Playing against an unpainted army...

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**Paintalist**

I hate to play against an unpainted or bad painted army. Sry but guys without painted armys are so uncreative and untalented. Its boring and it blame my full (and awesome) painted army. I mean WTF grey figures? or just black/wihite. WHAT THE HELL! It is a lot of rage- i know- but i hate it so! Even if you are a not so skilled painter, i see it on the table and know at least he tried, Its good for me but stop putting your grey or black stuff on the talbe!

**darkcloak**

...

And AoS becomes an official tabletop wargame with the creation of its very own dakkadakka Painted vs Unpainted thread.

Hooray! Welcome AoS. Here is your name tag, just stick it to your shirt there so the other games know who you are. The punch bowl is over there. Go mingle!

Cheers. I like painting too.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
You'll pay for this Loxley!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
We maaaay look like sissies, but don't take us wrong! Or we'll put out your lights!

We're men!

**Talys**

darkcloak wrote:
...

And AoS becomes an official tabletop wargame with the creation of its very own dakkadakka Painted vs Unpainted thread.

Hooray! Welcome AoS. Here is your name tag, just stick it to your shirt there so the other games know who you are. The punch bowl is over there. Go mingle!

Cheers. I like painting too.

Ain't that the truth?

The irony, of course, is that you could just plunk the thread (title and all) into any other game's discussion forum, hehehe.

**alex87**

Paintalist wrote:
I hate to play against an unpainted or bad painted army. Sry but guys without painted armys are so uncreative and untalented. Its boring and it blame my full (and awesome) painted army. I mean WTF grey figures? or just black/wihite. WHAT THE HELL! It is a lot of rage- i know- but i hate it so! Even if you are a not so skilled painter, i see it on the table and know at least he tried, Its good for me but stop putting your grey or black stuff on the talbe!

If this rant was a movie it would be titled "How to contradict yourself in 100 words or less".

**AegisGrimm**

I actually like the hobby aspect of Warhammer and WH40K more than the gaming aspect. I feel I am a passable painter (just a little bit higher than tabletop quality) and I love to convert figures, whether in metal or plastic.

I respect any effort another player makes towards painting their force, even if it's hitting the table in progress, I feel it brings the table to life during a game like really cool scenery. I don't care about their skill level in it relative to mine, it's all about putting your personal touch on making your army "unique" and yours alone.

To me not giving a care to painting at all (not the ones who don't have the time, the ones who just don't care to make the effort), would be like not giving a crap about terrain and just shrugging and writing things in pencil on squares of paper or cloth forever, when very little effort can make things look cool. Especially when there are situations where players don't even care to assemble the figures well, or completely.

One of the cool things I liked about the Rackham games At43 and Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok, is that being pretty decent quality prepaints everyone's armies started out looking cool and in full color, and people who wanted to spend the time could go above and beyond that to make things personal.

**455_PWR**

I think that a painted army (whether painted poor, table top quality, or higher) looks great on the tabletop. As long as an army has a uniform theme, the minis really pop on table tops. This added to a painted board and terrain really helps me immerse myself into the game and makes games more enjoyable.

However, I will play anyone, even if their army is not painted. When I see an unpainted army, I always think of the times in life my time was limited due to 19 credit semesters (with a job as well), to 60+ hour work weeks, to having kids. I think it would be shallow to judge someone else based on their unpainted army without knowing them well or their life schedule (maybe they have kids, play in sports, are in college or grad school, social events, medical problems, family problems, etc).

To recap, I prefer painted but will gladly play an individual with an unpainted army.

**Talys**

AegisGrimm wrote:
I actually like the hobby aspect of Warhammer and WH40K more than the gaming aspect. I feel I am a passable painter (just a little bit higher than tabletop quality) and I love to convert figures, whether in metal or plastic.

I respect any effort another player makes towards painting their force, even if it's hitting the table in progress, I feel it brings the table to life during a game like really cool scenery. I don't care about their skill level in it relative to mine, it's all about putting your personal touch on making your army "unique" and yours alone.

To me not giving a care to painting at all (not the ones who don't have the time, the ones who just don't care to make the effort), would be like not giving a crap about terrain and just shrugging and writing things in pencil on squares of paper or cloth forever, when very little effort can make things look cool. Especially when there are situations where players don't even care to assemble the figures well, or completely.

One of the cool things I liked about the Rackham games At43 and Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok, is that being pretty decent quality prepaints everyone's armies started out looking cool and in full color, and people who wanted to spend the time could go above and beyond that to make things personal.

I'm a lot like you, now. My time spent on P&M far exceeds my game time, though some of this is probably just because it's hard to get guys together for the length of time 40k takes to play.

Playing with nice terrain now, to me, is as important as playing with nice models. But.... for my first 10 years or so of 40k, all of our terrain were pieces of felt

A hill was brown felt. The hilltop was a yellow strip of felt. Trees were green felt. Building was grey felt. and so on

Wow, that feels like a long time ago, LOL.

**wuestenfux**

No big deal.
I play either fully painted or unpainted nonundercoated armies.

**AndrewGPaul**

Kriswall wrote:
AndrewGPaul wrote:
Elitism? No. I don't think anyone has said that people with unpainted armies are _better_.

I don't play against children, people who play Magic or Warmachine or people who don't speak English either, because I don't enjoy doing so. I don't claim to be _better_ than them, though.

Nobody has explicitly said that people with painted armies are better. HOWEVER...

When someone says (paraphrased from comments in this thread) "We don't allow anyone with an unpainted army to play at our table", it is generally heard by people with unpainted armies as "If your army isn't painted, you aren't good enough to play with us". The attitude comes off as very elitist even if it's not intended to be. Remember, perception is reality. Your intentions makes almost no difference if your audience is getting the wrong message. You might need to modify the way it's being delivered.

Compare...

1. "We require fully painted armies. If you don't paint your models, you can't play here. Besides, it's not rocket science. Try harder. Go watch a Youtube video or something."

2. "We embrace every aspect of this hobby and love seeing fully painted models fighting epic battles. To whit, we do require that if you want to use our tables that you bring a fully painted army. If you're not interested in painting or find it too challenging, let us know! There are plenty of simple techniques we can share or even contract painters we can point you towards. We're looking forward to seeing you join us on the battlefield."

Same message, two deliveries. One comes off as elitist, the other comes off as simply having high standards and being excited.

I don't recall saying anything that would imply statement number 1. I'm not sure why you picked up on me specifically.

As it happens, I run a wargames club. There's no restrictions about having painted minis, the right minis, anything like that. All that sort of thing is down to the players involved in each game to sort out, and I've never had any problems. Playing a game with two painted armies on proper painted terrain is my personal preference and it's a large part of the decision process about who I choose to play against. I'm not going to force it on anyone else.All I look for in an opponent is someone who's put as much effort in as I have.

Talys wrote:
darkcloak wrote:
...

And AoS becomes an official tabletop wargame with the creation of its very own dakkadakka Painted vs Unpainted thread.
...

...
The irony, of course, is that you could just plunk the thread (title and all) into any other game's discussion forum, hehehe.

That's one of the things that bugs me about forums; people putting general topics into a specific sub-forum.

**ImAGeek**

quickfuze wrote:
War Kitten wrote:
I'm perfectly fine with it. Each person hobbies in their own way. Some people might not have time to paint, others may be bad painters and they don't want to make the attempt. The player may have only recently finished assembling the models and wanted to try them out. And yes. It would have been rude to suggest the guy spend time painting instead of playing, i know it would have irritated me.

I disagree....one player plays a game, the other participates in the hobby. The hobby consists of all things; modeling, collecting, painting, converting, playing etc. If someone just wants to play a game, I heard chess comes pre-painted.

To get a force ready for playing even without painting they've already had to collect and build, so actually they still are as much in the hobby as someone who collects and paints but doesn't game, or collects, paints and games but doesn't do conversions. And what if they don't like chess? What they aren't allowed to play a game they enjoy because they don't enjoy painting?

I'm all for you saying 'I'm sorry I'm not going to play you because I'd rather play against painted armies'. That's fine, no issues. It's when you get comments like 'people shouldn't be allowed to play with unpainted models' or here; 'you should just go and play chess if you don't paint your models' that I take issue with. There's a difference between not playing people who don't paint their models because you don't enjoy it, and telling people that they're doing the hobby wrong for not painting their models. They aren't. They're doing it differently.

**timetowaste85**

I paint as I go along. My WoC army is about 1/3 painted, and almost everything is at least undercoated (except Tzeentch warriors, because I don't want them getting mistakenly put in with Slaanesh warriors, until they get finished). I'd be miffed by somebody saying I can't play because I'm not done. Even when I finally finished, I wouldn't opt to play that guy. Time is a real constraint. I work 50-60 hour work weeks at times, PLUS an hour a day of driving to and from, plus need for sleep. Then time spent with friends or family. Sometimes that leaves me an hour left of the day. And I just want to drop in front of a movie. Other times I'll build and paint my full Warshrine in a single shot. Or my Nurgle Sorc. Two hours, done. But I take my time and put a lot of effort in. I can't speed paint.

**MadMarkMagee**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I think bare plastic looks much better than a very simple scheme. If my minis end up looking like Heroscape minis or worse, then I have ruined them.

Simple schemes don't have to be bad... Just clever... If you do it cleverly you can go back later and complete the paint job. Still looks better then bare plasitc IMO. For example a paint scheme I am using to quickly get 2 panzers out (time poor myself atm) for a FOW tournament in a few days is just spray- wash- drybrush- paint tracks brown and drybrush metal. Doubt I'll have time to ad transfers, paint tools, paint road wheels, tank commander etc, etc. But I can do that later. Will still look better then unpainted and will earn me tourny points. Each to their own I guess.

Still I guess painting is a skill you need to learn a bit. My first proper/serious/educated attempt at painting (discounting when I was 7/9/12 etc) was at 15. My Ultramarine tactical squad isn't brilliant... but you get better...