The Club 200

Anybody who follows me on Twitter (@Gaz_T) may have noticed that over the last few weeks I have been involved with some discussions about painting. This has come up from a couple of events that oddly enough Ben Curry of Bad Dice Podcast Fame (@BadDice_Podcast on Twitter) had been too.

The first event was the Midlands Open and was down to the first game on Sunday. As usual on the second day of a tournament, you tend to get a few drop outs and a few of us were milling around waiting for our opponents to turn up or for us to be paired up against each other. Ben ended up playing a bloke with a High Elf army but Ben wasn't very happy about this as the army wasn't even painted! (Well it had been undercoated and had some shields painted) Naturally, Ben wasn't happy as he likes to play against painted armies which is one of the reasons why he goes to events. This caused some discussion where he aired his views on his podcast and we saw some comments made in the Feedback thread about the event, saying that the bloke had just become a Dad and was struggling for time. The next discussion that popped up was due to the Warmachine ETC event that Ben went to. Now Ben said he loved this because he enjoys playing Warmachine but he loves the Team aspect of the tournament. He also said he would go to more Warmachine events but due to attitude of being able to play with non painted models, he wasn't very keen. Again, this brought up comments about not finding time to paint, etc, etc.

So I jumped into these discussions as I agree with Ben, that at a tournament, it is nice to play with and against players with painted models. I'm not expecting Golden Daemon quality for what people have painted, but I'm expecting at least a few colours and some effort no matter the end result! A couple of people replied saying that why should they be forced to paint when they don't like it or that it was difficult finding the time to paint things up. I answered this with that you can always find time to paint and I was very honest with the fact that I'm not a massive fan of assembling and painting models, but I do because I enjoy using painted models.

Oddly enough while this twitter discussion was going on, a very interesting thread appeared on The Warhammer Forum. The thread was started by Old Fogey (aka Paul Whittaker who older readers may remember from some White Dwarf appearances quite a few years ago as well as a regular on the UK tournament scene), who is a TWF regular of the Painting part of the forum. Old Fogey, is a very good painter with a distinct style (realistic and grimey) and he actively tries to encourage people to paint. One of these attempts was the club 200, which is essentially a way of getting people to paint a bit each month to end up with a fully painted army at the end of it.

So back to the present and we come to the main course of this entry, I personally think that most people who have time to be in the hobby of miniature wargaming, can and should find time to paint. In fact I think this so much, I'm going to join the club 200 and show you all! So expect some updates about this project over the next few months, which should hopefully inspire some of you to pick up a brush and paint!