by Pesren
Hi! So as the Death May Die series (rightfully) grows in popularity, there's about to be many new owners of this game/series who are hopefully going to love the game system, but not have any inclination/tools/practice when it comes to painting minis. CMON is also among the gradually vanishing minority of companies that doesn't yet offer some version of "preshaded" minis, that being Sundrop, Stormbrush, Mist-Touched, Color-wow or whatever other proprietary name that publishers come up with. I say that, because the growing popularity of pre-shaded minis despite its fairly hefty cost is indicative of how much people value their games' minis not being blank/plain gray.I bring this up in case you weren't already aware... you can "shade"/"wash"/"fast-paint" your minis here without a prerequisite of talent, practice, fancy tools, or a preponderance of time. The requirements to significantly improve your blank minis are:
1) Working hands & eyes
2) A paintbrush (not a good one mind you, just a brush)
3) Primer
4) Washes/Shades or any of the 'quick' series of paints
5) A bit of spare time
For the unaware, "washes", "shades", or 'quick' paints (shorthand for one of several brands I'll list later) are very thin, liquidy agents that rather than smoothly coat a mini in paint... they seek to tint the mini a bit as they're brushed on, whereupon they flow into the crevices of your mini and stay there. The result is your mini that has a lot of texture will show more of those textures strongly, since it's the equivelent of "filling in" those textures with a color.
What's particularly cool about these is how simple they are to use. Dip your brush in it, slather it over the mini, let it dry... bam. Mini presence drastically improved! A quick and dirty improvement that may only take a minute. You could keep it very cheap and just buy a single bottle of shade/wash/quick paint and call it a day, or you could buy a set or a couple different colors to further differentiate the creatures and investigators.
As an example, the first episode in this new series has Ghasts as a key enemy. I don't typically take 'in progress' pictures of my minis, but for illustration, these Ghasts here were <10 minutes of work in total. They were Primed, I painted the bases with cheap black matte paint, then did a single pass of a different color/mix of quick paint over each of them. Very, very easy, and without using any of my actual painting techniques. Here's a picture I took right as I finished this step:
/pic8626023.jpg)
Do they look amazing? No, but they sure look better than they came in the box! All for a very small amount of effort, and the game will look that much more full of life using these!
As for some details to each step from above:
1) Working hands & eyes - Self explanatory... even one working hand will work fine for this as long as you can gently clamp the mini in place =)
2) A paintbrush - seriously, this doesn't have to be a fancy brush at all. That crappy multipack of 10 brushes for $1 will work just fine for this. I genuinely use old, worn, cheap brushes while doing this myself. Avoid flat ones though, a modestly thick round brush is best.
3) Primer: a couple options on this. Spray Primer is the easiest solution to this. I set the minis on a slab of cardboard outside, blast them with a "rattle can" of primer/paint in a neutral tone (the above was Army Painter's "Necrotic Flesh" primer), and tada. There are plenty of brands both hobby & hardware-store that can do this for you, with the only important caveat being to stay with a medium-to-light color. If you prime these darkly, your eyes won't be able to even see the difference of where the paint/wash pooled into. Spray Primer can get a little pricier if you go with hobby paint brands, though you can easily prime a few games with a single can. Brush-on primer exists too and may be a lot cheaper, but do be warned that this will notably increase the time investment.
4) Washes/Shades are things like the strict term of "Wash" used by companies like Vallejo, Secret Weapon, Monument Pro Acryl.. or iterations like "Quickshade Wash" from Army Painter, or "Shades" from Citadel. While generally sold as ways to tint & shade painted minis, these also work perfectly well to do a single pass of color as described above. "Quick" paints are any of the semi-recent trend of paint companies to offer liquid acrylic paints that perform similarly to Washes - gently coating exposed surfaces while heavily coating recesses to give a light/dark effect. These exist in different forms, e.g. Citadel's Contrast Paints, Army Painter's Speedpaints, Vallejo's Xpress color, or Scale75's Instant Colors. All of these will be more expensive than washes to varying degrees, but will generally offer a much wider pool of colors with the ability to create more vibrant/bright colors. These are popular options now, but there's no need to buy an expensive set of these - you can easily try a single bottle of shade/wash and see if you have any interest in expanding to other colors.
5) While I'd caution you from believing anyone who sells you on the idea of painting/washing an entire game box in 10 minutes, it's important to note that the time investment is probably less than you'd expect. You can easily take out all the minis, spray-prime them in one swoop, then sit down and paint several at a time. It will take more time if you're looking to change colors, do additional coats or something like that, but beyond that, there's just nothing special about the process that makes it time consuming. BUT, it's not nothing... it will still take a bit of time to get it all laid out and run your brush over 100 minis X) But if you intend to play the game a lot, maybe it's worth that bit of time investment?!
As one final caveat, the texture of the minis in question may affect how good it looks. Washing/quick painting lives & dies by the fact that minis are often designed with lots of features, nooks, crannies, appendages etc. - they're simply not good or meant for broad/flat surfaces. So Tsathoggua will look great with this technique with all of his bumpy skin & fur. Color out of Space will not look as good, given his smoother big lumps. The majority of minis will look great, thankfully, but do note that it's not a perfect solution for every mini out there.
Cthulhu: Death May Die is my #1 game, and several years ago someone mentioned on bgg how easy it was to just wash your own minis rather than paying hefty sums for pre-shaded minis. I was skeptical since I hadn't held a brush since paint-by-numbers in grade school.. but they were right! It was super easy, pretty cheap, and I found myself buying other colors to try different appearances. That led to me trying painting, I gradually delved deeper into that, and now I love the mini painting hobby and spend significantly more time painting than I do on gaming!
Maybe you will too, or maybe you'll just also be surprised at how surprisingly simple it is to get your minis looking much cooler and leave it at that! Either way, if you have a bit of spare time and a few extra bucks, I'd encourage you give it a try =D
After all, you wouldn't want to disappoint my Ghasts, would you?
/pic8625487.jpg)