Warhammer 40K Tabletop Thread XXXVI: If it Ain't Broke, Nerf It

[Cheesegear]

Again: I understand why people get a feeling of pride for well painted minis, and like to show them off online.

Not even online. Your friends pick up your models to have a look at (and then drop them onto the floor).

Oh. Page 49...Uhh...

Thread XXXVII: Contrasting Opinions

[Voidhawk]

Not even online. Your friends pick up your models to have a look at (and then drop them onto the floor).

My friends care roughly the same amount I do. The few who actually enjoy painting get praised for it by the rest of us, but they certainly wouldn't dream of "yucking someones yum" by making out like anyone had to meet their personal standards to be allowed into the clubhouse. This isn't some kind of "no shirt no shoes no service" hobby, we're all just dudes playing with toy soldiers.

Anyone who had that kind of snobby attitude among us would find themselves out of friends to play with very quickly. Just the same as someone who brought four wraithknights would.

[Wraith]

a) Spend an hour (total) basecoating, washing and drybrushing, and get some decent models.
b) Spend 10 minutes and get a worse result.

I think this is the crux of the argument. There are two sides; the ones who are okay with this happening to their own miniatures, and those who are not.

As you possibly recall, I just recently started collecting Thousand Sons, under the conclusion that I need a bucket of Tzaangors in order for them to be any good. If I can turn 5 minutes of painting a Tzaangor into 3 minutes, because I'm going to need at least 29 more of them for an effective unit and as rank-and-file fodder I don't care all that much if they're my best work, then I'm quite happy to make that sacrifice.

I'm okay with that. I admit it; My standards are lower than yours (again, Royal You) and I'd really rather spend my time playing with some okay-ish models than all pristine ones. Other people wouldn't dream of committing such sacrilege. That's okay too. I promise that I won't use Contrast paints on Ahriman and will do him "properly" as a centre-piece deserves, if that will make you feel any better?

Thread XXXVII: Contrasting Opinions

Thread XXXVII: Your Shading Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad
Thread XXXVII: Would be Better If Nicol Bolas Were Here
Thread XXXVII: AoS-Spelljammer Or GTFO
Thread XXXVII: <Insert Noun> Seems Totally Lame
Thread XXXVII: The Scouring of the Scouring of the Shire
Thread XXXVII: Damage Resolves At The End Of The Thread

And, extrapolated from your previous post because I feel that it deserves some out-of-context accolade:

Thread XXXVII: Wraith Was Correct

[Cheesegear]

Thread XXXVII: Would be Better If Nicol Bolas Were Here
Thread XXXVII: AoS-Spelljammer Or GTFO

I think...
...I think I love you?

[Avaris]

Thread XXXVII: Contrasting Opinions

This is genius.

Thread XXXVII: roll a d6 to resolve disagreements
Thread XXXVII: now with action figures!

[Meatgrinder]

Thread XXXVII: "You don't understand. I will make it Spelljammer."
Thread XXXVII: The Higgins Boat joins the race
Thread XXXVII: There is only salt

[lord_khaine]

Thread XXXVII: roll a d6 to resolve disagreements
Thread XXXVII: now with action figures!

I equally like both of these.

[Saambell]

Thread XXXVII: Mars Hovercraft Full of Rippers

[Wraith]

Thread XXXVII: Roll a D6 to Resolve Disagreements

I equally like both of these.

I agree on that one, very fitting for both the game and the thread in general

Meatgrinder's Spelljammer reference was also very good, but either of those titles might confuse people who thought we were talking about "Warhammer D&Dk"

[Brookshw]

I guarantee that Contrast will be useful... If you're the kind of person that it's aimed at.

Choose one or more of the following:
a) You have difficulty shading and highlighting,
b) You don't like shading and highlighting (especially if 'it takes too long'),
c) Your desired unit or batch is predominantly painted a single colour that is conveniently one of the colours offered.
d) You have no interest in photographing - or having people look at - your models closer than 30cm.

If you, personally are one or more of those things, then Contrast Paints are for you.

As far as the proposed application for it, sure. I'm wondering if there will be non-marketed uses. For example, I could see this potentially being useful for SOL or wet blending. Will it be? Not sure. Will it just be a way of skipping a step but then I'll be going over and doing a few brighter layers over? Probably. I'm inclined to pick up a pot or two to play with and see what can be done with it.

Related, how'd you're ghost painting go? I was thinking about it earlier, and if you're still trying to crack that nut I got to thinking about maybe trying to prime with hair spray and then wash over that.

Thread XXXVII: Contrasting Opinions

Nice!

Thread XXXVII: AoS-Spelljammer Or GTFO

Much as I love space pirates, I'm thinking that a thread title that references 40K, AOS, and D&D, might be a bit confusing to newcomers wandering in and looking for the 40K thread.

Thread XXXVII: There is only salt

Hah!

[PraetorDragoon]

Thread XXXVII: Highlighting the Contrasts

[Voidhawk]

Thread XXXVII: Highlighting the Contrasts

Oooh yes. Subtle, multiple meanings. I like it!

[Meatgrinder]

Thread XXXVII: Highlighting the Contrasts

I'll vote for this one as well.

[Manticoran]

Thread XXXVII: Highlighting the Contrasts

This one! Definitely.

Also as someone who never bothered to paint a lot of my minis at all because I just wanted to play the wargame... Before I swapped over to doing entire substitutions with things like legos, rocks, D&D minis, etc with my friends, anyway. Might have me more likely to buy miniatures if I didn't feel like I would have to do a bunch of stuff I don't care about at all.

The change from 3rd edition Tyranids to 4th, and then 4th to 5th, where all of my Carnifex/Hive Tyrants/etc were suddenly built wrong, but were painted so I couldn't really change anything, was what ruined 40k for me in stores. I had the right miniature, but I couldn't play with it because I'd built it the right way at the time, and now it was the "wrong" way. The issue from my perspective is that 40k is multiple games in one, and if I don't want to participate in the building toy soldiers, where the art in the books I buy and whatnot is so much nicer than anything I could ever do myself, I couldn't play the war game. Probably why I swapped over to computer war gaming in general, TBH.

As a highly competitive player, I also couldn't stand playing inefficiently.

And the online tabletop simulators just don't do it for me, since they're so obnoxious to control.

[Requizen]

I think this is the crux of the argument. There are two sides; the ones who are okay with this happening to their own miniatures, and those who are not.

As you possibly recall, I just recently started collecting Thousand Sons, under the conclusion that I need a bucket of Tzaangors in order for them to be any good. If I can turn 5 minutes of painting a Tzaangor into 3 minutes, because I'm going to need at least 29 more of them for an effective unit and as rank-and-file fodder I don't care all that much if they're my best work, then I'm quite happy to make that sacrifice.

I'm okay with that. I admit it; My standards are lower than yours (again, Royal You) and I'd really rather spend my time playing with some okay-ish models than all pristine ones. Other people wouldn't dream of committing such sacrilege. That's okay too. I promise that I won't use Contrast paints on Ahriman and will do him "properly" as a centre-piece deserves, if that will make you feel any better?

Pretty sure they said it was specifically for people struggling to get everything to tabletop standard, or for people painting hordes of rank and file. This clearly isn't intended to replace anything or convert Golden Daemon hopefuls, but if I was a new Tyranid player and I wanted to run 120 Termagants/Hormagaunts (because I'm a masochist), I sure would appreciate skipping a step or two on that many models.

Warhammer 40K Tabletop Thread XXXVI: Contrast: Not for Primarchs

[9mm]

Pretty sure they said it was specifically for people struggling to get everything to tabletop standard, or for people painting hordes of rank and file.

if the skeleton version gets anywhere near my current GameColor white + sepia wash, I'd might be willing to put my self through the next 60 I'd need for 3 full blocks...

[LansXero]

if the skeleton version gets anywhere near my current GameColor white + sepia wash, I'd might be willing to put my self through the next 60 I'd need for 3 full blocks...

Is it any different from TAP spray + GW wash?

My issue is people who think it will do something, realize the result is crap, and feel taken advantage of. Of course, me being the guy in charge of selling things to them it affects me, but I can see why not many share that perspective. And its not even like I can not sell it to them. everyone is hyped from the online "its like doing shading and highlighting on one step" "just slap it on" etc. People dont like admitting they were wrong, and will blame me for letting them buying it if it doesnt magically make them good.

[9mm]

Is it any different from TAP spray + GW wash?

I've yet to find a white spray that wasn't absolute crap.

[lord_khaine]

My issue is people who think it will do something, realize the result is crap, and feel taken advantage of. Of course, me being the guy in charge of selling things to them it affects me, but I can see why not many share that perspective. And its not even like I can not sell it to them. everyone is hyped from the online "its like doing shading and highlighting on one step" "just slap it on" etc. People dont like admitting they were wrong, and will blame me for letting them buying it if it doesnt magically make them good.

I guess the best you can do there is suggest people compare a before and after model.

[Drasius]

Thread XXXVII: Contrasting Opinions

Gets my vote.

As to the viability of the contrast paints, as others have said, for something like clanrats, skellies, plague zombies, 'gors, grots or 'gaunts that have a minimum buy in of 90+ models, this'd be great. For anything else except maybe boyz, I'm not so sure. Might work as an intersting wash option for detailing tanks though, for mud/oils/rust though, so that'd be nice. Wouldn've made a killing if WHFB was still a thing, given masses of ranked infantry where the back ranks really don't need to be painted as well as the front ranks.

If I can get 80% of the effect in 1/6th the time, you'd better believe I'll jump on that wagon, but if it looks like that spoilered picture of the plague marine, well, yeah, that's just wasting money and time 'cause you're going to have to do so much touching up it would have been quicker to just do it properly in the first place.

We do have one fried who is renowed for bringing grey plastic to the table, and we do rib him about it in a friendly manner (Aussie friendly anyway, most others would probably leave over the stuff we say to each other), but I suspect all of us would rather grey plastic than a half-arsed effort like the picture. There's another guy in the store who constantly boasts of getting 40 guardsmen done in 20 minutes, the standard reply is to tell him that you can tell it was only 20 minutes from the quality of the paintjob (as it's primer, rattlecan base and army painter dip).

I guess a lot of it will be wait and see, 'cause those seraphon lizardmen I saw looked fine for TT quality, but I also didn't look real close, but then, that's kinda what TT standard is all about. Will be nice for tournament players looking to game the painting system though - 5 minutes and you've got 3 colours, shade and highlight on all your minis if you can run this stuff through an airbrush. It'll look very average, but if the TO is relying on check boxes rather than a grading scale, well, job done. They'll still lose to people who've put effort in, but if it's the difference between getting your models you bought the day before tourney legal or putting grey plastic down and taking a huge points hit, well, we both know what's going to happen.

Is lowering the bar for entry to painted models good? YES! Is that inevitably going to come with a reduction in painting quality? Almost certainly, but the more people who start painting, the more people who will get good at painting, so while the overall number of badly painted models will go up, the amount of people painting will also go up, and as most of us know, your painting gets better over time, not worse, so eventually the amount of well painted models will outweight the poorly painted contrast only jobs, giving us a net win. That's my take.

[Destro_Yersul]

Yeah, that plague marine looks better than the first minis I painted, way back when. It'll likely be a viable starting point for new hobbyists.

[Cheesegear]

Looks like we're going with...

Contrasting Opinions, or
Highlighting the Contrasts.

Either way, Contrast pun. I'm biased towards the former.

[LeSwordfish]

I think the latter is funnier.

[Turalisj]

Highlighting Contrasting Opinions?

[EhDerangedMonk]

Ork player sounds like a real jerk. I would've got in a fight with him over whose time got used for the rule dispute. To the point of trying to get him disqualified. After all, most tournaments require you to have a copy of all the rules you are using. Not having said copy would be grounds to autolose right there. Or at least, grounds to not be able to use Vigilus Defiant at all. After all, it's not your fault that he didn't bring his rules to the tournament.

Conceal is pretty much always better than reveal. And War Walkers are indeed awesome. But you know what else works? Vypers. Almost as tough as War Walkers, still have Fly, and are still Jetbikes so Conceal works on them as well.

I feel like a lot of it is easier to call in hindsight or if you've seen it before. His team captain did have a copy on his phone so they may have been sharing it but it honestly didn't occur to me to call for a GL or DQ until the end of the day. If it happens to me at another tournament I'm definitely going to push for that.

Since this was the first game i'd played in the region and the TO was down with the clock being present and enforced I was really trying to just adjust myself to the playstyle. Being on a personal clock is a lot of pressure-especially when you realise that every single question you have to stop and ask your opponent is hurting your chances of winning. I did confirm that rules questions about your opponents stuff are done on your time later but spending 5mins arguing that your opponent should not be allowed to use vigilus because he didn't bring the vigilus rules would have been almost pointless. Yeah sure a couple models would have lived but the real issue was time and if I didn't get my opponent a game loss over the lack of vigilus there was no way I was going to recover the time spent arguing over it. Which is of course a problem with chess clocks when both people don't know and aren't expected to know all the rules of the game verbatim.


I agree conceal is better than reveal. No argument here- especially when on a foot warlock.
While you could make vypers work here I feel that if I was to run a substitute for War Walkers I would want more windriders. Vypers are a decent choice but they can't take dual scatter lasers so they'll end up costing more and have two weapons that are at odds with one another. While fly, <jetbike>, and the extra movement is great I wouldn't discount T6 and 5++. T6 5++ really helps against Disintegrators, lascannons, and the like. In my army I was trying to go full gunline and the 36" was really important if I went first or had to deal with deepstriking light infantry(bloodletter bomb, horrors, GSC). Since vypers aren't the greatest at gunlining I feel they would work better as an aggressive objective grabber where they'll compete with Shuriken Cannon Windriders instead of the less mobile War Walkers.

Shuriken Cannons were not a good choice for me for several reasons.
1. I am looking for better ways to clear blobs not space marines
2. They cost more
3. 24" is a lot riskier than 36".

Vypers also suffer from the space marine problem when compared with windriders. A unit with a similar role that runs the same or more firepower spread out over multiple bodies is better than fewer, more impressive models. That's why everyone runs guard, bodies matter. My opponent can roll a 6 with a D6 weapon and vaporize an entire Vyper whereas at most he kills one windrider per shot. War walkers approach the issue the same way knights do: with an invulnerable save. I personally feel that Vypers are an uncomfortable mix between War Walkers' firepower and durability and the swift efficiency of windriders. Since the Vyper can't decide on it's role and GW isn't pushing it as a unit it just ends up being mediocre.

This is a direct and quantifiable failing of the TO. You cannot allow one table to use different rules and conditions to the others, it's an unfair advantage to the one guy who has brought one having had all the time in the world to practice with it and accommodate its use into his turn.
This is even before it causes arguments over how its being used and whose 'turn' it is - a TO should have clear rules and expectations on that etiquette and being unprepared, unable or unwilling to enforce them just allows it to be abused.

I concur. It should be all chess clocks or none at all, chess clocks change the dynamics of the game. In an ordinary game if I'm in a dominating position I'm advantaged as I might table my opponent or cripple them to the point where I can hold most/all objectives for several turns and essentially play on their time. In a timed game because I'm dominating my turns will take longer and my own list's strength plays against me if I can't play 7 turns in half the round time having sustained minimal casualties. This works better in actual chess as no matter what one can only move one piece per turn. I got the impression my opponent and his list were designed to work on this clock which is a whole new level of metagaming that I wasn't operating on at the time. Thankfully you can just practice on the clock elsewhere. Even if you don't use the clock in tournament play I'm sure your opponent and the TO will appreciate games finishing within the allotted time. I've seen, heard, and experienced countless games that run till the last second of the round timer and as a currently-shooty player you sometimes just really need to reach turn 5/6/7 rather than ending on 4 especially when dealing with hordes or armies with exceptionally strong board presence.

Looks like we're going with...

Contrasting Opinions, or
Highlighting the Contrasts.

I vote for Contrasting Opinions!

[Forum Explorer]

I agree conceal is better than reveal. No argument here- especially when on a foot warlock.
While you could make vypers work here I feel that if I was to run a substitute for War Walkers I would want more windriders. Vypers are a decent choice but they can't take dual scatter lasers so they'll end up costing more and have two weapons that are at odds with one another. While fly, <jetbike>, and the extra movement is great I wouldn't discount T6 and 5++. T6 5++ really helps against Disintegrators, lascannons, and the like. In my army I was trying to go full gunline and the 36" was really important if I went first or had to deal with deepstriking light infantry(bloodletter bomb, horrors, GSC). Since vypers aren't the greatest at gunlining I feel they would work better as an aggressive objective grabber where they'll compete with Shuriken Cannon Windriders instead of the less mobile War Walkers.

Shuriken Cannons were not a good choice for me for several reasons.
1. I am looking for better ways to clear blobs not space marines
2. They cost more
3. 24" is a lot riskier than 36".

Vypers also suffer from the space marine problem when compared with windriders. A unit with a similar role that runs the same or more firepower spread out over multiple bodies is better than fewer, more impressive models. That's why everyone runs guard, bodies matter. My opponent can roll a 6 with a D6 weapon and vaporize an entire Vyper whereas at most he kills one windrider per shot. War walkers approach the issue the same way knights do: with an invulnerable save. I personally feel that Vypers are an uncomfortable mix between War Walkers' firepower and durability and the swift efficiency of windriders. Since the Vyper can't decide on it's role and GW isn't pushing it as a unit it just ends up being mediocre.

Well I always go with Shurikan Cannons over Scatter Lasers for a couple reasons, namely the extra AP on a 6 sometimes matters a lot, because you aren't always fighting hordes. Though I suppose with a team game that matters less. The other reason is so that they can move and shoot without penalty. On that note, I wouldn't discount the 3+ save that the Vypers get. It matters alot for small arms fire which is actually one of the more cost effective way to kill Vypers/War Walkers. On that note, I don't think that T6 matters that much. Disintigrators sure, not so much everything else. The 5++ is pretty big though.

But really, I would say that Vypers and War Walkers are more or less even with one having more mobility in exchange for slightly less durability. The bigger comparison is between Vypers and Windriders. Being only T4 with a 4+? Windriders are super easy to kill for pretty much anything. Bodies don't matter because they don't have objective secured, and Vypers are actually pretty durable. And they are only 8 points more for the same amount of shots. Honestly, if someone is shooting lascannons at Windriders then they are making a mistake. Though I suppose there is something for building a list that has no targets for anti-tank weapons at all.

[LansXero]

oddly enough, Ive never had any luck with jetbike eldars aside from maybe shining spears. Either brick up with Wraithblades (3++ on T6 bodies with 5+ FNP and -2 to be hit is fun) or run around with Rangers. They are sucky snipers, but that -2 and their nil offensive output discourage shooting at them and makes them more survivable than they have any right to be.

As for anti-hordes, thats what Tempest Launchers are for. At least thats how Ive always handled it. Or get kabalites-in-raiders instead?

[Cheesegear]

Did The Masque get new rules like the Keeper of Secrets did, or just a new model?

[The Patterner]

Looks like we're going with...

Contrasting Opinions, or
Highlighting the Contrasts.

Either way, Contrast pun. I'm biased towards the former.

I like them both, but Highlighting the contrast is a little wittier.

[Brookshw]

Had a new scenario tonight. Kastellan rebounded a missle shot from a tankbusta embarked in a Wagon. We figured the rebound got cancelled out by the embarked rules. Anyone have thoughts on how it should have played out?