How to Plan Your Miniature Army or Warband

0:00 in this video I'm gonna tell you how to get yourself prepared to tackle that big army project or even a small war band I was having lunch with our man Sam Lenz a couple days ago and we were reading Mexican food and it was lovely we were talking about some plans we've got coming up for well for the future both for him and me and for us working together we'll be filming some stuff in February so you'll probably see it mid to late February look forward to that but I was talking about how I was trying to come up with something to talk about this week and I had some ideas and this and that and then Sam suggested well what if he made a video about preparing for a big project and I actually a little bit later on the afternoon was going through my big list of all the different ideas that I've got stored in my phone for videos and I came across basically kind of the same thing although it was aimed a little bit more towards armies and a little bit less away from say a big display project Sam and I in the future will hopefully talk about how to prepare for a big display project like a big squad that you want to take to a competition or for maybe like a big what do you call them like a you know like a big display board and all that kind of stuff a diorama but this video is about armies that you're gonna use on the tabletop to play with this is about gaming armies and what you need to do to get yourself moving forward honestly it's a question that I do get asked quite frequently in some

1:31 fashion or other I either get somebody who says hey look I want to get into Game X and so I bought this model in that model and I want to know whether or not these models work best in this situation and whether this goes and if you're asking for strategy if you're asking for the strats this is not your guy I'm not I'm not here to be able to tell you that stuff because I don't know I'm not good at strategy but the most important strategy for starting to build yourself an army and I tell this to every person that I get this question from is by the rulebook don't start by buying models if you've decided you want to get into game X by the rulebook for game X now if that type of game is also the type of game that also requires that you buy it army books depending on which army you want to play like let's say ages Sig Mars you got their battle tomes although you can do war Scrolls for ages Sigmar which are free which is really kind of a nice thing or you've got you know 40k has got codex's then start with the book go through the book if you don't know what Ivan army you want to play with that's actually really an important thing to start with figure out which army you want to play with and then buy the Codex for that army if you first start off just buying models because you love buying models and who doesn't love being at the store and buying models you're gonna find yourself potentially buying models that either play in a way that you don't really want to play or models that don't actually work very well in your army or at the very least can't make up the core of your army most games unless you're

3:03 playing completely like open concept most games have requirements on how to build an army there may be points there may be a number of models there might be you have to have a leader and you can't have two leaders and you can't have three of these guys but you can have as many of these guys as you want there's troop choices there's all kinds of different things and every game is a bit different but most games require to make at least at the very least a legal list usually some sort of boss some sort of cool whatever hero wizard warlord whatever something big no not even big necessarily but you know it's a it's something that's that's got the wherewithal to be able to run this whole group of nincompoops who are you're trying to traverse across the board and smite your enemies so you need those guys and then you need the ground pounders you need the foot soldiers you need the troops in many situations to go back to 40k still to this day the the FOC which I forget what it stands for off the top of my head right now as I'm speaking force of command no see I'm gonna get it wrong anyway the FOC the bare room you need is a HQ unit and two troops that's the that's the straight up so in those situations if you start with other stuff if you're like yeah but are you gonna buy this really super cool vehicle mmm start with the basics definitely figure this out once you've gone through and read the book and figure that out and figure it what your army you want to play write a list sit

4:35 down and write a and try to figure out what you're going to need to buy based off that list and then buy the simplest stuff the stuff that at the bare minimum if you just got these five things painted you could play a very limited kind of truncated game to get the idea of the rules don't go right into the fancy HQ units you know paint one maybe but I still would tell you to actually start by painting your troops because if you're also relatively new to the Hobby in general you want to paint the troops before you start painting your HQ units because you're gonna learn a lot by painting the same troop over and over and over again and then you'll be able to take that knowledge and put it into your fancy leader guy and I cannot stress this enough don't buy the entire army all at once I did a video at getting into the Hobby too fast a long time ago pachow and it also holds true to armies the thing is if you sit down and buy your entire army all in one you know fell swoop you got a whole bunch of money from out on your tax refund or something like that and you go boom and you drop it all on that especially if you're new to the game you're either gonna find a mistake that you made and the way that your list was done and now maybe you bought these guys and you can't use four of them you can only ever run three so now you got extras or you're gonna do something else is gonna come up there's always times when you're gonna be like oh I didn't think of that and so start small and grow slowly in that situation as you're buying the models to put into your army the next important thing to think about though is am I just gonna build these these folks normal or am I gonna convert them in

6:05 some fashion now if you are starting out again I would tell you to probably think real hard about just going the normal Road build following the instructions do the things you need to do if you are not new to HA being to you know miniatures and all that kind of stuff but you're getting you're new into this game you may want to see like some games don't have a lot of conversions either because of the way the game is structured or because of the way the models are structured they're very mano pose or whatever but if you're interested knowing that before you start building can allow you to go either onto eBay and buy extra parts like different heads you might want to put on or go on to some other website and by conversion bits to make their shoulder pads look different or whatever you're going to do but knowing that before use building is super important because it's real hard to kind of go back and add that stuff later on now it's time to start building your models and one of the big reasons you start building your models is because it helps you to get a really good look at the unpainted but finished product understand that depending on your level of fussiness I might say you may or may not want to leave parts off some people love on your standard Space Marine who's holding their bolter in front of their chest like this love to keep that part off as they're painting so they can paint the little Eagle thing and the skulls and whatnot on their chest and then glue it all you know together later I'm a big fan of trying to get stuff done as quick as possible so if there's a sergeant or

7:36 something who's holding like their arms apart like this I'll paint that eagle but if it's a regular troop I won't because it just takes a lot extra time and you know I don't want to have to go through that but that's totally up to you I did a video also about building in you know like sub assemblies and things like that pachow and that's a decision you want to make as well as you paint but getting and looking at a finished model can really help you to understand the way that the different materials are supposed to be oh that's a leather pouch I didn't get that from the box I see okay and that's what really helps you in the next step which is starting to figure out the colors if you're gonna do a big army game something like Aegis Sigma or something like flames of war or something like 40k some you know those types of bigger games as opposed to a smaller skirmish game where you're building a war band of maybe less than a dozen units or you know people in those big big military-style games everybody needs to look a little bit kind of the same these kind of sneaky dudes who are supposed to go and hide in the bushes and snipe obviously we need to look a little bit more camouflaged in some situations but they still kind of have to have the same emblems or whatever the deal is and it depends on the game and how realistic it might be but understanding that in most situations in the big army games you can tell whose guys are who by what color they are that's kind of an important thing to pick out ahead of time it's also important to sit down and actually look at reference go online and look at photo reference or artwork reference if it's a game that's got a

9:07 lot of lore to it and a lot of things going on and it's been around for a long time you can look at the way that the artwork and that those books have been painted in certain ways and certain games will have painting guides and say this is the way you should do it and if you're playing a historical game you kind of want to follow those because it's you know you don't want to show up to the battle in World War 2 in red fatigues you know it would be a little weird but you know you can if you want to but just you know understand you're gonna get a little flak from the other people playing the game potentially in a more fantastical style game a sci-fi or fantasy style game you can kind of do what you want but if you want to say hey these are ultramarines well then you should try to follow along especially again if you are new to the game and try to paint them blue you know and that kind of stuff that stuff's very important to figure out if you're painting a group of monsters that's your entire army you can take a look at um a lot of different nature you know sources I did a video about that years and years ago pachow that's about like if you're painting lizard men look at lizards that we actually have here on earth and go oh that's a cool color scheme if you're painting tyranids look at bugs you know that kind of stuff figuring all that stuff out first is super important and doing that research is super important for moving forward in getting your army actually on the table you should definitely definitely do some test models if you are painting a big army game if you're painting a big game that's got 50 60 70 80 100 200 models in it if that's your goal is to paint that

10:38 giant army you want to start off by painting two or three and saying this is the I like this one this is the way that turned out the best and always be thinking of efficiencies if you're trying to get stuff done and get it on the table as quick as possible always be looking for ways to cut corners and there's nothing wrong with that but figuring that out and writing it down every step so that you can constantly come back and redo it on squad after squad after squad is super important if you're painting a war band for a skirmish game it's probably less important unless that there's some sort of military unit they'll have to look the same and you're super forgetful like me right that down but you know if if you're just doing a bunch of weird ragtag whatever people in your war band then you can kind of go nuts it's important to set deadlines for small portions don't say I have to get all this done by June first it's not a great idea because without the small deadlines you won't probably all of a sudden it'll be two weeks till June first and you'll be like oh you know but if you're like I'm gonna get you know a HQ unit and two units of troops done by March first and then I'm gonna get these guys done by April first and I'm gonna get these units of such and such vehicles done by May first then having that setup and picking those numbers out and writing it down keeping track of it put it in your phone calendar whatever ahead of time will help you because it's more manageable it's smaller bytes as opposed to doing I have to get this entire army done you know the plan is to get the entire army

12:09 done by X whatever date that is but if that's the only deadline it can kind of be problematic and slow you down some military person that I don't remember said something along the lines of no plan ever survives contact with the enemy and that will also happen in your army project whether it's a small war band or a big honkin army you will find that the local meta you find out something about it and go oh wow nobody uses flyers around here and maybe I should because then you know what or nobody does this or this is a real problem where everybody plays this army around here and my Army's not great against that army or whatever or new models will come out and you're like well I gotta have those well now how do I fit them into my army understand that these things will happen understand sometimes point changes will happen company will come out with some sort of update to a points change thing and all of a sudden your Army's 14 points over or 20 points under or whatever the goal is for the point size of that army so keep that in mind as well don't just buy exactly than the models you need like if you need nine models for this squad and they come in fives from the manufacturer and you go on eBay and buy four separate ones number one that's probably more expensive than just buying another box of five but also if it turns out that the points change and then you do need a fifth guy now what do you do right so in those situations a little liberal with maybe some of that stuff but again baby steps start small and keep growing the army as you buy it built and paint build and paint don't buy it all at once and that'll really help because you'll be able to find

13:41 different places where you can change things a little bit where things might get changed outside your control and you won't be too freaked out about lastly a big army project in a big army game it can be a big big hill to climb it can be overwhelming when an if and I'm gonna say when you get overwhelmed and I've said this a bunch of times on a bunch of different videos that I can't even think of right now off the top of my head change tactics when you are you you just can't paint another red person another red armored robot man you just can't do it work on some terrain or work on a small war band for something else or build a vehicle or do something there's a lot of different ways to change your motivation I do remember that video pachow sometimes I end up switching from paint mode to build mode if I've been painting for a month straight on this big project and then I decide you know what I can't paint anymore and I just go and I sort of build some stuff maybe for a different game or something like that until I can get back to painting again all of these ideas can help you kind of climb this hill that to a lot of people specifically people who are just starting out look at this as an impossible dream the concept of a big army game I will tell you right off the bat it's easier if this is your very first rodeo it's easier to go into a skirmish game because war bands most of this stuff kind of really does you know apply as well to the war bands but just in smaller amounts and some of these things don't apply to war bands you know but a lot of these things can help you get a war band done for a small skirmish style game whether it's kill team or war

15:12 cry or you know conflict 47 or anything like that you know skirmish games can change as far as size is concerned a bit but understanding that maybe that's the first project to go into you know start with the skirmish game and then go that but if you are absolutely all my friends play ages Sigma I got to play 2,000 points Aegis a market that's what anybody else it ok great go through these things and follow this list and work yourself towards that goal and then you can have some fun with your friends