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

So, 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 fact of how much money, patience and luck you have:

Money:

This first one is obvious, this is not exactly a cheap hobby, but if you are already here it means you are committed, depending on what company you choose to give your cash you may go from some dozens of european coins to enough bills to hire your own real life private military contractors, we suggest you start with something small like a special character, or alternatively 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 availability of options, particularly GW marines, of course, if you live outside an specific region this loses attractive as the cost of shipment increases, but again, you are willing to shell it out, unless you can't in that case we recommend you first try to achieve a bigger income of money, really, no need to afford your kidney or lungs if you can't afford them, wait until you can actually spend in miniatures without having, say, a 20 percent or more of your monthly budged wiped out regularly in /tg/s favourite plastic crack.

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 can feel the thrill of removing the plastic and contemplating 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 tool over the plastic, also, see where they are going, it's very sad when your cutting plier ends cutting a detail of your mini because you miscalculated the angle. Pro tip, test your tools in the sprues first to get used.

Ok, after this we are good to go, except first 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.