My first foray onto the Overlords podcast as a guest on their Room 40001 segment gave me ample opportunity to take aim and fire my meltagun at one of my biggest bugbears (listen here). The issue has always bothered me to an extent where it spoils the game at times, which probably makes me sound like a douche but bear with me….
I am of course talking about unpainted armies. The naked grey plastic mounds that sit either end of the table in venues around the world. My grief is not limited to the greyness either – for there is a far more annoying phenomena – armies simply sprayed black. From four feet away what appears to be an Ork with a big choppa may actually be a scout with a shotgun. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but you can see what I mean. In purely gaming terms it makes units difficult to distinguish and recognise with my ageing eyes.
The biggest annoyance for me however, is that unpainted miniatures spoil the immersion. Personally, the spectacle was always an integral part of the game’s appeal and paramount to the creation of the grim dark atmosphere of desperation and struggle. The battles are supposed to be epic, representing the fate deciding conflicts of entire civilisations, after all. Maybe this comes from my background as a modeller – I played around with model kits as a kid many years before I started playing games, but I suspect its actually a direct result of my exposure to 40k through White Dwarf.
See, as a thirteen year old kid I was busy playing Hero Quest with my school friends and one day (actually they did it twice) GW published expansion rules in White Dwarf. This lead me to pick up a copy and subsequently exposed me to a universe that I didn’t know existed. Early ‘Eavy Metal shots of terminator squads stalking across a detailed battlefield are precisely the reason I wanted to be involved with the game, and my love for painted miniatures was born. This was cemented month after month with beautifully crafted minis every issue, and I’ll admit to being guilty of standing in front of Games Workshop Meadowhall drooling over the painted minis in their window. On several occasions as well, it’s a surprise they never called in security to prise me out of my saliva-soaked puddle.
I have to admit admit my own Blood Angels army, which was used from 1990 until 1997, wasn’t particularly well painted. Well, at least it was red. I’m almost glad I no longer have them as they were probably even worse than I remember (so thankful it was before the advent of affordable digital cameras). Nostalgia is a powerfully blinding light at times. What I can guarantee however, is that a monumental amount of time and effort was put into creating a cohesive, themed force. This begs the question; What would you rather play against? An unpainted army, or a badly painted army? So long as effort is in evidence I’d go against the badly painted stuff every time without any doubt at all.
Not all of us, myself included, are great painters. In fact, not many of us are. Painting takes dedication and a substantial chunk of time, something very few of us possess. We have a few guys from Roll With It who regularly plonk down some unpainted miniatures on the battlefield, yet I don’t have a problem these. Why? Because these guys all actually make an effort to get models painted, albeit at a slower pace than myself. They might paint a unit a month, which in my eyes is absolutely fine with progress always in evidence.
It’s the 100% sprayed black armies that I could rant about the most. Usually purchased as a whole army in one go, undercoated and then used for six months with not so much as a sniff of Blood Red or Bleached Bone, before being sold on eBay with the owner moving onto a whichever new uber Codex that has been recently released. I suppose its no coincidence that a lot of these lifeless, dull, detachments belong to power gamers and are made up purely from some internet-originating min-max spam competition lists.
As previously documented I myself have a love/hate relationship with painting models yet I persevere and I think the effort is worthwhile. Other people may say that they have no interest in painting and just want to play the game, but I’d argue painting is part of the game. 40K is a vast, all encompassing envelope of fluff, story, modeling, painting, socialising and gaming.
Take any one of those ingredients out and its just not 40k anymore.
One Inch Rifles 