I get quite a few E-mail questions and actually get involved in quite a few conversation about paint/assemble style miniatures games, especially recently with Fantasy Flight Games announcement to make Rune Wars the miniature game.  Now ordinarily while I like the conversations and have interest in the games, I avoid getting involved personally in paint/assemble games which is why I don’t have very many articles about miniatures games outside of the pre-painted stuff like X-Wing and Armada which don’t really fall fully into that paint/assemble hobby genre.  Recently however I have decided to get involved in a game called Bolt Action and so I picked up some of these old E-mail questions and thought based on some of those questions I would create a kind of guide to paint/assemble miniatures games given that I have been doing a lot of my own research in preparation for my own little venture.

Now Bolt Action won’t be my first venture into the paint/assemble hobby.  I did a stint with Warhammer Fantasy and a pretty long stint with Warhammer 40k as well as some War Machines.  Those experience have taught me a great deal mostly in what to avoid in the hobby.  So here are a few tips and tricks to getting involved in the hobby, hope you find it helpful.

Start slow and stay slow

Gamers are a very excitable bunch and we are pretty quick to whip out our credit cards with imagery in our heads of a 3000 point army with fully realized terrain in epic level war games.  I mean, believe me I get it and I have fallen victim to the hype and over excitement of out of control spending.  Here is the reality however, in particular if you are just starting out.

First and foremost, it takes many hours to assemble and paint a miniature army.  If you are just starting out looking at a box of unopened miniatures you are still many, many hours away from playing not to mention quite a ways from understanding what impact each model/unit will have, understanding the rules and impact of the rules in actual play and how that applies to the army your building.

Secondly it always takes at least two to tango so while you might have a 3,000 point army ready to rock the people you are going to play with might not.  Its quite important that you and the people you intend to play with are somewhat in sync in terms of point values, special rules, factions etc.. so that you don’t end up spending a lot of time getting models ready that you aren’t going to get a chance to use.

Finally you don’t even know if you are actually going to like the game you have chosen, miniature games come in all shapes and sizes.  Research is important and sufficient to decide your interest but it’s not going to help you decide the specifics of your army, units and style of play you will eventually choose. You need multiple gameplay experiences to really understand whether this is just hype or a real long term love for the hobby as well as deciding whether X or Y army is right for you.

Starting slow simply means to get enough miniatures to get a minimum game going and get that army ready.  You will realize that painting even a small army is a big commitment and those early first few games are going to help drive your decisions about the game which will likely look very different to you then what you conceive just from reading of the rules or looking at cool pictures of fully painted armies.

For example you might realize you’re not happy with the particular faction/army you have chosen, or you might realize that some of the units you thought would be awesome are underpowered or don’t fit your play style.  You might also realize that at 500 points the game is already taking 3-4 hours more than you thought and playing a 2,000 point game is just going to be too big.  Or you might realize you don’t like the actual game at all, a really tough pill to swallow after spending many hours and dollars on a game.

The point here is that there is absolutely no reason to rush into things.  If you found a game you’re interested in, pick up a basic set, paint some miniatures and play a few games to make sure it’s something that will really stick both for yourself and your gaming group.

You will find a lot of people online who have huge armies with no one to play with them, or people who don’t like the faction they chose after spending hundreds of hours meticulously painting them.  Don’t be that guy, it’s a miserable experience (take it from someone who has made some bad choices).  You really want to take your time here, get the experience at a nice slow and steady pace and ease your way into the hobby.  You will thank yourself later.

Weigh your options carefully, don’t over-commit or make rash decisions

Most miniature games will offer you a wide variety of armies or factions options, but once you have chosen one you will find that you have to make other more specific commitments when making decisions about what to buy, assemble and paint.  Everything from color schemes, to unit types or even specific types of equipment for specific unit types will be important, ultimately defining your experience.  For example in Bolt Action you have to decide whether the NCO in infantry unit will have a regular rifle or a sub-machine gun.  This is a very simple decision, but it puts to question what the goal of that unit will be in your army, what range you will place them in during battles, how that weapon will be leveraged. These decisions can get far more complex than that, but they will often impact your army’s effectiveness and you will usually have to make them before you ever actually get an opportunity to put them on the table.

It can be tough to make these decisions and it’s why you really want to build your army from the smallest point count possible with the most general and simplest decisions made first.  If you are unsure which tank to take or which giant robot is best, don’t decide at all, make the decisions you are certain about instead.  For example in most games every faction has a sort of staple, base unit type be it some sort of infantry unit or something along those lines.  Start with those.  They aren’t as fancy and awesome as putting up a monster model on the table but they usually require less knowledge of the game and have fewer options to weigh, so do those first.  Play with them, gain experience in the game and from there you will find making the more difficult decisions easier.

In Bolt Action for example if you choose Japan (which I have) as your faction you have a choice of 20+ different tanks from light fast ones to big heavy ones and everything in between.  Each has different effects, abilities, options and costs, it’s a fairly complex choice to make in particular if you have no idea how effective tanks are in general or what their impact will be in the game (from experience).  I Avoid that decision and will try to play a few games without a tank to see if I can come to terms with how the game works and what impact the tank will have in my army.  This is a very specific example but you’ll find such elements in almost every miniature game.  Approach these decision with as much restraint and caution as you can muster, don’t be confident in your ability to make decisions without experience, this is the most sure fire way to end up with a painted model you will never use and regret putting time into.

Always collect with and involve your friends

Ok I can’t stress this enough but unless you have chosen a game that you already know is well established in your area with lots of eager and available opponents you really want to make sure that you are not the only one diving in.  Finding a few friends who are ready to commit to collecting/painting and playing a miniature game with you is absolutely vital.  I would say at least 50% of the people I know that play miniature games can’t find opponents to play with and their miniatures collect dust on their shelves.  It’s a very frustrating experience and you are going to want to avoid it at all cost.  There is no sense in you spending hundreds of dollars and hours collecting and painting miniatures if you don’t have a solid gaming group that is as committed as you are to the game.

More importantly though is that you should not have to twist arms, beg, plead and convince people that they should start collecting with you.  The miniature game hobby is a really big time and money commitment; it’s something you really have to want to do on your own, something that you are excited about.  It should not be something you get into because your friends nagged you into it and rightfully you shouldn’t get others to join you on those terms.

Also be wary of committing to a game even if there is a local scene.  Miniature gamers can be a finicky bunch, as well miniature game interest can rise and fall dramatically and you might find even though there is a lot of people playing your game, they aren’t interested in playing with random people they don’t know.  Having a few friends diving in with you is a sure fire way to make sure you have opponents.  I would be wary of going into it with the assumption that you will find opponents later when your army is done.  That usually doesn’t work out so well in particular if the miniature game you chose is obscure and less known/common.

Don’t get into the miniature paint/assemble hobby for competitive play.

I think a lot of people would argue against this advice but I would caution anyone entering the hobby with the intent or sole purpose to do it for competitive reasons.

Competitive miniature gaming is an entirely different hobby then casual/theme/fun miniature gaming.  There are quite a few drawbacks to competitive miniature gaming, in particular if you are new to the hobby.

First and foremost playing competitively will usually increase the cost of the hobby to you, I would personally say by a pretty significant amount.  Miniature games are in constant flux, in particular the bigger more well-known ones like Warhammer for example.  To stay competitive you will constantly have to pick up the latest and greatest, often forced to switch armies entirely.   I would highly recommend you talk to competitive players and ask them about their experiences in your local area, most will probably tell you a similar tale,  that staying competitive is not cheap and requires a much higher commitment to collecting then you will need to make with a more casual approach.

Secondly and I think this is really important to understand about miniature games, as a genre; miniature games live on the premise of playing for experience, theme and fun.  They are a kind of step child of role-playing games and really have more in common with the dynamic, abstracted nature of RPG’s then they do with the strict, organized nature of board games.   To get to the point, they make very poor competitive games and the competitive scene for every miniature game that I’m aware of can be described at absolute best to be ugly and petty.

This really stems from the lack of clarity of the rules and the general “eye ball” approach of many of mechanics of miniature games.  Things like line of site, measurements for distance, terrain and many other elements are typically rules that require a level of judgement call and while in competitive play you usually have “judges” that can settle arguments, if you try to abide by the strict letter of the rules in miniature games get ready to have some whopper arguments with people.  Every rule in every miniature game I have ever played is up for interpretation and you will find an ample amount of interpreters ready to volunteer their time and energy to arguing about it with you in the competitive scene of miniature games.  It’s exhausting; definitely not something you want to get involved in if you are just entering the hobby and it might not be worth your time to ever get involved.  You certainly don’t want to enter the frey with the intention of assembling and painting miniatures with the sole purpose of entering competitive play.  If you are going to do it, ease into is slowly and be sure to talk to competition players and ask them about their experiences.  I assure you they will have plenty of horror stories to tell.

From personal experience the best approach is to enter the hobby using advice 1, 2 and 3 outlined above and if competition interests you after that, by all means give it a go.  But absolutely under no circumstance or logic should you start collecting/assembling and painting miniatures for the purpose of competing, I assure you, it will not be a good experience.  Competitive play is something you evolve into once you have exhaustively played the game and know the rules inside and out.

Now I will say that competitive play can be a lot of fun and certainly I wouldn’t discourage an experienced veteran from giving it a go but as a new player you should actively avoid it in my humble experience.

It’s a two part hobby and that’s ok.

I will say this up front that at least half of the people I know that collect and paint miniatures do it for the painting and collecting, playing the game is an afterthought and that is ok.  This is a creative hobby and if you are getting into it because you love the miniatures and have a creative need to paint you can safely ignore the above advice, pick miniatures you like based on aesthetics and have fun.  Plenty of people make army lists for aesthetics and theme, I always love playing against them but the truth is that usually don’t do that well and this is where that approach can kind of back fire a bit.

If you are going to play the game with a desire to put a couple wins under your belt, buying units/models for an army willy-nilly from a creative angle is probably going to result in you having a pretty crappy army for gameplay purposes.  I guess the point here is that, in every miniature game, every faction will have a certain amount of model/units that just suck ass for gameplay purposes.  They might be pretty or thematic, they might be fun to play, but they will be useless to you in a game.

It’s not that much fun to lose all the time, even if your not that competitive and while I will be the first to admit that I rather lose with a pretty army then win with a cheesy one, I think there is a fine line between a crappy list put together for aesthetics and a cheesy competition list created for the sole purpose of winning.  You will sometimes need to paint models you don’t like that much because they are good for your army and exclude beautiful ones because they are shit in your list if you want to make something resembling a decent list.  These decisions you will have to make for yourself but know that there are tradeoffs either way.  Think of your opponents a bit here, its really not that fun to play against someone who offers no competition for you.  Sure it can be fun once or twice, but if you are crushing someone every time you play you would get bored too.

My suggestion is that before you buy/paint/assemble a model, be sure it’s something you are going to use or make peace with the fact that your adding it for your shelf to look nice rather than the impact on the table.

Now this is just advice and I will be the first to admit that I don’t always take it myself.  I will often find a unit/model in my army that I think looks great but is useless for the game and use it anyway.  I’m not terribly competitive and neither are my friends but I’m usually selective about it.  You really want to put some thought into the competitive angle of your army even if you’re the creative type and just want to play for fun. Its kind of good etiquette to show up with a list that puts up a challenge.

It’s a two part hobby but it’s not ok

Ok so devil’s advocate time.  Some people get into the hobby but they don’t want to paint, they don’t have a creative bone in their body and they just want to play the game.  It may be ok for that person but most hobbyists will agree that playing a game with your meticulously painted miniatures on a beautifully orchestrated battlefield only to find your opponent with hastily assembled unpainted miniatures is neither fun or in the spirit of the game.  If you don’t want to paint miniatures and intend to use greys you will find it difficult to maintain the interest of your opponents.  In fact many gaming groups have house rules against that sort of thing and in competitive play it’s usually not allowed at all.

There are a couple of reasons for that and it’s not that tough to deduce.  This is a visual game, it’s about the spectacle of it all and people put a lot of hard work into making it so.  It’s also not really meant to be a cut throat competitive game and it’s not about rushing through the game but enjoying the experience, the ambiance of it all.  You can think of it like golf, people could play golf on any open field and get the same level of competition but they build golf courses to be exotic and beautiful because the ambiance is just part of the game experience.  It’s the same with miniatures game and coming to the table with a bunch of greys with no intention of ever painting them lacks etiquette and is a bit impolite to your opponent.

Suffice to say if you’re not interested in painting miniatures, you may want to consider alternatives like pre-painted miniature games or just tactical board games that simulate to a degree the themes and genre of miniature war gaming.  There are plenty of them, in fact I talk about them all the time on this site.

Don’t go overboard on supplies

Most hobbyist will eventually collect a massive armada of supplies, but the market is largely geared towards selling to new players and you will find that there is an immense amount of gear you could potentially buy for assembly and painting of miniatures.  90% of it you won’t need now or ever, in fact for most games 4 or 5 different paint colors, some primer and a couple of brushes with a few household tools you probably already have at home is enough to paint entire armies of miniatures.  The 100 colors and 30 brush set or other large box sets are without question crazy overkill.  In particular paints, if you buy one of these large sets the large majority will dry out long before you ever get a chance to use them, it’s really just a waste of money that would be better used to expand your army.

On the flip side quality equipment is a good idea, in fact it’s far better to buy 5 high quality paints then it is to buy 30 cheap ones.  As far as paints go you really want to decide on your color schemes, plan out how you are going to paint your miniatures and just buy the paints you need.  Don’t try to “get everything you might need”, again because in most cases these will get destroyed before you ever get a chance to use them.

When it comes to painting miniatures less is more anyway and while certainly the depth of artistic endeavor’s vary from player to player if your just starting out its usually recommended you keep it simple and develop your technique to the point where you will know what sort of gear you actually need/lack in what your trying to create.  Trying to anticipate that when you’re first starting is pretty much impossible so you really want to keep things simple and cheap until you know what you’re doing.

Don’t try to be a master, learn to do it faster.

Aside from rhyming, this is good advice for newbies and veterans alike. The goal here is to get a painted army to the table and you’re not going to be able to do that effectively if you spend 100 hours on a single model getting everything perfect.  Not to discourage talented painters from their commitment but in as a whole once the miniatures get on the table the difference between a 5 minute speed paint and a meticulously master painted miniature is completely indistinguishable and largely irrelevant.   Miniatures are small and you’re looking at them during play from 2-3 feet away, you’re just not going to see those details.  What you will notice is the awkwardness of a grey army with a couple of painted miniatures mixed in.

The thing about painting miniatures too is that details can always be added later so your speed paints can be touched up to look perfect in the future, but its typically far better to get the job done and have a functioning painted army on the table for your games then it is to spend hundreds of hours per miniature and find yourself constantly playing with an unpainted army.

Remember that it’s a game of theme and experience, not a competitive board game

An important lesson already previously mentioned and one most miniature gamers will fail to learn but miniature gaming is a game of estimation, a lot of dice rolling and judgement calls.  It’s a simulation of battles but one so abstracted and distanced from reality as well as distanced from mechanical stability that it barely qualifies for the term “game”.  It’s really more like you are “playing” then “gaming”.   Most gamers coming into the hobby will find it a stark contrast to board gaming, in fact, miniature gaming is far closer to the dynamic/abstraction of role-playing games then it is to the rule strict and well defined boundaries of board games.  As such it requires a lot of hand waving cutesy and imagination inspired “overlooking” of the reality and often even the rules.

You will see rules like “line of sight” to be particularly fuzzy, much of the games rules are driven by these sorts of mutual judgement calls rather than strict observance so you really need to get into that spirit.  The goal of a good miniature game is to tell a fun story of a battle, win or lose, the experience should be the reason you come back not for competitive play.

 

I already mentioned that competitive play should be avoided by most, but it’s not because I have something against tournaments but because tournaments zero in on the weakest element of miniature gaming, the rules.  With such vagueness, trying to have a good competitive experience is more likely to lead to arguments about interpretations of the rules then it is to a fun experience and as such this advice is more about approach.  Approach it as a game of storytelling like a role-playing game and you will find the entire experience far more enjoyable, do the opposite and you will quickly become frustrated with the rules.  In fact the most common information you will find online about miniature games is people endlessly arguing about rules, pointing out the weaknesses of them and more often than not accusing the game of being unbalanced in one way or the other.  I’m here to tell you that it’s all true, miniature games are horrifically unbalanced (all of them), rules are always inadequate and you will always find things that simply make no sense at all.  It’s like that because miniatures games by their dynamic nature aren’t particularly well suited for strict observance of rules.  They are games of estimation.  Understand that, make peace with it and you will enjoy the experience a lot more.

Get out when you stop having fun

It’s really hard when you spend hundreds of dollars and hours on a game and discover you are just not enjoying it.  There is a kind of mental push that “you should play”, after so much money and time was spent.  The reality is that miniature gaming is not for everyone and lots of people get into it and stay in it for all the wrong reason.  This is why starting and going slow is advice #1.

Miniature gaming is a hobby, something you really have to truly love to make enjoyable for yourself and the people you play with.  It requires a lot of patience and in particular an extreme amount of etiquette and cutesy to have an enjoyable experience.  In fact, you could say it’s a gentlemen’s game if you can overlook the sexist term.  What I mean is that it’s meant to be played with the greatest amount of respect and politeness for your opponent you can muster.

If you find yourself bitter about the rules and balance of the game, miniature games are probably not for you.  It’s just the reality and nature of miniature games that they are not an exact science or even anything approaching it.  I have seen miniature gamers get so frustrated and angry at the table over rules interpretations, accidental bumps or judgement disputes they are ready to get into fights over it and you really have to stand back, look at that spectacle and realize that not everyone is able to handle these sorts of games and that’s ok.

Don’t be that person; if you find yourself getting angry at a miniature table, you’re doing it wrong.

General Advice About Miniature Games

There is some good advice up here I have gathered from both experience and conversations with countless Mini war gamers. Suffice to say there are quite a few things to keep in mind when getting into the hobby but I think above all else the most important part to keep in mind when diving in is that it’s a very slow paced hobby.  Things are not going to happen quickly, you are probably not going to play often and so you really have to relish the experiences and opportunities you get.  Make the most of it by being well prepared, have a painted army and terrain and really make it the visual spectacle it deserves to be.

You will find that most happy miniature gamers will eventually settle in this mellow space and its a pure joy to play with them.  Those that don’t typically either washout out of frustration or worse stick around to make everyone around them miserable.  As such finding a good group with the right mindset and approach to the game is absolutely vital.  Your opponents will ultimately make it a wonderful experience or an awful experience so having good opponents is the key to the whole thing.

Also and this is for the creative types.  Mini gaming is a creative hobby and you are in the right place to lavishly create but don’t forget that this is still about gaming for most.  People will greatly appreciate your work but you still have to come to the table and present them with a challenge and create a great experience for your opponents.  I saw often see very talented painters who put so much effort into creating visual magic on the table but ultimately make poor opponents because they forget to learn how to play the game well.  It’s an important part of the hobby to make yourself a worthy opponent so don’t skimp on that part.

Finally and perhaps most important never forget that any form of gaming is about having fun, about being relaxed.  This is a pass time, people who play these games are doing it on their days off, they are looking to wash away the problems of life and enjoy a moment made entirely for them.  Don’t ruin it by being a dick.  Be respectful to your opponent and remember that the game is about enjoying it, not about winning or losing.