Daverman's Lazy Amateur Daqan!

By Daverman, in Runewars Painting and Modeling

I finished my Daqan from one Core Set... I take what I call a "lazy amateur" approach as, while I do enjoy painting I find I quickly reach a point where I'm more interested in playing than painting. Finding a balance between detail and quality that doesn't take hours upon hours has been my driving goal with anything I've painted. I generally only fill in the colors, clean up any mistakes and then wash and that's it.

I got back into painting by working on my Battlelore 2nd Edition forces, which come from the same world as Runewars TMG, so I knew I wanted to use that as a baseline. My Daqan were mostly blue, white and yellow. I didn't care much for the way the Spearmen were depicted on their reference card. This is just a personal bias of mine, but I don't like colored armor. I think armor should be shiny and metal. Maybe I just watched Excalibur too often as a kid.

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So I painted my Spearmen's armor plain metal. Pretend their Barony isn't that rich and can't afford fancy enameled armor. Walmartania?

Then I was worried because all that metal didn't leave a whole lot for the other colors I wanted to use. I especially didn't like the way they showed some sort of copper scales underneath the armor... the last thing I needed was more metal. So I figured they're wearing white woolen jerkins underneath instead, since Walmartania is to the north and um... it's cold?

So blue cloth, white wool and yellow... something? My Citadel Guards (a similar unit from Battlelore) had a nice raised detail on their shields that was easy to pick out but these shields are bare. I thought about making up a simple crown-shaped stencil and doing that in yellow or maybe getting some decals but you know, lazy amateur here. I don't have time for that! Then I noticed the cloth wrapped around their spears and thought that would do nicely:

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Everyone else moved along nicely after that... now off to the Waiqar!

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Edited by Daverman

There's no such thing as "watching Excalibur too much" as a kid or otherwise!

Great work! Painting doesn't need to be complex to be effective! I always try to be as lazy as possible.

how come i never noticed that oathsworn with the incredibly derpy/happy face....?

That is..just priceless..rofl..

They look great. Only quark i got is you let the wash on the runegolem pool up so it left dark spots like that. Yuck...
Also you say lazy paintjob but honestly all you did was stop at step3 (Prime, Base Color, Detail, and you didnt move onto highlights). If you ever wanted to you could easily make them much better as what you got may look simple, but thats what almost all models look like before the highlights step. Nothing wrong with that, i just wouldnt call it "lazy" lol

6 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

They look great. Only quark i got is you let the wash on the runegolem pool up so it left dark spots like that. Yuck...

They're rocks, they get dirty. Besides, this is Walmartania. Regular Golem scrubbing isn't cheap!

You should paint Walmart star burst on the shields.

So lazy!! :) Nice work.

I dig it man, I might actually steal this for my spearman cause... there's a lot and this looks solid for how quick it would be

Looks nice! Did you use a wash or a dip?

An excellent example of solid "Tabletop" painting.

I love these. Why? Because they are simple and finished. I won't force someone to paint to play but it's much nicer playing against an army lovingly and effectively (if quickly) painted.

I haven't started BattleLore yet (still working on Runewars boardgame), so I must ask, how would you compare painting these guys to BattleLore? Did the size make a noticeable difference in painting them?

20 hours ago, eilif said:

Looks nice! Did you use a wash or a dip?

An excellent example of solid "Tabletop" painting.

I washed, never tried dipping.

19 hours ago, VernonBroche said:

I love these. Why? Because they are simple and finished. I won't force someone to paint to play but it's much nicer playing against an army lovingly and effectively (if quickly) painted.

Thanks! I'd say it took nearly 10 hours to do the Spearmen but I was testing out things as I went, and doing things here and there when I had spare time to work on them. The others went much faster. I agree that it doesn't take a whole lot to make them look good on the table. A little care and attention to hit the details that will draw people's eyes does a lot. Most people (myself included) post the really nice close up pictures of their miniatures to show off their work, seemingly forgetting that this is all you're going to see when you sit down to play:

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No one's going to really notice you gave some of your men 5 o'clock shadow, or used 5 different colors of feathers in your archer's quivers.

16 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

I haven't started BattleLore yet (still working on Runewars boardgame), so I must ask, how would you compare painting these guys to BattleLore? Did the size make a noticeable difference in painting them?

Yes and no. They're larger and have more details that will soak up more time/attention... but there's fewer of them if you're just talking about 1 core set. The detail you want to put into the Battlelore guys can be a little tricky since they're smaller. I'd say it kind of works out even unless you wind up struggling with the smaller details on the Battlelore guys.

Edited by Daverman
23 hours ago, Daverman said:

So I painted my Spearmen's armor plain metal. Pretend their Barony isn't that rich and can't afford fancy enameled armor. Walmartania?

Preface: this is not a criticism, but the know-it-all in me wanting to spread my knowledge to the world.

Keeping metal armor a plain dull gray takes a lot of work, especially when it is in constant use outdoors or in any kind of rain/snow/water. I have my armor a plain steel without painting because I have the time and energy to keep it that way and don't have to march for weeks through the mud to get to a LARP or SCA tourney. Before the advent of things like chrome and stainless steel, the only option was to constantly polish the crap and rust off the armor (a great way to keep your snot-nosed teen squire from getting into trouble when you went off to war). Most of the wealthy cavalrymen could afford either a slave or servant to clean their armor, or someone to do all the rest of their work so they could polish it themselves, so they were most likely to 'shining armor' (hence knight in shining armor actually refers to someone rich enough to be able to afford to polish his armor). However, nobody who has half a brain is going to waste time polishing armor all day in the middle of a real war, so in times of war, or for all the rest of us not sitting on a cushion, the armor would be painted with what is essentially primer. A flat brown, grey, or black (depending on the base of the primer), sometimes mixed with pigments to add some colors. Rich knights would decorate the crap out of them before going to war of course, so they had painted versions of their heraldry proudly displayed or whatnot. However, in a long campaign the paint would eventually wear and if there wasn't time to haul a professional painter out, they had some squire primer it with whatever was available to prevent the rust from setting in. Lastly, the richest nobility might use silver, gold, or bronze to protect finicky bits and prevent rust from setting in, or effectively plate the armor to reduce corrosion (this is crazy expensive when you get a scratch!). Most armor seen in collections today are tournament armors that fall in these last categories, or they were a field armor that sat in somebodies hallway and had the paint stripped off and polished up by servants in the 1700s as a decoration. Most of the surviving painted armors were repainted as decorative, or are heraldic shields used to like a team logo before jousts, and kept as decorations with the original paint being touched up.

On ‎4‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 4:23 PM, Vineheart01 said:

how come i never noticed that oathsworn with the incredibly derpy/happy face....?

That is..just priceless..rofl..

With his arms thrown wide like that, he looks like he's singing about the hills being alive, possibly with the sound of music.

On ‎4‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 4:10 PM, Daverman said:

So I painted my Spearmen's armor plain metal. Pretend their Barony isn't that rich and can't afford fancy enameled armor.

They look fantastic! Anyone would be proud to field those.