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[Breadwinnner]

Me ad a friend joined a Warhammer club back in school many years ago. We ended up sinking £200+ each into units and paints and still didn't have enough for 1000 point armies. Plus the sheer amount of time it took to paint them. I was a bit of a perfectionist when it came to painting them. I won a competition for one of my units once. But I digress, We spent so much time assembling them that we only ended up playing one or two proper games before the magic of it all died. I also switched from CSM to Necrons part way, rendering my hours of work for nothing. Not to mention racking up even more fee's for the change in armies cost me. I ended up selling them, modeled and painted and barely broke even when you counsidered the cost of the modelling supplies. Not to mention the hours sunk into doing all that it hardly seemed worth the time/effort/money.

If I ever wanted to play the game again I'd just use substitutes for models instead. As much as I enjoyed the modelling, my wallet couldn't keep up with the hobby.

[fenrif]

I'm not sure how much the starter boxes are, though I think warmachine's are cheaper? Might be wrong on that. I know my local shop has a colour-coded price guide sheet, and the GWS models are definatly more expensive, even if it's only by a few quid per blister or something. But generally with games like Warmachine or Malifaux you just need less models to have a decent sized army.

Sure you can end up spending hundreds if you want everything, or a really big army, but you can play a game of Warmachine with just a handfull of models. A light warjack costs something like £10, and that can easily be a third of your armys point cost in smaller games. Quite a lot of the newer wargames seem to be going this way. Infinity and Malifaux both also seem to revolve around smaller model counts too.

It also means less models to paint, and more importantly much much less of the GWS "paint 50 identical guys" thing. When I was into 40K I'd always have my commanders, solos and vehicles painted up like a flash, but I'd put off the dreaded assembly line painting required for anything else.

[Sirus]

Why on Earth Terra were you painting a bunch of guys identically, though?

Just about every army (aside from possibly the Necrons) could be painted in a variety of ways. I'm planning to have each squad color-or-pattern-coded, and of course you can pose them differently.

[Ivefan]

I ended up selling them, modeled and painted and barely broke even when you counsidered the cost of the modelling supplies. Not to mention the hours sunk into doing all that it hardly seemed worth the time/effort/money.

The value drops like hell as soon as you start assembling them. Its great that you broke even, usually you sell at a loss if you even get them sold.

For me it was the painting and assembling that was the fun part and for just playing i would have preferred to play it on the computer.

[Karakzon]

Just to stick an ore in here but:

do you think theirs a decent computer programn that could handle simulating a normal game but online?

I know theirs a programn called game table that i may be able to use for this, just wondering if anyone else knows of any, and if theyde be interested in playing a match or two should i get all the data input done.  = Imperial guard player, or hoping to be=

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gametables a) Free b) has "pogs" for model tokens c) inbuilt dice roller d) info entry and storage (so you can go back to the saved map after a few days away)

It was made for DnD games, the only tricky bit should be getting the pog scales right.
Tis also 2D only (but a bit of creative thinking can get around that).

I dont want to take cash away from anyone -i already own the codex book, just waiting for 6th book out so i can learn the rules-
but i am a uni student, so other than this, theirs not really much way i can get into the game.

[nenjin]

In truth, I still like GWS for the lore and the aesthetics. I'm so out of touch with gameplay though that the mechanics of it hold zero interest to me these days.

But I love painting figs, customizing them and making terrain. That actually started to become more of a money sink to me than the figs (which I long since stopped buying), as I'd go out and buy spackle, model paint, flock, pink insulation foam and gallons of wood glue. So I ended spending hours making and painting stuff like this instead of playing the games. The only reason I stopped is because the cost became prohibitive and I didn't have stable income. Now that I'm back in the employment racket, I may pick up making terrain again soon.

[Ivefan]

making and painting stuff like this

Brain says want to, Wallet says no

[Sirus]

making and painting stuff like this

Brain says want to, Wallet says no

+1

[fenrif]

Why on Earth Terra were you painting a bunch of guys identically, though?

Just about every army (aside from possibly the Necrons) could be painted in a variety of ways. I'm planning to have each squad color-or-pattern-coded, and of course you can pose them differently.

This was back before you could pose them at all. 3rd edition came out just as I was getting out of the hobby. And I mean yeah you can paint every marine a completely different colour scheme, but if you want a military looking army then aside from small details like shoulder pads and things the vast majority of a unit is going to be pretty much the same. And if you're painting say an imperial guard army or an ork army then for the amount of figures you're doing (that were all pretty much identical) I found it best to just get them done. And since you're allready painting much of them the same (ork skin for example) it's easier to just assemly line them out quick as you can. Better that than having loads of half-finished squads.

Unless I was playing something like chaos or orks I doubt doing each squad differently would sit right with me.

[nenjin]

making and painting stuff like this

Brain says want to, Wallet says no

+1

A few things. (Spoiler'd since this is OT)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Some of the things you see are cannibalized from boxed sets. Most of the door frames ect... in those pics came out of the Mordheim boxed set.

2. FOUND MATERIALS! This defrays part of the cost. Stuff like, salvaging what you can from construction sites. Foam, wood in usable sizes/materials, nuts, bolts and metal fittings. Gravel gotten from gravel roads (I have 3 separate trash bins with different grades of dirt/gravel from a country road about a mile away, that I sifted myself. I use a lot of it to base terrain with, particularly rubble.) Business card stock. Old computer parts are great for 40k/Necromunda. Styrofoam packaging. Lots of food/common household item packaging. There is a real art to taking something from around you that's common, and making it look like something else. You have to see it in your head first, and it doesn't always work. But with enough paint and texture, anything can be made to look like something else at scale. Or you bite the bullet and buy some real materials.

3. There are some costs you can't avoid. Glue, which is relatively cheap. Spray paint, which you will end up going through regularly. I buy large sheets of poster board to use for the super structure of most buildings. I've used card board, cereal box card board....of which I don't have pics, but I'm still quite proud of. They look like shit up close, but it was a pretty valuable learning experience, because it teaches you about how important good materials are. The #1 cost that's hardest to avoid is your BASE material, the thing the whole terrain is glued to. I use MDF, and that shit ain't cheap. But it's worth the cost because it won't warp under the stress the glue places on it. Card board, even posterboard, will flex under the tension of the glue when it dries, causing the base to curl up. It's also sensitive to moisture warping. And you want terrain pieces to sit nice and flat. And then of course....paint. I recommend NOT using GWS paints because they're horrifically overpriced and loaded with latex. Finding a good brand of paint that's affordable, that you like the look of and that works well across multiple projects (models vs. terrain) is all part of the game. Modelling putty is also kind of pricey, but it gets used in small bits and is soooo neat to work with.

4. Small projects! After doing several large projects (40k themed mostly and those Mordheim pieces), I looked at all the scraps I had lying around (mostly sheets of MDF with big circles cut out of it) and all the tiny bits of carved pink insulation foam and was like "Screw that, none of this is going to waste!" And that's how I ended up at that little corner piece in the pics, with the squid thing. It's probably only 6" across, yet working small let me pour a lot of detail into it. I think that's actually one of my favorite ones.

5. If you've got interest in this stuff, even if you don't plan to do any of it, read and view the articles and showcases over at www.Terragenesis.com. Those guys are hardcore terrain builders and as a community they produce some insane shit. They also have a large list of DIY articles, primers and tutorials. I really can't recommended it enough if you geek out over terrain.

This was back before you could pose them at all. 3rd edition came out just as I was getting out of the hobby. And I mean yeah you can paint every marine a completely different colour scheme, but if you want a military looking army then aside from small details like shoulder pads and things the vast majority of a unit is going to be pretty much the same. And if you're painting say an imperial guard army or an ork army then for the amount of figures you're doing (that were all pretty much identical) I found it best to just get them done. And since you're allready painting much of them the same (ork skin for example) it's easier to just assemly line them out quick as you can. Better that than having loads of half-finished squads.

I painted my Blood Angels all the same when I was just starting out. When I came back years later, with more experience and a steadier hand, I decided to repaint them all. And I found a lot of new ideas coming into my head while I was doing so, like creating battle damaged armor by carving little slices into the shoulder pads and leg armor with an exacto knife. Even if units are all painted the same, even if they're the ones you can't pose, you can still add a lot of diversity to the look of the army with a few simple touches.

[Sirus]

I painted my Blood Angels all the same when I was just starting out. When I came back years later, with more experience and a steadier hand, I decided to repaint them all. And I found a lot of new ideas coming into my head while I was doing so, like creating battle damaged armor by carving little slices into the shoulder pads and leg armor with an exacto knife. Even if units are all painted the same, even if they're the ones you can't pose, you can still add a lot of diversity to the look of the army with a few simple touches.

+1 (again)

Hell, dab some bloody wounds onto a Force-Commander's face.
Guardsmen? Give them different skin tones.
Orks? Attach bits of the plastic frame the models came on to make "bitz".
Chaos? Cut off a CM's arm. Attach an Ork arm. Call it a mutation.

[nenjin]

I clip up all the sprues the figs come in, and turn them into bricks for rubble. Nothing, NOTHING, goes to waste. Having a bit box as a modeler allows you to do so much more than a simple paint job.

[fenrif]

Yeah I'm not saying you can't do different things to make them unique. I was specifically talking about having to paint a large number of models that are all coloured pretty similar.

You can add battle damage, shade them differently, do different unit markings, kitbash all of them, etc. But eventually when it comes down to it you're painting 30 odd guys in red armour, or 60 odd greenish orks. If I went the whole hog trying to make each of them unique I'd never finish. Because when it comes down to it they're all the same guy, in the same pose, and they're all wearing red armour.

I clip up all the sprues the figs come in, and turn them into bricks for rubble. Nothing, NOTHING, goes to waste. Having a bit box as a modeler allows you to do so much more than a simple paint job.

One of the only things I don't like about Warmachines is that you don't seem to get sprues with anything. They were so usefull!

[nenjin]

Do you just get the figs and pieces loose? Maybe they figure it's cheaper to clip things out of sprues and reclaim the excess material. That's something I'm surprised GWS hasn't started doing.

If I went the whole hog trying to make each of them unique I'd never finish. Because when it comes down to it they're all the same guy, in the same pose, and they're all wearing red armour.

When I had to paint 30 identical beastmen, I still took the time to do tattoos, different fur colors and the like. When you're in a hurry to have a painted army, yeah, you don't bother. But now I think I truly enjoy myself more when I'm creating than when I'm at the table.

I know some painters have a batch method where they paint the basic elements all the same then go back and do detail work. It can get a little mind numbing doing each fig from base coat to detailing, one at a time.

[Sirus]

I spent a good four hours painting a single D&D figurine. It rests proudly on my shelf to this day, because it is awesome.