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I wanted to get something off my chest thats been nagging me lately. I am the proud owner of this army



It's a lot of bugs I've collected over the past few years. I like the paint scheme, people tend to really like it as well. The thing is, I've gotten better as a painter
in the past few years as well, but my army obviously hasnt gotten to look much better on account of there being a set scheme that they have to follow. I recently
painted some bugs such as this Harridan and malanthrope:






I go to a lot of tournaments and get compliments on my army, but never get to go to the big tables for paint judging. Lately I've been having a nagging wish that I could have either a second bug army or repaint my own in the new scheme. It
seems silly writing it out, but if I take the time to paint I'd obviously like it to be out on display. Not to mention I think a 1850pt army would look great painted up that way.

But thats one hell of an expensive compulsion, and it may not be worth it. I'm also attached to my current scheme, so its almost a no win either way.

Anyone ever been caught in this position?

I also find that a lot of my stuff just looks shoddy compared to what I can do now; I technically have 6 40k armies, but only one and a few bits and bobs that I'd happily put down on the table. For me, repainting is the answer, and once I get around to getting some striping stuff, about 3/5 of my collection will be going straight in. I do kind of her attached to old schemes, but I'd still sooner start over on those minis than endure staring at my poorer stuff. At the moment it's only my BA, SW and some DA/GK/RG that I'll use, but I'll get to the rest eventually (and save money on new minis! )

Your new stuff does look loads better, so I say strip and repaint what you have; you'll end up with a stunning army!

I too have compulsions to do great full-army repaints - a compulsion I have followed through with twice before - and when you do it, make sure you REALLY REALLY like the new scheme.

... and it will be painful. Very painful.

But ultimately satisfying.

Maybe you need to look at it a different way. A big army that you are going to play doesn't have to be painted to competition standard. If you're interested in entering painting competitions then look at the catagories and put something together. It doesn't have to be an 1850pointer. You can even throw the tactics out the window and just buy what looks good. But these things tend to grow...

Dude, first off that new paint scheme is fantastic. I wouldn't even know where to start getting a result like that!

Secondly, I had a similar problem with my Nids, although not to the extent you're facing. I was returning to the hobby, and spent ages deliberating what scheme to go for with them and then, when I eventually decided and painted up a 1000 or so points, I changed my mind. I just couldn't bring myself to repaint them and am now actually in the process of trying to sell them (shameless Swap Shop plug )so that I can start again from scratch.

Have you considered selling up and starting again?

You wouldn't have to sell them all in one go. You could sell them piecemeal until you've sufficiently built up your new force in your new scheme?

Just a thought!

Paradigm wrote:I also find that a lot of my stuff just looks shoddy compared to what I can do now; I technically have 6 40k armies, but only one and a few bits and bobs that I'd happily put down on the table. For me, repainting is the answer, and once I get around to getting some striping stuff, about 3/5 of my collection will be going straight in. I do kind of her attached to old schemes, but I'd still sooner start over on those minis than endure staring at my poorer stuff. At the moment it's only my BA, SW and some DA/GK/RG that I'll use, but I'll get to the rest eventually (and save money on new minis! )

Your new stuff does look loads better, so I say strip and repaint what you have; you'll end up with a stunning army!

One issue is that I've never had much success stripping, especially with all the recesses in tyranid models. : /

TheManWithNoPlan wrote:I too have compulsions to do great full-army repaints - a compulsion I have followed through with twice before - and when you do it, make sure you REALLY REALLY like the new scheme.

... and it will be painful. Very painful.

But ultimately satisfying.

Sounds like a big, big undertaking.

theCrowe wrote:Maybe you need to look at it a different way. A big army that you are going to play doesn't have to be painted to competition standard. If you're interested in entering painting competitions then look at the catagories and put something together. It doesn't have to be an 1850pointer. You can even throw the tactics out the window and just buy what looks good. But these things tend to grow...

It's not that I want to enter paint competitions on their own, just the paint scoring at big tournaments that I attend.

NidLifeCrisis wrote:Dude, first off that new paint scheme is fantastic. I wouldn't even know where to start getting a result like that!

Secondly, I had a similar problem with my Nids, although not to the extent you're facing. I was returning to the hobby, and spent ages deliberating what scheme to go for with them and then, when I eventually decided and painted up a 1000 or so points, I changed my mind. I just couldn't bring myself to repaint them and am now actually in the process of trying to sell them (shameless Swap Shop plug )so that I can start again from scratch.

Have you considered selling up and starting again?

You wouldn't have to sell them all in one go. You could sell them piecemeal until you've sufficiently built up your new force in your new scheme?

Just a thought!

Thats the other idea, I ebay quite a bit and while it would take a while, I could roughly break evenish. But I have to first be able to let go of my babies.

I'm in this position right now with several armies, and I've come up with a strategy. Rather than set a big project for yourself, strip and repaint each model fully one at a time and field them together on the table as necessity dictates.Your new scheme is too gorgeous not to be spread to all those minis!

I know the feeling.

I started disliking my Space Wolf scheme about 10 years ago and started repainting it and never finished repainting it. Similar story with my Lizardmen, have 3 different Lizardmen schemes because I keep improving and learning new techniques.

My Tyranids I feel bound by the scheme I chose, I really don't want to repaint them because there's hundreds of hours that have gone in to them and I don't want to get half way through repainting them and regret it.

My Orcs (WHFB) I just swapped the scheme but didn't bother repainting any of the old ones... on the table they look fine next to each other.

I'm in the slow process of repainting my old Black Templars army currently, over 2000 points worth of it. I'm doing it because of different reasons then you, I've been using IF rules for my marines, and I've gotten better as a painter, my advice really is, if you're doing that, do it squad by squad, don't try and strip some stupidly big number of models, like 80 models or something because I found, at least for me, that it was just creating more work for myself and I stopped for a while after stripping 20 tac marines, a Rhino, a captain, and a dreadnaught. I shouldn't have done so many before painting them, but YMMV

If you like the color scheme of the original as well as the new, I would strip the old a couple at a time and repaint them. While repainting see if I could incorporate the old scheme a little bit in the new somewhere.

After those couple are done, then move on to a couple more. Keep an eye on what you've got done, and don't focus on how many you have left to repaint and you should be able to feel the progress a lot easier without being overwhelmed by how many are left to go

I was in exactly the same position with my nids, I've got tonnes and have been painting in the same style/quality for years for coherency's sake. I can do far better now but quantity is a quality of itself.
I find it's a nice break to smash out a few nids quickly every now and then just to stay current.
My answer was just to start another totally different army that I could paint nicely, dark eldar, I was soon absorbed and not too bothered about my nids.
One word of warning/advice before you go too far would be to try the new scheme on a GW nid of reasonable size (and maybe some small ones), carnifex/trygon and see if it still works.
The carapaces on the GW nids are very smooth and lack a lot of texture in other places and won't take washes anywhere near as well as the FW stuff. You may not be able to recreate the scheme very well at all or quickly at which point the decision has been made.

^ I've found that lightlyscoring them carefully (in appropriate bone patterns) helps recreate the awesome FW textures. Its an extra step but looks the part. Good call though, that was one of the big considerations I had to take.

Thanks for the advice everyone, I decided to go through with it and I actually feel good about it. I was sad taking the ebay photos, I have memories of the last two years painting all of them and Im overly sentimental, but I like the idea of not hording a lot of stuff I dont need. Plus they get to go out into the world and do battle, and I get to start a new project.

My wife has nearly 9000 points of fully painted nids. She started with a really simple paint scheme but then GW Discontinued inks so we went and bought every pot of purple ink we could find! Anyway, I showed her a WarhammerTV YouTube clip on how to paint a Maleceptor. She copied it and now is going to go back and repainting all of her monstrous creatures!

You can see some photos of her nids on my blog (just click on the WWW).

I wonder if you could get that extra texture with a couple of strokes of a very course sandpaper (20 or 40 grit) or stiff wire brush (I've got one that's toothbrush sized, from screwfix iirc) or a combination of both along with some carving? Might speed up the process a bit?