Picture if you will the scene, me and John are setting up our, admittedly very purple, armies on a nicely laid out table at our local gaming centre. Its shaping up to be a fun, cinematic experience with some cool scenery, painted models and good laughs.

Tabled, John lost 0 units either thanks to my cursed dice skills.

Setting up next to us is a kid with a Forgeworld army of bare half built resin models, his opponent rocks up and unloads a pile of space marines that have been sprayed with some sort of red car paint, bases and all, as well as a storm raven. I say a storm raven, but this is 3/4 of a Storm Raven, there’s no doors, no weapons, its essentially an empty shell again sprayed in red car paint.

I was almost sick in my mouth.

I’m the first to admit there’s no right or wrong way of playing this shit, we’re all black sheep here, fuck the rules apart from the ones in the book yeah?

I think perhaps I’m biased towards the painting aspect as I enjoy that more than playing if I’m honest, but I cannot see the point of playing  a game with a half arsed army. Why spend hundreds of pounds, dollars or euro’s on an army only to field it half painted or worse, half built? It makes the game seem like an overly complex game of Risk then, with board pieces rather than miniatures.

Corehammers Duggan shares a very similar viewpoint to myself :-

If it ain’t painted, I ain’t fielding it. Something about everything on the table being painted, no matter what level of skill, is majestic. I’d feel bad if I rolled up with a grey plastic and metal unpainted force.

But in the other camp, two of my northern mates really enjoy the tactical side, the game play element but has only a handful of finished models at his disposal. One doesn’t really enjoy painting, the other just doesn’t do it much, both can paint to a really good standard when they put their mind to it as well,  I’d say on the flip-side, that the other guys see painting as a waste of gaming time perhaps? Why paint an army when you can visualize it in your own minds eye and just get the fuck out there and roll the dice? From a gamers perspective, using up those valuable spare man hours when pressed with the time constraints of modern life, painting when the galaxy could be burning.

My man Matt Geary from over at Geek Pride had this to say on the subject:

“For me painting is a secondary pleasure, if you will. Dont get me wrong, I enjoy making and painting minis but playing the game and learning to be good at it is my primary… it’s all about the WIN! When I get a game that I really want to play it frustrates me somewhat that I have to make up models and paint them before I enter the battlefield. This is probably why I love Dust Tactics and am looking into X-Wing as they are pretty much ‘plug and play’ games, where the only time needed is to learn the rules..”

The CH Harelquin, Marsden has a pragmatic approach to his own games:

Prefer playing with painted stuff, but I’m not a stickler for it. Smaller games I’ll tend towards as fully painted as I can, larger ones I’d rather have a game than not, so will play with bare plastic and headless minis. Plus then I can paint what looks cool and take as long as I want over it rather than rushing for a game. I refuse to strip models I’ve painted though. I like being able to look back and see how I’ve improved.

Me and Marsdens duel match with our HQ. Looked epic.

I’m no painting snob, which I guess some people might think by my refusal to play with anything unpainted, or my constant moaning when an opponent turns up with endless grey plastic. Far from it, I totally respect the effort you, or anyone else puts in to a model. I’m no ‘eavy metal painter, I just do my best, no one can ask any more from anyone else can they? If a models just base coated with some painted sand on the base, that’s cool, its gonna make a game look great when its stood out there on the battlefield with the rest of your force.

Sean Kennedy-Brennan, stands somewhere in the middle ground with a nice take on how he’s beginning to approach things:

I prefer painted models but will play with unpainted but constructed models, hate half built models you can’t even recognise. I love the painting side of it but have so much I want to do at once I get nothing done, and end up with base coated models. My biggest problem is in my mind I know what I want but don’t take the time to paint. But as with you and Marsden I’ve begun taking my time and getting shit done and pushing myself to get the best quality. I now treat it like I would an art project at college, research, investigate and plan.

Corehammers own LB takes a similar stance to myself in that :

Imo it completely ruins the game. I’m not a tactical player going to the win all the time. I like having a laugh and part of that is seeing both armies lining up on the board.

Steve Leighton also of Corehammer comes up with this pearl, which I can totally understand as someone who plays in tournaments:

I take a huge amount of pride in my painted vampires and wood elves. If I bust them out, I’d like to play vs painted and offer the same to opponents who’d rather play my painted army than my work in progress stuff. That said, I like to really put a list through it’s paces during the painting stages, I’d rather change my list before I am dropping 10 lovingly painted hex wraiths and like to build and paint the army I like to play. So naturally during all this, I’m playing unpainted/proxy minis and am happy for opponents to do the same.

Bloodbowl, unpainted team versus painted, you decide!

I find it hard to engage with a game that’s not painted (which likely says more about me than it does about anyone else), as an artist and tattooist himself, Corehammers resident visuals guy Adam “Sketch” Chandler says:

On the last time we all played at Warhammer World I got such a buzz from seeing what everyone had painted  no matter the skill level it made the day for me , there was a Heresy game taking place a few tables up and it totally killed me seeing all those awesome models unpainted 

Mirrored by Witchfinder General Chris:

At least get some basecoats and washes down as bare minimum and maybe do the bases, then go back later to do the highlights, details, accessories etc later.