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First of the year I plan to buy and paint 2000 point army and just play that list for most of the year.I have painted a few other army’s before but I usually buy a few units paint them then buy a few more. Then by the end of the year I have a bunch of painted models I never play with because I didn’t plan the army out very well. That’s why I plan to buy the whole army at once.
Anyways what’s a realistic goal to get the army built and painted and not burn out? Taking into account a full time job and family life. And I’m talking about just a good table top paint job and a base done not show case models. But I do plan on putting some magnets on vehicles so that’s going to add some time.
Im thinking 500 points a month would be doable goal, that would be 4 months finished. Would like to do 750 a month to cut it down to 3 months but I think that maybe pushing it. What do you think is a decent goal to get this done? Thanks for your input!
Like Insectum said, it depends on model count, and paint job. The other major variable is you. How fast do you paint? Assuming a 'reasonable' paint scheme for your level of skill, does 750 pts a month sound doable?
Keep in mind 750 points could be two preditors, and two dreadnoughts. It could also be 90 gaunts.
Grimlineman wrote: First of the year I plan to buy and paint 2000 point army and just play that list for most of the year.I have painted a few other army’s before but I usually buy a few units paint them then buy a few more. Then by the end of the year I have a bunch of painted models I never play with because I didn’t plan the army out very well. That’s why I plan to buy the whole army at once.
Anyways what’s a realistic goal to get the army built and painted and not burn out? Taking into account a full time job and family life. And I’m talking about just a good table top paint job and a base done not show case models. But I do plan on putting some magnets on vehicles so that’s going to add some time.
Im thinking 500 points a month would be doable goal, that would be 4 months finished. Would like to do 750 a month to cut it down to 3 months but I think that maybe pushing it. What do you think is a decent goal to get this done? Thanks for your input!
A 2000 point army takes me about 3 months if I'm killin it(with my painting time investment).
It’s about 50 models of Eldar 5 of that is tanks rest infantry of different sizes so not really a horde army...... I think 500 a month what I’m going to shoot for I just wanted to see what others thought but I know there is lots of variables.
I’ve heard of escalation leagues where you build and paint so many models a month but I never been a part of one so don’t know what’s standard for them
Over the last year, I painted several 2000+ point armies. A few words of advice:
1) Buy used and strip the paint. For me, the knowledge I was not paying retail was an incentive to do something useful with the models. Instead of shooting for perfection on an expensive model, I was aiming for thematically-valid on cheap ones.
2) Avoid conversions. If you want to get something done, don't screw around with conversions. They eat time and don't always work out. Only do it when there's something big to gain.
3) Use an airbrush. Priming, basecoating, highlighting, etc, all get a lot more efficient and look better. It's not hard to thin GW paints and there are plenty of compatible paint lines.
4) Use pin washes. A lot of stuff I used to do with a brush I now do with a pin wash. Creates a consistent, realistic effect.
5) Don't be afraid to freehand. Unlike conversions, freehand painting tends to not be unique. A Black Legion shoulder pad, for example, is the same across all troops. After you paint the same thing a few times, it becomes automatic.
6) Do the bases first. Can't stress this enough, bases look better and are easier to work on if you do them before working on a model. You spend a lot less time trying to get them to look the same if you do them in one large batch.
If you are really committed and pick a fairly easy army to paint you should be able to get it done in a couple months. I got my 1250 point IG list done in about 3 months with 70 infantry models and about 7ish vehicles.
Batch paint your infantry and using washes will speed up your progress. Use simple basing like the GW crackle paint and then some tufts of grass so you're not worried about matching it all.
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts."
A wise man from this site gave me some sage advice when I started my guard army. Do one hour a day, every day. Maybe highlights one day, basecoats for another, etc. It seems trivial but after one year you will have hundreds of painted models.
I think said wise man did over 200 this year alone.
It sounds doable to me.
For myself a large project is just lots of little goals.
Day one- build the unit, plan bases.
Day two- bases and base paint.
Day three- finishing touches.
Adjust as needed.
This is highly dependent on army, space marine tanks are a breeze to paint. Hive tyrant I would put in 20 hours to be happy.
But I will work on smaller projects as I go.
Of corse you could could ad to another army now, rather than go for a complete new one as well
For the last few years my goal has been one mini a week. This is a very achievable goal that just about everyone should be able to maintain. I normally do a bit more then this, but it’s a solid baseline to strive for. Best way to get there is just to sit down and put brush to mini every day. One color a day for a week, and that’s your mini. Batch paint 2-4 at a time for troops and you will get them done a lot faster for not that much more investment of time.
I feel you're pain, I'm trying to get 1000 points of Eldar done over Christmas break. Some advice:
1.) Airbrushing is a great for basecoating and priming
2.) Be prepared to paint in sub-assemblies, it can make many paint jobs much easier.
3.) Choose your paint scheme wisely. Some paints go over others easily, some do not. Figure it out before committing to a scheme!
4.) Set your expectations to a proper level. If you're painting 60 infantry, they should be a lot simpler than your character models.
A number of people have said "it depends on your color scheme", what I haven't seen so much of is "it depends on how you execute that scheme" with any sort of detail.
I'm doing Marines; green armor with a really dark blue wash, orange and gun-metal gray equipment with a brown wash. Individually they're ok, looks good massed at table-top distance. The thing is I start with a white base so the orange will pop, and that makes putting down the base green quite time-consuming. Two different wash operations also guarantees that any given squad is going to take at least four days: two to allow base coats to dry enough to wash, two more to let the wash dry enough to handle for further detail work.
I could have picked a scheme where everything would look good over a green base coat and under a blue wash; spray-priming to green so I only had to paint gear and then eliminating the brown wash stage would be easily three times faster than what I'm doing now.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/24 19:06:47
If you are doing Eldar then it should be quite easy but as others have said, it depends a lot on the colour scheme.
If you plan to use washes (such as the Warhammer TV guide for Iyaden) then you will find colour matching vehicles hard to do.
If you plan to use a colour such as orange as the primary, this requires more layers and therefore time.
On the other hand, if using a colour scheme such as Red and White / Black, it should take little to no time due to spray cans, good base paints and easiness to highlight
techsoldaten wrote: Over the last year, I painted several 2000+ point armies. A few words of advice:
1) Buy used and strip the paint. For me, the knowledge I was not paying retail was an incentive to do something useful with the models. Instead of shooting for perfection on an expensive model, I was aiming for thematically-valid on cheap ones.
2) Avoid conversions. If you want to get something done, don't screw around with conversions. They eat time and don't always work out. Only do it when there's something big to gain.
3) Use an airbrush. Priming, basecoating, highlighting, etc, all get a lot more efficient and look better. It's not hard to thin GW paints and there are plenty of compatible paint lines.
4) Use pin washes. A lot of stuff I used to do with a brush I now do with a pin wash. Creates a consistent, realistic effect.
5) Don't be afraid to freehand. Unlike conversions, freehand painting tends to not be unique. A Black Legion shoulder pad, for example, is the same across all troops. After you paint the same thing a few times, it becomes automatic.
6) Do the bases first. Can't stress this enough, bases look better and are easier to work on if you do them before working on a model. You spend a lot less time trying to get them to look the same if you do them in one large batch.
I’ve painted many many armies myself, just had 11 months off work with an injury and painted a LOT. Stopped me losing the plot. And I have to say I disagree with every bit of advice here. Which goes to show how personal the creative part of the hobby is. I don’t believe my way is better than this it’s just my way and works for me. I would say
1) buy new. Don’t mess about stripping used models and dealing with someone else’s cockups. Start fresh and avoid headaches like paint not coming off clean and details spoiling. Painting a new clean model to me is easier than managing over an old one.
2) do conversions. Lots. Big ones for characters and others dotted around. It really helps me commit to an army if I’ve personalised it and made it my own. My conversions are usually narrative based but many are just for the sake of it. Simple ones like head swaps and weapon swaps can really help and stop you painting the same model glued slightly differently over and over.
3). Don’t bother with an airbrush. To much hassle and mess. Painting a squad at a time base coating doesn’t take long at all and highlights look better painted on imo. Airbrushed highlights look to cartoony for my tastes. Use rattle cans to prime and base coat if possible. Choose colours you can get easily in sprays as the main colour of your guys. Miles easier than airbrushing.
4). Use washes and use them wisely. Try to use as few as possible so that you can base coat as much of the model as possible and just sling wash on quickly. Agrax earthshade is the king of all washes to me. Whole armies only using that. On the whole model. No messing with oils or thinners. Simple.
5) keep freehand to a minimum. Decals are your friend and even then don’t use too many. If you are doing eldar then vehicles and wraith things should be your only real decal situations. Average freehanding can ruin a good paint job. It can drag a look down instantly.
6) do the bases last. And have the models on them. And do them when you finish each squad etc. Don’t leave it as a boring job to do at the end of the project. Pick a style, get the supplies enough to do the full army and stick to the plan. Do not deviate.
So I would say overall find your own way to do it. There no right or wrong way. The above works for me and the quoted guys wouldn’t at all. But both are equally valid.
I also line up my army unpainted in one place, usually out of the way. And then when a unit is finished it gets moved to another area, more prominent. And I then can see my results to motivate me and see the work ahead decreasing as the painted stuff increases. I also start the next unit as soon as I finish the last, even if it’s just some base coating etc, in the same session. So I can’t falter between units then.
Something I like to do as well to stop from getting caught in a rut is to mix up the order I paint my army in. Usually I'll paint 5 to 10 boring infantry, and then switch over to a fun vehicle or character, and then switch back to grind out another 5 to 10 infantry, and then back to something fun. You get the idea. This way I avoid getting stuck painting a seemingly endless horde of infantry and giving up on the project.
I also love to make sure that I have a capstone piece to finish a project off. Some big crazy converted character or monster that I can look forward to when I'm done everything else.
I do the same between army projects. When I finished my Necrons, I took a break to paint a few fun busts like my Daenarys. I just finished my Adeptus Titanicus stuff and I'm taking another break with a Radigundus bust before I dive back into my Nighthaunt for Adepticon.
Make sure you're keeping your creative juices flowing by allowing yourself to work on fun creative pieces. I find one offs great for this because you never have to replicate the color mixes again, allowing for some really creative experiments!
The Newman wrote: A number of people have said "it depends on your color scheme", what I haven't seen so much of is "it depends on how you execute that scheme" with any sort of detail.
I'm doing Marines; green armor with a really dark blue wash, orange and gun-metal gray equipment with a brown wash. Individually they're ok, looks good massed at table-top distance. The thing is I start with a white base so the orange will pop, and that makes putting down the base green quite time-consuming. Two different wash operations also guarantees that any given squad is going to take at least four days: two to allow base coats to dry enough to wash, two more to let the wash dry enough to handle for further detail work.
I could have picked a scheme where everything would look good over a green base coat and under a blue wash; spray-priming to green so I only had to paint gear and then eliminating the brown wash stage would be easily three times faster than what I'm doing now.
Yeah, that doesn't seem to be too bad.
I usually mean how intricate the painting is. Such as if you were to free-hand all of the scale patterns on hundreds of Alpha legionaires.
Personally, I find that, despite it being less time efficient, I work better with very small batches, like 3-5 figures, and do them start to finish.
5 finished dudes are a good motivator to do the next 5, while a large batch of half-done figures that are all waiting for the same tedious step (like eyes) is soul crushing to look at.
And it's a nice bite-sized painting goal too. You can probably see yourself doing 3 figures a week easily enough. Well, that's 150 in a year. Way easier than doing 50 basecoats in one week, 50 bolters the next week, 50 washes the next week, etc.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/25 11:24:33
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techsoldaten wrote: Over the last year, I painted several 2000+ point armies. A few words of advice:
1) Buy used and strip the paint. For me, the knowledge I was not paying retail was an incentive to do something useful with the models. Instead of shooting for perfection on an expensive model, I was aiming for thematically-valid on cheap ones.
2) Avoid conversions. If you want to get something done, don't screw around with conversions. They eat time and don't always work out. Only do it when there's something big to gain.
3) Use an airbrush. Priming, basecoating, highlighting, etc, all get a lot more efficient and look better. It's not hard to thin GW paints and there are plenty of compatible paint lines.
4) Use pin washes. A lot of stuff I used to do with a brush I now do with a pin wash. Creates a consistent, realistic effect.
5) Don't be afraid to freehand. Unlike conversions, freehand painting tends to not be unique. A Black Legion shoulder pad, for example, is the same across all troops. After you paint the same thing a few times, it becomes automatic.
6) Do the bases first. Can't stress this enough, bases look better and are easier to work on if you do them before working on a model. You spend a lot less time trying to get them to look the same if you do them in one large batch.
I’ve painted many many armies myself, just had 11 months off work with an injury and painted a LOT. Stopped me losing the plot. And I have to say I disagree with every bit of advice here. Which goes to show how personal the creative part of the hobby is. I don’t believe my way is better than this it’s just my way and works for me. I would say
1) buy new. Don’t mess about stripping used models and dealing with someone else’s cockups. Start fresh and avoid headaches like paint not coming off clean and details spoiling. Painting a new clean model to me is easier than managing over an old one.
2) do conversions. Lots. Big ones for characters and others dotted around. It really helps me commit to an army if I’ve personalised it and made it my own. My conversions are usually narrative based but many are just for the sake of it. Simple ones like head swaps and weapon swaps can really help and stop you painting the same model glued slightly differently over and over.
3). Don’t bother with an airbrush. To much hassle and mess. Painting a squad at a time base coating doesn’t take long at all and highlights look better painted on imo. Airbrushed highlights look to cartoony for my tastes. Use rattle cans to prime and base coat if possible. Choose colours you can get easily in sprays as the main colour of your guys. Miles easier than airbrushing.
4). Use washes and use them wisely. Try to use as few as possible so that you can base coat as much of the model as possible and just sling wash on quickly. Agrax earthshade is the king of all washes to me. Whole armies only using that. On the whole model. No messing with oils or thinners. Simple.
5) keep freehand to a minimum. Decals are your friend and even then don’t use too many. If you are doing eldar then vehicles and wraith things should be your only real decal situations. Average freehanding can ruin a good paint job. It can drag a look down instantly.
6) do the bases last. And have the models on them. And do them when you finish each squad etc. Don’t leave it as a boring job to do at the end of the project. Pick a style, get the supplies enough to do the full army and stick to the plan. Do not deviate.
So I would say overall find your own way to do it. There no right or wrong way. The above works for me and the quoted guys wouldn’t at all. But both are equally valid.
I also line up my army unpainted in one place, usually out of the way. And then when a unit is finished it gets moved to another area, more prominent. And I then can see my results to motivate me and see the work ahead decreasing as the painted stuff increases. I also start the next unit as soon as I finish the last, even if it’s just some base coating etc, in the same session. So I can’t falter between units then.
Haha, was not expecting a point-by-point response. Absolutely true - there is no single way to approach a project. What works for you is always the best strategy so long as you are getting the desired end result.
Over the last 18 months, I did a Grey Knights army, a World Eaters army, a Sons of Horus army, and a Crimson Fists army (the last one was for a friend and done totally for fun.)
The most important thing was being conscientious about the process. Streamlining the less important steps so I could focus my energy on the more complex ones was the key to remaining motivated and productive. Sure, the details could change for any painter, but having a process was much better than not having one.
Here's some details about how it played out. At the start, I bought an Apocalypse-sized force of Grey Knights off Facebook. 9 Land Raiders, 6 Razorbacks, 40 Terminators + 10 characters, 20 PAGKs, and assorted Inquisition models. I bought an additional 3 Dreadknights, a Storm Raven, and 20 more PAGKs off eBay. The total cost for the entire force was less than 20% of retail.
Stripped everything with Super Clean and Isopropyl Alcohol. Primed everything with an airbrush and base-coated / highlighted the surfaces with Vallejo Metal Colors. This gave me a uniform appearance to work from that I was happy with.
Worked out washes using GW paint thinned with Isopropyl. Went through all the models to create realistic shading, then went back to do highlights with Vallejo's aluminum colors.
Created bases using Magic Sculpt, where I carved cobblestones into the surface to give it the appearance of a ruined temple. Did about 100 of these, each is unique. Mounted the models to those after they were painted.
Did the heraldry after everything else was finished. For smaller models, I freehanded the skulls / swords / etc. After the first few, everything became routine. For the larger models, I printed my own transfer sheets on the laser printer. The Land Raiders especially benefited from it.
After that was done, it wasn't hard to transition from that process to Sons of Horus. Everything uses models from Forgeworld and Betrayal at Calth, so it cost a lot more. But, since I had a process down, I was a lot more confident that things would get done as I went along. The hardest part, honestly, was figuring out how to paint gold on black for the symbols.
lord_blackfang wrote: Personally, I find that, despite it being less time efficient, I work better with very small batches, like 3-5 figures, and do them start to finish.
5 finished dudes are a good motivator to do the next 5, while a large batch of half-done figures that are all waiting for the same tedious step (like eyes) is soul crushing to look at.
And it's a nice bite-sized painting goal too. You can probably see yourself doing 3 figures a week easily enough. Well, that's 150 in a year. Way easier than doing 50 basecoats in one week, 50 bolters the next week, 50 washes the next week, etc.
I have that same issue. A single combat squad or vehicle at a time is all I can handle, I start losing motivation if I have any more than that.
I assembly line paint up units, and have a habit of using differentiating color schemes for each unit, to not repeat myself. Base coat the whole model. Paint everyone's gun. Then everyone's casing. Paint all the horns. Paint all the cabling. Paint the trim (my least favorite). So its base coat for everything, then specific details for everything. Then a wash. Then highlights and touch ups. I kinda hate painting metallics since they ruin my brushes so I try to do that step first, but sometimes do it last when it comes to trim in everything. Part of me wants to just quit CSM because of all the damn metallic trim on every model and go with simple Loyalists.
It is EXHAUSTING. I'm painting up Death Guard now, one unit a brown base coat, one a white base coat. and one a green base coat. It had taken me about a week (but only getting about 3 nights of actual painting) to get the base coat of brown on 10 Plague Marines. Today I'm on the 2nd color, a lighter brown for all of them.
At the rate I'm going each 5-7 man unit will take me two to three weeks.
I dont even know why I'm painting Plague Marines! They started out as a Killteam and I got carried away with the army Theme.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/25 23:09:50
Prior to October 2017, I basically bought on impulse and had tons and tons and tons of unpainted stuff laying around.
In October, 2017, I decided to switch tack and I decided that i) never have more than five minis assembled and unpainted; and ii) never have more than twenty minis waiting to be assembled.
It's worked a lot better for me. Previously nothing ever got finished; I had about 18k of Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Tyranids just sitting unpainted and unloved in boxes. In the nearly fifteen months since, I've managed to build, paint and base a little under 2500pts of Daemons and nearly 400pts of R&H.
Thanks for your input!
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