1d4chan's Assembling, Painting and Basing Guide

What, seriously? We have documented almost every aspect of /tg/ except this one of the most essentials of all? Anyway, let's see if we can give you some 101 tips and save you some minis and money.

Where to start

First you need your miniatures, of course. There are many options. Rampant capitalism, aside from allowing these sort of hobbies, has ensured you can always have a wide array at the market. However, there is also the matter of how much money, patience and luck you have.

Money:

This first one is obvious, seeing as this is not exactly a cheap hobby. But since you are already here, you are most likely committed. Depending on which company you choose, your spending may go from some dozens of Euros to enough cash to hire your own real private military. We suggest you start with something small, like a special character, or perhaps a squad of your favourite meatshields, so you can have a few guinea pigs. If you are short of money, you may try second hand minis. eBay offers a wide variety of options, particularly GW marines. If you live outside a specific region, this loses attractiveness, as the cost of shipment increases. But again, you are probably willing to shell it out. Unless you can't. In that case, we recommend you first try to achieve a bigger income of money. Seriously, don't sell your kidney or lungs if you can't afford these toy army men. /tg/s favourite plastic crack should not be devouring 20 percent or more of your monthly budget.

Patience:

So, let's say you live in a place where this hobby is not exactly popular. Certain regions lack the historical tradition of having elegan/tg/entlemen buying and building their own little toy armies and grinding through tens of pages of rules and profiles, this results in you being forced to ask for a delivery, which in turn means you may have to wait, also, as previously stated, you are going to do all by yourself what usually is done in a factory assembly line or by people who are paid to spend their time as handmade artisans, what is more, miniatures often have a level of detail which would make you feel you are head surgeon, but that's ok, we take the challenge, we are all craftmen, it's our pride, so all good, unless of course you prefer to hire the aforementioned person to do this job, but then why are you here?

Luck:

Yes, luck, and this is the biggest one, see, you may have find this awesome miniature advertisement and you would like to have it, only to discover the stock ran out, of course you can also decide it's time to rebel against the evil corporations and go to places like Ebay to buy from the people, by the people and for the people, or attempt to cheat through the chinaman (we just will say we strongly discourage you from doing this as it's pushing your luck even more, also we don't want to have the wiki killed), the thing is, you can buy second hand miniatures to save some money only to discover they are in a worse state than what was shown in the pic, after all, photo manipulation or just taking the shot in the right angle may hide away things, or perhaps you wanted to remove the paint and do it all by yourself only to discover the previous owner used oils instead of easily removable acrylics in your new plastic miniatures, so it's always a bit of gamble. Even if you buy your stuff first hand at an official shop you could end with a damaged model, things happen, while you may recover your money or get a replacement you already lost time, which of course is valuable too, so, yeah, try to play it safe as much as possible.

There is also, again, related to luck, the consideration of the weather where you live, dry, cold, wet, all these aspects will influence what you are doing, but a good simple rule is to do your hobby in a place with a comfy temperature and level of humidity for human beings and the occasional scifi and fantasy humanoid.

And on the matter of luck, remember, shit happens, brushes fry, miniatures fall and break, Nuln Oil gets spilled (too often), just remember, the more skillful and rich you are the better you can deal with these things, and, truth be told, they are going to be part of your life as a hobbist.

Assembling

So, let's say you finally get your miniatures box. You feel the thrill of peeling away the plastic, and contemplate the sprues filled with those pieces, which will eventually become your new friends for life.

Stop, just stop.

Before you rush into tearing the sprue apart to get those juicy bits, ask yourself. Do you have cutting pliers? Do you actually know how to use them? Do you have the tools needed to remove the vents and flashes, or actually take out the pieces of the sprue without damaging them?

If you answer is no, and you actually care about a minimum level of quality then first you need, at the very last, cutting pliers and some needle files, in order to make sure your bits get correctly cut and the vent, flashes and mould lines are dealt with.

As a general rule you shouldn't apply that much pressure when using any of these tools over the plastic. Also, watch where they are going. It's very sad when your cutting pliers end up cutting a detail of your mini because you miscalculated the angle. Pro tip, test your tools in the sprues first to get a grasp of the pressure you'll need to apply.

Ok, after this we are good to go. Except, you need to have a clear idea of what are you going to cut, and how are you going to paint it. If it happens you are working with just one miniature then you may proceed with to remove each piece without much planning, but if you got a big box with multiple miniatures then you need to plan what you are going to do, we certainly can't give a clear answer for this, but we can tell you it's easier to find a sprue with some pieces attached than a head, or worse, a neck, also, this may come as obvious but, unless you are doing kitbashing, you better cut only the parts of a single miniature or set of miniatures, and only after you are sure you are going to use all the bits, again, no point in cutting something you are not going to assemble for the next few months.

Suppose you still managed to mess with your models and damaged them, well, here is where green stuff comes, green stuff, which starts its life in a pot as technical material or a as a blue and yellow band inside a package at a hardware retailer store, works like Plasticine, that is until it dries and becomes hard as nails, and is useful both for repairing missing bits or adding new ones, we hope you don't need it but well, there is an option if you ran out of luck.