WARHAMMER HOBBY: Batch Painting and Basing
Today lets talk about tips and tricks to get that giant pile of silver and grey on your painting table onto the field of battle doubletime!
I’ve been collecting just about anything Chaos related since I first started with Warhammer so getting some of the new Daemon models was nearly obligatory for me, especially some of the great new plastic kits. These kits allow for easy assembly and customization and usually come with a good variety of extra bits for us conversion enthusiasts. Recently I was visiting a friend’s independent game store, FTW Games in the Richmond, VA area and also discovered some of the terrific scenic bases by Micro Arts Studio among the other cool merchandise there. Micro Arts makes a bunch of great looking bases with all sorts of thematic scenery on them, but for Khorne Daemons basic skulls and lots of ’em are what the Lord Of Skulls demands. I quickly purchased some boxes of Games Workshop Bloodletters and a bunch of 25mm square Skull Bases by Micro Arts Studio. Since I play both 40K and WFB I tend to put all my daemons on square bases to make them easy to use with both game systems, at least the ones that use the same size bases for both games. The result in this case is shown above.
Getting armies on the tabletop is always a challenge, especially when you have lots of model ranges in which you enjoy dabbling as I do. Therefore these Bloodletters are quite deliberately done with quick paint jobs designed to get the models on the tabletop and to get me onto painting the next batch of models with alacrity, but I’m relatively pleased with the overall effect in spite of short painting time. The paint scheme is inspired by the one on the box cover of GW’s LotR Balrog model. One wonderful thing I discovered when this unit was finished that I hadn’t thought about beforehand was the effect that the Skull Bases have together when the unit is ranked up. When all the skull bases are tightly ranked together it gives the impression that the unit is marching on a large field of skulls! It really made spending a little extra time and money on the custom bases worthwhile, which is a good thing since I have another unit of twenty models just like it still to paint.
Now earlier I mentioned putting my daemons on square bases and using them in both Warhammer game systems when the base size is the same for both, but there is one cool Daemon Hero model that conspicuously sits on a 25mm base for WFB and a 40mm base for 40K, the infamous Skulltaker. Since base size is crucial in Fantasy Battle for determining how many models can fight I didn’t want to move him up even one base size as I occasionally do for awkward sized or top heavy hero models in 40K. My solution here was to make a removable round base for his square base to sit upon. The 25mm square base is circumscribed nicely by the 40mm round base as seen below.
So my new Daemon army is well on its way now though there’s still plenty left to do. Keeping the color scheme simple and easy for all the large units should allow me to put a little extra time into the characters for the army and have a decently painted army on the tabletop with speed. Batch painting large numbers at once also saves time and improves productivity. For those struggling with getting their armies done at a faster pace, here are a few basic tips that have always worked well for me:
1) Spray base coats when possible. Spray paint, airbrush, whatever tool gets you along to step 2 as quickly as possible is a good tool.
2) If you’re going to shade and or highlight the base color, then do so before moving onto any secondary colors. That way you can do so with speed without worrying about messing up your secondary colors. Washing and dry brushing are the quickest ways to shade and highlight where appropriate, and they often are for batch painting units at speed.
3) Spend a little extra time on key details and it will make it appear that you’ve done more to the models than you really have. Nicely painted faces and other details that viewers focus in on tend to make models appear to be painted to a higher standard even when less prominent parts of the model have little shading or highlighting to save time.
4) Be neat. Simple base colors done neatly look better than all the shading, highlighting or blending in the world if the model is not neat and “cleanly” painted. Avoid blobs, streaks, and the like.
5) Paint as many models at a time as you can handle comfortably. This will allow you to change colors less often and save even more time per model.
6) Keep basing relatively simple, but choose colors for it that accent your army. If the models are painted in bright colors have contrasting relatively dark bases. If the models are somewhat dark then use brighter colors for the basing.
Above all, keep painting!
I’ve painted more models than ever in a single year this year. I’m already at about 325 models painted for myself for the year, models of many different types. This includes Chaos Marines, Chaos Warriors, Daemons, Eldar, Space Marines, Imperial Guard and scenery pieces. It also includes models of nearly every size, all the way from foot soldiers to Land Raiders and more. The models I painted for others this year like the Drop Pods I painted for Games Day and the scenery pieces I painted for a local store aren’t even included in that count. Yet somehow the pile of what I have left to do seems to remain around the same size as when I started painting this year. But that’s a part of the hobby I’ve come to expect and even enjoy. There’s always another project to do when one is finished. As one fellow hobbyist I know likes to say, “you wouldn’t want to be caught up.”
