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I’m tempted to get the new 40k box and I the new necrons look pretty cool. I’ve never really thought about it but they are pretty much one colour and don’t have the same detail as SM. So that leads me to think they’d be pretty quick and easy to paint up, which appeals to someone like
Me who is pretty slow at painting.

Am I right or have I missed something that a few months down the road is going to be really annoying

Depends on the scheme you choose to paint really. Give them a basic undercoat then leadbealcher for an undercoat of metal all over; follow that up with a nuln oil wash for dirty metal and then give the armour/raised areas as coat of brighter metal like stormhost silver and you've got most of the armour and plating done. Pick out the eyes ,perhaps gaps between the ribs if you want and the weapon and you've got them painted.

So they can be fairly simple.


Some can be more complex - eg several vehicles are easier to paint in stages like the Ark and the Command Barge - then its mostly just a case of having an easy to paint system by doing them in parts rather than assembling and having tight corners to get the brush into.

Necrons are very simple to paint, prime them any color, spray with silver, add nuln oil, drybrush necron compound. Paint eyes, and weapons green. Done. Or use black primer, drybrush with iron warriors or leadbelcher. Paint eyes and weapons green. Done.

I have never painted Necrons but I'd assume that they are quite easy and fast to paint due to fact that very few colours are needed and metal basecoat goes a long way. They don't wear any clothes or carry any equipment, so basically all you need to paint is their body, weapons and base. However, the downside to this is that you need to come up with solid colour scheme and basing theme to make them look interesting.

I am going to use paint a small Necron force from Indomitus and I aim for a quick and easy to paint colour scheme. Leadbelcher spray followed by Iron Hands steel will be my base. Pick another metallic colour with Contrast paints on top of IHS. The guns will probably be black because that works on top of metal as well. Gauss can be painted with Contrast paints but it requires Wraithbone or Corax white basecoat by hand. Base is easy to paint with Contrast paints too.

As noted, Necrons can be painted in a variety of colors and if you go with your own Dynasty (or a counts-as Dynasty) then they can be as easy and quick or as hard and time consuming to paint as you want them to be.

mrFickle wrote:
I’m tempted to get the new 40k box and I the new necrons look pretty cool. I’ve never really thought about it but they are pretty much one colour and don’t have the same detail as SM. So that leads me to think they’d be pretty quick and easy to paint up, which appeals to someone like
Me who is pretty slow at painting.

Am I right or have I missed something that a few months down the road is going to be really annoying

With Necrons, as others have said, it depends on the color scheme you want to go for, and what units you want.

They can be done very quickly and easily with a simple color palette (e.g. black primer, boltgun metal/leadbelcher over everything, ink wash, done!), particularly if one focuses mostly on the simpler models. Some of the vehicles are a nightmare however, not only being complex with lots of surface area and edges and tech bitz (especially the new gauss rods), but with lots of gubbins that are hard to reach with a brush, and if one wants to get into shading/highlighting/multi-tone color schemes, they can be as complex as one wants to make them.

i had a bunch of the first plastic warriors & the biggest pain was putting them together!