I have not painted many miniatures, in fact I've painted for Space Marines prior before starting Star Wars Legions. I want to know if I should be gluing the Stormtroopers and rebel Troopers to their bases prior to painting? I don't know if I'll ever be doing a detailed base other than painting them all black. Any guidance would be helpful it's the one thing holding me back from starting to paint. I really want to play.

Some people poster putty them to a paint stir stick or something to prime them. Other stick them on bottles and caps. Depends on the minis and how much details are accessible that the base would block.

For small stand guys I usually glue to their base. Usually can access undersides fine.

I have limited experience ... with that ...

You want, as often as possible, a clean bond between plastic. A primer or primer with paint between two plastic surfaces does not bond like it should.

Second, spending a bunch of time painting something and, then, placing something with super glue onto it, well, causes the paint to heat up; reactivate and smear.

Sure, leave the arms off, while covered in blue tac. That keeps those surfaces clear of primer/paint and can easily be glued later.

These have all been things I have learned in the last few months and trying to save you some time

I would glue them to the base. Then put white glue around their feet, and dip them in sand. Let it dry, then prime. That way your groundcover is already undercoated and you can just a few dry brushes over the bases and voila.

1 hour ago, L0STHER0 said:

I have not painted many miniatures, in fact I've painted for Space Marines prior before starting Star Wars Legions. I want to know if I should be gluing the Stormtroopers and rebel Troopers to their bases prior to painting? I don't know if I'll ever be doing a detailed base other than painting them all black. Any guidance would be helpful it's the one thing holding me back from starting to paint. I really want to play.

This is glued to the the base with CA/super glue....just a some Elmer's multipurpose glue, natural sand from Games Workshop for basing. The base is unpainted on the edges. Very minimal work. Tuft if from army painter Tundra version. Super easy.

It depends on what I am working on but for troops like these with light plastic I have been leaving the mini off the base and apart, then painting everything including the base separate. I find it' easier for me because I do my base colors with my airbrush and don' want to worry about overspray.

I also use spackle instead of just glued on sand so it' easier for me to shape and create the effects on the base when the mini is not in the way.

I glue them to their base prior to priming.

I did not glue them to the bases because I was not sure if I wanted to customize the bases or not. And I did not put them on sticks because... I'm a beginner. I really struggled:

1. During priming, I could not hold them without leaving small marks on the wet paint...
2. After 10 minis, my gloves were full of paints and I was leaving big chuncks of paint on the details...
3. Wet minis stick to the gloves...
4. After priming, they were sticking to the cardboard when dry. More marks...

5 hours ago, Cartchan said:

I did not glue them to the bases because I was not sure if I wanted to customize the bases or not. And I did not put them on sticks because... I'm a beginner. I really struggled:

1. During priming, I could not hold them without leaving small marks on the wet paint...
2. After 10 minis, my gloves were full of paints and I was leaving big chuncks of paint on the details...
3. Wet minis stick to the gloves...
4. After priming, they were sticking to the cardboard when dry. More marks...

that sounds terrible. I'm sorry that happened to you man.

If you don't want to glue them to the bases right away (depending on what you're doing it may be a lot easier to base after you're done painting)

What I do, is lay everything down on parchment paper (or baking paper) and spray everything, rotate it and spray from a different angle (I usually do very light coats from all 4 directions) wait about an hour, flip the stuff and hit the other side. (if you're going to do it this way, you want to move the spray can quickly side to side and make sure to change direction past your minis, since that area where you're stopping will get hit with way too much paint)

another nice way to do it is to just poster tack things to a stick or something (the best thing to use is a paint stirrer stick from home depot or wherever) lets you easily get all angles. (this is a good idea if you decide to glue them to the bases first)

Yeah, if you want to prime them sans a base just be patient and wait for the primer to harden before flipping them and doing the other side. Definitely don’t want to be holding them. Alternatively you can put sticks into the feet and hold them that way and use a foam block to stick them in when priming/painting. Rather a bit of work though to drill all the holes and such. This is what I’d do for the vehicles though at least, like the speeder bikes and at rt.

Even better though is just use temporary, smaller bases. I have a bunch of little square 20mm bases from old historicals that I use if I want to paint the bases separately.

glue the figure to the base but do NOT glue the arms to the figure as they block the front of the figure

A buddy of mine uses nails. He uses a weak glue, I think like PVA or something and then has the nail to hold onto while painting.

2 small, rolled bits of poster tack will hold a baseless mini upright on a paint stir stick. Thus far, the only mini I regret mounting to the base prior to working on it is the ATRT because you can see down under the towers. The rest are fine to mount first, sans arms as mentioned.

9 hours ago, Cartchan said:

I did not glue them to the bases because I was not sure if I wanted to customize the bases or not. And I did not put them on sticks because... I'm a beginner. I really struggled:

1. During priming, I could not hold them without leaving small marks on the wet paint...
2. After 10 minis, my gloves were full of paints and I was leaving big chuncks of paint on the details...
3. Wet minis stick to the gloves...
4. After priming, they were sticking to the cardboard when dry. More marks...

You can glue one foot of the mini to a small stick or similar using superglue, use only a minimal amount of it!

If using a stick, the stick can then be placed in a piece of foam or a jar or something similar to hold the mini while it dries. This way you never have to touch the painted areas and the mini dont have to touch anything while being painted, so no wet paint sticking or scraping off!

When the mini is done and ready to be glued to the base, you can easily cut with a hobby knife straight at the glue joing, between the mini and the stick, and it will come apart easily without any damage to the model!

This is a perfect way to handle models for painting if you dont want to glue them to the base first. But unless you plan on actually doing specialised basing, I really recommend gluing them to the bases before painting, it makes it soo much easier.

14 hours ago, Emperor Dane said:

that sounds terrible. I'm sorry that happened to you man.

Thank you for your concern. But do not worry, I exagerated the extent of the failure.

I realize my mistake after the third stormtrooper. So I stopped and changed methods for the other ones. It was my first time using white primer and well, it is not as easy as the black one.

20 hours ago, Cartchan said:

Thank you for your concern. But do not worry, I exagerated the extent of the failure.

I realize my mistake after the third stormtrooper. So I stopped and changed methods for the other ones. It was my first time using white primer and well, it is not as easy as the black one.

I use cardboard and use tape or putty to stick the undersides of my minis to it. Then, I can move the whole piece of cardboard around without touching the minis themselves. I'll let that coat dry and then see if I need to do a shot from underneath.

I've stopped using cans, though. I use my airbrush now, which lets me use smaller strips of board for priming, giving me access to more angles (and allowing me to prime inside, as Texas weather is notoriously unreliable). It's just a convenience, though, really, and isn't necessary. The main idea is to mount the minis on something that allows you to take advantage of the huge amount of paint that comes out of a can.

Assemble them, glue them to their base, apply base material like sand if you want, then prime and paint them. Particularly for beginners, all these ideas of leaving the arms off or painting them on sticks over complicate things imo.

If you're going with sand or similar, it tends to work better to glue them to the base and add the sand and grit before painting.

If you're going with something that is more industrial, painting the minis separate is a good idea.

For my Imperials, I'm using plastic canvas with some hard, stir straws to have a more grating and pipes look for the bases. They're simple to do, but they would be a massive headache to paint if I had the minis attached to them when I painted them because of getting paint down into the grating

On 3/29/2018 at 12:50 AM, Cartchan said:

Thank you for your concern. But do not worry, I exagerated the extent of the failure.

I realize my mistake after the third stormtrooper. So I stopped and changed methods for the other ones. It was my first time using white primer and well, it is not as easy as the black one.

Right on! It took me longer than I can remember (or want to admit) to find the priming way that works for me.

It's funny cause the first time I used white primer was lame too. The white exposes your painting boo-boos so much more. Now I rarely use black.

I started painting with 1 squad of rebels, I just stuck them to the base with some sticky tack while painting them since I didn't want to glue them to the base originally. It kept them on the base well enough for a temporary solution, then I could super glue them to the base when they were done being painted.

On 28.3.2018 at 3:07 AM, RickyBobby17b said:

I also use spackle instead of just glued on sand so it' easier for me to shape and create the effects on the base when the mini is not in the way.

Could you please Post a Photo with one of your spackle bases?

thanks, Dieshe

Will do when I get home later

8 hours ago, Dieshe said:

Could you please Post a Photo with one of your spackle bases?

thanks, Dieshe

I wish I could figure it out but it keeps saying the file size is too big any tips on how to get the attachment to work?

Just now, RickyBobby17b said:

I wish I could figure it out but it keeps saying the file size is too big any tips on how to get the attachment to work?

Upload to a hosting site like Imgur than insert the picture via url.

Speaking about glue, I've only played a handful of games with my armies and finally started to paint them, however I have several (now more like ten) minis fall of or popped of their bases. For most of my legion minis I've been using testors cement for plastic models.

Is this a good product to use?

could the problem be that these might be the minis that I added another layer of cement because they didn't stick the first round?

and should I clean of the original dry glue off of the minis?

nvm just saw mini junkies video about using super glue, didn't realize they're was such a difference between superglue and cement