The real issue as most here recognized with painting is time. I would encourage those that still want nice models to look for commission painters. Legion models look a lot easier to paint than many other popular wargame ones, so you can find someone who will charge you roughly as much as you would need to add to the base price for models of this casting quality prepainted. Only they will look neat instead of clumsy and weird.

I think there are loads of pre painted Star Wars miniatures in the world already.

FFG could see if dust studios is up for making a premium line though.

16 hours ago, ninclouse2000 said:

Ive never painted a thing and just proved how much supplies are and wow are they expensive! I can't believe you really save any money buying non painted minis when the painting supplies cost this much.

Not sure what you've been looking at...use Vallejo paints...top quality, half the price of GW. I have pots of paint that I've been using for 2 years and still have enough for what I'm doing. Worth paying more for brushes (and GW are ok quality).

I play X-wing and I have for a long time also been interested in Armada, however the fact that the fighters/non-capital ships are unpainted (and of poorer plastic quality and sculpt) than X-wing has held me back. Another point is that X-wing is hugely popular in my area with a large competitive scene and several gamestores holding game nights, unlike Armada which not popular at all.

Runewars was introduced some while ago and did attract some individuals, but not me, as it was not prepainted, and now, in my local area Runewars is dead. The few that bought it are selling their coresets as there are none who play...and no players equals dead plastic.

This made we wonder, for a game to be a success it has to attract a "critical mass" of players right from the beginning, that is the only way to get a "selfperpetual" local gaming community going around it, that stands a chance of growing into something big. If there are not enough players, then it does not take off, and then it risks dying. This is a huge part of why X-wing became a success - the non-hardcore hobbyist player wants prepainted miniatures.

Now, I play X-wing and I am interested in SW Legion, however the fact that the miniatures are unpainted is holding me back. I am so hoping there will be a premium set or that at least this game takes off in my local gaming community.

Don't buy GW brushes!

Buy ZEM brushes

http://www.zembrush.com/3200-brush/

They manufacture brushes for lots of brands and while they are not the world's greatest brushes they are very good and much cheaper to replace.

as for the paints an imperial player only needs two colors.

8 hours ago, Lifer4700 said:

So this means if I want a basic paint job on my Legion models, I'll be able to start playing the game just over half-a-year after I buy it...

Because that 3-4 hours I get once per month to play something like Legion would be spent painting instead. Looks like I'll be playing it unpainted, since I would rather enjoy the game with boring gray models than not play at all.

Well... no. You're being a little melodramatic. If you want a decent paint job, you're looking at seven 3-4 hour blocks of time to get the models painted to a 'basic paint job'. That's as a beginner. Realistically, most people play with other people who have their own models or other people who could help with the painting. If you insist on only playing with painted models, you're looking at more like three or four 3-4 hour blocks. That's about 12 hours of total work. You've already said you get 3-4 hours free once per month for gaming (what the heck do you do that you have so little personal time?!?). That means a full paint job for one faction is about three weeks... four if you're slow. That's nowhere near six months.

Or you could play unpainted. Many people will play unpainted. I doubt seriously that FFG's tournament rules will require paint.

Or you could pay someone to paint. If you have no free time, I'm assuming you have money. If you don't have money or free time, this sort of game might not be for you as it can become somewhat time and money intensive.

I cant believe how many people are still going on about pre-painted minis.... No one complained when Imperial Assault wasn't painted why is this the exception? You can literally have tabletop quality in 3-4 steps per troop, I say embrace the fact you can customize your troops as they do with imperial assault. Let me break it down, as a previous imperial assault player/painter.

-6 stormtroopers

Paints: Black, White, Grey, Black Wash, Black primer, and 2-3 cheap brushes = $15-20

Prime Black -> Base coat Grey -> Wash in Black -> highlight white -> Paint Base Black

Following the above method lets say a total of 30 minutes per figure in total 30x6 = 180 minutes or 2 1/2 hours.

2 1/2 hours to get 6 of your minis to pre-painted-esc quality because we all know most hobbyists have a higher standing than a factory can produce, i mean look at the pros... If you are put off by painting your minis, then Im sorry to say you are not the targeted market which was stated by the creator himself Alex. A business would not change their target audience 2-3 months prior to release.

If you are also put off by not having time to spend 2 1/2 hours to paint 6 minis, then I feel like maybe you shouldn't be playing wargames? This is not a boardgame that you can just buy the box and play with 0 further investment, this is where wargames shine it allows for the creativity of the player to take hold in Terrain, Squad Schemes, etc. which also is more of a time/money sink for casual people.

TL:DR - Painting is not difficult, Painting to pre-painted quality does not take long at all, If you dont have time to paint maybe you shouldnt be playing a wargame, you will also need terrain on top of painting your minis. QQ elsewhere this game is not for you because you are not the target audience, the designer of the game has said so.

9 hours ago, Lifer4700 said:

So this means if I want a basic paint job on my Legion models, I'll be able to start playing the game just over half-a-year after I buy it...

Not even close... Because you can play with one faction while you paint the other, or play with a partly painted force.

Plus if you're playing Imp's it will be fairly quick and easy to get them to tabletop quality. Base the Stormtroopers with white and paint the black details. Base Vader in Black and do a few details and you're done. The Speeder Bikes would be the tricky part but even that's a white base, black detail and then tan on the bike.

Could do an Imperial force in a matter of a dozen or less hours... It won't look great but would be on par if i not better than any prepainted kit.

13 minutes ago, Ryertangent said:

No one complained when Imperial Assault wasn't painted why is this the exception?

That's not really true, people did complain about it when it first came out. In fact it was pretty much the same exact arguments you're seeing now for Legion.

You know you can just play with unpainted models...

9 hours ago, TylerTT said:

as for the paints an imperial player only needs two colors.

Yup, red and orange. (Black and white aren't technically colors.)

45 minutes ago, Orcdruid said:

Yup, red and orange. (Black and white aren't technically colors.)

If you want to get technical, there is no such thing as color. O.O

54 minutes ago, Orcdruid said:

Yup, red and orange. (Black and white aren't technically colors.)

Technically Black and White are colours, physically they are not. (If you want to be a smart-****, do it right).

On 8/20/2017 at 0:17 AM, kmanweiss said:

Sure, people can do better than X-Wing and Armada. And those people stripped, primed, painted, and touched up those models. For the other 99% of the people, they were ecstatic to have amazing looking (in their opinion) unit to field right out of the box. The pre-painted aspect of those games drew people in, lots of people. Lots of people that had never played table top games. Lots of people that had never touched a paintbrush outside a water color set in grade school. X-wing wouldn't be top dog today if it wasn't for the pre-painted aspect.

I can attest to the fact that the only way I ever even dreamed of getting into miniature gaming was because X-Wing was already pre-painted. However, two years later and dropping almost $750 over the last six months by investing in Blood Bowl, Warhammer 40k, paints, brushes, hours and hours of time, etc.

I am now fully invested into miniature gaming. I thought there was no way I'd ever even have the ability to hold a paint brush without shaking, but after watching videos and researching on the web, I can now paint some pretty respectful looking miniatures. Of course they're not professionally done, but in all seriousness they compare to many of the miniatures I see on the tables now and in fact look better than some even. And this is after only painting about a dozen miniatures. I wish I would've discovered this fun and rewarding hobby years ago. I can not wait until SW Legions comes out.

@Darth Onyx you are totally right - years ago, I started painting minis armed with nothing but almost no money and an internet connection. The miniatures hobby is so much more doable than it looks from the outside.

Shaving prepainted miniatures brings both sides together. People that want to paint can and the ones who can't to don't have to. People make some amazing paint jobs on X-wing models but no one has to play with a lifeless grey blob.

37 minutes ago, ozmodon said:

Shaving prepainted miniatures brings both sides together. People that want to paint can and the ones who can't to don't have to. People make some amazing paint jobs on X-wing models but no one has to play with a lifeless grey blob.

Noone that wants to paint is going to spend 2-3 times the cost of what the product would be unpainted to have to go through the additional time and expense of stripping the models. Not in a game of this scale.

This isn't X-wing where you put 4 ships on the table in a single game. You're expecting at least 40 models on each side, you have to keep the model costs down or you price yourself out of the market for both groups. How you continue to not consider that reality is beyond me.

I think FFG are damned whatever they do.

If they release painted figures of poor quality, they can keep the price down, but will lose sales.

if they release painted figures of good quality, the price point will have to go up.

So I think their best bet is to release unpainted, keep price down, and rely on the fact that most miniature games come unpainted and hence not alienate too many of the potential market.

An option for quickpainting Stormtroopers: Get white primer, black paint, and white paint. Spray white, paint black details black, clean up with white, literaly dip the whole thing into Army Painter dark tone quickshade, shake off, let dry and be done with it. This takes an hour of actual work for a squad of troopers at max. It will look aweful compared to properly painted minis, but still miles ahead of prepainted.

Imagine the inaccuracies X-Wing ships have on a storm trooper helmet, it would be terrible! And X-Wing is the top of the curve concerning prepaint quality. It is just that on purely mechanical things the inaccuracy doesn't hurt as much.

19 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

An option for quickpainting Stormtroopers: Get white primer, black paint, and white paint. Spray white, paint black details black, clean up with white, literaly dip the whole thing into Army Painter dark tone quickshade, shake off, let dry and be done with it. This takes an hour of actual work for a squad of troopers at max. It will look aweful compared to properly painted minis, but still miles ahead of prepainted.

Imagine the inaccuracies X-Wing ships have on a storm trooper helmet, it would be terrible! And X-Wing is the top of the curve concerning prepaint quality. It is just that on purely mechanical things the inaccuracy doesn't hurt as much.

The better option would be to prime with black, paint the white areas with a couple of thin layers (possibly very light grey), ink wash (AP dark tone) and then highlight in white. Using wash as the final step would leave you with some very dark stormtroopers...

13 hours ago, ozmodon said:

People that want to paint can and the ones who can't to don't have to.

It's been explained why this is a bad idea so many times I'm starting to think you either don't read what anyone else says or are incapable of seeing past your own selfish desires.

1 hour ago, Holttum said:

if they release painted figures of good quality, the price point will have to go up.

And the price point will go up to the point that they'd lose even more sales. The Dust Premium line is a truly apples to apples to Legion, both core sets cost $80, and have about the same amount of plastic in them. The Premium pack costs $240, for the prepainted version. That means Legion would cost about the same. I can say with a fair degree of certainty they'd lose way, way more sales at that price point then they will because the models aren't painted.

I'm super stoked for this game but there's no way in **** I'd pay $240 for the core set and $40-50 for a 7 man squad. I know i'm not alone in that, in fact I'd be willing to bet that even with the SW IP behind it, at that price point it would be a flop.

1 hour ago, VanorDM said:

It's been explained why this is a bad idea so many times I'm starting to think you either don't read what anyone else says or are incapable of seeing past your own selfish desires.

And the price point will go up to the point that they'd lose even more sales. The Dust Premium line is a truly apples to apples to Legion, both core sets cost $80, and have about the same amount of plastic in them. The Premium pack costs $240, for the prepainted version. That means Legion would cost about the same. I can say with a fair degree of certainty they'd lose way, way more sales at that price point then they will because the models aren't painted.

I'm super stoked for this game but there's no way in **** I'd pay $240 for the core set and $40-50 for a 7 man squad. I know i'm not alone in that, in fact I'd be willing to bet that even with the SW IP behind it, at that price point it would be a flop.

Agreed.

2 hours ago, tuco74 said:

The better option would be to prime with black, paint the white areas with a couple of thin layers (possibly very light grey), ink wash (AP dark tone) and then highlight in white. Using wash as the final step would leave you with some very dark stormtroopers...

Best way I've found to do white right too.

3 hours ago, VanorDM said:

It's been explained why this is a bad idea so many times I'm starting to think you either don't read what anyone else says or are incapable of seeing past your own selfish desires.

And the price point will go up to the point that they'd lose even more sales. The Dust Premium line is a truly apples to apples to Legion, both core sets cost $80, and have about the same amount of plastic in them. The Premium pack costs $240, for the prepainted version. That means Legion would cost about the same. I can say with a fair degree of certainty they'd lose way, way more sales at that price point then they will because the models aren't painted.

I'm super stoked for this game but there's no way in **** I'd pay $240 for the core set and $40-50 for a 7 man squad. I know i'm not alone in that, in fact I'd be willing to bet that even with the SW IP behind it, at that price point it would be a flop.

At this point I almost wish that they had made X-Wing unpainted, because the flat, angular ships coming with a base and wash are making tons of their boardgaming playerbase come to the conclusion of "if pre-painted infeasible then how x-wing".

You nailed it though, the DUST premium pack is basically apples to apples and shows that the price for a good paint job would be astronomical. Just look at Arkham Horror, $200 for 48 hand-painted miniatures and the paint job is still extremely mediocre and in some places straight bad.

35 minutes ago, tuco74 said:

The better option would be to prime with black, paint the white areas with a couple of thin layers (possibly very light grey), ink wash (AP dark tone) and then highlight in white. Using wash as the final step would leave you with some very dark stormtroopers...

Dark tone is a Quickshade, which is not a traditional wash. The pigment creeps much further and more importantly it is not acrylic, with a lot longer drying time and a very different finish more akin to a varnish. I speedpainted these orcs for a demo game when the BB reboot came out. The yellow parts are not touched up at all - light enough I would guess.

8 minutes ago, Shadin said:

At this point I almost wish that they had made X-Wing unpainted, because the flat, angular ships coming with a base and wash are making tons of their boardgaming playerbase come to the conclusion of "if pre-painted infeasible then how x-wing".

It is a bit irritating to have to keep pointing out that X-Wing's and Stormtroopers are not the same thing...

But I think part of the thing about X-Wing was the cost of making them pre-painted did not drive up the price enough to make it an issue. An unpainted X-Wing with the same cards and such would likely still cost $10 or so bucks I bet. So offering it painted for $5... That's a pretty easy decision I think. Just some people can't see to understand that a $5 increase per model isn't going to cut it for Legion. Instead you're looking at doubling or even tripling the price. Which will price it out of most people's price range.