This blog post is based on a Facebook post that I wrote back in April, just prior to the WATC event. M saw a Facebook post of a tournament player complaining about the 3 colour minimum painting requirement and being forced to ruin an expensive army in order to comply with tournament requirements. I am grateful that the post was brought to our attention because it gave me an opportunity to address the problem then and there. I thought I would share it here in the name of transparency, so that you can see why decisions are made the way we make them.
Firstly we are sorry that any player at any times may feel that the 3 colour minimum paint requirements are putting you in a position where you have to ruin models in order to comply. The 3 colour paint requirements are not intended to force you to slap paint on and ruin anything, much less an expensive army. A lot of money, time, and energy goes into buying, converting and building an army so we don’t want any decisions that we make to jeopardise the outcome.
Recently we had a private game held in the ObSec dungeon and the rules were; if it wasn’t fully painted it didn’t go on the table! This was awesome as it gave the players the motivation they needed to get very expensive models converted, built and fully painted. I think we all know how much fun it is to buy the models but somewhere between buying them and building them the motivation runs out and they sit on a shelf unpainted for quite some time (sometimes decades hey M 😀). The flip side of that is, I have seen other games where guys have 5c pieces on the table to represent a model they don’t yet own and I’ve seen everything in between.
When you have 2 people playing you can set the requirements to suit the 2 of you who are playing. When you have 64 people playing as it was for WATC (or 100 as will be the case for the 2016 WA Masters) it is difficult to find something that is going to suit everyone and so we made a compromise to say 3 colour minimum. This was actually set over a decade ago at Ultimates and as it was something that players in WA are familiar with we made a decision to continue with that requirement as painting, for quite a few members of our community, is a big part of hobby. Just this past weekend I was chatting with a former ETC player who again shared the story of an ETC player a few years ago (not from Australia I’ll add) who got very creative and got a toothbrush and put a stripe of black, a stripe of red and a stripe of blue paint on it and then ran it down the middle of each model and said ‘there you go – 3 colours’ and so the wording of the requirements were changed to state that the colours must be representative of the finished model. This can mean under coated, sprayed in a base colour, high lighted and wheels/tracks painted, that is 3 colours that should hopefully be achievable by anyone and everyone.
With the players pack being released months in advance and army lists being submitted in advance we anticipate that players would have enough time to paint to a 3 colour minimum before any tournament. In the ‘Tournament Prep Guide’ (available for digital download for only $5, less than a pot of paint https://objectivesecured.com.au/products/) we do cover planning armies based on what you already own and is painted, how much money you can afford to spend on new models and how much time you can give to painting. We also cover scheduling your painting so you can get it done in time.
After reading the negative feedback we had a long discussion around the pros and cons of keeping the 3 colour minimum. The 3 colour requirement has been standard across Ob Sec tournaments to date and we have had a lot of positive feedback about it, including comments around how much players enjoy seeing and playing against fully painted armies and how awesome the tables look when covered in fully painted armies, so after careful consideration it is something that we decided we will keep to give procrastinating gamers the motivation they say they need to put brush to model and get them painted.
In all sincerity I would like to thank the player that publicly spoke out about the 3 colour paint requirement. By speaking out about the issue you faced it gave us the opportunity to re-evaluate the 3 colour requirement and make a decision on whether it was still relevant for our events. It also gave me an opportunity to address the issue publicly. I would ask that if any member of our community has an issue around any aspect of ObSec that you let us know. If we don’t know there is a problem we can’t fix it and we can’t let you know the thinking behind the decision. Feel free to email us, PM or contact us via Facebook.
Thanks once again for your support as we try to create events to fill a need in the community, to have something to offer veteran players and something exciting to entice new players to the game.
For those of you who are the players that are ALWAYS painting at 3am the morning of an event. Have a freak out 24 hours before the event is due to start here is my tip: keep going! You can do it, it’s amazing how much you can do in 24 hours. The trick is not to become over whelmed. Take a minute. Get a pen and paper. Break it down. What NEEDS to be done. Group it together. Write a schedule, be specific, don’t write 9-10 paint, 10-10.30 break. A more specific example is: 9-10 undercoat bikes/highlight (something) while undercoat dries, 10-10.30 eat, 10.30-12 paint all tracks, 12-12.30 eat lunch, 12-1 play with my kids, 1-2.30 etc. stick to the schedule and get it done. A bigger tip is don’t leave it until 24 hours before, work out what needs to be done, set your schedule and stick to your plan. Regardless of how much time you have: You can do it, I believe in you!
I look forward to seeing you and your painted army at an event in the future!
Ha! The days of 3am painting are long gone. Now it’s only until midnight for the entire month before (currently painting my D-thirster to the centerpiece standard it deserves).
I’m grateful to Obsec for having this standard for events. As many times as I’ve been cursing 3 colours, on the day of the event it’s great to see painted forces – it adds so much to the experience. Before going to Masters last year, I’d fully painted maybe 10 units in as many years. But for that event, and over the course of the events this year, I’ve not only painted two full armies but also picked up a Best Painted award to vindicate my efforts.
So regardless of if Obsec changes the rules.. I’m going to keep abiding by it anyway.
Fully painted has such a wide range of standards that I think it’s important to define more clearly than a 3 colour minimum as you have done. For anyone saying their paining will ‘ruin’ a perfectly good army I can’t help but feel you’re misrepresenting your painting ability. Unless you’re slapping on house paint with a 4″ brush you should be able to put down a flat colour without obscuring detail and how is a red/blue/green model worse looking than bare plastic. From there it’s a very easy couple of steps to pick out a detail or two in another colour and by detail I’m meaning, for example, the gun in a metal colour and maybe a shoulderpad. That’s talking about marines, obviously once you go into other armies it’s slightly trickier as they’re not quite so naturally mono coloured.
Also don’t get bogged down in details, every pouch doesn’t need picked out in a different colour, eyes are a nice touch but require brush control and effort and you’ll not notice it unless you pick a model up to look at it and when you lay out an army in total it all being painted cohesively is far more important than the individual details on each model.
For the example of the IG talked about it’s important to work out a scheme, a very basic 1-2 colour scheme and then stick to it rigidly and then follow a process.
1. spray model the dominant colour of the model. If their clothes are tan then spray it tan, or green or whatever colour works.
2. Pick out the contrast colour if needed (I’m thinking the classic GW cadians with green shoulderpads & helmet), note that you could just leave these the same colour if too time consuming, it won’t look as good but it won’t be awful.
3. paint the flesh tone on the face & hands. Make sure you use a GW base paint or equivalent for this so the paint coverage goes on with a single coat.
4. boots & weapon in black (in reality I’d do the weapon silver but this is going for bare minimum colours on the model). One small point on metallic paints I’ve found Vallejo Air (model or game) silvers have the best coverage for single coat painting metallic so I prefer them but GW metals will probably do it too.
So far that’s used 3-5 colours and now every part of that model should have a flat colour on it. Now the important step.
5. Wash the whole model in a black or brown shade/dip. Army Painter do a range of what they term Quick Shade Inks or Dips.
-The dips are not water based so apply in a manner which make them really pull into the recesses but they’re a faff to work with as not water based, good effect for minimal effort but more specialist stuff needed (white spirits & a brush you don’t mind getting trashed). With these they have a gloss finish so you’ll normally want to spray with matt varnish after it’s dried (leave 24 hours is recommended).
– The inks are water based and comparable to standard acrylic paints so easy to work with but require a little more effort on the model to control to ensure they only sit in the recesses.
Ultimately both still work more or less the same though, you load up a large brush (1/2″ flat generally works for me) and slather the whole model in it then sit for 30 secs-1min depending on conditions to let it all settle then pull off the excess (do this by unloading the brush of paint by just dragging it against a pallet/pot to pull most of the shade off but you still want a we brush this will then ‘suck’ off any excess from the model simply by putting it against any pools on the model. Note that I tend to batch this so I’ll load up 5 models and by time I’ve done the 5th the 1st will be settled and ready to tidy off any excess and repeat.
This will give an army with a more than acceptable basic ‘table top’ standard army that should pass the painting requirements of any tournament pack with the least amount of effort. With the increased level of technical paints released over recent years and the ever improving design of models it is making it simpler and simpler to turn out an army to an acceptable standard with less and less actual painting skill being required.
I say this from a lot of experience, I started painting Warhammer armies the best part of 20 years ago and they looked pretty awful by todays standards. I’m fortunate that I enjoy painting but what I don’t enjoy is painting lots and lots of the same model over and over to a high standard. I save that for small skirmish games and my army painting is mostly done following the approach above. The good thing about this process is that if you want you can easily go back and add more detail or highlights to improve the look at a later date if you decide you want to but there isn’t any need to do it if you don’t.
Hope this gives anyone reading this who has a fear of painting the confidence to give it a go as really there are no technically difficult steps to this, it’s just a process. Yes it takes some time and unless you’re used to painting brush control will not come naturally for the picking out the boots, weapon, face etc. so this will be time consuming if you’re painting 100’s of models so don’t underestimate the length of time to get there but don’t fear the process is what I’m trying to say!