model counts. 9th's rumoured reduction could lessen the strain. (not to mention all those GW-minis-compatible rulesets, including mass battle rules, that require fewer minis too. )

sco0terkidx wrote:
However, I know for a fact that I'm selling the things I will never use.. Don't need a 2nd bell or plague furnace or 3 doomwheels. haha

Fair enough.

This might seem insane, but I'm quite happy that I'm a Skaven player when it comes to the painting. Yeah, I'm up in the hundreds of models too. 200 slaves and matching clanrats.

And I can't play with a model until it's painted, because I run it all on clear plastic bases, so I can't glue it on to the base until it's done or I'll ruin the base.

But painting Skaven means you can do it sloppy and it only helps the model look more ragged. I shiver at the thought of doing the bright perfect paint jobs needed for a full army of High Elves.

In my experience you build and paint 20 models and it's made no dent in your sprue pile so you start looking at role playing games instead.

The ranks and files of Warhammer Fantasy is so much more visually appealing than skirmish or squad based games. But when you run Skaven or Goblins things can really get out of hand.

One thing I would suggest due to the "slog" of painting so many models: how many do that with airbrush?
At the very least, the "block" painting?

I found anything with rough or a multitude of surfaces was a pain with brush but airbrush makes is seem civil in comparison.

Painting my sanded / graveled bases always seemed to take a ton of paint and kill brushes.

It has revitalized my "horde" painting because just getting some basic paint coverage seemed soul-sucking with a brush.
Just painting those big gothic buildings (or the mausoleum kit) had so many fussy bits that airbrush made it 1/4 the time at worst.

Then that funny "Zenithal" highlighting with an airbrush is what the new washes do for depth on a model.

Anyway, food for thought because I can well understand just wanting to walk away and not even look at a brush for a month.
(I usually assemble during that time...). Right now I am tackling my 70-odd Battletech miniatures from way-back that need to have their paint-job redone.
Darn friends throwing down the gauntlet, always seems to get me painting.

Having recently painted a horde army (vampires) myself, I can strongly attest to the fact that there is exactly one way these sorts of armies get painted:

Deadlines.


Without a deadline the notion of painting that many models is simply too overwhelming to consider. However set yourself a reasonable deadline, plan the project out ahead of you, then start chipping away at it a few hours at a time.

Once you get into a rhythm you can actually paint up those models at a shocking pace. I painted a unit of 40 skeletons in two reasonable evening sessions. I painted 20 direwolves in one. It tooks dozens of hours slaving over test models and smaller batches to get there, but once you have your method down it's surprisingly easy to replicate.

The other benefit of deadlines is that you stop caring as much. Know what nobody will ever look at? Whether clanrat # 98 in the back rank has a painted belt buckle. But you care about that gak when you first start. It's not until the 50th identical model that you think "fuckit" and start letting those errant brush strokes slide.



The other key is limiting the number of models you're actually going to paint. Deadlines helps for that too. Set a deadline for something like "I will paint X army for Y tournament." Now you have a specific number of models that you need to paint. Those 40 plague monks you have no intention of fielding? Yeah...they don't get painted. They dont' even get assembled. Maybe afterwards.


One other thing I'll stress very strongly is to use washes. Washes are amazing. You'd be shocked at how well you can do with undercoat->wash->drybrush. Especially for "dirty" armies like Skaven and Undead. This is part of what I meant by honing your method...by the time you're on your last unit you'll have cut the method that started with 20 steps on your first test model to one that's 8 steps on your final model.

It's all about mixing it up, I find.
I got to hate painting Night Goblins, so I started painting Orcs. I started to grow weary of those and now find Night Goblins refreshing. I'm sure they'll be a pain in the ass soon enough, but the Orcs will be more appealing then.

However, when everything is a rat (and let's face it, yeah O&G will field a lot of Goblins, but not near the amount of rats), yeah, tedious.

Play some video games about skaven read some books about skaven and play a narrative match with skaven. That made me want to paint my Khorne Daemonkin Army again.

You can never have enough models. I snapped this the last time I took inventory of my Dwarfs. In 6th & 7th it came in around 20K without runes. With this new book it's more like 17K. I best thing to do with a large army is work on it for a while take a break work on a different project then come back. Skaven are nothing compared to beards, beards, and more beards

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
You can never have enough models. I snapped this the last time I took inventory of my Dwarfs. In 6th & 7th it came in around 20K without runes. With this new book it's more like 17K. I best thing to do with a large army is work on it for a while take a break work on a different project then come back. Skaven are nothing compared to beards, beards, and more beards

I think I might have actually cringed at the site of all those cannons and organ guns

Very impressive army. I've been working on my high elves for the last week or so (Just started them up), and I've been having a blast painting them so far (I absolutely love the look of phoenix guard). I'm using them in a 1500 point tag-team event coming up tomorrow, so wish me luck!

With an airbrush you can get through dozens of skaven in no time if table top is all you are after. Blue tac 20 to a batton (having sanded the bases first), spray with chosen colour, i.e. Mournfang, with a brush pick out the clothing in a block colour, the weapons and any armour in leadbelcher. Then respray with agrax. Drybrush and flock the bases, then edge them and you are done. Minus the drying time that will probably take little more than an hour-hour and a half.

I think you only have too many models if you either don't have space for your collection, or you are buying them at the expense of other import things, like the electric bill, or flowers for the missus...

Holy crap Baldrick! That's a lot of stunties!

If you want a quick but effective Skavem army, I really suggest you take a look at this thread by Elmir.

link



The models are painted super quickly from using one of Army Painter's dips (quickshade), but to counteract the quite flat paint job that would give, a really strong green OSL has been used to pick out all the warp details and add a focal point.

Really inspiring stuff!

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
You can never have enough models. I snapped this the last time I took inventory of my Dwarfs. In 6th & 7th it came in around 20K without runes. With this new book it's more like 17K. I best thing to do with a large army is work on it for a while take a break work on a different project then come back. Skaven are nothing compared to beards, beards, and more beards

Man we could recreate the war of the beard quite well between all those dwarves and my nearly equal amount of high elves. All we need is a really big table a week or two to actually play it out lol

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Holy crap Baldrick! That's a lot of stunties!

Thanks, it is close to 20 years of collecting the little fellows. I just wishni had more of them painted. I may get back to them this summer. I painted up a bunch of slayers about a year and a half ago, so its time to get back.


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xevv wrote:

Man we could recreate the war of the beard quite well between all those dwarves and my nearly equal amount of high elves. All we need is a really big table a week or two to actually play it out lol

I have a buddy with a 10K HE army, we have talked about it but he moved out of state and we have trouble even getting him for our yearly "winner drink all" tournament.

The largest game I have played though was 10K of my Empire vs 3 friends with VC back in end of 6th ed. It was a total blast but took all day. I have been trying to talk another buddy in to a game that size, I think he's weakening. If we do, you can be sure I'll do a report on it

Sorry to hijack the thread. But on topic to the OP for fantasy I have 5 armies at 10K or more and a few others at less. The best way to handle it is to get your army up to a fully painted playable group of 2-3K work on something else for a while then come back add another 200-500 points at atime. Then eeventually your basement is full and your wife just shacks her heard