A case for painting requirements
Fully-painted: the gold standard of 40k and wargaming in general. Having a fully-painted army is a huge achievement, often the work of many months or years. Putting such a force on the table should be done with immense pride. Even when I face off against an opponent who is a far better painter than I (and there are many of them), having a finished force always brings me joy.
But should events require fully-painted? As I just said, finishing an army takes a lot of hard work. Taking a gander at event photos (including some on this very blog!) you’ll see that not every event requires this. So should yours?
How painted is fully-painted?
There are a lot of levels of painting out there. The old standard was three-colour minimum: that is, each model must have a minimum of three different paints (whether primer counted as one of these colours was often a source of debate). This was pretty basic, where an army would look very much in progress and incomplete, often with key parts of the miniature still the colour of the primer. Nowadays, GW has defined painting levels much more succinctly for the community, and as a whole this has been eagerly adopted.
“Battle Ready” is generally defined as basecoats and washes for the entire miniature (or a contrast/speed paints over the mini), plus at least a texture paint on the base. This is above a three-colour minimum in that each distinct colour is painted to the same standard, whereas in the three-colour minimum you could stop after the first trio of colours is down.
Above Battle Ready would be “Parade Ready”, where the Battle Ready standard is improved with highlights to take the miniature to a more complete stage. Parade Ready as defined by GW is Battle Ready but with highlights added to the miniature. I’d push this a little further and define it as complete, where Battle Ready would be perhaps “tabletop”: which is to say it looks okay at a distance but isn’t finished.
Which painting standard (if any) you suggest, encourage, or require from your attendees is up to you, but I’ll refer back to these as we go.
Immersion
This has been the watchword of my gaming of late, and fully-painted armies are a big part of that. If you’re running a narrative event, requiring players to bring fully-painted armies is only going to improve the immersion. Looking at the table and seeing no grey plastic will only draw you into the battle, bringing the story to life.
That’s not to say that you can’t have a narrative game with unpainted minis, but it forces your mind to take an extra step in suspending disbelief. Looking at a board of grey plastic, you’ll instantly see that these are game pieces on the board and be drawn away from the story you’re trying to build. That’s not to say that your fully painted toy soldiers will come to life when you put down the brush, but a good Warhammer game should look like a diorama as much as a game, a moment frozen in time.
Showcasing the hobby and drawing people in
A big draw of wargames are the spectacle of the game. Oftentimes, if you’re playing in a public space like a game store, a fully-painted game will draw a crowd, even people who have no idea what a Space Marine is. Simply put, a fully-painted game of Warhammer looks so damn cool.
If you want to grow this hobby, put on a display. Make your games worth watching. I always skip past social media links of half-painted battles, but if the armies and tables are fully-painted, I’ll be going through every pic in that post. Even Battle-Ready armies look great from three feet away: especially if you’re promoting your club or event, just having a coat of contrast on everything will go a long way to making your photos look all the better.
This is probably a good time to mention terrain. If you’re requiring painted armies from your players, you should be providing fully-painted terrain. Obviously this can be a huge hurdle-the Independent Characters often call terrain the “third army”, and asking you to paint another “army” (or several) to have fully-painted is a big deal. But if you’re playing a fully-painted game, then having fully-painted terrain is part of that.
The hard part
Getting everything painted for an event is a lot of work. I’ve often worried that requiring fully-painted armies will turn people away. However, many people use events as motivation to get their armies painted and they can be a great goal for gamers to paint towards. But that means giving people enough notice so that they can paint an army. I like to give at least five months’ notice if I’m requiring fully painted for an event, which is enough time for my players to finish their current project and shift gears to painting for my event. Obviously, this will vary for your gaming group and event: if you’re doing a Combat Patrol event, players might need less time; if everyone’s starting a 2,000 point army from scratch, it might be more realistic to give people a full year.
There’s no way around this: painting takes a lot of time. In 2022 when I finished my Dark Eldar army for a campaign weekender, my other hobbies took the back seat for the five months leading up to the event. I was painting almost every night and spending most of my available time painting. I had scheduled the units and terrain I needed to complete so that I had enough time before the event (aiming for a project every two weeks), but this didn’t allow wiggle room for things like video games and gamemastering my roleplaying game, both which took a backseat. I’m not saying you should quit your job or neglect your significant other to paint, but you might need to paint when you’d rather be doing other things.
If you are really, really strapped for time and need to get an army painted, plan out a scheme that can be speed painted in a day or two, and set aside a weekend to do the whole army. This usually means planning the paint scheme to be speed painted, not the other way around, and you need to be disciplined enough to follow through. Also, don’t be afraid to recruit friends to help out: members of your gaming group will probably be happy to hangout and paint for a day! There’s lots of great resources for speed painting entire armies, some of my favourites I’ve linked below.
From an organiser’s standpoint, there’s a few things you can do to make the painting burden easier. For one, you could set the standard at Battle Ready instead of Parade, or even just say Fully Painted and let your participants interpret as they choose. Most will probably push for Parade, but some may only make it to Battle. That’s okay: the goal is to have fully-painted, immersive, inspiring games, not to judge a painting competition (though you can certainly have painting awards). You’re asking your players to put their best foot forward painting wise, not demanding an unrealistic standard.
Lowering the points of the event is also a way to make it more accessible to people with smaller collections and/or tighter time constraints. As an example, I feel like 40k and Age of Sigmar are slaves to the 2,000 point game size, but 1,000 point games work just as well, or it can be varied to anywhere in between. This has the added benefit of shorter games, where fitting three 2k games in a day can be difficult, with many participants not finishing rounds. For example, at the 2022 Hogtowner, I didn’t finish half my games due to time. If you’re running a narrative event with custom rules or a progression system like Crusade, you definitely want more time for people to process these mechanics.
Regardless of how you approach these issues, having an open dialogue with your players is key. Don’t be afraid to ask them how they feel and work to meet their needs. But at the same time, it’s okay to stick to your guns: if you want a fully-painted event, you can insist on it and if people don’t like it, hey, not every event is for everyone. And if no one shows up, then take a look at your event and re-evaluate.
Changing Metascape
It’s no secret that 40k points change multiple times a year. 40k may be the worst offender, but other game systems have updates as well, sometimes with little notice. If you’re giving a five month lead time as I suggest above, that means at least one balance update could drop before your event. You’ll have to decide if it will be adopted, but chances are players will need to change their lists in the middle of army prep. For some people, this will be straightforward as they’ll have a large collection to draw on: for others, it may be more difficult.
This is a really good example of where being a collection builder rather than an army builder comes to the fore. If you have a large collection (say, 12k+ of a custom Chapter) it can be easy to plug holes in a list when Space Marines drop in points. Whereas if you only build 2,000 point armies, a now illegal list could be hard to adjust (though if you have multiple armies, you may be able to switch).
Having allied units in your collection is great for filling last minute holes. If you’re an Imperial player, a few assassins and/or Inquisitor and retinue are great way to do this. Knights (both loyalist and traitor) are also fantastic centrepiece models that can slot into a list, albeit if there’s big hole. Finally, take a look at our 40k house rules with more relaxed allies rules and see if they’re something your group would like to adopt.
But if you’re still strapped for minis to build your list, you can always ask to borrow some models. For 40k 10th edition specifically, it has done away with matching schemes and requirements for cohesive armies and you can easily borrow models to build a list. A little contingent from a different chapter can really help build the narrative of an Astartes taskforce, and there are a ton of in-lore examples of this.
Isn’t a painting requirement gatekeeping?
I have only heard of one event that requires players to apply with pictures of their models: in every other case, the painting requirement, at its strictest, is to the best of one’s ability. Therefore, no one is being excluded based on painting skill, rather whether or not a person wishes to devote the time to painting.
There certainly can be barriers to playing Warhammer. The financial cost to get into the hobby can be a barrier, a disability could prevent someone from being able to hobby, play or learn the rules, or a community they join (whether online or in person) could be so toxic they don’t feel welcome. Compared to these examples, a painting requirement is a very minor and surmountable barrier, one overcome with a little time and dedication.
Non-participation
Sometimes despite all the reminders you give, paint days you host, and memes you post, someone shows up on the day with unpainted minis. Your immersive, hardcore narrative event has been blighted with unfinished models or grey plastic toy soldiers: what do you do?
Before throwing the offender in the gutter, have a conversation with them. There’s probably a very good reason they didn’t finish their army: people have jobs, families, and lives outside of the hobby, as despicable as that sounds. Maybe an emergency came up the weekend they planned to speed paint everything and couldn’t find another weekend. Maybe they never use discord and didn’t see the requirements. Maybe they just don’t care.
Whatever the reason, I can’t really give standard advice on how to handle the situation – the possibilities are too varied – except treat the person and situation with courtesy and respect. This is a game and a hobby, after all, it’s rarely someone’s first priority.
There are also options to bring the event up to scratch. If you brought a ringer army or there are spare models on hand, these could be swapped in to replace the unpainted ones. You could put a penalty in place, such as all units can reroll 1s to Hit against unpainted units. Or you can just let it go: the peer pressure of being (hopefully) the only person with unpainted miniatures will probably be both punishment enough and encouragement to try harder for the next event.
Many-Colour Minimum
At the end of the day, some people just don’t like painting. That’s okay: this hobby is so multifaceted that there is something for everyone. And there are a ton of events out there that don’t have a painting requirement.
But playing a fully-painted wargame is the utmost pinnacle of this hobby. Showing off your finished minis, fawning over your opponents models, and getting lost in a completed battlefield is why I show up and what I strive for. It’s something I hope everyone builds towards, as it’s a great way to grow our hobby and expand the community.
Army painting videos: