Greetings Dash28! At the beginning of August, West Virginia hosted its long-running two-day Kings of War GT, Mountaineer GT, run by the stalwart Chris Fisher. We had 46 players competing for the top this year! As the swirling melee was taking place, I filtered through the room doing the rewarding, but high-pressure job of paint-judging all of these armies. This is my third year paint juding this event, and I feel like I have started to hit a groove with the process.
Rather than bore all of you with the specifics, I group armies into four tiers, Tier 4 below tabletop (usually reserved for armies with anything not finished), Tier 3 Tabletop (general baseline), Tier 2 Above Tabletop (higher quality but achievable with a little work), Tier 1 Some of the Best in the Room (generally only meticulous painters can reach this standard).
One thing I do that I think is unique to my event is provide written feedback in the form of a filled-out rubric-like worksheet. I usually jot a few notes down on everyone’s sheet, but for people who check they want feedback, I try to highlight my favorite details from their army and things that I think could be improved. I don’t expect people to make changes to finished armies, but rather view these as ways to give guidance for future projects.
Every year, I find myself writing 3-4 of the same tips for a large chunk of the room, all of which are pretty easy to do but can make huge differences to the overall appearance of your army. If you are someone who says to yourself “I’m not a painter, but I’d like to do better,” then these tips are for you. If instead, you are someone looking to win awards, keep an eye out for a future article (though hopefully there will be kernels of knowledge for you too)!
Mold Lines and Gaps
Ahhhh mold lines… the bane of my existence… One of the first things you can do to improve how your overall paint job turns out is to take the painstaking task of removing these annoying lines from your minis.
Assembly is my least favorite part of the hobby, specifically because of gap filling and mold line removal. It’s tedious, mind-numbing, and on some minis makes me truly despise the sculpts (looking at you Mantic Gargoyles).
However, nearly every paint technique, particularly quicker paint technique, is going to make these lines shine out like a beacon. Plan to use washes, dry brushing, Speed Paints, Contrast Paints, Zenithal Highlights, or literally anything to make painting quicker? Yup, those all tend to make already painful mold lines even more obvious.
If you are even remotely concerned about your army’s overall appearance, or paint score, spend the extra time and clean up your mold lines.
That goes doubly for gaps! Some gaps you can get away with, underneath horses, for instance, no one will see, but their rump and neck, yup it’s super obvious. Some minis are worse than others at this, and it can be almost impossible to fully remove gaps, but a little effort goes a long way with this.
There are a number of products to help with gap-filling. I personally really like Vallejo’s Plastic Putty, it does the job and is pretty cheap.
With multibasing, sometimes you can conceal gaps by tactically placing models in the unit in certain ways, or with grass tuft placement too, but use this as a last resort for those truly terrible gaps. Some companies are awful with the ways the mini goes together too, making gaps painfully obvious. Wyrd Miniatures has some amazing sculpts, ruined by being put together in halves, so a tiny gap goes right down a mini’s face. I just avoid sculpts that have this issue, no saving a face gap.
3D printing really solves a lot of this, by taking away mold lines, and usually gaps! Though it comes with its own headaches to solve.
Faces and Shields
Certain features of models are more important to the overall effect of the model than others. This can vary from model to model, but nearly always the first and most important detail is the face of the miniature. When I was first learning to paint, one of the people guiding me through getting better told me “Your model’s face is a window into the model. It’s often the first detail someone looks at, and usually has some of the finest detail sculpted to it.”
I’ve tried to take that pointer to heart by always giving just a bit extra attention to the face of my minis. Usually, that means 1 more highlight than the rest of the model’s skin, fur, etc. just to really have the face pop. This also gives you one more step to clean up the face and really nail the expression for the miniature.
Now, obviously, there are exceptions to this rule, big fully armored knights with no face, Space Marines, and I’m sure others, but almost all the time minis have some sort of face, even skeletons and ghosts! Do yourself a favor, spend a few extra minutes, and just add a bit more detail work onto your faces, it makes a big difference.
Faces are intimidating to paint at first, particularly when you are first taking them up a notch, just add a highlight to the cheeks, nose, chin, and top of the forehead. As you get comfortable with this you can start experimenting with more shading in faces, but this is a good starting point. Oddly, I have found thinking about make-up placement super helpful when highlighting faces.
The other detail I mention is shields, but really this means whatever other major detail your miniature has. For many infantry minis, which are smaller, this means shields. This detail you want to put extra work into getting right.
The giant skeleton below highlights this method. The major feature that I identified on the model other than its face, was the beard, so I put a few more minutes into dry brushing more highlights onto it. This gives extra pop to the mini, pulls you in to look at it more, and elevates the overall appearance of the model, without really adding much more work.
Some other common major details models have are cloaks, weapons, gore, and/or maybe natural armor. Basically, one additional feature that is sort of interesting and is worth investing 1-2 more highlights into. It doesn’t always have to be the biggest extra detail, but rather the one that you are picking to be that wow factor. These subtle choices are what I think often separate tabletop armies from above tabletop ones, spending just a little time thinking about the miniature, and how you want to portray it can go a long way.
Color Schemes and Pop Color
Ok gamers, strap in, because we are going to get a bit into color theory here. One of the big failings I see in many tabletop armies is that they look fine, but only have 1 color that isn’t just a natural tone. And often this color is darker, or more muted. Or, they go the complete opposite and do splashes of every color creating a confusing overall color scheme (Jon Vanase from Unplugged Radio calls this “Fruity Pebble Nonsense”).
One of the most important choices for your overall army appearance is the colors you pick for your army, and how you apply those colors to details on your minis.
There isn’t one right way to do this, but rather there are a series of important concepts to be aware of, as they will influence the vibe and overall look of your army. Generally, you want to pick either 2-3 “pop” colors that are similar (analogous) or complementary (work together but contrast). I think a monochromatic army could be very cool, but I think harder to pull off.
Let’s talk about analogous colors first. Basically picking these colors means that your army will have a very uniform vibe to it. Importantly, you aren’t just using one color, but rather, a variety of colors that all have the same vibe, yellow, orange, and red if you want a warm palette, pink, purples, and blues for a cool palette, or blues and greens for something a bit more natural.
I personally think complementary colors are the easiest army schemes to do. I pick one primary color that will be the majority of the uniforms, clothes, shields, basically stuff that isn’t neutral color. Then I pick a color that will complement and pop out from that color as my flash of color to pull you in. In the Undead Footment red is my primary color, but the blue purposefully jumps out at you. I even applied significantly brighter highlights to the blue to really emphasize this effect.
I still have browns, skins, metallics, and everything else in the unit, but the two primary colors that probably jump out most at first glance are red and blue. This is purposeful.
When you plan your army colors, you need to put some thought into how you will achieve some wow factors. To save yourself time, as a rule of thumb make one of those colors your “pop” color, and apply it less frequently, but really make it bright. This “wow color” needs extra attention, similar to your faces and shields, but should be used sparingly to both save you painting time and not overdo the effect.
Basing
This is my final, but most important tip for players hoping to elevate their paint game. Basing is the single most important decision you make for the overall look of your army. Good basing can elevate an average paint job, or absolutely drag down a great paint job.
The colors and features you put on your base will not only frame where your imaginary army is fighting, but it will also frame the models themselves. Basing is always worth spending time planning and brainstorming because it can make or break your army.
The good news is that it is also relatively easy to achieve decent basing.
Generally, as a rule of thumb, I think effective basing is a combination of 5-7 elements. First, your base, the standard used to be gluing modeling sand or some other texture to a base, but now I just use Vallejo or AK Interactive texture paints. Both have a variety of options for affordable prices. If you want crackle paints or just to pay more, Games Workshop also has a line of these paints. But they are far more expensive for similar-worse results, minus the crackle paints.
With these base texture paints, I am more focused on the texture it applies, over the color of the basing. This is because 9/10 I will be repainting over whatever color the base paint is, to get it the color I want. This was my method at least while I used Vallejo Texture paints, but AK Interactive’s color variation has me adapting my method to just use their colors with washes and dry brushes applied.
No matter what you do, make sure you cover the entire base! Blank basing showing through looks terrible!
Once your base is dried, if you need to paint it a different color, do that. Either way, plan to do at least 1 highlight dry brush on the basing, and maybe a wash before the drybrush, so that the texture pops.
From there, I think all good basing generally has an additional 3-4 elements. This can be a combination of static grass and flock, grass tufts and static grass, terrain elements, bark or wood chips to be stone, water effects, cobblestone etc. Whatever you pick, it is important you have variation. A blob of goblin green flock might have cut it back in the day, but it just doesn’t work now. The good news is, it’s easy to apply variation, just buy a few different types of tufts, maybe some bark, rocks, or skulls, some static grass, and boom, variation!
If you do these basics, your basing will be well on its way to elevating your army. However, there is an additional step in this planning that I think is important to keep in mind, and it tends to separate average basing from good basing. This is how the colors and elements used work with the models and colors of your army.
If you look at my Herd above, the Martian red wasteland base purposefully contrasts with the colors used on the models. This is so that the basing really lets the models stand out. You don’t need to do this, perhaps instead you use similar shades so that models blend in, to emphasize how they are in their natural environment (think Autumn Wood Elf armies or trident realms in the ocean).
Whatever you pick, make sure you think about how the colors on your models and your basing will work together. This is a common mistake I see with fire demon armies, if you base them in lava, and paint the army primarily the same shades of red then the army can just look like a blob of red. If though, you had less lava and more volcanic rock, for instance, it would provide important visual contrasts to the models, while still framing them in their environment. Or you stick with reds and oranges, but purposefully use different shades on the models versus the basing. Whatever you pick, you need variation in details to make the minis stand out.
Similarly, think about where you are placing your army. Undead in graveyards can be very cool, but it is also very overdone, meaning that often gamers will look and go “cool undead” and move on without looking further. Try to base your armies in environments and settings that might provide a little uniqueness to the viewing experience, this is how you get people to pause and wow over it, usually with the same amount of effort that a more traditional basing for the army would be. Multibasing can also help with this, by allowing for really dynamic scenes to be set up in your unit (who doesn’t love to see a legion of zombies pouring over a fence for instance).
Conclusions
Those are it for my tips on elevating your army’s paint quality, without adding a ton more work. While there are plenty of other ways you could also improve the quality of your army painting, hopefully, these tips were useful as a starting point!
