“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,… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
@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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
*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… Read more »
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… Read more »