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It appears the full book ($21.99) will have actual guides for a couple of characters and in addition to the same content in the free and the 4 $2.99 books (centurions, vanguard veterans, hunter/stalker, sternguard veterans.

Product link for all to view:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/how-to-paint-citadel-miniatures/id695802546?mt=11

 Pacific wrote:
Why not just post the news without the heavy dose of sarcasm?

It's like.. the whole purpose of this thread is to troll.

Yeah, I call that "pre-heating the oven". Sure, it's not actually breaking any rules, but the tone and wording is such that it encourages responses that do.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:


Does look like these guides are becoming more about achievable and less about aspirational though.

I agree. They're a good thing, amd will help a lot of people get a good looking army without too much effort (which, if you see the threads about plahying painted vs non painted armies, has to be a good thing). But it's a real shame they're not complementing this with higher-end work.

WE have the White Dwarf which shows how to paint the AOBR warboss, with several customised versions in the same issue. It's stunning. The so-called "customised" examples in this months' WD are merely marines with bits from other kits glued on. In WD in particular, there's a whole level of participation that has completely disappeared. Must be boring for some of the team there.

It's a bit of a mixed message now.

The GW business model is, apparently, to extract a large amount of cash in the smallest amount of time, before the customer discovers beer and girls. A lot of their approach could certainly be said to support this in recent years, in fact, the existence of Forge World is just about the only thing that throws any real doubt on the issue.

But, they also seem to be fanatical about "locking in" customers to the GW way, and not acknowledging the existence of the wider wargaming market outside their own footprint.

Such behaviour suggests they need a "Forge World of Painting" for those who stick around long enough, or are focused enough, to graduate to. In fact, now I've thought of it, I can't believe that something isn't already in place!

At the moment, anyone who wants to move their painting forwards will very quickly hit the limit of materials and education that GW currently provide, which will lead to them looking further afield, something GW apparently really don't want.

I've said before, if, in years to come, it emerges that there are some really divergent ideas coming from upper management that are pulling in opposite directions, I won't be surprised.

If we see a "How To Paint Citadel Miniature: Advanced Edition" in about 6 months, I'm starting litigation!

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 stubacca wrote:
What exactly are you complaining about...? That the tactical painting guide is free?

The 'how to paint space marines' is £17.99 and it's 204 pages, the Dark Vengeance one is 50 pages and £7.99, Lizardmen is £9.99 for 117 pages.

The better idea would be to have Black Templars, Salamander etc specific guides, with the successor chapters of each of those within each book (ok, salamanders was a bad choice)

I just don't see the point you're trying to make, like if GW doubled the £0.00 price it'd still be £0.00?

There is misunderstanding and then there is MISUNDERSTANDING.... He's saying it's a good thing.

Not really a misunderstanding, the dude is complaining that Games Workshop gave him something for free? He must literally the only person in the history of 40k/warhammer history to complain about a money grabbing, customer hating company, giving something away :p

 azreal13 wrote:
Does look like these guides are becoming more about achievable and less about aspirational though.

I'd have really liked these guides when I started painting. The guides they used to give were not only about acheiving the Eavy Metal look (something unacheivable by many even with a guide and practice) but were also hilariously incomplete (for example, the Goff Ork guide in 2nd edition went from 'base coated and washed' at step 3 to ' completely highlight with blended shading' at step for with a brief 'now highlight your model' instruction.

Guides that give good, acheivable results with simple layering, washing and highlighting are great for helping people not confident in their abilities get table quality armies on the table.

How in the world is "this only works on a small subset of electronic devices" not a valid complaint? I'm sure there are quite a few people with computers or android devices who would really enjoy a free basic space marine painting guide.

Can we agree that if something is offered for free and is accessible to some people, that's pretty good, but if it is accessible to more people, that would be better? How is this controversial?

 -Loki- wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Does look like these guides are becoming more about achievable and less about aspirational though.

I'd have really liked these guides when I started painting. The guides they used to give were not only about acheiving the Eavy Metal look (something unacheivable by many even with a guide and practice) but were also hilariously incomplete (for example, the Goff Ork guide in 2nd edition went from 'base coated and washed' at step 3 to ' completely highlight with blended shading' at step for with a brief 'now highlight your model' instruction.

Guides that give good, acheivable results with simple layering, washing and highlighting are great for helping people not confident in their abilities get table quality armies on the table.

Hey, I spent years confused and upset that my models didn't look like the ones in White Dwarf.

I'll be damned if I'm going to stand for today's young whippersnappers getting away without at least a minimum of 12 months trauma!!

 frozenwastes wrote:
How in the world is "this only works on a small subset of electronic devices" not a valid complaint? I'm sure there are quite a few people with computers or android devices who would really enjoy a free basic space marine painting guide.

Can we agree that if something is offered for free and is accessible to some people, that's pretty good, but if it is accessible to more people, that would be better? How is this controversial?

Apple provide a free book editing software. Design, play around with it, and upload and that's it, it'll work on every iPad with iBooks installed, I'm guessing android, with all the different hardware combinations is a lot harder to do that for? It makes sense that the iTunes version is out first, since it's the quickest to output

It's certainly reasonable that development constraints cause it to appear on the iPad rather than other formats. That makes a lot of sense.

But how much development costs would there be to take the text of an old painting article, update it to the new paint line and put it on the website? Or contact a youtube painter that does good work and comission a video where the youtuber paints a new space marine miniature with GW's paints and brushes. It also has the added advantage of being social media marketing.

Why pay all that money when there are plenty of free tutorials online?

You'd be surprised at the the number of people who can't or won't look up those tutorials but will pay for them when iTunes or Amazon or whatever puts them in a web store.

Not to mention those who really are extraordinarily interfaced with the "GW Hobby" and wouldn't think or know to look elsewhere.

Sorry lower caste non ipad owner so will have to wait for an PDF version.

 Pacific wrote:
Why not just post the news without the heavy dose of sarcasm?

It's like.. the whole purpose of this thread is to troll.

This is a post about a new item, that's cool and free, complete with photos.

IF I added a dose of humour about the fact that some people would complain anyway, well, perhaps that's been borne out by events. A;ways better to laugh at these things than get stressed about them. Also, I posted thinking there simply must have been a news post already and I'd missed it, I can't believe it isn't a bigger deal that GW have essentially fixed a complaint that's been voiced on here for yonks.

I did assume everyone's familiar with this style of painting guide, if anyone isn't, let me know, and i'll try and post a couple of better pics.

 azreal13 wrote:

Such behaviour suggests they need a "Forge World of Painting" for those who stick around long enough, or are focused enough, to graduate to. In fact, now I've thought of it, I can't believe that something isn't already in place!

At the moment, anyone who wants to move their painting forwards will very quickly hit the limit of materials and education that GW currently provide, which will lead to them looking further afield, something GW apparently really don't want.

I've said before, if, in years to come, it emerges that there are some really divergent ideas coming from upper management that are pulling in opposite directions, I won't be surprised.

If we see a "How To Paint Citadel Miniature: Advanced Edition" in about 6 months, I'm starting litigation!

Forgeworld have already published two master class books and have a small range of weathering powders (I think they are rebadged MiG but I'm not 100% sure): http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Modelling-Supplies what else would you like to see them do?

winterdyne wrote:
Hyperbolic ridicule aside, I found it unfathomable why they'd do nice, (soooo smoooooth) crisp paintwork, beautiful edge highlights and bork it up by simply not doing the decals with a coat of gloss under them. Could it be (whisper it) because they don't trust their own varnish?

I don't believe I've ever heard of using a coat of gloss under a decal before.

winterdyne wrote:
It's a terrible painting guide though. Works alright as a colour guide, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about technique at all. And the decal work is atrocious.

GW's decal work is always terrible because there's no GW brand decal softener for them to flog. Their "painting guides" are nothing of the sort.

 AduroT wrote:
I don't believe I've ever heard of using a coat of gloss under a decal before.

Well, that's what happens when you stay inside the Games Workshop bubble. There's a big, wonderful world of scale modeling out there, many of whose paintjobs make the "Eavy Metal" style look like the careless scribbles of nincompoops.

Here's a photo dump, followed by a user review by Curtis.



















Curtis: Overall, I think the book is really good, if you're a space marine player it shows you everything you need to know, how to do a good job of things like purity seals. The way they do the plasma guns looks amazing. It has a good breakdown of all the chapters in great detail, including
White scars, iron hands, imperial fists, blakck templars, salamanders, raven guard, . It is more of a beginners guide, but some of the painting is really nice. IT shows you how to get good results for eyes, guns, backpacks, how to get lovely highlights. And there's no advertising or BS, it just tells you what paints you need, what brushes you need and that's it.

The results are much nicer than most of the armies I play against. I'm not a great fan of space marines but I think they've done a great job.

If I played against armies that looked like this, from people who'd done all those steps, you would feel far more immersed. Most of the time Games Workshop might be money-grabbing, like those Apolcapyse Formations with absolutely no discount, but giving away a free book is good, of course it is! Who doesn't want free stuff?

 AduroT wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
Hyperbolic ridicule aside, I found it unfathomable why they'd do nice, (soooo smoooooth) crisp paintwork, beautiful edge highlights and bork it up by simply not doing the decals with a coat of gloss under them. Could it be (whisper it) because they don't trust their own varnish?

I don't believe I've ever heard of using a coat of gloss under a decal before.

Then you really haven't looked up any decent tutorials, or indeed thought about it terms of what causes poor results and what assists good ('painted on look') results. There's a reason military and aircraft modellers do it and my guide http://www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/winterdyne_tutorial3.pdf is basically a repeat and consolidation of many similar tutorials that I myself learned from. My guide covers the majority of pitfalls and misconceptions pretty well I think.

There are other ways to get the decal lying flat rather than using decal solvents (HOT water works pretty well I'm told) but in general they're not quite so easy as following the process.

With the specific problems shown in the painting guide as an example, using ONLY GW products (as this is a caveat for all the 'guides' they produce) a better result could have been achieved by first putting down a layer of 'ard coat, then decalling with warm water, slitting the decal where it crumples at the edge (sharp, new hobby blade), and applying another fairly thick layer of 'ard coat over the top before matting down with Lahmian medium, or if particularly ballsy a coat of Purity Seal.

I personally wouldn't recommend Purity Seal ever, had far too much trouble with it.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
It's a terrible painting guide though. Works alright as a colour guide, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about technique at all. And the decal work is atrocious.

GW's decal work is always terrible because there's no GW brand decal softener for them to flog. Their "painting guides" are nothing of the sort.

 AduroT wrote:
I don't believe I've ever heard of using a coat of gloss under a decal before.

Well, that's what happens when you stay inside the Games Workshop bubble. There's a big, wonderful world of scale modeling out there, many of whose paintjobs make the "Eavy Metal" style look like the careless scribbles of nincompoops.

They do have something for decals, I think it's the Lahmian Medium, which is awful

I buy a few of these for colour guides, that's it, 'cause I'm still relatively new into painting or for The Hobbit, I wanted the models to look like they do in the film/tabletop. They're not that great as painting guides, the colour names are sometimes wrong, the swatch by the side of it, sometimes wrong. I think I saw Moot Green with a black circle next to it. They don't tell you how to make your own washes, which they've used on quite a few, like the Necron guide, and the stage by stage models, don't look anything like the finished model. The Tau one was bad for that.

They're good if you're using them in conjunction with youtube, or if you can paint to an ok standard but don't know what colours are used to get a certain look. To be honest, at £18 you can quite easily leave this behind because there are an absolute ton of Marine guides out there

That's no way a 'painting guide' it's a promotional colour guide!

winterdyne wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
Hyperbolic ridicule aside, I found it unfathomable why they'd do nice, (soooo smoooooth) crisp paintwork, beautiful edge highlights and bork it up by simply not doing the decals with a coat of gloss under them. Could it be (whisper it) because they don't trust their own varnish?

I don't believe I've ever heard of using a coat of gloss under a decal before.

Then you really haven't looked up any decent tutorials, or indeed thought about it terms of what causes poor results and what assists good ('painted on look') results. There's a reason military and aircraft modellers do it and my guide http://www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/winterdyne_tutorial3.pdf is basically a repeat and consolidation of many similar tutorials that I myself learned from. My guide covers the majority of pitfalls and misconceptions pretty well I think.

There are other ways to get the decal lying flat rather than using decal solvents (HOT water works pretty well I'm told) but in general they're not quite so easy as following the process.

With the specific problems shown in the painting guide as an example, using ONLY GW products (as this is a caveat for all the 'guides' they produce) a better result could have been achieved by first putting down a layer of 'ard coat, then decalling with warm water, slitting the decal where it crumples at the edge (sharp, new hobby blade), and applying another fairly thick layer of 'ard coat over the top before matting down with Lahmian medium, or if particularly ballsy a coat of Purity Seal.

I personally wouldn't recommend Purity Seal ever, had far too much trouble with it.

Nice guide - handy stuff in there. You don't often see much on using decals

As someone who has only really started to paint his models over the past few months (before then I loathed it and spent more time converting models), I personally have found these painting guides to be far more useful than video guides. Some of the YouTube videos I've seen don't really help much. I've also downloaded the painting Tactical Marines freebie guide (Even though I play DA, there's parts of it that are still relevant to painting marines) and found them to be quite helpful.

Also, for those complaining about iBooks. I'm surprised people haven't just taken screen shots on the iPad copy and made a decent PDF out of it...

It's not bad, just sloppy QA as always. There's a couple of stages where they've put the pictures the wrong way round. If I can notice that on a 5 min flick through why can't they?

Downside to DV I think was the Deathwing tutorial- as far as I can tell, the Basecoat stage appears to have Zandri Dust swatch next to it, but is labeled as Ushabti Bone?

Looky Likey wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

Such behaviour suggests they need a "Forge World of Painting" for those who stick around long enough, or are focused enough, to graduate to. In fact, now I've thought of it, I can't believe that something isn't already in place!

At the moment, anyone who wants to move their painting forwards will very quickly hit the limit of materials and education that GW currently provide, which will lead to them looking further afield, something GW apparently really don't want.

I've said before, if, in years to come, it emerges that there are some really divergent ideas coming from upper management that are pulling in opposite directions, I won't be surprised.

If we see a "How To Paint Citadel Miniature: Advanced Edition" in about 6 months, I'm starting litigation!

Forgeworld have already published two master class books and have a small range of weathering powders (I think they are rebadged MiG but I'm not 100% sure): http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Modelling-Supplies what else would you like to see them do?

Modelling Masterclass is very focused on vehicles and dioramas.

What I would possibly look to do, if I were GW, as there's nothing I personally need from them as I have a broader view, but from the perspective of their "one stop shop" philosophy they seem to pursue.

- a range of additives (matte medium, flow improver, drying retarders etc)
- a branded airbrush, perhaps airbrush and compressor combo
- a range of inks, as well as washes
- decal softener and setting solution
- a small range of oil paints and thinner for oil washes
- a regular range of premium brushes, rather than just the occasional promotional one in a gift set
- all tied together with a "How To Paint Citadel Miniatures: Advanced Techniques" guide, covering things like blending, osl, colour theory, NMM, use of the various additives etc, perhaps some crossover with Model Masterclass in terms of weathering technique etc, basically anything not covered by the existing guide, or going into greater depth of those techniques that are. All more focused on single minis, monsters etc, to avoid treading on MM's toes.

 zedmeister wrote:


Nice guide - handy stuff in there. You don't often see much on using decals

You do , it's just mostly in the plastic model kit world, the great johnsons Klear disaster of 2008 when they changed the formula was a site to behold across the forums of the modelling community.

Gloss helps decals sit better and prevents (to an extent- which is why you also need micro sol and set or equivalent) silvering, which is air bubbles trapped beneath the film, the stuff you see on nearly every single GW promotional picture.

I still use Klear to this day, the floor polish, its only a couple of quid, doesnt smell bad, is easy to put through an airbrush and does the job well. Alclad liquid gloss is a good alternative, if costly, if people dont like the idea of floor sealant on their models.

Just noticed, it looks like the free offer is for one month. Better grab it now, while stocks last, etc etc.

 azreal13 wrote:

Modelling Masterclass is very focused on vehicles and dioramas.

What I would possibly look to do, if I were GW, as there's nothing I personally need from them as I have a broader view, but from the perspective of their "one stop shop" philosophy they seem to pursue.

- a range of additives (matte medium, flow improver, drying retarders etc)
- a branded airbrush, perhaps airbrush and compressor combo
- a range of inks, as well as washes
- decal softener and setting solution
- a small range of oil paints and thinner for oil washes
- a regular range of premium brushes, rather than just the occasional promotional one in a gift set
- all tied together with a "How To Paint Citadel Miniatures: Advanced Techniques" guide, covering things like blending, osl, colour theory, NMM, use of the various additives etc, perhaps some crossover with Model Masterclass in terms of weathering technique etc, basically anything not covered by the existing guide, or going into greater depth of those techniques that are. All more focused on single minis, monsters etc, to avoid treading on MM's toes.

They already did their own airbrush, it was complete rubbish. They'd have to buy one in and re-badge it as they lack the skilled people to make their own from scratch. Most of the cheap Chinese clones that they could re-badge are knock offs of other companies models, I would hope with the stance GW take on IP/Copyright for their own products they wouldn't do that. GW have seemingly moved on selling other peoples products that they haven't re-badged so I can't see them selling an iwata branded as iwata.

The other stuff I agree with, although it belongs at Forgeworld as it conflicts too much with the core paint set causing confusion with new painters. Most of it will be re-badged products so it'd make sense to make it low volume and mail order to reduce the amount of on hand stock needed.

I have both the master class books and I agree they could do one focusing on the infantry they sell as they have a ton of them now. I noticed that the new Sons of Horus Contemptor is painted with some NMM so hopefully that will be in volume 3. GW do seem more open to sharing advanced painted tech as I just got an email from Warhammer World advertising a workshop covering MM and NMM painting...

Looky Likey wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

Modelling Masterclass is very focused on vehicles and dioramas.

What I would possibly look to do, if I were GW, as there's nothing I personally need from them as I have a broader view, but from the perspective of their "one stop shop" philosophy they seem to pursue.

- a range of additives (matte medium, flow improver, drying retarders etc)
- a branded airbrush, perhaps airbrush and compressor combo
- a range of inks, as well as washes
- decal softener and setting solution
- a small range of oil paints and thinner for oil washes
- a regular range of premium brushes, rather than just the occasional promotional one in a gift set
- all tied together with a "How To Paint Citadel Miniatures: Advanced Techniques" guide, covering things like blending, osl, colour theory, NMM, use of the various additives etc, perhaps some crossover with Model Masterclass in terms of weathering technique etc, basically anything not covered by the existing guide, or going into greater depth of those techniques that are. All more focused on single minis, monsters etc, to avoid treading on MM's toes.

They already did their own airbrush, it was complete rubbish. They'd have to buy one in and re-badge it as they lack the skilled people to make their own from scratch. Most of the cheap Chinese clones that they could re-badge are knock offs of other companies models, I would hope with the stance GW take on IP/Copyright for their own products they wouldn't do that. GW have seemingly moved on selling other peoples products that they haven't re-badged so I can't see them selling an iwata branded as iwata.

No, but they could easily rebadge an Iwata or Badger, there would be no need to get a cheap Chinese one, the largest miniatures company in the world could easily persuade one of the big airbrush makers to licence, or even manufacture them their own spec model.

The other stuff I agree with, although it belongs at Forgeworld as it conflicts too much with the core paint set causing confusion with new painters. Most of it will be re-badged products so it'd make sense to make it low volume and mail order to reduce the amount of on hand stock needed.

I have both the master class books and I agree they could do one focusing on the infantry they sell as they have a ton of them now. I noticed that the new Sons of Horus Contemptor is painted with some NMM so hopefully that will be in volume 3. GW do seem more open to sharing advanced painted tech as I just got an email from Warhammer World advertising a workshop covering MM and NMM painting...

That was my original point, while not necessarily lumping it under the Forge World umbrella (they've already sort of established Eavy Metal as a retail brand as well as the studio with the edge paints, brush sets and what have you) but a more boutique brand, separate from Citadel, for people to graduate to as their skills and interest grow, without leaving the GW family (or, more importantly, giving other people their money)

Perhaps the aforementioned edge paints and brush sets are the beginnings of something like this, as now I've thought of it, it really does seem to be an obvious gap for GW to fill.