Sometimes, you have all the time in the world to paint your army, and life is great.  Other times, the tournament is in 24h, all hell breaks loose and the end justifies the means.  This article is about the latter.

A tradition in tournament armies

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere before, when I got started in commission painting, it was mostly to help my friends get their army fully painted for tournaments.

And every now and then a tournament pops up, and I get a lot a DMs for commissioned armies.  It makes me feel like that friend with a pickup truck on moving day.

But I usually say yes, because it’s pretty much what I love most.

And then I go freakin’ beastmode and paint 2 armies in a single week.  Actually, one army in 6 days, one in 24 hours.  And this article is about the latter.

Here’s JC’s undead army:

Painting with a Purpose

The premise for this army is the following:  Both JC and I knew I had very limited time to work on his army.  Pretty much a 24 hours window.  Actually, it was more like 36, but miscommunication about wether or not the army war already primed cut this timing short.

This is the epitome of painting with a purpose.  The goal is not to win some sort of trophy or best painted prize.  It’s to show up with a fully painted army to a tournament.

We are looking for maximum wow factor, and very little finer-detail work.  The end justifies the means in this case.  We are thinking short term:  get it painted by tomorrow.

Now this feat is not possible with the same army.  Or at least, it doesn’t lend itself as easily to all armies.

Obviously you can do a lot more work on the army.  And that’s just the point.  It’s tournament ready, it doesn’t mean it has to stay like this forever.

Quite the opposite in fact.  You could even start back from scratch because there is very little paint on it and nothing that prevents you from re-priming it, like quickshade or heavy varnish.

Or you could go from the ghostly look and improve from there, like adding edge highlights to the white, black and bright green.

Wherever your heart desires to go from there.  Because that army’s painting served it’s purpose:  be fully painted in a tournament.