Beginners Guide to Miniature Painting - Tools and Materials

Well, since you ask me for a guide to painting minis, it just so happens that I might have something that could help you...

Some of my daughter's D&D group want to try painting minis, but although there is a lot (A LOT) of advice online, if you've never put brush to mini before, it can be overwhelming.

So this is my guide, which hopefully won't be scary, won't assume you have instant access to a million different paints, but will teach you enough to get you going.  I'm not aiming to teach award winning painting techniques, I will teach you sound basics that allow you to get some minis painted and then decide how much of the hobby you want to do.  

Paints.  I'm using just nine paints to begin with; red, yellow, green, blue, black, white, dark brown, bronzed flesh and a steel for armour and weapons.  We'll mix any other colours or shades we might need from this lot.  Eventually we will need a few more colours and maybe even some washes etc, but for now this is plenty.  I'm using a mix of Army Painter, Vallejo and Games Workshop, just to show that it doesn't really matter what make you use, just choose medium or light shades for now.  All painters have their favourites (mine is Vallejo, or Reaper if I can get them), but just get what you can and make your mind up yourself what works for you.  It's best to get dedicated miniatures paints, they are formulated specifically, and things like the pigment grain size and amount of flow medium are carefully balanced.  You can get by with craft paints, but they are harder to use on minis, and are best kept for terrain and other, larger projects.  You should be able to get all these paints in hobby shops (Warhammer shops should have a huge range of the Games Workshop paints, independent games or model shops are are likely to stock the other ranges) or online, and some are available in starter sets, such at these from Army Painter, Vallejo, or Reaper .*

Starter paints; GW black, Vallejo metal and brown, Army Painter red, white and flesh, VGC yellow and green and AP blue

Brushes. These are just as important, and a good brush is well worth looking after.  However, for your first painting, you can get by with most hobby brushes.  I got a value pack of  Royal and Langnickel camel hair brushes, which seem OK and contain several different sizes.  If you got a starter set of paints it may well contain a starter brush as well.

Other Tools. You'll also need some sort of palette. These are readily available in craft shops, but to begin with any waterproof low walled container will do, as will a take-away tub.  I often use the bottom cut from a yoghurt or butter container.  White plastic helps show up the paint colours.  

  

You'll need something to protect the surface you are working on, a pot to hold clean water both to wash brushes and to dilute your paint, and a cloth or paper towel to dry your washed brush (and clean up any spills). 

I recommend using a small cap or lid, such as from a drink bottle with bluetac (poster tack) to hold your mini and protect your work as you paint.

Finally, find somewhere to paint where you are comfortable.  You'll need a good source of light, daylight is best, but you can supplement it with an LED lamp.  I find I have to use a magnifying visor, but then my eyesight isn't what it used to be, hopefully most of my readers will be fine without.

Miniatures. You should now have everything you need apart from minis.  I'm aiming this particularly at people using minis in role playing, which means lots of different manufacturers, and lots of different materials.  For examples I'm choosing some of the most common and easily found ranges and looking at hard plastic, such as most Games Workshop kits (and lots of other ranges like North Star's Frostgrave range), Reapers own soft plastic minis ('Bonesium') and the plastic minis from Wizkids.  

As an important part of learning is practice, so its worth getting a few cheap minis just to practice on.  eBay has lots of options, such as random selections from Chinese suppliers, you can even try some board game minis, and these are sometimes available cheaply in random lots.  

When choosing, try and find minis without a load of fiddly details.  We are starting at first principles here, and there's no point making life difficult by having lots of equipment, belts, weapons etc to paint.

Set up ready for painting, note vitally important mug of tea (sadly empty)

One final thing that's very useful, especially if you go on to paint a lot of minis, is a notebook, but it's not necessary at the beginning.

I'll let you collect the stuff you need.  Next time we'll actually get our first minis primed.

*If you can find the Reaper Learn to Paint kits they contain three miniatures as well as instructions and paint, and are an excellent introduction, I recommend them. I'll be taking things a bit steadier though, none of this fancy shading and highlighting stuff for a while yet.

Trying Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes

Today I finally got in my first game of Galactic Heroes with good friend Bodvoc.

We used our 20mm Star Wars minis and combined our terrain. 

We've been wanting to try the rules for several months now, and have both been collecting and painting Star Wars minis and building terrain.  These are our 20mm minis, more about them here.

We played the first mission in the book and started the third, though we ran out of time on that one.

The village before the action.  Four droids wander around while the speeder waits impatiently in the top right corner.

As the action starts the Imps are able to reach most of the wandering droids before the Rebels do.

However, Rebel shooting proves superior and Stormtroopers drop.

Despite the Rebels having the upper hand in shooting (I think the Imps managed one hit all game) they hadn't got the droid with the second part of the plans.  A well fought draw.

For the second game we went for the third scenario.  Given that all our terrain is currently desert planet we went for this rather than a forest moon.  For the 'native levy' we used some Sandpeople, who as grunts were nowhere near as tough as I'd hoped they would be.

The Rebels advance with Nova bomb at the ready.

This game went badly for me pretty much from the start. I replaced the specialist with M 45 Repeating Ion Blaster (heavy blaster) with a PLEX (Rocket Launcher) which went out of ammo on the first shot.  I managed to leave my leader out in the open, and he was duly killed by the Imps showing remarkable marksmanship.  I then lost one of the troopers carrying the Nova Bomb, and to add insult to injury, the Imps killed two of the Sandpeople who appeared close to the generator, and they even got the specialist with his now useless PLEX.  Although we had to finish at the end of the third turn an Imperial victory was assured.

We both really enjoyed the rules and will certainly play more Galactic Heroes in the future (or should that be A Long Time Ago?).  We need to look more closely at the traits, both in assigning them and in remembering what they could do.  The first game seemed relatively bloodless, I gave the Imps Lousy Shot, which in conjunction with Inaccurate blasters meant they usually needed a 10 at long range.  This might have been a bit much, but certainly matched the traditional Imperial marksmanship.  I was a bit complacent in the second game, and paid for it by loosing three of my own troops plus two Sandpeople.

Of course we had bits where we were unsure, and I expect we made many mistakes, but we had a lot of fun, and that's what counts.

Progress With Inkarnate

 Last week I mentioned my shift from Dundjinni to Inkarnate and the reasons behind it. Well I've spent a bit of time experimenting and getting some idea how it works in between decorating and helping my youngest move.

Inkarnate themselves have some very useful tutorials on YouTube, the first one is here, and I real like what I can do so far.

So here's a map I did today for the first session in a new D&D campaign.  It took me about an hour, which is much faster than I could have produced anything with Dunjinni. I'm sure I'll get faster with familiarity and practice.

Shipwreck!

I've sized it to fit nicely on the 25 x 25 square pane on Roll20, but there is potential to do much bigger battlemaps (30 x 40 I believe).  I used the 'watercolor battlemaps' artwork.  There are plenty of stamps available, including the rather neat wrecked ship! I'm sure I will do better once I've got more experience, but I'm very happy with this for an early attempt, it certainly does the job.

R. I. P. Dundjinni, Long Live Inkarnate

I've just had to replace my PC.  The good news is that it's going to be a lot easier to do this blog, no more messing around with phone, tablet and borrowed laptop.  The bad news is I've lost my copy of Dundjinni.

Regular readers will know I'm a fan of Dundinni, a software suite for designing battlemaps for role playing games. I've printed out floor plans for adventures such as the classic Night's Dark Terror way back in the 90s. More recently and in an attempt to get more use out of the printing, I've made floor tiles using printed off Dundinni maps such as these sewer tiles I did fairly recently.  Of course, there's been no need for physical battlemaps or tiles this last year, but I have drawn maps for our online game using Dundjinni too.  But now I need a replacement.

A bit of research suggested two modern equivalents, Inkarnate and Dungeonfog. Both use a 'freemium' model, but Inkarnate seems to have more assets in the free version and the premium version is cheaper. Both programs are still having new content developed and both seem to have an active community.

I tried Inkarnate first, and the free version convinced me that it was worth at least a year's subscription ($25 at the time of writing).  I created a battle map for the online group just using the free version, and I'm now working on a map of the island the game is set on.

What do I think of it?  Well, things have changed in the 20+ years since I bought Dundjinni, or tried to work out how to use Campaign Cartographer. It's much more instinctive, and I'm enjoying trying the various tools to see what I can make. I'll add my island map once its finished and I will certainly try making more tiles using Inkarnate images as a base as well.

One thing it doesn't seem to have is much in the way of instructions.  Back when I was buying discs (and before that, floppy discs) there was usually a thick handbook, now it's all online.  I found the following video very helpful when trying Inkarnate out.

Does Combatzone Terrain Work for 20mm?

Yesterday I posted my first couple of Combatzone scatter terrain. This stuff is designed to be used in games of Star Wars Legion, a game which uses larger figures than the old WotC minis I'm using, so they are already on the large side.

Bodvoc asked in the comments if they'd work with our 20mm minis. It's not something I'd considered, but I thought it was worth looking at.

20mm Star Wars minis with Combatzone terrain

So there we go. Nothing inherently wrong with the crates, the barrel does look a bit on the large side but the pillar could be any size so that's fine.

I'm less keen on the Moisture Vaporator, though perhaps it's a larger industrial sized device?

The good thing is that the items are very 'Star Wars-y', I'm not quite happy with the scale, but I'd certainly put them on a table if I was short of terrain.

More relevant for me, I'll probably use them as inspiration for scatter terrain I build myself. I've already done some crates (with the grooves diagonal rather than straight, as in these examples), and I'll do more in the near future. 

Please leave a comment with your opinion below.

28mm Combatzone Star Wars Scatter Terrain

May the Fourth be With You

I recently received a couple of packs of Combatzone's Desert Planet terrain bits for my 28mm Star Wars games. T'Other One recommended their stuff he got for his Aliens board game, so I took a chance.

I've rushed a couple of the pieces off to get them posted today (International Star Wars Day) and here they are.

The crates etc are from the Large Scatter Set and the Moisture Vaporator is from the Desert Skirmish set.  Combatzone use the 3D printed terrain from Imperial Terrain (with full permission) and 'add some Combatzone bling'.  I take it to mean they  make moulds and cast, as the pieces are a hard plaster compound.  There is a faint trace of the printing layers, on the vaporator especially, and it has been altered to make it easier to cast (the three arms should be some distance from the central column).

The overall effect is good.  Because I rushed these, I neglected to clean them up, and there are several small bubble holes and a few bobbles that could have been removed, especially on the Moisture Vaporator.  I got both sets and there are plenty more pieces to take my time over.

Briefly, I undercoated with Vallejo Surface Primer (white) and  then painted in the recesses with Vallejo Game Color Cold Grey.  I then painted the raised areas in VGC Wolf Grey before painting on a heavy edge highlight of white.  Once everything was dry I drybrushed heavily with white.  The crates were done the same way, the broken pillar they are resting against was basecoated VGC Earth and highlighted up to VGC Khaki with a drybrush of VGC Off White.  They were easy to paint, though I admit I could have done better if I hadn't been rushing.  Whilst there are a few flaws on some of the pieces, I accept that I could have cleaned these up if I hadn't rushed, so its not a criticism I lay at Combatzone, just my hasty preparation (or lack of it).  They are exceptional value for the price.

The thugs gather round a Moisture Vaporator

Rebels use supplies as cover

I chose these pieces as being quite recognisably 'Star Wars' in style, though they'll work in other games like Deadzone I'm sure. 

By the way, if you like Star Wars gaming, Heroic Maps (whose stuff I regularly use) are having a Star Wars sale.  Tempting, especially if I ever get any Savage Worlds Star Wars done.