I am new to the hobby and was wondering if anyone has any tips or things that would help me through painting, building terrain, helping others get into the game, etc.

For terrain it's hard to beat Mel's videos. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTerrainTutor

For painting miniatures I'd recommend https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT and https://www.youtube.com/user/Sorastro Sorastro is going to be painting everything from Legion I believe so he'll be especially worth watching.

After that, find a local game store of club and play games there. Best way to learn is to do.

13 hours ago, JackD2204 said:

I am new to the hobby and was wondering if anyone has any tips or things that would help me through painting, building terrain, helping others get into the game, etc.

For painting, try to accept your results and the fact that they will improve!

Depending on who you are, this can be way more difficult then it sounds with so many great painters out there showing off their works! But unless your one in a billion, you cannot get around the fact that it takes time to get even a decent paintjob consistently.

Find tutorials and guides that focus on simple and clean paintjobs, not overly complex and detailed works. The less steps, colors and "special techniques" the better, it will get you going on the basics and incent you to continue as you will see progress in your work!

Dont go for too much details, it takes a lot of time and can really demoralize and make the painting feel like a chore instead of a joyful hobby. You can always go back and add details to your miniatures at a later time when you feel like it.

Ive done this mistake time and time again, expecting my skill to be above where it really is, ending with excessive time spent on results that turned out much worse then they would had I gone with a more moderate approach.

And as a final little advice, do spent some time deciding on how youre going to base your models! An army is really brought together by consistent good looking basing that isnt "too much" or "too little". A simple green flocking with some rubble workse wonders, but dont shy away from desert, snow and even burned/scorched earth. Especially Stormtroopers with their overall white armor will look great on darker bases!

But again, accept and be happy with whatever results you can consistently bring out without making it a tedious affair, if your not enjoying it your not doing it right

I 2nd the recommendation for painting figures....Sorastro has already done amazing guides for imperial Assault Star Wars figures and will do more for Legion...amazingly easy to follow and great results.

I only have a few years of experience.....what I learned so far.

1. WATER DOWN your paints.

2. spray can primers are hard to control. I went with an airbrush and Vallejo primers I find are the best way to go.

3.YouTube, so many nice tutorials there. You'll learn as you go along.

4.don't be afraid to ask questions if you get stuck.

5. Time...take your time.

6. Factory build and paint. This is good for troopers and stuff and saves time.

7. get some good brushes and fine black pens for shading.

Pace yourself on painting. Do a few at a time.

Do a squad, and then take a break and do a Hero or vehicle to break the routine.

30 minutes ago, Sirdrasco said:

Pace yourself on painting. Do a few at a time.

Do a squad, and then take a break and do a Hero or vehicle to break the routine.

^THIS.

Doing batches is a must to get consistency early on, but nothing will turn you off painting more than trying to do 15+models in the 1 session and having it turn into production line boring.

If you plan to paint, then, to repeat something I said else where. Don't buy everything all at once.

Buy what you need to get started and paint that. Then whenever you finish painting something replace it with something new.

Many gamers buy a complete army and then look at the unpainted pile of models and never get to the paint.

Thank you so much everyone for the great advice! It is sometimes overwhelming to come into a hobby like this, that takes a lot of time and hard work to make it a great experience. It is more comforting to know that there is an active and exciting community for the game. As far as terrain goes, I am not too worried as I have a pretty good idea for what I want my endor map to look like, as well as tons and tons of useful resources such as youtube, and this community. The figures, I think that sorastro is awesome and a great painter! The only problem? The amount of paints he uses, and the various techniques he uses are a little outside of my price range and skill level. I think I'l just paint the minis my best, and they probably won't look too bad. (Also planning on putting some flock, and grass tufts on the base which will raise the quality of the figures as well). Thanks again everyone!

Red, Yellow, Blue, Black and White are all you need.

The thing is, when you are painting an army, having set colours in a pot or at worst a basic 2 drops of this to 1 drop of that means that you can paint a unit, and later re-do a similar paint job on a second unit. Keep a notebook or log of what you do. As such you may end up finding that it isn't all that bad.

If you notice Sorastro breaks his painting into 5 main steps, preparation, base coat, shade, highlight and base. Preparation is making the model if it is multi-part and you may find that you'll need some clippers, files, blades and glues. The primer is part of the base coat, Sorastro typically uses a white in the videos I have watched, so a can of white may be good.

For the base coat you just hit each part of the model with various colours. Say flesh for skin, green for pants and grey for a shirt. If you watch the video and take note of the various colours used in this step just get those colours and complete these steps for the models. I think at worst you may need 6-10 colours.

Once you have all the core set base coated then you could buy the colours for the shading. At the end of this step you would have a perfectly acceptable tabletop standard of paint job.

For highlighting you can just add white or yellow to the base colours, or you could expand into the paints as you can. Perhaps you just highlight the flesh as a step and just get the 1-2 colours needed to do that. I think these add depth to a model, but it is worth noting that you can just highlight one or two key parts of a model and that alone will make it look much better. So, perhaps the pants and boots look just fine with a wash and the extra effort of the highlight will not add much more.

Basing can just be a simple process of gluing down some sand with a a watered down PVA glue, painting the whole base a medium brown, dabbing on a brown ink wash and then highlighting with a very swift drybrush of a pale brown or white. Then add a turf or two of a product like GamersGrass , Mininature Silflor or Army Painter Grass Tufts.

Slowly over a few months you'll expand what you have. Start with Stormtroopers, they have a very limited pallet of colours, then the walkers, bikes and Darth Vader. Then you add the rebel troopers, walker, bike and Luke.

19 minutes ago, Amanal said:

Start with Stormtroopers, they have a very limited pallet of colours, then the walkers, bikes and Darth Vader . Then you add the rebel troopers, walker, bike and Luke .

Not trying to be a contrarian, but I think if you're new-ish to painting figures, a more forgiving way to go is to start with the Rebels first. By the time you're done with them, you'll have gained enough experience to be able to paint the Stormies at a fairly good/consostent level. A common comment over in the Imperial Assault paint forums is that people would often start with the Stormtroopers, assuming they'd be easy to do--after all it's just black and white--and that wasn't always the case. Also, by the time they'd be on Stormie #9, it would look 9 times better than Stormie #1.

I say the Rebels are more "forgiving" because they're not required to be as uniform in appearance as the Imperials.

At any rate, when painting non-armored, "clothed" figures, after priming, start painting from the inside-out. In other words, do it in the order of how you'd get dressed. Start with exposed skin, then paint the next article of clothing closest to the skin and move outwards: undershirt, pants, shirt, vest, boots, jacket, packs, gloves, helmets & weapons, etc.

Once you have those base colors painted, then you can do your details and washes & highlights.

Good points indeed.

Regards the number of colours Sorastro uses, dont be intimidated, you dont need to use 5 shades of blue on a figure

Most of us dont even have the skill to make use of so many shades.

Most of the time, especially if you are new to the hobby and have limited paints etc, you can make do with what you have if you have the basic colours....you can even start to experiment, lets say you have a basic brown and Sorastro says use XXXX brown which might be a bit lighter etc, you can mix in a little black for example, you soon start to learn what paints mix without even realising.

I dont rush out and buy every paint sorastro mentions, I make do. granted I have a decent collection of paints but I just add some now and then. I still get great painted minis and the guides are great.

Watch It Paint It is also another great channel for painting miniatures - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsr_rvVTf00q3toVg8olFbQ

Any advice on what paints to start with? Buy a set? Buy a couple of colours? What type of paint is bought for this sort of thing? Can I get it at a craft store, or should I be ordering from specialty miniature painting companies like Gamesworkshop?

Do you use the same paint for Terrain and Miniatures?

2 hours ago, Copes said:

Any advice on what paints to start with? Buy a set? Buy a couple of colours? What type of paint is bought for this sort of thing? Can I get it at a craft store, or should I be ordering from specialty miniature painting companies like Gamesworkshop?

Do you use the same paint for Terrain and Miniatures?

I started with cheap craft paints from Michael's. They're hit or miss on the quality but I still use a lot of them today and you can pick up a pretty wide variety for less than $10. Practice on some cheap toys or game pieces. I used MicroMachines and little green army men. After that you can move on to picking up some of the more expensive Vallejo or GW paints just for the colors you need. I haven't painted much terrain but what I have done I did in the same paints I use for my Armada ships.

Something I didn't notice anybody else mention is CLEAN YOUR BRUSHES . I learned the hard way how to take care of/not take care of my brushes. This can save you so many headaches and $$$ spent on new brushes.

I bought a 24 pack of acrylic paints for $10, and some cheap brushes. I mix all my own paints. Doing this will save you a lot of money.

Get a tiny detailing brush and some washes, like nuln oil. I watch Sorastro's vids to get an understanding of how to shade and highlight things.

Don't think anyone has mentioned it, but don't worry if you make a mistake. The minis are small and you will be standing about 3ft away so you won't notice the errors you made.

Great advice here.

The one thing I'd add is to be aware of how often you need to finish something to keep interested. One big thing that discourages people is when they focus on making each model as good as they possibly can, but doing so takes so long that they get bored/discouraged and never finish. This gets worse if you have kids or other things that can scatter or interrupt your painting time.

If it feels like you're having trouble finishing consistently, consider how long it takes to do each model and think about maybe scaling back how ambitious you're being. If you do something which is maybe a little bit more tabletop-quality than showroom-quality, but it lets you get models done faster, you might find the stream of completed models builds your confidence and enjoyment level back up and gets you moving again.

Likewise, as people have mentioned upthread, doing a big piece like a vehicle can be a really nice accomplishment, but it takes more time, so space out how you work through your collection, and don't be afraid to take a break and bang out something which you can finish more quickly, to help keep yourself going.

Also, remember that you can always go back and fix something later. When I'm doing a big army, I always end up with a few models at the start that end up looking a little different because my approach to painting the army evolves as I go and takes a bit before I settle into the way I want to do it going forward. You can always go back and touch the first guys up, or strip and repaint if it comes to that.

2 hours ago, Megatronrex said:

I started with cheap craft paints from Michael's. They're hit or miss on the quality but I still use a lot of them today and you can pick up a pretty wide variety for less than $10. Practice on some cheap toys or game pieces. I used MicroMachines and little green army men. After that you can move on to picking up some of the more expensive Vallejo or GW paints just for the colors you need. I haven't painted much terrain but what I have done I did in the same paints I use for my Armada ships.

+1, this is exactly what I did. Also, when you switch to higher quality paints for your models, you'll still probably have a bunch of craft paint left that you can keep on using for terrain, where quantity is much more important than quality.

7 minutes ago, You Look Like A Nail said:

Also, remember that you can always go back and fix something later. When I'm doing a big army, I always end up with a few models at the start that end up looking a little different because my approach to painting the army evolves as I go and takes a bit before I settle into the way I want to do it going forward. You can always go back and touch the first guys up, or strip and repaint if it comes to that.

Does stripping the paint do any damage to the model? How effective is it to take you back to a "start from scratch" phase?

One of my biggest concerns is that my early models will look like trash, and as I get better I'm going to want to redo them. I'd be less concerned if I didn't have to re-purchase the model.

6 minutes ago, Copes said:

Does stripping the paint do any damage to the model? How effective is it to take you back to a "start from scratch" phase?

One of my biggest concerns is that my early models will look like trash, and as I get better I'm going to want to redo them. I'd be less concerned if I didn't have to re-purchase the model.

I've only used acrylic paints and they strip off very easy with simple green or even just soaking them overnight in dish soap and water if it was freshly painted. I haven't had any damage done to my models.

You can use cheapo wall paint for large swaths of terrain if you're trying to cover a large area. Most big box stores have a bin of mixed paint that weren't purchased for whatever reason, at discount.

Having said that, if you go to a craft store you can pick up 2 oz. acrylic paint bottles for $2-$6 or pretty much any color you want for smaller things like scatter terrain (walls, boulders, etc.). I wouldn't recommend these paints for your miniature figures though.

For your figures, you'll want to get higher quality paints like Vallejo, Citadel, Army Painter and the like. My personal preference is Vallejo. They come in an eye dropper bottle, so there's minimal waste and I've never ever had a spill. Also they have a good flow & consistency as well as great coverage rarely needing to be thinned, if at all. Citadel carries washes like Nuln Oil and Aggrax Earthshade that are indespensable, but they come in little pots. Just make sure you triple check that they're closed or you'll have a spill. If you have like $9 to spare, from Amazon or ebay you can buy a set of fifty 5 ml empty eye dropper bottles to put your Citadel washes and paints in.

Colors you'll use the most are black, grey (a dark one and a light one), an off-white (the lightest gray you can find,) brown and green in two or three shades, tan/sand or bone, silver or gun metal. You can make a poor man's gun metal to silver by adding black to it.

You'll want these, but likely not use them much for Legion: Red, Yellow, Blue in which case buying a cheap set of acrylic artist paints (the kind that come in a tube) can get you by. Generally they are used as accent colors and the nice thing is you'll get like 6-10 other colors if you buy a basic set. Plus you can mix them with your higher quality paints if you need to.

As for brushes, cheapy brushes are fine for those big areas of terrain and PVA (white) glue. You can get cheap sets of "artist" brushes to use with your craft paints for under $10. And for your figures, you'll want to buy individual good to high quality brushes: a size 1 and 0. You can get away with using the cheap artist brushes for your minis, but eventually you'll want something better. Just go along as your budget allows.

Make sure to clean your brushes at the end of a painting session! And at some point pick this up to clean and preserve your brushes:

YouTube how to clean your brushes.

Good luck!

Regarding stripping paint:

I've only stripped X-wing models and Imperial Assault figures. If you use Simple Green or "LA's Totaly Awesome" from the dollar shops, you'll be alright. Dunk your minis in a small jar. Simple green starts to work in about 20-30 minutes or so if you're impatient. Grab an old tooth brush and start scrubbing the acrylic paint away. Then rinse off with water. Use a toothpick for paint stuck in cracks. I've had trouble getting primer off when trying to strip a model, but repeating the dunking and brushing + elbow grease eventually worked.

I went the route of Armypainter Megaset. It's $125, but you get :

• 50 Warpaints; 39 Acrylic Warpaints, 5 Metallic Warpaints, 4 Quickshade Washes and 2 Effects Warpaints,
• 1 Triangular handled Regiment Brush
• 1 The Army Painter Painting Guide

The painting guide is excellent, ya a bit spendy but that works out to 2.50 a bottle. The paint is very thick and you'll be watering it down. The shades will do wonder.

Add an Army painter detail brush, $6, and you'll be good to go. Oh and a can of primer.

I love the army painter brushes. You get used to the handle type pretty quick and then you never want to go back, and the brush quality is great for the price.

Thanks again for all of your responses! I now have a more relaxed feeling about painting miniatures, and I will just try to take it slow and do my best with the materials that I have. How long does it typically take to have two fully painted armies and a fully made map? And also one last question, What materials do I use for my map's base? (yes I know that I have a lot of questions but you are giving me very detailed and thoughtful answers, so I can't help but asking).