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Hey everyone
Just picked up my Age of Sigmar base set and have started to paint. I'm fairly detail oriented and painted miniatures many times in the past. What do you think is a reasonable average time to build and paint the set? I want them to look as polished as possible but hey...I want to start playing as well. For those that really love painting ( like me) and are very picky....how long does it tAke you?
Thanks!

Welcome to Dakka.

It depends a lot on how fast you work. I know that’s a cop-out answer, but it’s true. Some people can bang out top shelf level work in less then an hour a mini. I generally take a week to get one done to a table-top level. Of course, that’s getting scraps of time here and there, not dedicated paint time.

I think the fastest I’ve done minis is when I batch painted a box of a dozen chaos warriors in an afternoon. Probably a more reasonable number is doing 4-5 guys a day when the desire is burning hot to get them done. If you do them assembly line fashion, you can move them along. Once you get a color done on the last guy, the first one is dry and ready for the next shade.

I think if you're putting in a bit of effort to each model, without going insane and trying to make each and every model display case quality, you're probably looking at a 2-3 hours per infantry model. If you are trying to make them display case quality, then I guess how long is a piece of string, 5 hours per model, 10 hours per model, 15 hours per model? Depends how crazy you are going to go with them.

My bare minimum for painting models I just want to get done and don't care massively how they look individually (think horde armies where you care more about the look of the whole army than each individual) it still takes me 25-60 minutes to paint an infantry model depending on how complicated it is.

My Space Hulk set I'm putting about 5-6 hours in per Terminator, maybe 2 or so hours per Stealer.

Welcome to Dakka!

This is a question that comes up a lot, and the only real answer, unhelpful as it is, is 'as long as it takes'. Some people can sit down for a couple of hours and knock out a great looking squad of 5 guys, some will spend two or three times that on a single model.

I tend to average around an hour for a basic infantry model to a good standard, more if the model is more detailed or requires techniques that take more time to get a good result (metallics are faster than Non-metallic Metal, wet blending is faster than layering/glazing but not as fast as washing, finishing a model off with weathering can take a few seconds or half an hour, depending on the methods in play, so on and so forth).

The more of a certain type of model you do, the less time it'll take as you get more familliar with the model and methods, so don't worry if it seems to take ages starting out, you might well find that your 20th Stormcast takes half the time your first few did as you're reproducing a method rather than working one out! On the other hand, a Reaver might actually take more time than a Blood Warrior, as skin and the different fabric textures aren't as easy to do quickly as the smooth, sharp armour plates.

In terms of painting an army, motivation will speed you along more than using quick and efficient methods; Being able to knock out a model in 20 minutes but not having the motivation to do it more than once a week will ultimately make the journey to a painted force longer than taking 2 hours a mini but doing half an hour or so every night. To that end, I definitely recommend getting involved in the Blog and Showcase sections here on Dakka, you're sure to get plenty of encouraging and helpful feedback that can be the difference between getting stuck in a 'can't be bothered' rut and powering through your army in short order (so you can buy more, of course! ).

Finally, I'd suggest taking a read through this thread, there's a lot of advice in there on speedy methods and general good practices when it comes to getting stuff painted quickly:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/689690.page#8635452

Good luck, I look forward to seeing some of your work!

yeah like they said, it all depends

I've spent anywhere from 4 hours to 15 for what I consider a decent table top job, to upwards of 40+ for things like hellpit abom & Screaming Bell. It just depends how much you do, what you're aiming for really, how fast your work etc. I don't work particularly fast, I just have a lot more time than most people.

Depends on how many times the wife interrupts me.

Funny, I started painting models SO my wife can interrupt me. My previous hobby was rather more involved.

To answer the question - How long is a piece of string?

I expect I could paint a 3 colour table top standard squad in about an hour, but I've never tried. Generally, it would take me 20 hours for a mini I'd guess, but that is spaced out over a month or more.

Cleaning, preparing and modelling takes a huge amount of time - then priming, airbrushing, masking, airbrushing more, painting, highlighting, sealing, oil washing. It takes exactly as long as I intend for it to take.

It depends a lot on army type to. More elite armies take longer. But armies like the guard or orks I spend less time on.

I've been working on the same space marine army since..... 3rd edition, oh, 1998 or so?. So, decades. Possibly a lifetime.

Two days... two weeks... two years... two decades...

To best answer the question, the three factors that influence the time the most in relative terms are the faction, the level to which you want to paint each model, and the size of the army. This is multiplied by the painter's skill, speed and experience with the particular scheme that's being painted, obviously. For example, if you're really good at painting Stormcast, they'll go a lot faster than if it's the first time you're trying that paint scheme.

In general terms, looking at the Age of Sigmar starter set, if you figure that a faction has about 20 models (I think it's slightly more than that? I forget), and you're looking for models about the quality of the studio art, I think a reasonable time budget for a skilled but not crazy-super-fast painter would be about an average of 15-20 hours a model. That factors in AoS models being snapfit and quite easy to prep; but also that there are some large models in the set, and quite a bit of detail to pick out.

So, if it were me... I'd set aside 300-400 hours per faction for some really nice looking output?

That might seem like a lot, but some competition-winning models take longer than that for just 1 model

On the other hand, there are also diminishing returns. You could probably spend half that time, and not be able to tell a whole lot of difference from 3 feet away.

And, oh, yeah... in the kingdom of GW land... those 20 models are only the beginning... bwhahahahaha

Thanks so much everyone. I'm amazed how much effort was put into everyone's answers. I don't feel as discouraged now knowing that it's normal to take awhile painting
I am definitely going to like it here!

 Talys wrote:
So, if it were me... I'd set aside 300-400 hours per faction for some really nice looking output?

How much free time do you spend painting?? If I figured out a starter set was going to take me 300-400 hours to paint per faction I wouldn't buy it as I know it'd take me well over a year to do and I'll get sick of it long before then

You could probably spend half that time, and not be able to tell a whole lot of difference from 3 feet away.

It depends on the model, but for me it's probably about 5 hours. If I spend more than 5 hours on an infantry model I'm not expecting to be able to see a difference from realistic viewing distances or without a magnifying glass. I don't usually spend more than that on a model, but I do have some characters that I spent 10+ hours on and the differences only stand out if I take photos and zoom in so the 1" tall model is 6" tall on my computer monitor and I can pick out the differences.

Painting for the display shelf is more time consuming (maybe 5+ hours) than painting for the table top (probably 2+ hours), but painting for photos is another level of crazy I've decided not to partake in I've had people who saw photos of my models before seeing them in real life tell me that they look so much better in the flesh. A lot of the small flaws that come out in photos simply aren't visible without a magnifying glass in real life

Part of the reason I got back in to aircraft models (aside from loving aircraft) was that I can spend lots of time on a single model and not care about getting it on the table for a game and not get bored because I'm just painting the same model over and over again. But that's a different kettle of fish, the whole process is a lot longer, with aircraft the painting of a really nice model is only a fraction of the time. Most the time comes from doing the little fiddly stuff, like it'll take me 3-5 hours to make the seatbelts, 2-3 hours to mask the canopy, 5-10 hours adding additional details to the cockpit, it might take 1 hour to paint a colour but then I'll spend 2 hours masking ready for next colour. Hell, I probably spend about 10-20 hours just going through thinking about how I'll actually do the model

Honestly, you will go quicker as you learn over time.

May be a cop out too but, I'm new so to get good results it takes me two afternoons to do a squad. Way less if I use the GW sprays to basecoat, however.

And I guess I'm okay with that. Though, I do know realistically it may be a bit daunting though looking at others churn out amazing works in fractions of the time.