What % of the armies you regularly field are painted?

[Kugane]

100%. If it isnt painted, I wont play it until it has its final layer of varnish on it. 

Because of that mindset it makes me sad when the opponent fields grey or sometimes in rare occassions even subassembled armies haha.

The downside is that good stuff will get nerfed, become obsolete or too weak to compete due to rule changes/point adjustments. Seeing stuff painted to tabletop++ standard becoming unuseable tends to hurt. Especially in horde armies.

Edited June 9, 2019 by Kugane

[Zadolix]

I'm constantly painting and working towards 100% but happy to field them while they're still grey or in the WIP stage as well. I usually bounce between a few projects and systems and that offsets the fatigue and burn of painting a similar palette over and over again (necromunda, 40k, AoS, LoTR)

[Retro]

I think of it in a similar way to video games. Are you a person who upgrades their PC  frequently so you can run a game at 1000% graphics level? And if it isn't at max do you lose enjoyment?

Or are you the guy who makes sure they have the minimum specs covered or downgrades graphics settings to make it run smoother. But ultimately enjoys the game just as much?

I'm the latter, and I also play with a lot of grey plastic at times. Although I'm trying to get better. The downside to this game is if you run grey plastic army you're  potentially downgrading some else's experience if that is something important to them.

What I don't like is people (online or in person) shaming others because of their level of hobby progress.

[SwampHeart]

Outside of tournaments I almost never play with a fully painted army. My armies are constantly in flux - trying new builds, trying whole new armies, play testing is a near constant for me. Just because of the way I approach the game I know basically none of my 'regular' games will feature entirely painted armies. I can't imagine spending the time to assemble and paint a unit only to play it and find out I hate the way it functions in the game. All this said I am regularly painting - I of course need to field fully painted armies at tournaments so I'm always working on getting there. 

[Televiper11]

100%. 

As someone who suffers from color blindness, blobs of grey plastic appear indistinguishable to me. 

[Captain Marius]

I prefer to play fully painted armies, whenever i use unpainted models they tend to die horribly and demotivate me from painting them!

[Charlo]

I always aim for 95%, probably just a few bases or some highlights missing.

My armies will always be at least base colours, a wash and some technical paints for flair.

Games just so much better with paint!

[AsraiR]

I aim to only play painted these days, but I'm in the lucky position that I have enough painted to run about 20 different tournament lists with ease.

[Lucur]

When i started with AoS i ran 100% painted for the first few games, then got a good deal on two boxes which i couldn't paint all that quickly (still haven't, raising kids takes time ), while people were asking me to up the points. I made them choose whether to run 1000-ish fully painted or larger games with parts of grey horde.

I would never impose expectations on my opponents. When i was younger i didn't care for painting and mostly played grey and black. Anyone should enjoy their hobby as they want. That said, people who run fully painted can rightfully demand fully painted opponents, as long as anyone can take a no without being hurt.

Edited June 12, 2019 by Lucur

[Alexonian]

0% currently, my one and only army (slaanesh) has been waiting for the new paints

[Eevika]

Always painted armies at the table. I mostly play at tournaments and leagues that require painted minis so its pretty simple.

[NeoA]

I play with 100% painted, but my oponents mostly field about 50% painted. And thats absolutely ok. They have children, so their time is more limited then mine.

[adreal]

I tend to be able to smash out a army pretty quick, might not be the best painter in the world, but I try my best.

So I tend to field 100% painted

[Bufkin]

Up to a 1000 points I play with everything painted. I usually have around 600-700 painted before I decides to actually play an army anyway so to get it to a 1000 is pretty easy.

After a 1000 the jump to 2000 is pretty step and I’m not a big fan of painting the same thing over and over so all the characters will be painted and I will have minimum size of several units painted. Now I have to decide what I actually want to play and paint the same models I already painted AGAIN, maybe 20-30-40 or even 100 times, that’s just not going to happen without playtest. So Ill build them and spray them black and then play them. My biggest concern with contrast is actually that I might not spray everything black in the future and I vastly prefer black if its unpainted.

But my goal is to always have more models painted between every game I play and I usually succeeds but I have a kid, a full-time job and other commitments so things comes in the way sometimes. I’ve also recently finally got a gaming table for my home so my personal “always have something new painted” includes building and painting new terrain and that has a higher priority since it has a bigger impact on the visuals of the game.

[Wired4War]

100%, I don't bring a unit to the table, unless it's painted. That's what I used as my motivation to keep painting.

[gjnoronh]

100% but I'm old and I've been in the hobby a long time.  When I was just starting we were proxying using Army men half the time. 

[Fairbanks]

On 6/8/2019 at 8:37 AM, Laststand said:

Hi. Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on this? Do you wait to hit a certain points value before fielding an army? Do you lead a force of grey plastic? Or do you bounce from painting project to painting project and have several half painted armies you use? 

Most of my models that make it to the table have either black/white Primer, colored spray, or some basecoat. I'm very interested to see how Contrast paints change that.

[XReN]

When I faced an unbreakable wall of not being able to paint my SCE (I decided to repaint my wholle force since it is a mess of half-assed models painted the night before tournament) I started to build and paint my FEC and played as painting progressed, now I'm finishing my first 2750 points of them and just 2 SCs short of having Cannibal Court (FEC mega-battalion) assembeled, but I won't play more games with unfinished models nor will move onto painting new FEC units before I finish old ones. 

And when I clear up my backlog consisting of half-painted Malifaux warband, friend's Skaven and some FEC units that I need to play more diverse lists I will finally return to my SCE

Also I'd like to note that most, I'd dare to say, 90% and more of armies and models that I see on tournaments are painted and based in our local community.

[Dodo]

DoK ~65%

Idk 5%

HoS and Sylvaneth at 0% (waiting for contrast experiments.

 

i actually don‘t care if i have to field grey or paint, but the big goal is of course 100%.

The only thing is, that full-time job, Son(3.5 y) and wife have a much higher priority than fielding painted miniatures. Hobby-time gets short when you have a kid.

i honestly have a bigger problem with gamers turning down a match because of grey masses than with people playing grey, because mostly there are reasons why it‘s not painted yet or takes some time.

Additionally playing the game motivates me to paint my toys

[Nin Win]

100%

Same for my opponent and all the terrain.

There's so much good game content for small games that there's always something we can do if one of us doesn't have a large amount done.  Skirmish, the Path to Glory scenarios are both excellent (even if I'm not the biggest fan of the PtG army building method as it requires way more finished models if the charts are to mean anything at all).

Our club also does build-paint-play campaigns where we do skirmish at 300, PtG scenarios at 600 and Open War cards at 1000 over a 16 week period twice a year.  Then we also do a 40k one (the skirmish supplement is pretty much compatible with both games but the next one will probably open up with a month of Kill Team).  You don't have to paint new stuff to get in on it, but most people do.

[thebouv]

Er, I don't think I've ever had a 100% fully painted army on the table.

Well, except when I used to run the Easter Egg Menites and brought them to GenCon 2006. Ha.

I also don't know if I've ever faced one.

[MrZakalwe]

Mine tend to be majority painted but I'm constantly swapping in and out units as new ideas occur to me (got to paint a Tenebreal Shard for that very reason- ran a little experiment with a Sword of Judgement on one and decided it needs further exploration). 

[soak314]

Various stages. My gloomspite army is currently sitting at about 80% of 2000 points done. I started playing early this year with exactly two grots painted.

Back when I started around 2011 it was pretty commonplace to tease or reprimand people who hadn't done up their armies yet. As time passed I increasingly found this behavior to be unpleasant and gatekeepy.

These days you could field 2000 points of empty bases with the units names written on top of em and I wouldn't mind. Heck, I personally think that's the most ergonomic way to play AoS.