When it comes to painting miniatures I’ve always found that the world is divided. Some people like prepaints, I’m assuming that’s why Heroclix does so well, and some people like to paint them themselves.

Ever since historical wargaming people have collected miniatures and painted them, and with the surge in the popularity in games in the 70’s when Dungeons and Dragons was first released the beginning of the MegaCorp Games Workshop  began humbly selling small pewter miniatures for use with D&D, Traveller, and of course, HeroQuest.

GW eventually released Warhammer, and sequentially Warhammer 40,000; the biggest most popular miniature wargame. I’ll admit that the prospect of painting hundreds of plastic miniatures seems daunting, but I can never seem to be able to break away from the hobby, not just because of the gaming, but because of the collecting and painting.  One of the main appeals of the hobby is painting, because you are putting your thoughts and desires into the miniature and at the heart of it all, you want your army to stand out and not just be Ork army number 837, at least that’s what it is for me.

But at the same time, I’ll admit that painting is the scourge of the hobby; it’s repetitive and games that come with prepaints seem like a such a better idea, but time and time again it’s proven that the standard of the paint work done on prepaints is far below the standard you could do yourself. I remember my adolescent self and a several friends laughing our heads of at the mustache of prepainted D&D mini, because it instead looked like a sad face rather than a mustache.

Tannhauser, the boardgame comes with prepaints and on this sort of level it always seemed ok because you are only using a few miniatures and if I’m perfectly honest, despise the fact that I feel I should paint my unpainted Super Dungeon Explore and Talisman figures simply because they’re unpainted.

I find that unpainted miniatures for a boardgame is fine; nobody cares, but as soon as someone turns up to the table with an unpainted Cygnar force, people begin to take note. There is no reason for that. Game on. Paint or no paint.