Musings of a Green Man

I have a lot of terrain. Tables after tables worth, however dense. This is before adding in stuff from work.  I'm currently in the middle of reorganising my domestic terrain range (the tedium of sick leave is setting in), and so I'm shuffling around 26 years' worth of old stuff.  Looking at this older stuff the painting is ... juvenile ... on most of them, even pieces from a few years ago. Some of the stuff i churned out earlier this year has a minimum level of paint, just enough to get by as painted terrain. Beside this, the trenches that are painted for promo shots looks incongruously well painted.  I'm reorganising primarily to fit in a table's worth of urban terrain that ive been building and painting over the past year, all of which are built around cheap kits and bits box raids. During the course of building and painting them, I've painted a lot of terrain for show. That difference in detail and standard has carried over to the new kits: where before I...

I've seen a fair few posts on various platforms decrying the move by Games Workshop, for events that they sponsor and organise, from the old staple of a "three colour minimum" to a "tabletop standard" for the minimum level of painting required for the forces used. "Tabletop standard" is an ambiguous phrase, since, on a lot of tabletops the standard is the grey plastic horde. That aside, my tabletop standard is very different from someone else's, since i love adding the details, heraldry, etc., by hand which many players add with decals or leave off altogether. That, however, is not what this post is about. Struggling to find sleep this morning i came to a realisation: the more models a force requires, the more complicated it's paint scheme tends to be. Let's take GW's 40k for an example, since they are in the trigger. Space Marines, Necrons and Knights are all relatively expensive per-model in terms of points, 16-200 or so minimum, ...

I have, sitting, primed and awaiting paint for over a year now, a bunch of Primaris Space Marines. Once I finish my current painting batches (WWII Heer, autumn 1943, Operation Barbarossa, and squat self propelled guns), i need a change of pace, and the simple heraldry of marines seems a welcome change. The problem is that I'm far from sure how my Chapter, The Holy, Secular Brotherhood of the order of the Nephilim (there's a joke in there for Latin scholars, and another for occultists), or The Nephilim, are a Dark Angels successor, and the way that these outsiders will be integrated into the Byzantine anachronism of the First Legion's organisational structures, and the mysteries that they all hold dear has largely been glossed over. The Unforgiven have ancient secrets that are kept from the general Imperium, some of which are even kept from certain parts of the Chapters, because you can't be too careful. I can't imagine my recalcitrant Order, who still use vast numb...

I enjoy painting miniatures. I spend more time painting them than I do with them on the table while gaming. As such, to me the three colour minimum is a hard minimum. I get obsessed with adding the little details to models, whether the layers in slashed sleeves for C14-17 European or the little collar patches and trims on C20 models. This is true whether I'm painting infantry, cavalry, vehicles or even terrain. It's something that, by now, i don't feel comfortable cutting corners on. That being said, I'm currently painting squat vehicles, which are, thus, covered in freehand detail. It's taking a lot of time. I'm not saying that I'm bored, just that I'm aware I've a significant backlog awaiting paint and i could probably rattle off a 1000 points of something where three colour minimum can work, like space marines or necrons, in the time it takes to do all the details I'm adding to a single vehicle. Now, don't misconstrue what I'm sayin...

Looking around on-line, one thread seems to keep surfacing: that, whether tools, glue, paint, or whatever else, you should always buy the best product you can afford. The implication being that the more expensive, the better or something like that. It's got me looking at my tools, glues, paints, etc., and looking at old articles from decades ago (some in publications that predate my entry into the hobby by a number of years). What I've found in those articles is that the current advice, to buy the best, is in direct contradiction to a lot of the advice from 30-40 years ago. There are articles saying that you should buy cheap tools, because, with any significant use, the tools will soon be broken and need replaced. Of course, back then, most terrain packs for gaming were cardboard cut outs. Back in those days, companies wanted you to spend as much of your hobby budget as possible on miniatures and products they produced. These days, the same can be said, but most companies hav...