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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Was going to make a poll, but I ended up scrapping it.

So far for me I have painted:
Death watch (Worst)
Skeleton horde (easiest)
Daemons (best looking)
Grey knights (worst looking, hardest, lots of bits and bobs to snap off by accident, too intricate)
Custodes (best looking sculpts, least expensive to paint, largest models, hardest to get to perfect, difficult characters)
Imperial Guard (most expensive to paint, most labor intensive, over 200 models)

For me I'd say I enjoyed the Custodes the most, but their characters were hard to paint, and my bad skills left my Trajaan looking like Trashjaan. I want to start painting a Drukari, or I might go in AoS?

What was your favorite army to paint and why?

Guard. I derive great satisfaction from having proper tactical identification marks on all my vehicles, and guard both has a lot of vehicles [Katherine <3 tanks] so there's enough on the board to see how all the marking symbols are read, and are sufficiently realistically themed that well, I can focus in historical marking conventions and have all my tanks look good instead of some bright colored garish thing.

I'm not overly fond of painting, I just want my toys to play with.

Given that, I've had the most fun painting Tyranids. Tau second, and marine vehicles third, the last just because I like tanks and such.

I think Death Guard are the most fun I’ve ever had painting in 40K. The details, the textures and then the joy of adding the grime and slime.

I'm a bit surprised to see Death Guard mentioned here as I think it's one of the hardest armies to paint, there are just so many details, tentacles, metal parts, guns, pustules, maggots, wounds, spikes, cables, horns, skulls, slime, tabards, chains - and that on every single marine. You're basically painting an army of only character models - which looks great in the end but it's a lot of work. I'm painting 20 lotr orks or 10 40K orks in the same time I need for one Plague Marine. I'm still surprised GW decided to put that army in a starter box.

I suppose this depends on what you mean by fun.

Black Legion is my main army, I've enjoyed getting the gold to look right and the black highlights on the armor. Over the years, I've adopted numerous approaches to black and settled on a technique that's consistent and looks good.

Death Guard has been fun to paint. Endless conversion options, multiple color schemes, can go as deep into the details as you want on each model.

I enjoyed painting Grey Knights for other reasons. Was able to get my army assembled and painted in under a month, then go back to do heraldry and force weapons separately. It's probably my best painted army.

Chaos Knights was the most "fun." I put a lot of work into the bases, using pink foam to create a ruined cityscape. After magnetizing all the weapons, I had to use resin to recreate some hard to find bits for holding them. I put more technical work into the construction / paint job of those models than anything else in my collection.

Around 2008, I painted 3k worth of Orks for a friend who was suffering from a medical condition that made it impossible for him to paint. Getting into that mindset, working up all the checkerboards and irregular uniforms, could be called fun. Doing heavy weathering all over the vehicles and putting metal scratches all over new paint jobs was definitely fun.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seer thing, Troup master, Ygrain, the Troop choice, an elite jester thing, and the bikes, right?

Skip yvraine. Shadowseer, Death Jester, Bikes, Troupe, Starweaver is all you NEED need, Solitaire is fun as well. Only bad unit in the codex ATM is Voidweaver (which is a multibuild with the starweaver kit).

The Troupe Master comes in the Troupe box.

Painted Dark Angels and Imperial Guard from 1996 to the present. I painted Orks from 1996 until about 2011 and Tyranids from 2008 to 2010. Painting Orks in 1996 was not fun. We used white undercoat and wore onions on our belts, which was the style at the time. Painting black over white undercoat - shudder.

My painting was in a bit of a rut. I had done lots of FOW 15mm from 2006 until 2016. My Russians look awful, especially as I painted them before realizing I needed reading glasses...My 8th edition Dark Angels were fine, but again I was in a rut.

Then I cleansed my palette. I picked up a 1st Ed Age of Sigmar starter box and painted the contents over Christmas holidays, following Duncan step by step on Youtube and using a wet palette as advised by Tabletop Minions. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot about some fundamentals that I had ignored. The Dracoth cavalry are some of my favourite models both to paint and look at on my shelf.

I painted my Indomitus Necrons over my summer vacation (stuck at home). I followed Guy from Miniwargaming's videos on sandstone Necrons and spent a relaxing two weeks painting them and relearning the fundamentals of base, wash and dry-brushing. I took them to a local tourney and received many unsolicited positive comments (unusual for my painting). Perhaps my favourite army paint thus far in a forty-year hobby journey! Thanks Youtube, and all those great hobby content creators!

the_scotsman wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seer thing, Troup master, Ygrain, the Troop choice, an elite jester thing, and the bikes, right?

Skip yvraine. Shadowseer, Death Jester, Bikes, Troupe, Starweaver is all you NEED need, Solitaire is fun as well. Only bad unit in the codex ATM is Voidweaver (which is a multibuild with the starweaver kit).

The Troupe Master comes in the Troupe box.

I watched Duncan(?)s video on painting jesters and the troop models with contrast, and they look almost better than the base/layered version, not as stark, but I think the neon look goes great with their motif! Definitely looking at them for the next box to paint. Definitely won't get discouraged after the first screw up and toss them in the bin of shame with my half painted DW kill team. That could never happen. Nope.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seer thing, Troup master, Ygrain, the Troop choice, an elite jester thing, and the bikes, right?

Skip yvraine. Shadowseer, Death Jester, Bikes, Troupe, Starweaver is all you NEED need, Solitaire is fun as well. Only bad unit in the codex ATM is Voidweaver (which is a multibuild with the starweaver kit).

The Troupe Master comes in the Troupe box.

I watched Duncan(?)s video on painting jesters and the troop models with contrast, and they look almost better than the base/layered version, not as stark, but I think the neon look goes great with their motif! Definitely looking at them for the next box to paint. Definitely won't get discouraged after the first screw up and toss them in the bin of shame with my half painted DW kill team. That could never happen. Nope.

I got a lot more willing to experiment and play around with my paint schemes after buying an ultrasonic cleaner. being able to just pop a model into the cleaner and strip it in a few minutes really allows me more freedom.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'm a bit surprised to see Death Guard mentioned here as I think it's one of the hardest armies to paint, there are just so many details, tentacles, metal parts, guns, pustules, maggots, wounds, spikes, cables, horns, skulls, slime, tabards, chains - and that on every single marine. You're basically painting an army of only character models - which looks great in the end but it's a lot of work. I'm painting 20 lotr orks or 10 40K orks in the same time I need for one Plague Marine. I'm still surprised GW decided to put that army in a starter box.

A plague marine doesn't have any more or less detail than an ork boy or nob though, except that you don't have to paint bare arms, pants or boots in different colors. A MAN takes a lot more effort to paint than a blightlord when you paint both to the same standard. Most people skip a lot of detail on ork infantry though, but you can do the same on DG models.

For me personally, it's ork characters > death guard infantry and characters > ork vehicles > death guard vehicles > ork infantry > ork bikes (feth those).
Death Guard also has the huge bonus of just being a lot less models, the main issue I have with their vehicles is painting large areas of bronze and white while making unwise choices which colors to use for my paint scheme. If I had gone with the regular death guard green/hashnut copper scheme you see in the store, I would probably have cut the effort to paint them in half.

I really didn't like painting nids until contrast came out, then it became really fun. Slap down a coat of greyseer, douse the skin in basilicanum grey, drench the carapace in blood angels red, then hit the teeth/claws/guns with skeleton horde. I painted 100 gaunts in a day once. I'll never paint a gaunt again but it was so quick

SoB

 jeff white wrote:
SoB

Huh, I thought you didn't like Age of Sigmar. But I get it. Those Sons of Behemat models do look really cool.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
SoB

Huh, I thought you didn't like Age of Sigmar. But I get it. Those Sons of Behemat models do look really cool.

Ao$ has some nice models but I don’t collect them.
I meant Sisters of Battle.
I should have been specific.

IMO anything with the ability to paint it how you want, adding more or less details, etc.. to give you the most room for an artistic license, also anything that has a large quality of small, mid and big models, finally something that you can pose, add basing, etc... so basically Nids, harlequins, and Space marines.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'm a bit surprised to see Death Guard mentioned here as I think it's one of the hardest armies to paint, there are just so many details, tentacles, metal parts, guns, pustules, maggots, wounds, spikes, cables, horns, skulls, slime, tabards, chains - and that on every single marine. You're basically painting an army of only character models - which looks great in the end but it's a lot of work. I'm painting 20 lotr orks or 10 40K orks in the same time I need for one Plague Marine. I'm still surprised GW decided to put that army in a starter box.

some people like that though, something that makes every model unique can break up the tediousness of it. it's why I mentioned space wolves TBH, they're semi uniform so you can batch paint easily but at the same time the army lends itself well to minor customization on every mini, if you so choose to give you something to mix things up.

I’ve painted up a couple armies with my DA the Deathwing or bone white is kind of a nightmare 3-5 paints including wash. The black armor army is probably the easiest if you wanna go fast I.e. ravenwing, or raven guard style just prime black than abandon black then nulin oil wash to create the depth and dry brush black or grey if you want a bit of pop. But my Greenwing dark angels are the funnest to paint usually get a squad done in about 2-3 days if I’m not being lazy.

I really enjoy painting the death guard models. They just ooze character and have so much disgusting detail.

Of the armies I've had:

Tyranids: I'll never understand why people say that painting Nids is easy. To me, it was the hardest, and I sold my collection because I could never get them right. I think people say this because they just slap on washes or contrast paint. While that makes them look decent, to me you need a Leviathan like theme really to make them pop. However, whenever I tried to put washes in recesses it just looked terrible, and I couldn't blend them well with the skin. And I could not for the life of me get anything convincing with the caparace stripes. I must have painted and pliunged them in the isopropyl three times for 4000pts worth until I got frustrated and gave up!

CSM: The old models were easy to paint, but not overly interesting. I started with these, so that was likely a boon. The new models, however, strike a great balance between ease and detail. I really enjoyed painting the new CSM sculpts.

DG: My absolute favourite. I've never found them difficult, but rather hugely characterful, and just so rewarding to paint. I don't think painting DG requires a huge amoung of skill per se, as they're still quite hefty models with big details. No hugely steady hand is needed then, like Harlequins. There's just lots of little bits to paint differently. So much fun that they're now the only models I have! Sold off my old painted army just so I could paint them all again, but better this time! I have always shunned the GW colour scheme, with all that green looking terrible to my eye. I went with a straight Seraphim Sepia watch to start, but now go 1:1 with medium. Perfect, effective, and quick way to do a Pallid Hand scheme.

Thousand Sons: I went with the Hermetic Blade colour scheme, opting for a 1:4 baharroth blue to medium for a sublte, but bright glow, and then a trim of sparkling stormhost silver. Really made them look magical! The characters were great to paint, although the Rubric Marines were a bit dull, being at the tail-end of GW's old sculpting philosophy. The only bit I hated were those little stripe collections; just could never get those looking as good as I should.

Khorne Daemons: The easiest daemons to paint, me opting for just a red wash and then some details. No stress painting these by the boat-load, and they look great! I think my Bloodthirster may be my (at least equal) best painted model, so I kept him when I sold the rest off.

Slaanesh Daemons: Went with a 1:4 Druchii Violet to medium wash to give them a nice, subtle skin colour. Really fun to paint, although, weirdly, I preferred painting the littler models.

Nurgle Daemons: Although I had more of these than all the rest of my daemons put together, I really didn't enjoy painting them. I went with a straight Camoshade wash with details filled in. Again, I painted these early, and thought they looked great. As my skills grew I became increasingly disatisfied with them. I have every plan to paint a new collection, but I will take my time with them next time, doing the skin properly. Kept my Great Unclean One, which I did paint properly, right at the end of collecting them, and I think he's likely the best thing I've ever painted. Just needs a new base.

Chaos Knights: Easy as anything to paint, but although I had a fine time doing so, it's nothing to write home about. No great memories painting these like at least some models for every other army.


So, in the end: Death Guard are absolutely my jam!

 TonyH122 wrote:
Tyranids: I'll never understand why people say that painting Nids is easy. To me, it was the hardest, and I sold my collection because I could never get them right.

Personally, I find Tyranids lend themselves to washes, drybrushing, and other 'messy' techniques due to their organic nature. Plus the carapaces provide a large canvas for patterning and detailing. I worked out a scheme that is mostly washes and patterning, not using the typical streaked chitin look on the carapace, and I find it's an easy, zen-like experience to apply.

So I'd say they're the army I've enjoyed painting most, in that it's the least effort for the best results, without the stress or tedium of lots of edge highlighting.

 TonyH122 wrote:
Of the armies I've had:

Tyranids: I'll never understand why people say that painting Nids is easy. To me, it was the hardest, and I sold my collection because I could never get them right. I think people say this because they just slap on washes or contrast paint. While that makes them look decent, to me you need a Leviathan like theme really to make them pop. However, whenever I tried to put washes in recesses it just looked terrible, and I couldn't blend them well with the skin. And I could not for the life of me get anything convincing with the caparace stripes. I must have painted and pliunged them in the isopropyl three times for 4000pts worth until I got frustrated and gave up!

Really? B.c you can paint them in a couple minutes. Just b.c you want a well above table top quality miniature doesn't mean its not easy for everyone that wants table top quality. Thats like saying "I don't understand people using a metallic paint when I rather paint NMM to make it pop more".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

 TonyH122 wrote:
Tyranids: I'll never understand why people say that painting Nids is easy. To me, it was the hardest, and I sold my collection because I could never get them right.

Personally, I find Tyranids lend themselves to washes, drybrushing, and other 'messy' techniques due to their organic nature. Plus the carapaces provide a large canvas for patterning and detailing. I worked out a scheme that is mostly washes and patterning, not using the typical streaked chitin look on the carapace, and I find it's an easy, zen-like experience to apply.

So I'd say they're the army I've enjoyed painting most, in that it's the least effort for the best results, without the stress or tedium of lots of edge highlighting.

Agree, honestly the more hard lines/highlights the worst it looks to me. Mix and blend the colors, if its messy oh well its looks great.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 TonyH122 wrote:
Of the armies I've had:

Tyranids: I'll never understand why people say that painting Nids is easy. To me, it was the hardest, and I sold my collection because I could never get them right. I think people say this because they just slap on washes or contrast paint. While that makes them look decent, to me you need a Leviathan like theme really to make them pop. However, whenever I tried to put washes in recesses it just looked terrible, and I couldn't blend them well with the skin. And I could not for the life of me get anything convincing with the caparace stripes. I must have painted and pliunged them in the isopropyl three times for 4000pts worth until I got frustrated and gave up!

Really? B.c you can paint them in a couple minutes. Just b.c you want a well above table top quality miniature doesn't mean its not easy for everyone that wants table top quality. Thats like saying "I don't understand people using a metallic paint when I rather paint NMM to make it pop more".

I get where TonyH122 is coming from. I also get where you are coming from. It can take only a couple minutes to paint up nids, and they'll look a LOT better than most any other model only given that amount of time. However, when I was painting my Tyranid kill team to try and match the same quality as pretty much everything else I painted, it felt like to me it took extra work. And I still don't think they look as good (I think they look bad) as a number of other things I had already painted. I can edit in photos if you want, or you can view my signature line.

I think it comes down to a painter's general style. I think I do well with space marines and metallic heavy armor with my clean painting style. That style doesn't transfer over to organic bits nearly as well since I don't make use of washes except largely for shadowing/detail and use very little dry brushing. However, I could just as easily see another painter that uses inks, washes or even contrast paints heavily along with a number of dry brushing techniques finding something like nids a joy to paint.

I have painted just at least one about every faction's plastic Troops choice at this point. For me, I think it is probably a toss-up between Genestealers/gants/guants and regular Guardsmen as to my least favorite to paint. And the Guardsmen is almost entirely due to be old, heroic scaled models which just don't match up with GW's more modern human proportions. Where is the nids just don't work well with how paint miniatures. I am certain in both cases my paint scheme (both pretty dark) had at least something to do with it.

I'm not sure if I have an army that has been more fun than another, however I do find some more satisfying. I've spent hours on guardsmen only for them to look ok, and then flown through the painting of something in plate armour (marine, stormcast etc) and yet they look much better. Despite those who mock it, I think a basecoat, black wash and some edge highlighting does look good.
The most difficult for me are those with lots of flowing robes, Nighhaunt for example I just can't get to a stage I'm happy with

Gotta be my Tyranids, fantastic to paint and contrast has led to some amazing carapace colours!

My only problem with painting another horde army is the timesuck. I painted a 2k guard army, and that was bad, like I had to apologize to the wife for missing the birth of our child because I was almost done with the last russ, bad. (JK, she missed the first birth).

But in all honesty, I don't want to get mired into another Witcher 3 of painting tasks; 80+ hours to complete. I'd rather paint something that I can put on my shelf at work to show off. (Right now it's a Skelly horde from AOS and a Adult Red Dragon). I don't want to play with this army, just display it, I guess. But I also don't want to spend 40+ hours alone in my basement shaping/basing models.

How are Skitarri for painting? They look like lots of little bits, but easy paint schemes.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My only problem with painting another horde army is the timesuck. I painted a 2k guard army, and that was bad, like I had to apologize to the wife for missing the birth of our child because I was almost done with the last russ, bad. (JK, she missed the first birth).

But in all honesty, I don't want to get mired into another Witcher 3 of painting tasks; 80+ hours to complete. I'd rather paint something that I can put on my shelf at work to show off. (Right now it's a Skelly horde from AOS and a Adult Red Dragon). I don't want to play with this army, just display it, I guess. But I also don't want to spend 40+ hours alone in my basement shaping/basing models.

How are Skitarri for painting? They look like lots of little bits, but easy paint schemes.

skitarii are pretty painful by virtue of being cheap in pts, meaning you need to basically paint a horde but with lots of details.

I got frustrated by admech after a while because while they're highly detailed, it's all just basic metallics for the most part, or just "Extraneous Tubeage" While they're definitely cool models, it's a bit like painting chaos space marine stuff: After a while it just feels like you're layering on greeble and not adding much to the overall model.

I think Dark Eldar hit the mark a lot better for me with the mixture of pleasing segmented armor with enough little greebly details to be cool and interesting without being a slog. On the greeble continuum I rate Admech and Spiky Lad Chaos Marines as too much, Space Marines, Eldar and Guard as not enough.

My Space Marines look the best, but they are the least fun to paint.

My Nids are the most fun to paint. More colors, quicker tecniques, more model variety.

the_scotsman wrote:
I got frustrated by admech after a while because while they're highly detailed, it's all just basic metallics for the most part, or just "Extraneous Tubeage" While they're definitely cool models, it's a bit like painting chaos space marine stuff: After a while it just feels like you're layering on greeble and not adding much to the overall model.

I think Dark Eldar hit the mark a lot better for me with the mixture of pleasing segmented armor with enough little greebly details to be cool and interesting without being a slog. On the greeble continuum I rate Admech and Spiky Lad Chaos Marines as too much, Space Marines, Eldar and Guard as not enough.

I love the AdMech aesthetic, but due to the amount of details on the basic Skitarii, I'll likely not get anymore than what I have for my Kill Team.

the_scotsman wrote:
I got frustrated by admech after a while because while they're highly detailed, it's all just basic metallics for the most part, or just "Extraneous Tubeage" While they're definitely cool models, it's a bit like painting chaos space marine stuff: After a while it just feels like you're layering on greeble and not adding much to the overall model.

For the most part, I think the newer chaos stuff is a bit better about that. I'm in the middle of chaos marines from the start collecting and a basic box, and it isn't as bad as I remembered. Admittedly the IW color scheme hides a lot of sins, but so far it hasn't been too bad. Though hammer-lord from Blackstone does have egregious tubes.

I do feel that way about death guard, however. There's always one more tentacle or bit of dribble.

--
I've definitely avoided AdMech because of the overdesigned basic troops, however.