Post by Deleted on May 1, 2015 8:27:25 GMT -6
NOTE: Text Heavy because I love typing. And 40K
I paint really slowly - it took almost 20 years for my Dark Angels to get to 1850 because points drop with every edition, and I've only won a couple of games in the last several years because I don't have the new fancy crap painted up, just my hordes of Tactical Squads, a Devastor Squad, and an Assault Squad (and everyone knows how great a single Assault Squad is in the game. Haha.)
However, for many people the "visual" is what drew them to miniauture wargames. It is part of what makes miniature wargames different from computerized strategy games or the old Avalon Hill wargames with hex maps and cardboard counters to represent squads and tanks.
When I play a game it bums me out to see a ton of unpainted models and also to see someone's crap strewn all over the table. Push your dice to the corners and put your books off to the side and on the floor. And set up the board so that it looks like something.
Most sports require that you have the proper equipment to play. To bowl you need proper shoes and a bowling ball. To play golf you need clubs and proper dress. For 40K you're supposed to field a fully painted army and show up with you necessary books, dice, and templates, it's part of the social contract (one that has been eroded over time in my opinion.)
I don't think someone should be excluded or pooped on for not being up to snuff, but there should be incentives in place to ensure that the social contract is being considered. For example: Prefered Enemy (Unpainted) could apply only to a person's oldest unpainted unit. Or one unpainted unit is forced to arrive from Reserves until it meets the 3 color minimum. Some slight disadvantage to discourage playing with unpainted models.
You can turn a negative into a positive bonding experience by rallying together to help get a new person's army (or Kessler's army painted and on the table by having a "basecoating night" where a bunch of you gather to get someone's army basecoated to a 3 color minimum. When I worked at GW we did this all the time for fellow employees because we needed to be positive examples of the hobby, and not having a single painted army was a no-no.
We also had a guy who devised his, "Army in a Sack" where he took a bunch of extra plastic Space Marines he had laying around, and he painted the entire army in a single night (Silver Skulls FTW) and he just carried them around in a sack to show the kids how easy it was to paint a full army with just some basic techniques. He used that army on game nights while he meticulously converted and painted armies at home.
If you're running gaming nights and recruiting people to the hobby, you want to be that positive example. How you get there doesn't matter, as long as you're helping people onto the right path. Lowering the points you regularly play at also makes painting goals seem way more attainable. Foster the right culture in your group, and there are a ton of ways to reward and encourage instead of punish. But remember, when I worked at GW you ABSOLUTELY had to have your models painted to play and some people were offput by this, but we offered up a hundred ways to meet that goal, and 40K Vet nights were always packed with a waiting list to play. That's part of being an ambassador to the hobby.
I paint really slowly - it took almost 20 years for my Dark Angels to get to 1850 because points drop with every edition, and I've only won a couple of games in the last several years because I don't have the new fancy crap painted up, just my hordes of Tactical Squads, a Devastor Squad, and an Assault Squad (and everyone knows how great a single Assault Squad is in the game. Haha.)
However, for many people the "visual" is what drew them to miniauture wargames. It is part of what makes miniature wargames different from computerized strategy games or the old Avalon Hill wargames with hex maps and cardboard counters to represent squads and tanks.
When I play a game it bums me out to see a ton of unpainted models and also to see someone's crap strewn all over the table. Push your dice to the corners and put your books off to the side and on the floor. And set up the board so that it looks like something.
Most sports require that you have the proper equipment to play. To bowl you need proper shoes and a bowling ball. To play golf you need clubs and proper dress. For 40K you're supposed to field a fully painted army and show up with you necessary books, dice, and templates, it's part of the social contract (one that has been eroded over time in my opinion.)
I don't think someone should be excluded or pooped on for not being up to snuff, but there should be incentives in place to ensure that the social contract is being considered. For example: Prefered Enemy (Unpainted) could apply only to a person's oldest unpainted unit. Or one unpainted unit is forced to arrive from Reserves until it meets the 3 color minimum. Some slight disadvantage to discourage playing with unpainted models.
You can turn a negative into a positive bonding experience by rallying together to help get a new person's army (or Kessler's army painted and on the table by having a "basecoating night" where a bunch of you gather to get someone's army basecoated to a 3 color minimum. When I worked at GW we did this all the time for fellow employees because we needed to be positive examples of the hobby, and not having a single painted army was a no-no.
We also had a guy who devised his, "Army in a Sack" where he took a bunch of extra plastic Space Marines he had laying around, and he painted the entire army in a single night (Silver Skulls FTW) and he just carried them around in a sack to show the kids how easy it was to paint a full army with just some basic techniques. He used that army on game nights while he meticulously converted and painted armies at home.
If you're running gaming nights and recruiting people to the hobby, you want to be that positive example. How you get there doesn't matter, as long as you're helping people onto the right path. Lowering the points you regularly play at also makes painting goals seem way more attainable. Foster the right culture in your group, and there are a ton of ways to reward and encourage instead of punish. But remember, when I worked at GW you ABSOLUTELY had to have your models painted to play and some people were offput by this, but we offered up a hundred ways to meet that goal, and 40K Vet nights were always packed with a waiting list to play. That's part of being an ambassador to the hobby.