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“Three Colours Minimum” – The Importance Of Painting
September 19, 2017 by crew
"Three colours minimum"
As an old-time "40ker", we had this phrase drummed into our core.
Throughout tournaments in earlier editions of Warhammer 40k, we had to have a base coat and some effort at detail as the minimum. The skill level was irrelevant and basing standards could be extremely varied, but ultimately there was a minimum standard which was at least met and often exceeded.
For a variety of reasons, many of which I will explore in this article, I feel that the requirements have been stretched and, more often than not, ignored for a number of years.
"Oh AJ. When did you become such a grumpy old git? Are you really going to wax lyrical about the good old days when Space Marines were Space Marines and Roboute Guilliman was still dead?"
Some people have accused me of being a painting snob, and honestly, maybe I am.
I have always refused to use miniatures in my games that are unpainted, but, I don’t expect the same of my opponent.
That being said, I would rather play against a painted army. I find myself wondering if I am in fact in the minority.
The Hobby Element
40k, and by extension all Games Workshop games, have long been considered a hobby. The hobby element has been considered primarily as the residence of the casual gamer. But what about the dedicated tournament gamer… do they HAVE to paint?
Why have Warhammer tournaments relaxed this requirement over the years? Here’s what I think…
The Roolz
40k has seen a rapid increase in the speed of releases.
There are new rules almost weekly if we count FAQs & Errata, and this has forced tournaments to reduce the amount of time before the tournament for lists to be submitted. Ultimately this has put pressure on events to relax painting requirements as gamers wish to tailor their lists.
Money Talks
Attendance at 40k events had been falling.
Naturally, when this happens the perceived barriers to entry are reduced in order to boost numbers. Is someone who has neither the time nor inclination to paint, going to go to an event that has strict painting rules? Perhaps not.
Should they though? In my mind yes, but then as I have said I am an old blowhard, sailing against a tide of instant gratification.
GW Removed Themselves From Events
It has been spoken about at length. GW went away from tournaments.
They hid in their mountain halls and shut out the presence of organised play. This meant that there was nobody governing the quality of miniatures placed on the gaming table in any more an official capacity than the Tournament Organiser (TO).
With the decline in numbers, they were not about to shut out any player and the money that came with them.
Why We Need A "Fix"
The main reason I believe this needs to be ‘fixed’, is simply for the general well-being of the hobby.
The whole hobby is designed to allow the hobbyist to build, paint, personalise and create a force, which they use to fight miniature battles against others who have gone through the same experience.
Someone who has built their army, and lovingly crafted the units, devoting the utmost time and effort that they can afford, deserves to fight against an army that has received the same treatment.
Should gamers be ostracised for failing to paint their army? Some hardliners would say, “If you don’t want to paint, play x wing!”. I don’t think so.
It’s everyone’s right to join in, gamer or painter, casual hobbyist or tournament champion.
A large part of me, however, feels that if you choose to go to a tournament, you should have to show commitment to the hobby. This should not only be through your gaming experience but also your painting and modelling too!
This part of me does get larger and more vocal when I am tabled by a grey hoard made up of the latest spam hotness, I must admit.
So What’s The Answer?
How do we get back to the heady days of sleepless nights before tournaments, feverishly dry brushing our way to absolution from the TO’s wrath?
I think the best solution is through a slow process of reminding all gamers of why painted armies provide both players with a better experience.
Supporting our Hobby scene locally, providing incentives at events to have a painted army and generally maintain a standard on a personal level.
There are so many hobby tools and paint ranges designed to make painting quicker and provide a great table top finish without the need for the skills of James Wappel or Dave Taylor, that there are fewer excuses for not having a fully painted army.
On Beasts of War alone, there are copious amounts of painting tutorials, never mind on the wider web.
Not everyone's cup of tea...but it is painted. Max Soft score!
Soft scoring and providing ways for hobbyists to gain points towards the tournament standings also brings the hobbyist into a system where their talents can be measured on an equal footing.
This has caused much contention in my own local scene, with players claiming that I am elitist and that I only want this because I am a painter, the word painter being spat at me like ugly venom that had encroached their palette.
I do not believe that simply wanting to encourage both sides of our hobby equally is in anyway elitist, but merely inclusive of all aspects of the system.
An Image of Warhammer TV Duncan’s First mini... better than mine, but both are better than bare plastic!
So do you have a solution to this problem? Do you consider it a problem? Am I being a hobby snob, forgetting that real people have real jobs and real lives that take up their time?
Or do you wish to see a return of a minimum requirement for tournaments? Does the sight of a grey mass lining up against you turn your heart to stone?
Answers on a postcard! (or comment below, your choice)
Written by commissaraj
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Yes, you’re a snob 😉 lol.
In all seriousness, painted armies are preferrable, but an expectation that armies should be painted goes much too far IMO. How would you feel if I said you were disrespecting the tournament if you hadn’t poured hours into testing and refining your list? That turning up with a nicely painted army you hadn’t practised with was disrespecting your opponent? That you should just stay home painting your miniatures if you weren’t prepared to put the hard hours into playing the game at a tournament level? Not that I’m suggesting you specifically don’t do that, but for plenty of people a tournament is an excuse to get some games in and show off their nicely painted army, and that’s fine. It’s equally fine for someone who likes to play but not paint and who invests their time into doing that to turn up and play. We each make our hobby our own.
I believe in rewarding all facets of the hobby, so whenever I run a tournament I always reward based on placings, but I give out prizes for painting too. I don’t cross those streams as give tournament points for painting, but recognise them for what they are, which is two separate and co-existing aspects of the hobby, which different people enjoy to different degrees.
It is the most visible aspect of your commitment to the hobby.
However I doubt that @AJ meant that the painting should come at a cost of the other aspects of the tournament scene of this hobby.
But given the limited time people have it is inevitable that sacrifices are made.
And paint is most likely the first victim, especially as complexity of the army building and the rules set itself grow.
I thought the most visible aspect of my commitment where the mountains of unbuilt miniatures threatening to collapse the supports in my floor and ceilings 😉
Surely they’re acting as a support for a ceiling? At least that’s what I tell my wife
What about :
“One day they’ll be worth a lot of money and we’ll be rich … ”
(yeah, I don’t buy it either … but we can dream, right ?)
Interesting point about the complexity of the miniatures. I hadn’t considered that.
Actually with regards to the list, I think that regardless of time invested in making it, it is important when you go to the tournament that you do know what your army does and that you fully understand the rules. Others have spoke about this as respect for your opponent, and there are many elements of the game we must consider when attending a tournament.
It is always advisable to have at least tested the list once before entering a tournament. My difficulty with not crossing the streams as you have said is that the rewards rarely match up. I’m not sure what you have done in your tournament, but I have regularly attended toirnaments where first prize is more miniatues or money for the tournament games and painting gets a certificate and a pat on the back.
I agree with you on the usefulness of tournaments to get some games in though. Have always found that after a day or two of gaming in a tournament setting i have learnt a lot about my army, but also met new friends and eternal table top enemies!
I know it would dramatically increase SKU count but part of me wonders if GW couldn’t promote this by offering common troops in multiple colors of plastic or their stereotypical color (Waagh! green for orks for example) so that even rookie painters could pick out a few details, throw on a wash and have decent looking painted miniatures.
a lot of their most recent releases in the boxed entry games are just that. Pre-coloured plastics so you can tell orc from sigmarine or ork from…well still sigmarines ;P
The other option is to buy a spray in a colour you need, if you want to push it more get a can of shade from army painter and a large drybrush to finish. Done
I would probably be equally unhappy playing against a horde of green plastic as grey, probably more so as the unpainted coloured plastics can look incredibly garish, especially the reds and the blues
It’s interesting but the way it’s written, arrrghhh!!! Come on, you can do better than this.
cuneiform, rhyming couplets, should the entire article be in calligraphy or expressed through the medium of modern interpretive dance?
I’m curious as to the issues with the way it’s written and what you would like to see to make it better.
Criticism is always better when it is constructive 😉
To be entirely honest, I’m a bit surprised AJ didn’t start the article like this:
There once was a man from Macragge
Who’s pauldrons were starting to sag
It did not embarass
his lines of Primaris
and he still has no hobby god bag.
If you’d like to submit an idea and then write an article @inhumanbookworm you are more than welcome to drop me an email.
Please bear in mind that articles and topics can be personal and will not always match every person’s particular tastes. As @avernos has said, if you have a criticism it would be nice to see it be constructive.
Az
It is chaotic. You use three one sentence paragraphs to write something that could be written in a longer one without forcing reader to stop. The same later, one sentence paragraph followed by a longer one makes an impression of something written on your knee five minutes before submitting it for publication like you didn’t have time to actually think about what you want to write and tie everything nicely in one well rounded argument. I am also a bit confused, it looks like your opinion is that everyone is welcome even with unpainted army yet they should show commitment and paint it, there should be rules on painting but if someone doesn’t want to you can’t say go play X-wing? Really hard to follow both your thoughts and writing style.
I am sorry, i tend to write the way I think, and yes that may be slightly chaotic. 🙂
To clarify: I do not want to dissuade gamers from playing, even if they are not painters, but I do want to create a system that would encourage them to paint. It’s interesting to hear thoughts and opinions of others with this article. It has long been a contentious issue in the 40k community.
Also- I never write on my knee, it is far too flabby. 🙂
A little chaotic maybe, but an interesting at thought provoking read just the same.
At least primed was the rule for my local GW back in the rogue trader days and it put playing a game there out of my reach. I only returned to the hobby properly with the re-release of Space Hulk in 2009 which is the game that started it for me first time around.
It’s an opinion piece by someone putting down their thoughts on a subject. It’s not particularly hard to follow and gets the message across. It’s not this year’s nomination for a Booker Prize and if that’s the level of grammatical accuracy you expect you’re going to be very disappointed by the Internet. I don’t think anyone struggled to understand what AJ was saying did they?
And if you want to get picky about grammar and punctuation, @inhumanbookworm, why did you use three exclamation marks? That isn’t the correct useage at all. One exclamation mark denotes an exclamation, three denotes a lack of understanding of what an exclamation mark is.
I gotta agree with @avernos and @thisisazrael . I’ve written “a few” articles for BOW and writing for web is a different beast than for a print magazine, novel, or other media. Short, punchy, bullet-point paragraphs are required because of the webframe format, etc.
Actually I thought this was a great article. 😀 And extra points for attaching captions to the images! 😀
does that meen only people with a high level of English are aloud to have their say?
I must say I really struggle with this as I want everyone to be able to enjoy their hobby in their own way, however, I also firmly believe in minimum requirements for tournament play as being a good thing. For example card sleeves for card game tournaments.
It’s hard to compare 40k to anything else though as even with so many options to paint now, it’s still a huge time investment to paint an army. The last thing I’d want is someone who loves a game, enjoys playing it but does not want to paint their army, actually end up not going to an event because of this. The more the merrier in my opinion and whatever the reason is for not painting such as confidence, funds, will, experience or any number of reasons shouldn’t stop them.
It’s definitely nice to play with painted miniatures though and I do believe that the models are designed to be painted, though maybe this is a shifting opinion and something that really lies in the hands of the player.
Rewarding players for painting, non-final standings impacting challenges and other things definitely sits well with me. I don’t think I’d like to give a painted army any sort of standings benefit over an unpainted one.
Thank you for raising this topic AJ, I remain largely on the fence for now lol
Az
it’s one of those things, that comes down to aesthetics. A vast majority of wargames don’t use “true” line of sight (that’s a whole other can of worms that I’m not going near) So there is no reason not to use empty bases. So what separates the wargamer from a board game is the aesthetic of the armies and miniatures you’re using. Admittedly we are seeing that line blur more and more.
So once you decide that miniatures are the way to go then you have the other topic of paint versus gaming. Being and old tournament player who rarely finishes a force before leaping towards another project, it was always a necessary evil for me to at least get some paint on them. Being part of a group like the Northern Wasters at least meant that we could have painting nights and help each other out. I remember converting horsemen for a WFB tourney for Shaun while he painted some block troops for me.
The soft scores helped to force me to bring something painted, having a separate painting competition, while probably more sensible, would justify me not bothering on the grounds there are players who would do amazing work and that single army would travel the scene mopping up those prizes, so why bother. I’d much rather play a different army at every tournament than force myself to go to that other level, because I have the attention span of a squirrel.
Like many things in the hobby this has been a bone of contention for a long time, and I have no problem with playing with unpainted minis, I can see the appeal of showcasing the system and product for many companies, and of course they look fantastic to play against.
One tourney many years ago awarded a single reroll per game for a fully painted army, as a reward for taking the time, and rather than penalising players who don’t have the required work done, a small but significant buff like that encouraged people to make the effort.
I’m completely with you on the subject of Aesthetics. Regardless of the game being played or the setting it is being played in, there is a pleasure, in and of itself, of simply seeing two well painted miniature armies facing off against each other over a well constructed table of scenery. I realise not everyone will feel the same but it’s definitely a big part of it for a lot of people.
(1) this applies to all games, not just 40k
The low model count games (like Infinity) the amount of work needed to get an army to ‘tournament standard’ is an advantage.
(otoh .. that is balanced by the *beeping* models that aren’t as easy to assemble as the average GW plastic models … )
(2) tournaments are a marketing tool for the game and its associated community.
Painted armies are a more visible aspect of this, because it is what people are most likely to see first.
This is a double edged sword.
If the average tournament army is painted at a high standard then it may intimidate potential new players.
(3) it’s not limited to tournaments … any public event / demo is an opportunity to attract new blood to the game.
It’s all down to how good you are at planning & preparing yourself and your army.
For me, I don’t put my minis on the table if they’re not fully painted – my personal preference and motivation for me to paint stuff.
Whilst I’m not a fan of playing against the grey plastic hordes, I’ve never turned a game down because of it, but a fully painted army provides a spectacle on the tabletop
As @limburger says, public events are big draw for new sales. I was lucky enough to be asked by FW to play a 30k demo game at the FW Open Day last month, and I spent most of it chatting to people about my army (@aj86 – it was my Iron Warriors you were admiring and asking painting tips on 🙂 )
I’ve always said “if you only want to game, buy a computer”… they do marvellous wargames these days and you don’t even have to roll dice. And if there’s a sore looser, just mute your sound system.
I’m in it for the minis (surprise, surprise… lol) and I say this : the game is a huge part of our hobby, and not to be disparaged… however, it is no longer the specificity of our hobby, as it has been in the past before wargames found other media to thrive on.
The only thing that is purely specific to this hobby (and of course the whole historical miniature community) is the modeling and painting. Which we actually call “the hobby”, as opposed to “the game”.
Painting miniatures is by no means for everyone, and it can be done for a variety of purposes… from shelf indians to role-playing games to re-painting X-wings to tank models to boardgames to, yes, wargames and skirmish games.
If you don’t like painting miniatures, I have no problem with that. I’m not going to disparage you or to “cast you out” (as if I could). However, I would ask the question : if you don’t like painting miniatures, why do you engage in an activity that has painting miniature as its sole specific feature compared to similar activities on other supports (boardgames, video games, etc.) ?
It’s worth thinking about.
Right there with you.
The thing I am interested in is then how to make the painting aspect something players want to do.
Going back to something @redben said about tournaments, and if you don’t have a good list/don’t play well enough, is the player not treating the tournament with enough respect? On the flip side of that, look how damned easy it is for a player with enough money to buy all the things for a netlist, pay for the painting, and then turn up and go through the motions of playing the game. Is that “respecting” the game. Is that respecting the hobby that your opponents have committed to.
This is all leads me back to why I prefer playing in more local, casual gaming groups where you foster both good play, narrative play, cool terrain, good painting. If the game is something that a passerby can ask “What’s going on?” and your response is “Well this is a game of X, where two forces ….. ” then to me that is cool.
I feel narration is the way to do this. Engaging players in a story, a campaign, characters you create… You couldn’t possibly field grey tokens, then.
@elromanozo
I am 100% with you on that one but to play devil’s advocate
Some people feel they lack the talent and love literally everything else about the game, and they feel that playing the game is the purest form of the game. I think the problem is it isn’t encouraged enough, I am trying to do my part on that end.
We don’t often agree but I’m right with @elromanoza If all you want is the simulation of the Battle, Total War can give you a much better experience than any wargame. But there’s something a bit special about playing on a tabletop with well painted miniatures that a digital product simply isn’t ever going to be able to recreate. I also think that the.more the world become ls digitised the more important hobbies like tabletop wargames and boardgames and miniature painting are going to become. It’s nice to be reminded that there is life beyond monitors and TV screens.
Sorry misspelled the name. Should have been @elromanozo
Why pick a game where painting is an aspect ?
Because there is something incredibly satisfying about pushing miniatures around that computer games can’t match.
The only problem is that there rarely is a middle ground between the extremes.
The technology is evolving to the point that it is starting to become possible for companies to offer pre-painted models as an option.
There is an audience out there that would happily play something like 40k if they didn’t have to do the ‘hobby’ stuff to make it work.
X-wing kind of proved that point to a certain degree.
And when you see people painting the pre-painted ships it is also obvious that there a way to find a hobby element in a game even if it is ready to play.
Wanting to play with painted armies is stopping me playing. That can’t be a good thing. I haven’t painted up “enough” minis (strictly to my mind) to play Blood and Plunder with a new local opponent I have found on Facebook. They have already said that they are not fussed if I turn up with bare plastic for my first game or 2, but I kind of feel I need to make the effort because he is laying on the table and terrain.
I know that the sellers of these games have sold them expecting us to paint them, but the more astute amongst them will realise that we keep buying models whether we paint and play or just play. I’m not sure they really care, so why should we so heinously?
I love painting and I love terrain making, so not playing isn’t really killing the hobby for me, but I do want to play.
I played my first ever game of 40k with a half painted and primed Nurgle Dark Imperium basic army and had an awesome time. My opponent dipped into a carry case and pulled out a fully painted Ultramarine army and think it made my first game a better experience than it might have been with unpainted minis.
All that said, I think we need to stop and think before we marginalise anyone from the hobby through painting snobbery.
Tabletop Wargaming as a hobby is way way too small to reduce the player pool in anyway. A favourite YouTuber of mine celebrated 60k subscribers the other day. My son saw me watching it and scoffed at me. I asked him why and he said “Muslek has over 2 million subscribers”. Apparently Muslek does YouTube content to on a couple of computer games and has a growing horde of fans. Our hobby is growing, but I don’t think I can afford to be too picky or awkward with anyone if want to play regularly. Computer gamers are rude and cheat all the time but in the anonymity of a million strong multi-player universe online there will always be more players to play no matter how “toxic” they are.
What is the point of the development of dozens of skirmish and gateway games to encourage players into the fold if we collectively slam the door in their faces if they’re unwilling to paint or uninitiated in the ways of the brush.
@avernos I like your example of the extra bonus in gameplay for a fully painted army.
I feel we should encourage people to paint for no other reason than it just looks nicer. I think that once new players see the improved look of a game with painted minis as opposed to without, I don’t know many people that wouldn’t prefer the former once they’ve seen the difference a few times.
A lack of painting might make it look like there’s a lack of care or respect for a game and hobby you hold dear, but I think we can accept people into the hobby that devote less time to painting than we do. If we don’t make room for these players this industry won’t sustain itself and after recent company closures I don’t think anyone wants to return to a 1 company industry without the diversity of games we enjoy now.
You could always steer them towards X-Wing if you really can’t stand playing unpainted minis. 🙂
I’ve done a couple videos about this lately, and have found that people have very different ideas about this kind of thing.
I’m a hobby hero and now, at this point in my life, will own play with painted minis. I’d prefer if yours were painted, too. If you’re working towards getting them done but you’re still working on it, then I can understand. However, if you’ve built them and have no plans to paint them (or even get a commission painter to do them) then I honestly probably won’t play with you after the first time. I find that the immersion of the experience and the enjoyment of the look of the battle is far more important to me than the tactics and strategy. However, there are people out there that certainly feel differently.
I think maybe one of the problems is gamers lose heart very quickly if they can’t match the paint jobs you see on Miniatures webpages and in places like Golden Demon etc. It’s nice to see Romain and the bloke from PP showing techniques and some videos showing the use of airbrushes etc but not everyone can afford an airbrush and some people for whatever reason don’t have the time to use and practice all these techniques.on their figures
So maybe what we a thread showing off all the cheats people know of so that people can paint a single 28mm figure to a decent standard in 20-30 minutes and thus getting painted figures on the table
I am in favour of tourneys having rules or encouraging people to come with painted armies/teams. It is a big pain in the rear for a lot of people but i personally do get a lot of enjoyment out of playing toy soldier games in full colour.
i mainly play Imperial Assault at the moment which comes unpainted and is technically a boardgame. The board is extremely well detailed with all sorts of cool interesting quirks on it and i always find it a shame to play with bland grey models with a solid base.
the question is then, how do you get people to turn up with painted lists? an easy way would be to give promo items away for them, we’re all collectors after all and will do anything for something only slightly different lol
@atomsmasher I liked your video asking people to consider how many hobbies they can handle and whether this is a hobby that can really cope amongst a sea of other hobbies. It is time consuming.
I guess it depends how many people are in your gaming group and at what stage they are at in their journey into the hobby. A large group with lots of newer players can probably tolerate more games with unpainted minis, whereas a smaller group playing with immaculate painted armies will feel that the new comer with no inclination to paint their minis isn’t as welcome.
I am an even bigger (and probably older) snob than you: I remember when tournaments actually rewarded all aspects of the hobby, since your final score was composed not only by the battle score, but you had points for painting, for characterful composition, for sportsmanship and even for a quiz testing the background knowledge. Once these were taken away, tournaments have simply become the realm of powerplayers and I stopped going to any tournament altogether.
And still see no reason to get anywhere near one. Tournaments, as they are currently, are the tomb of the hobby proper
@warcolours – I am with you, and I think these sorts of rules are back in the GW hosted tournaments up at Warhammer World. To the point where some of the powerplayers I know have been complaining that too much emphasis are on those aspects of the hobby. I do intend to try one of the GW doubles 40K tournaments out at some point over the next year, and it will be with a 100% painted army.
Interesting one, thank you @aj86 for raising this topic. While I think we can all agree that painted armies look better it is a fact that different people have different priorities. I am fortunate enough to have enough time to paint miniatures, but if I was looking after kids or studying or working extra hours then that would not be available to me. I’m not going to judge someone poorly for prioritising family commitments or similar ahead of hobby time.
The counterpoint to that (and I must admit this is something I have never personally seen) is if someone is showing up with an army full of ‘naked’ minis I would personally have a lot of trouble readily identifying what my opponent was fielding from across the table. Similar to when proxy miniatures are used this may end up causing confusion (well for me at least…).
The ‘three colour rule’ strikes me as interesting one too. I have heard of armies at tourneys where it was genuinely a case of black primer, zenith spray with chapter colour and drybrush metal on the boltguns. Ticked the ‘three colour’ boxes to allow tournament entry but it does sound like gaming the system – matching the letter of the law without really adhering to the spirit of what it was trying to achieve. So reintroducing a 3 colour minimum I don’t think would necessarily resolve the issue, especially if it encourages people to mistreat perfectly good minis in such a manner.
Earlier this year I used the army painter method on three older WHFB Chaos armies that I had. It took me around 30 hours to get three small Chaos armies (125 minis in total plus a chariot in 3 different paint schemes) done to a solid tabletop standard. So I know it can be done. I’d estimate if I was doing a 50 model Space Marine army with a similar method and a uniform scheme I could knock it over in 15 hours or so. 10 if I wanted to cut corners. Perhaps if we see fellow hobbyists at a tournament with armies which they haven’t had capacity to paint we could view it as an opportunity to discuss with them the methods available for getting an army painted up, and get them excited about colour schemes and techniques, coming up with a theme and background for their army etc.
I don’t game with naked minis, personal choice. I’m happy for my opponents to, but with my eyesight at least a basecoat would really help me out. I obviously prefer to game against painted armies and believe that painting is an important part of the hobby. I would suggest that the way to get more painted armies at tourneys would be through positive reinforcement and encouragement, rather than risk alienating community members. And if people are now fronting up regularly with fully unpainted armies then I think we should all be trying to help them out before the pendulum swings too far in that direction.
Just my .02 🙂
I have never played in tournaments, but I have found that deadlines really focus your hobby. I wanted to get involved in Operation Firestorm but had no minis or terrain ready. I managed to get about 3 reports in and felt great because I had got a reasonable amount of hobby completed in a short time.
Tournaments should keep a painting standard because I think once you are looking to play competitively you are probably invested enough in time and money to consider it to be your main hobby. If you enjoy the game that much you should probably consider painting or investing in painted armies to enjoy every aspect of the game to its fullest.
As an aside as I don’t paint 28mm that often and don’t paint any of the newer fantasy and sci-fi models that gave appeared over the last 10 years. But are people painting less because their being put off with all the extra detail that seem to be now being added to figures
I have been to a few tournaments (4) and while I like a separate painting awards at them I don’t think it has a place on getting you on the podium (fyi all my armies are pretty much 100% painted apart from drop fleet).
I also play in a small group of friends and I am the only one who has painted armies. I always have a good table laid out and a painted army myself but face against a grey mass. It is infuriating when everything looks awesome for them but I need to look at grey.
I have even often offered to paint entire armies for free to a good standard and have been turned down as it will effect the resell value. Rules change so often and armies change also, so I can understand not wishing to decrease the resell value by painting them. (though in all my ebay sales I have usually added value).
Again going back to tournaments then a pay to win strategy comes into it if you get these painted for you. Where someone who loves to paint spent 100+ hours painting their army to a bad standard.
I have had to let this go mostly but as you can see I am still a bit bitter because I live in the hobby part and not the gaming part. I love to see tables of scenery and painted models but this seems like a dream. If I refused to play people with unpainted stuff I wouldn’t play at all.
I don’t think there is any answers here. Just you need to accept there are different horses for different courses yet sometimes they race each other.
I play with unpainted mini’s, I’m a monster I know. The reason is I can paint decently and I enjoy doing so, but I paint fairly slow and can’t always paint. I want to spent lots of time and attention on my models to make them something I’m proud of, that’s why most of my armies are still unpainted. I still do want to play as well, that’s why I play with unpainted mini’s. I do admit that playing with and against a painted army is more fun and that can be a simple paintjob, maybe even a coloured primer to show some character will do. I just can’t justify speed painting for myself and also don’t enjoy doing it, I like to take my time.
Honestly this is the first time that I hear that a painted army has a lower resell value than a painted one. Doesn’t really make any sense to me.
@amachan I don’t paint fast, I usually play skirmish games so i only need to paint a few models and suddenly over half my army is painted.
If you painted your command units slowly and primed the rank and file would you feel better / less guilty when you come up against a well painted army?
I don’t particularly feel guilty about having unpainted models. I take my time with all my models and that is why the majority is still unpainted, it’s just the way it is. People I play with also know that I’m painting them and there is progress they can see, it will just take time and I won’t rush. I have no problems playing with or against unpainted models, I would just prefer to see them painted.
That sounds like a balance that most people are happy to play against. Progress is progress and if people are so judgemental that slow progress is a problem I’m sure you find other players that are happy to play.
I personally won’t play an army until it’s painted but that’s cause I actually the painting process as much as ignore side. Yet I understand there is a section of the hobby who either don’t want to paint their models for what ever reason and that’s fine, but part of entering at ornament is entering a painted army, maybe one way round this is those who haven’t painted their army loose tournament points, or they gain additional points for presenting an army that completely painted.
Ignore should should be gaming….sorry mistype
As a hobbyist type of gamer, all I expect from people I play against is at least standards equivalent to this
I don’t think that is asking the world.
A lot of other war games with organized play use painted as a requirement for their higher tier tournament events, which make sense since it’s a spotlight event for their product, honestly. I think a problem that people have when it comes to fielding a painted army is the mistaken belief that it has to look as good as painting level competition pieces or company catalog level. The Army Painter method is perfectly fine for getting a good looking army fielded. Tabletop quality is a very generous standard and just aims for something that looks good when viewed on a wargaming table.
For a good example of tabletop quality just watch any of Miniwargaming’s battle reports. They make use of commission painters often and intentionally tell them to keep it to a good tabletop standard as anything higher won’t really show on their videos. Honestly, even playing against an army with just a colored primer is so much better than playing against bare metal/plastic.
Nowadays with colored primers and the vast numbers of quick painting options there’s little excuse for getting some color on your army. That said, I totally understand not enjoying painting but even then a simple three tone zenith priming is more than enough to bring out the details of the figures, which is all that is needed to tell figures apart.
well there some factors that actualy plays against painting the models for thouse who only play for the turneys.
first one beeing they are models used for a game. as sutch they are game tokens first and foremoust. you dont paint your chess pices or your risk soliders do you?
to paint the models is simply an option, unlike a display model that has no gaming purpouse to it.
second one is the constant change to rules. what is good in the beginning might be nerfed 1 month to 6 month later.meaning the nerfed unit no longer has a value on the competative tabletop, meaning again it was a wasted time to paint it.
allso it is clear that whit the new codexes, “subfactions” are not balanced. some are worse then others and it simply 100% wrong to have your army painted as subfactor 3 but by rules represent subfactor 5 simply cuz nr 3 has 0 uses on the comp board.
finaly, there is playtesting. why bother to paiint an army that dont win turnys or finish in the top 3? even the turny itself is a playtest arena.
yes grey plastic is boring but wg could theoreticly fix this problem by adding colour to their plastic sprues..
if they can do it on the easy to build models, they can do it to all models.
Why buy wargaming models then? Just buy bases of the right size and label them.
I think this all leads into the types of conversations and opinions pieces by the likes of Nigel Stillman, Jervis Johnson and others over the years, who are of the opinion that you should ignore making the perfect army, and ignore the tournament meta.
So this then leads to the following – are there two wargaming communities? The one that paints, plays, creates the narrative, and enjoys all aspects of the hobby. And the other is the tournament side, designing lists, practising and refining the lists, consulting the meta of the game. These groups may over lap, but philosophically are distinct. For the first the model is the hobby, and for the other the game is the hobby.
I think the situation is more nuanced than that. I don’t think there’d be anyone who says their preference is for unpainted minis than painted minis. There will be people who prefer unpainted minis to badly painted minis, but in principle I doubt anyone would always prefer unpainted to painted. So when we’re seeing unpainted minis, and I field my fair share, then there’s something more going on than it just being ‘gamers’ with no interest in painting.
For my part, to paint a human-sized mini to a standard I’m happy with (and wouldn’t paint to any lower than) takes me around six hours. For troops in a mass battle game it would be less, but for nice skirmish game minis it’s about that. Currently that would mean if I stopped gaming I could paint a mini in a week. A six-model Guild Ball team would take me six weeks as long as I did no gaming in that time. That gives me the absolute minimum required to play just one game and means taking a month out of half away from what I enjoy doing, gaming, to do what I don’t enjoy doing, painting. That’s before getting onto to any other games I want to play. So if we’re in the same gaming group and we decide we want to get into a new game, say, Infinity, and you enforce fully painted on me before we can play, then I’m taking a fair bit of time off doing any gaming at all just to meet that, and that’s just to get the minimum required to play.
Which is not to say I don’t do any painting. I have almost every Fisherman’s Guild model fully painted, but it took me over a year just to do that. That’s one faction in one game. Great if all I want to do is play just one faction in one game, but I don’t. So either I play unpainted more than I play painted, or I just don’t play minis games at all and stick with board and card games only. So it’s not that I’m some hardcore tournament gamer who has no regard for painting, it’s just the practical reality of me including minis games within my gaming.
*taking a month and a half away from what I enjoy doing
“There will be people who prefer unpainted minis to badly painted minis, but in principle I doubt anyone would always prefer unpainted to painted.”
As a matter of fact I know a lot of players of the local tournament scene that openly declares that miniatures are a necessatry evil to them. They would rather do without them at all, without having to build them, the thought of painting them does not even cross their minds. I have seen more than once people arriving the day od the tournament, buying the latest models that they shoved in their list the night before, hastily rip them from their sprues and put them on the table.
Is that the same as saying given the choice they would have unpainted minis rather than painted minis, or that given the choice they would rather not paint than paint?
In essence, if you went up to one of those folks and offered to trade them your well painted army for their unpainted army, which is model-for-model identical, do you think they’d refuse because they’d rather their army was unpainted than painted?
They might accept it, provided it is the very same army up to the slightest detail. But then again, we just had people here stating that they offered to paint the armies of said people and they refused because that would lower their resell value (it still doesn’t make sense to me) and I know they sell their armies as soon as the slightest change in the meta occurs.
This summed up fairly nicely all that I dislike in the tournament scene players. As others have said, why buy the models then? Just cut some cardboard pieces the right size and write what they are supposed to be, if they are just tokens. Even better, if the interest of the tournament player is just in the making the perfect list and playing the meta, why don’t just play some CCG, which is what they are all about?
Here’s where the problem is. Like AJ i played some very early versions of Warharmmer 40k, Back then if you we’re going to play in a tournament or even just in the store you showed up with painted minis. It was simply the way it was..there was no question if you were playing you brought a completed force. If your proxying something to try it out i’m actualy fine with no paint on it. I stopped playing 40k for a very long time I’ve picked up 8th but I haven’t played a single game yet because you guessed it..i haven’t painted them all up yet (getting close). Like Uncle Atom up there I enjoy the painting aspect almost more then the playing back in the day and now as well,but everyone says they don’t have time to paint… I just make time..yeah I’m slow and yeah I’m not the best painter in the world,but I will paint them before they see daylight.
So, your not “old school” per say..it was just a different hobby when we came in then the cell phone short attention span types that play now.
> So do you have a solution to this problem?
If people have paid their money they should be able to play with their games/toys as they see fit. However, I am on the side that I rather see painted miniatures. The solution is to incentivize painting. Be that with special cool prizes available only to those with painted miniatures or some type of reduced tournament fee. Another alternative is to sell painted miniatures. When WizKids release Tomb of Annihilation Board Game, the painted miniature version sold out immediately at a premium price. Perhaps pre-paints like X-Wing would be something people are willing to pay for.
> Do you consider it a problem? Am I being a hobby snob, forgetting that real people have
> real jobs and real lives that take up their time?
I have a real job w/1hr commute each way, a wife, two kids and two cats and I can still find time to paint my miniature even if that is sometimes at 1am in the morning. As to the question, it is very disappointing not to see painted miniatures at the table and I dislike playing another player who does not have painted miniatures but at the same time I do not see any reason why they should not be allowed to play. I would be happy if maybe the miniatures for different factions came in different shaded colors of plastic.
> Or do you wish to see a return of a minimum requirement for tournaments? Does the sight
> of a grey mass lining up against you turn your heart to stone?
I do not believe you can any longer have minimum requirements. I already see this playing out on the Star Wars Legion forums on Reddit and the FFG Official forums where there are those who will refuse to buy in and play if there is a requirement to paint the miniatures. It disappointments me to no end to see gray miniatures. Sometimes it even pisses me off, but, then again I say, they paid their money, let them play.
I do secretly wish those who do not wish to paint their miniatures would stick to RTS video games and not bother to show up. I do wish there were special tournaments where painting miniatures was required to award those who made the effort.
None of this will happen, so I hope that someone does something in the tournaments to give special exclusive awards to those who did paint the miniatures. At the award ceremony, make the awards for best paint jobs first, not last. Have special website reports showing the painted miniatures. Maybe hand out special acrylic game tokens or dice to those with painted miniatures. Give incentives to come with painted miniatures (free T-shirts). That is the only thing that remains.
Awards for painting have been given to a lot of tournaments, but they have not done anything to improve things since they are considered a side show, when they are not looked as the prize for the guy who “cannot play” but is good at painting. Tournament players want to win the tournament, painting awards are of no consequence to them.
Now if you got tournament points for painting, as you used to many years ago, things would be different…
The larger conventions, like Adepticon and NOVA Open, are gravitating towards multiple events which cater to different camps of players — linked-story, narrative events for hobby-minded players; hardcore, multi-round tournaments for competitive players; and one-off participation events for casual players.
Offering a variety of events is one way to satisfy the different preferences and expectations in the community.
I prefer to see painted minis on the table and will try to encourage others to paint their minis. Yet, this hobby isn’t just about painted minis, so some folk don’t paint its hardly the end of the world. It’s their hobby as much as it’s mine, we just differ in regards to painting. I don’t pour over lists and rules like some friends but they don’t scorn me for it, so I don’t berate anyone cause they choose to field an unpainted army.
In today’s market, with primer sprays available in every colour imaginable, is it really too much to ask to have an army at least in the basic colour it is going to be?
10 minutes with a red spray can and blood angels are at least red, or orks are green and so on.
I get painting is not for everyone, and that is one of the beautiful things about this hobby, in that is something unique to each of us, but no one needs to field the grey horde these days.
Im very much in the painted or death camp, dont mind if people dont paint their mini’s but i have to paint mine, i dont play competativly any more so this really isnt a problem i butt up against as i only play with people who dont irritate the crap out of me and i know can have fun with, and generally are of the same opinion as me (yup gaming mono culture FTW, sure maybe i could broaden my horizons but im happy as i am and would rather play with adults who treat rules as a framework and guidlines, than edicts that must be followed, ever tried playing TWD against a rules lawyer, they just dont get it lol “what 50/50 dice but there isnt a stipulation for this specific occurence in the book!!!1!!!, you mean we have to come to an agreement and cant cheese my way out of this???”).
Specifically in the competative warmahoards and 40k scenes i do feel like there are a lot players who have a very miopic view of the “hobby” that building the mini’s is a chore let alone painting them, so if all they like doing is pretending to be a computer and doing all the boring bits that an RTS hides from the player, bully for them, i do think a lot of them would be better off to practice on their RTS of choice and learn to suck less at it, rather than insist that their boring way of playing (minimal terrain, min max’d lists, death stars and an overbearing smugness of having found a loophole in game balance through too many hours in front of a spreadsheet) is the only true way to play.
As for painting requirements for tournaments, i think a blanket rule of 80% of your force has 3 or more colours on it isnt asking a lot, it even allows rules laywers a nice loop hole to take the piss with, as it only says 3 or more colours on your force, so you could go and buy 3 scratch repair pens from halfords and dab 3 dots on a base to be compliant! (if any one takes this seriously you need to learn to detect sarcasm)
Tight and well written rulesets are the best defence against cheese. Loose and vague rulesets are the biggest ally of the cheesey WAAC player.
@redben couldnt agree more, the incident im thinking of comes from trying to play a game of walking dead with a hyper competative 40k player, who couldnt deal with coming to an agreement about the outcome of an event coming down to the 50/50 dice as there wasnt a specific rule which covered that exact scenario, admitadly i do tend to play in very narrative driven way and so im always happy to go with what makes sense in that games setting and universe, where as he was very much a by the book competative 40k player who liked to have a rule for everything and the fluff is VERY separate to the game for him. The fact he wasnt doing very well either didnt help the situation either lol, i think it was pretty much him not liking the fact that i could nick all his loot if the roll didn’t go his way (it did go his way incidentally, but that was moot as he had already wasted 20 mins arguing that it wouldnt be fair if he lost the game because of a coin toss…)
@redben, as a matter of fact many stated that given the choice they would rather not have to deal with fiddly bits of plastic and metal at all. They would play with unpainted miniatures only because miniatures are required, they have no interest in painting them and if possible they would simply use labeled cardboard pieces
@warcolours Which leads back to my opinion that people who play like that would probably be better off playing RTS’s if they didnt get schooled by organised Korean teams every time they logged onto a server…. 😉
Often I find that some of these players are also the ones that prefer MathHammer to actual play and become quite upset when the dice don’t perform according to their statistical analysis. I’ve seen a player once quit a tournament because their planned first turn alpha strike was foiled by uncooperative dice. :/
At tournaments locally I’ve seen all sorts. WIP is better than unpainted, finished is better than WIP. Low entry tournament allowing unpainted miniatures are ok, as that is what the tournament is. But more serious tournaments, like the Norwegian Masters, I think painting needs to be an requirement, at least a requirement if you want to win the tournament!
I prefer to play with and against unpainted armies, and only when testing a new game out I’ve played with unpainted miniatures.
Personally I think you should paint your armies but that’s because I enjoy this hobby specifically for the sight of painted armies. I view the hobby in much the same way as people who enjoy building model railways. It’s about the craftsmenship involved in creating those tiny, miniature worlds. Playing with unpainted miniatures doesn’t give me anywhere near as much enjoyment as seeing fully painted and based armies on the tabletop. The game itself is somewhat secondary to me and that’s pretty much why I am unlikely to ever game in a tournament; the competitive nature of them holds no attraction for me at all. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the games or that I never play with unpainted miniatures, only that my primary motivation is seeing the miniaure battles, in full colour, on the tabletop.
I can see arguments for both sides of the debate when it comes to tournaments. On the one hand there’s a reputation issue both for the game and for the tournamen itself. If you get a reputation as a tournament that does little to encourage painted armies I think that there’s enough people out there to whom that matters enough that your tournament will start to suffer in the long term. From a game point of view, you really want to make sure that your game is being shown off in the best possible light and that means painted armies. On the other hand you don’t want to make the tournament so exclusive that many people can’t attend because they haven’t painted their armies or pressuring people into rushed paint jobs just so they can use their models.
I think some of the current “soft scoring” rules where you get points for having fully painted armies represent a good middle ground for this where fielding a fully painted and based army can score you points. I don’t think that you should necessarily get points for the quality of the workmanship because not everyone can paint and really, as much as I enjoy it consider it a big part of my hobby it’s definitely not part of the game. Despite the continued existence of military “Number 1s”, you don’t score any points in war for looking shiny and pretty. I think if tournaments want to judge paint quality they should run a separate competition for best painted army in addition to the tournament winner. This actually gives people the option to compete in the arena they enjoy the most whilst still taking part in the tournament. People can even, if they are inclined, go all out and try and go for an “undisputed champion” by winning the tournament AND the best painted army.
I love playing games with fully painted armies on both sides, and would absolutely prefer to play against 100% painted armies, but I also understand that it takes time to paint. I choose not to play against people who use a grey horde with no intention of painting as from my experience they are typically the min-max bend the rules to breaking types who are more interested in beating their opponent than the story being written by both gamers.
I wonder how many people would run 200 conscripts in 40K if they had to be painted!
However, if there is progression (no matter how slow) I am much more likely to not worry about the painting as there is at least effort going in to it, and hopefully next time we meet there will be even more painted goodness 🙂 The guys at my local GW have been trying to convince me to play with my unfinished models, and I do intend to do that but they will be progressing each time I play.
I always paint my minis. I hate playing with unpainted minis. I have on very rare occasions when test driving something but I almost always have the minis 3 colour minimum in such instances.
I don’t mind my opponent not having a painted army but for me, nothing looks better than two fully painted armies facing off across a nice battlefield.
I dont particular think my paintings that great, but I always play all my games, even friendly games, with painted miniatures. I’m mostly a narrative player, so I just prefer my army to look the part. Id prefer to play against painted armies, but if painting doesn’t float someone’s boat, that’s up to them.
This is a subject that I raised a couple of years ago when the guys were doing the “Gurn or the week” ( @warzan what happened to that, its about time for it to be brought back…lol) I personally don’t have a problem with someone playing with unpainted mini’s but only until they get a chance to get them painted, not everyone has a lot of free time to put in the hour required to paint vast hoards or figures even to a basic standard. I play in Dropzone tournaments regularly an occasionally you get a player who has not hd a chance to finish painting or is new to the game. In the major Dropzone tournament they have a separate painting comp for people to enter which I think is the best way to do it 🙂
Incidentally I do not think I have ever entered a Dropzone Tournament where I have completely finished painting my army, but that’s only because of the details of the minis and I always have more to do…lol
Up until 2014, I was strictly a hex and counter gamer, who never really saw the point of painted minis. The “limitations” of miniature wargames (scale vs. realistic sizes of tables, availability of strictly historical units, etc) always put me off.
Since joining Beasts of War I have definitely learned to appreciate a painted army, I make sure my own armies are painted as best as I can and really appreciate it if the other player has also painted his army (for the photos, if nothing else). 😀
However, I still have one foot in that strictly mathematical, design-driven, historical-crunch hex and counter world, where realism, scale, historical fidelity, are all king and minis don’t matter at all.
So I can appreciate both, and can happily switch back and forth between the two. When I am on a miniatures table, though, I prefer painted minis. I brought painted miniatures to the Team Yankee and FoW boot camps … but of course understood why other people’s armies weren’t finished yet (we had gotten the miniature boxes just yesterday!). 😀
I would absolutely love for all my minis to be painted. But between working 40 hours a week, commuting for 10-15, grad school for another 10-15, being married,and other social commitments, it’s hard to find the time. In addition, I have carpal tunnel, so holding a paintbrush for an extended period of time makes my hand go numb.
But so many people (like some in this thread) are somewhere on the intolerant spectrum when it comes to unpainted minis, so I don’t feel welcome bringing unpainted minis to play with. Which means I don’t get much playing done at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not the only one who gets put off showing up at all because we don’t want to deal with the scorn of “couldn’t you even bother to put three colors on?” And trust me, we can tell when you’re unhappy about playing against unpainted armies.
If y’all want healthy gaming communities AND more painted minis to play against, less public shaming and more encouragement/understanding might be the better way to go, just sayin’.
Completely agree with that last point.
Atomsmasher made a video recently when he talked about not going to gencon again as there wasn’t enough miniature wargame companies at the event. To me gencon perfectly represents the breakdown of the tabletop hobby with board gaming being the largest through to wargaming being the smallest aspect of the whole genre.
So it surprises me that people would gladly have the players who play with unpainted pretty much leave the hobby to play videogames, card games, whatever. What our niche within a niche needs is less people buying and playing miniature games! The barrier for entry is already high enough without looking down upon people who don’t paint for whatever there personal reason is.
Another thing i thought strange was people talking about coloured primers, does it really matter if the plastic is all grey, red, green, blue? Because surely it is pretty much the same.
All of this
You know … it’s one thing to “complain” about people who don’t paint their armies.
But wouldn’t it be better if we helped them instead ?
I think that rules as “three colours minimum” are not the way to go, because as some already have said it can be gamed.
The “army painter method” is one of those beginner friendly systems that are easy to teach/learn and very effective.
Pre coloured plastics are definitely options that would make it possible to find a middle ground between bare metal and magazine quality art.
We’re also seeing that technology is improving to the point that pre painted miniatures can become as much part of the system as the model kits themselves.
I think that it should not be a choice between “You must bring a fuly painted army or Get Out”. Wargaming is a niche hobby that is time consuming and potentially expensve to get established in. Player numbers are always somewhat limited and not everyone can find time to do it all. Simply attending a tournament can take up a large chunk of your weekend or even as much as three or four days once travelling is factored in.
As such, organisers should make efforts to be inclusive, while encouraging players to go the extra mile. Hawk Wargames in my opinion nail this. Their Dropzone Commander Invasion events do not require that models are painted which allows anyone to turn up and get involved. However, they also award a prize for best painted (celebrating a job well done) as well as a painted raffle that all painted armies are entered into. This way everyone is encouraged to apply paint to models regardless of skill level but not penalised for being new or otherwise time poor.
It may be coincidence, but the vast majority of armies at Dropzone events are in fact painted forces. Many of the paint jobs are kept simple, but it makes the whole event look that bit nicer.
In Italy there have often been prizes for best painted in a lot of different tournaments (40K, FOW, BA to name a few); what has always happened was that you had the vast majority of unpainted armies, from the tournament clique who wanted to compete for the tournament, quite often with the last pieces ripped from the sprues the very morning as I said, and a couple of painted armies from people who were there for the painting award, knowing they were going to be trounced by the others. Clearly not working and soon fell out given that there have been several occasion of the painting prize not being awarded for the lack of qualified armies.
On the other hand, we had a tournament were everything was painted to a degree, because that was part of the score: you didn’t have to have a painted army, but you got 0 points for unpainted, 3 for primed, 6 for three colours and 9 for fully painted, with a 10th point if it was especially good. As you can see the effort was awarded, not the quality so skill did not come into play. The three point difference allowed for in between situations, so if over 50% of your army qualified for the upper tier you got 1 more point and if it was over 75% you got two. The tournament awarded also 10 points for historical composition (it was an historical game, but it could be for character or background) and 10 for sportsmanship against 30 for battles. Interestingly it wa a very relaxed tournaments with very little dickheads
Game tourneys are not hobby tourneys. Game tourneys may have hobby categories to celebrate both sides of “the hobby” but it is really 2 hobbies. They may be related, but are quite different. Not all people who enjoy fine steaks are also master chefs, master butchers, or cattle ranchers. Can you imagine not being served in a restaurant because you can’t cook what you ordered? Or never being able to buy a video game because you can’t code? No more clothes for you since you’re not a tailor? Can’t watch a movie if you can’t make one of “acceptable quality” to its creators? Pretty silly, right?
I hate painting. I don’t particularly like putting stuff together. Thankfully, my wife enjoys painting (and is pretty good). I’d rather buy affordable pre-painted stuff (unfortunately, most of that stuff is of awful quality) and get to the important part – playing the game.
If you love putting together a finely crafted and painted army… great! I don’t believe you are owed anything by anyone else, though. Your work might inspire them. They might not like your work and simply be puzzled at the all the time and effort you put into it (I’ve seen plenty of “pro” and “master” works that thought were ugly enough I’d rather have naked figs than those). Or maybe they are just there to play with their little plastic army men and have some fun.
All that said… if we’re talking about sponsored tourneys? Yeah, painting should probably be required for most events. Throw in a rookie/teaching category for the new folks so new people can see what you might start with and then at the vet tables what you might end with. Those are pretty much promo events and nobody puts the ugly girl on the hood of the concept car for the new magazine spread. If it’s just a local thing at the corner shop? It’s foolish to put up barriers like that. Heck, you should have armies ready to go to LOAN to people who don’t have them. Hook the buggers. The elitist nature of many gamers is big turn off for a lot of people.
I’m not sure your analogy holds up. It more like saying you’re not allowed to eat steak because you don’t know how to use a knife and fork…
Now, while I totally respect your opinion here I think you do need to qualify much of this with “In My Opinion” because that’s what it is. For example the important part is playing the game, in your opinion. In my opinion it’s equally important to play the game with painted models. What is important to you will be determined largely by wjat motivates you to play tabletop games. For me it’s all about watching the battles and seeing the armies. Unpainted miniatures spoil it for me and although I would never refuse to play someone with an unpainted army I wouldn’t go out of my way to play them either. Also in my opinion, unpainted armies are far more acceptable in informal games with friends or in clubs than they are in tournaments
So I have different warring feelings on the matter. I am not a big fan of forcing anyone to paint their miniatures in any sort of public play setting. Up until recently unless you were a model railroader you would come up with beautiful miniatures and play on a table with books and the box set plastic terrain, usually unpainted. So wonderful miniatures and terrible table. So it seems hypocritical to me to force paint on a miniature and not force work on pieces to play on.
In my stage of life I so rarely have time to play games I am not really picky about what their army looks like. As long as I can tell what the pieces are I do not care what it looks like. In the same line, I will play an unpainted army if it is a game I have not yet painted my army yet, or a bigger size than I have painted.
I would absolutely love to field only painted armies and if I have a couple of weeks to spare the army will at least be basically painted. Again where my life is now, I can find a couple of hours to paint more often than play, so I do paint a lot.
Finally, in general I will play with people who want to play. I feel that refusing to play with someone who does not want to play your way is selfish. Lets talk about 40K, my Imperial Guard army I have over 2000 hours painting into it. That in economic terms is 1 man year of time, or all the hours I am expected to do my job for a year. Yes it is over 400 pieces, but a 200 piece IG army is not out of the realm of possibility and 5 hours a model is high. So look at a 2 hour per model average is 400 hours or 10 man weeks. Even Infinity where you are looking at 20 models, it is still 1 man week to do a basic paint job (which is a crime as beautiful as those models are IMHO). I have done the Army Painter method on my Runewars army, and 2 hours a model average was about as low as I could get it. So if you require painted models you are making a huge barrier to entry, not only the time to paint the miniatures, but the expense of getting the equipment, and the time to learn to do it. Many of us who have been doing this for over 20 years we forget how long it took us to learn how to do this.
–Chris
Saying that what it’s important is just playing the game is akin to saying that in a movie the only thing that matters is the script, so as long as you can read the script all the rest is just superfluous…
Nicely timed by GW
https://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/Model-Requirements.pdf
Very interesting. Funnily enough, although i’ve just written below saying I’m in favour of allowing unpainted armies, i think this guide is good. It’s clear about the intention and means that everyone will go knowing what standard to expect. And ‘3 colours minimum’ really isn’t a minimum. ‘Tabletop standard’ is a much better minimum if you’re going to enforce painting at all.
I like painted armies (surprise!) but I regularly field unpainted ones. I play in tournaments because if I didn’t, I simply wouldn’t get any games in. I have so little spare time that without the ‘I’ve paid to enter and planned to go’ nature of it, I wouldn’t game at all.
Playing against others with painted armies – but knowing that I’m welcome anyway – is for me the best of both worlds. It encourages me to return the favour by painting my stuff if I possibly can. (And I left the recent DZC Invasion tournament newly fired up to do some painting.) But if I wasn’t allowed to enter with unpainted miniatures, then I – and others – just wouldn’t play. And I think that the tournament would suffer for losing several players.
The reason I’m against ‘3 colour minimum’ type rules is that I have enjoyed painting models in the past and look forward to doing so again. Badly painted armies don’t look any better to me than unpainted ones, so I don’t see the point in doing that to my armies, especially if it makes it harder for me to do a decent paint job if/when I do have the time to pick up a brush.
Hawk give out a prize for best painted and a raffle for everyone with a painted army.
Personally I’d be just as happy for tournaments to give tournament points for painted armies too (it’s not like I’m entering them with any expectation of winning!). But I think that would be unpopular, even with a lot of players who use painted armies.
Ironically, I think home games are probably where it’s more appropriate to enforce painting standards. If you’re doing it with friends, you won’t feel penalized by something you’ve all mutually agreed on, and you’ve probably got more time to paint your stuff because you’re not doing it for a one-off event. And you’re possibly playing less competitively too, so it’s not like you’re ‘harming’ yourself by not fielding your new killer unit because you haven’t painted it yet.
I think tournaments should err on the side of being inclusive and open to all, and that includes those who don’t have painted armies.