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I love chaos and want a nice big CSM/cultist army. But looking at the new models being released, as beautiful as they are, I can’t help think ‘OMG, that’s gonna take me ages to paint.

I get that there is a lot of power armour and space skeletons which can be painted easily but if you don’t want to play SM or Necrons then that doesn’t really help.

GW does the whole 3 colours or battle ready vs parade ready but I don’t see how anything less than parade is needed for some of the new models due to the amount of detail in the minis.

Yes, absolutely.

Modern GW miniatures are extremely detailed and are definitely much harder to paint than older stuff. Some models (see Necromunda ones) are even much harder to assemble compared to every infantry GW model that was previously released.

Orks vehicles have always been super easy and fast to paint, but take a look at the buggies. For some painters (me, for starters) it's even flat out impossible to paint them properly once they're assembled, most people prefer to paint them unassembled. Which is something I've personally always hated.

For someone it might be a good thing, for other it isn't. To me it depends on the model, although I generally prefer the 2000-2014 GW range over this modern massively detailed sculpts.

To directly answer your question, no. 'painting' could mean anything from 3 basecoat colours and a wash, up to hundreds of hours golden demon entry. It's ambiguous as to what you mean.

The models are getting more detailed for sure, which is great for me as a display painter, but I still don't think that means you can still make models look good for the table top. Plenty of small details can be skipped or simply drybrushed to expedite the painting process.

Personally I can't see any arguments which support more details being a bad thing!

As someone who tends to build subassemblies and paint those in detailed models I was positively surprised about the new Gaunt's Ghosts. The parts were really well thought through for this kind of approach. I could put every dude as far together that I had two seperate parts per soldier were I could easily reach every surface and detail. And the places they are glued together afterwards are mainly "hidden".

So for me that showed more details while remaining good to paint is possible, if the designer really puts his mind on it.

The thing with Chaos is that its models are finally getting the amount of detail they were always meant to have, that hasn't been there since the Rogue Trader metals and that has only been shown in artwork in the meantime. It's a faction trait and if GW wants to commit to that look in any meaningful way, they have to accept that it impacts how the models are painted.

With that said, I imagine if you want to be speedy and still get a good bit of detail out of your shiny new Chaos models, Contrast with drybrushed highlights may prove to be an acceptable compromise between speed and quality. Contrast is pretty good for models that have dense surface detail.

In general, no, I don't think GW models are getting too hard to paint. Styles differ between factions. You'll still have a wide variety spanning flat, empty surface all the way to Chaos hedgehogs. If you limit yourself to a specific faction then yes, you may well see change for the worse (to you, anyway). But it's not a general GW phenomenon.

Would not call them harder to paint.

For those who just do primer, a basecoat, a wash and drybrushing, it makes no difference. For those who put more work into their models, there are more opportunities to let their skills shine.

For me, the downside is simpler paint schemes look less interesting on more detailed models. Played against a Thousand Sons army last week, every model looked like a heap of blue with gold trim. Tabards were the same color as the armor, lenses had a small green dot, the bolters were painted in gunmetal, but all of the small details were ignored.

This was an example of a lack of attention to details coming at the expense of overall visual interest. I wondered if that paint job would have looked better on simpler models.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Personally I can't see any arguments which support more details being a bad thing!

I'll have a crack at it!

I think lots of details are worse for people who paint to a middling standard.

You have the people who are happy drybrushing over the details or skipping details and whatnot.

Then you have people who paint to a display standard and are painting a lot of detail even if the detail doesn't exist on the model.

But you have all the people in the middle, they're not painting display quality but they also don't want a bunch of skipped details on the model. For those people, keeping the models relatively simple is better. These are the people who want a decent looking *army*, not a decent looking *model*, but a whole army that looks okay, which precludes them from spending several hours on each model but also precludes them from skipping a bunch of details.

To me, this has always been a problem with Orks, they're a model of which you need many to make an army, but they're inherently require a bit of effort just to pick out the details to a moderate standard. On the other hand, your basic Night Goblin is really good in that regard, they're easy to paint in batches of 10 or 20 spending a few minutes on each model just picking out the spear, the shield, the flesh, then hitting them with a few highlights to produce a decent looking model.




I'll also argue from the artistic perspective that many of GW's models these days are just unnecessarily detailed. More detail does not make a better looking model, if a model has tons of detail there's nothing that specifically draws the eye. I think a model needs a couple of features that draw the eye, maybe a pose, maybe some flowy fabric, maybe a strategically placed skull, maybe some filigree or embellishments on their armour, maybe some detail on the base, maybe a nice hat, maybe some cool gun attachments.... but only a couple of those features, not all of them at once. Not unless the excessive detail is in itself a detail (maybe like some religious figure covered in excessive detail).

Some of my favourite miniatures are the ones that have minimal detail, but the detail is done well, the model is well posed and the sculpting is solid.

Gw doesn’t make army men models anymore, they try to make renaissance sculptures that you huddle 5-10 of in a group. They’re less focused on how the kits can interact with the hobbyist and let them do their thing and impose their vision on the modeler.

Way too many details on stuff nowadays, as a trade off for wargear and poses too, which is sad.

Detail is great, but being overly busy is a thing too.

I love highly detailed kits, I find them easier to paint. I find large areas of flat model to be harder to look good, but lots of details is great for shades and contrast paint.

I've painted 20x and have 50x more of the plastic Krieg to paint and wow... They take ages. I actually think them being plastic makes them take longer to paint than the resin ones as you can't get away with washes doing loads of work and dry brushing, as they detail is so compact together you have to go in with detail brushes for the straps and other parts. The only real way to make them easier is to paint in sub assemblies, but that is not all that time efficient either.

I love the models, and I enjoy painting them, but they will be a labour of love by the time I have got through all of them.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Gw doesn’t make army men models anymore, they try to make renaissance sculptures that you huddle 5-10 of in a group. They’re less focused on how the kits can interact with the hobbyist and let them do their thing and impose their vision on the modeler.

Way too many details on stuff nowadays, as a trade off for wargear and poses too, which is sad.

That's a good assessment, I think GW models are great for, say, a blood bowl team, or a Kill Team, or something like that. It's no longer that appealing to actually paint an army.

Honestly I sort of fell in love with the plague marine models that came out and when I finally decided to paint up an army, I chose to do them.

It is taking me forever to paint them up though, for a combination of reasons.