How much effort do you put into painting the ranked up units on your unit bases?
Please vote here and if you want to explain more or show off your work, please do. I’m looking for inspiration so I took a few days to assemble and quickly paint up a spearhead of fyreslayers I picked up a while back.
First go with the airbrush too.
My usual approach, for the majority of my armies has been to temporary base models, and more or less batch paint, but with each model receiving equal care and attention.
Inevitably, models will emerge as “better”, just because I posed them in a more attractive way, or because for whatever reason a steadier hand on those particular ones has made them come out better. So those guys go in the front ranks.
Where it’s monstrous infantry or large infantry, and it’s at regiment size, and there’s sufficient clearance between models, I’ve been putting them on their base (semi finished) and painting them there. Basically, cutting out individual temporary bases.
With troops, regiments and hordes of infantry and cav, they get more crowded on the base, if you’re at or near PMC, so I’ve tended in the past to use temporary basing for each model, even though this can mean - at times - making a lot of temporary bases out of whatever crap I have lying around.
Lately, however, for skeletons as pictured below, and Victrix knights (abyssal horsemen) I’ve been priming, putting them down on semi-finished bases, and just firing away with slapchop for the horsemen. The skeletons I painted with my kids and just used a super simple prime and speedpaints on top approach.
Will I attempt this with other ranked units in the future? I might. It was a timesaver, and for me “good enough” is done, we’re more about getting the models on the table to play than really enjoying the painting over a protracted period.
If you take the example of the abyssal horsemen here, one advantage of this approach when you’re using the slapchop method is that things primed in black can just be left “in shadow”, if they’re a part of the model that is unreachable, and thus likely to be largely unseen anyway.
The abyssal horsemen bases here still aren’t totally finished, I’ll do more to break up the puddle bases, which are still visible.
This. Painting is my to-go me-time. It’s relaxing and I don’t mind the time spent.
It helps that I have several finished armies and there’s no need to rush a new army.
As with @Rory - paint all the models separately and add to (mostly) finished base. Depending on the unit in question I’ll often do command type models, which end up in the front .
As a lot of mine tend to quite ‘diorama-y’ in nature, I’m very rarely actually ranking models up in the first place.
I’d say “all models painted equally”, but due to a lack of extra effort on the front rank than extra effort all round.
While I enjoy painting and it helps me relax, I’m not interested enough to make it it’s own hobby. I “paint for effect” to get models to my tabletop standard, rather trying to push or develop my painting ability.
Interestingly, my painting still improved over the years just from practice.
So I batch paint to get them done and don’t pay much special attention. Only deciding which models go in the front after a unit is done, depending on how models rank up/fit on the base.
If there is a special model, usually a command build included in the sprue or a fun conversion, then that goes in the front; but the only difference in painting is if there is extra detail that needs to be painted. Ditto heroes, monsters generally require more attention.
Front rank gets extra attention, as does the last rank, but not necessarily in painting quality but most often by painting extra details that are there, command units, banners or shields on the back
Also depends if the models are glued on the bases before painting or not, with the easy method of “everything the brush can’t reach stays black” if models are on the unit base
I’m thinking for my ranks I’m going to give the front row the most attention, second row will get a slapchopped and maybe the back row will get a bit. The rest will be monochrome with maybe a little color but not much.
I am going for packed bases with not a ton of models in general. I really like the monochrome effect as it represents the individual soldiers moving.
It also can really depend how you are doing the painting - easier to do a full unit style paint job with an airbrush than manually.
Really it’s a case of finding what works and you are happy with - the type of model itself can sometimes swing how you do stuff.
