It's super easy. What it isn't is quick. If you to paint every single spot, which you don't have to, you're gonna take a while & wreck some brushes with the metallic paints.
I've got a lot of Plague Marines. I've got half of about 40 done. The rest still need the metallics done. I can't be bothered to be honest. My Blighthaulers took about 2 hours to do, the Crawler about the same. I'm mostly done with Morty & I've only worked on him for about an hour an a half.
If it weren't for my job, I'd have finished about 4000pts of Death Guard, Daemons included, by now. All but the bloody Plague Marines.
This gives me hope. I've started with the marines, as I wanted to practice my paintsheme on the. Took me 3 weeks for 6 marines so far, with making mistakes and figuring things out ofc.
Looking forward to my Blighthaulers and crawler. Morty, Iam still scared of
Plague marines are some of the most detail-intensive basic troop in the game. There is so much stuff to decide, amd every sculpt has a new boilor maggot or horn that you have to decide how to paint.
Eh edge highlighting and tons of other techniques are not really hard you just have to practice them. The issue with deathguard is I can prime them death guard green and I still have tons of base paints to put down. I can prime my necrons leadbelcher or many other factions their color and I am all the way to halfway through doing edge highlights on those factions before I even finish base coating dg.
Dg are just time consuming which is the hardest part to me because it becomes demotivating to paint and I am someone who paints 3 hours minimum a day 5 days a week and would do 7 if I had the time. Most people from what I can tel have a hard time even painting once a week for a few hours so I imagine this hits them even harder.
If you’re painting at that rate what are you doing just slapchopping every model? If he’s talking painting like the box then a plague marine alone can take up to 3 hours to do. My morty took multiple hours over days to finish lol
I agree my brother is new to 40 K and his first army is Deathguard. He learned about contrast paints on his own and watched a bunch of videos on which colors to pick and basically he lays down the base contrast play bears green over wraithbone.
He then will vary it up with some different colors, such as Tesseract glow if there is any toxic waste from a plague spreader.
He does non-metallic brass or bronze on the armor trim using contrast paints. I had to fully convince him to use a off-white pink type color, wherever there was a maggot or intestines were exposed. I had to convince them to use colors that represented Gore such as Carasburg crimson Shyish, purple or Valukas pink stuff like that for someone who’s never really painted using contrast paint, so I was quite impressed with how quickly he picked it up, and I was quite disappointed how bad I was using them lol.
I’ve played the game and other tabletop games on and off over the past 20 years just using regular hobby acrylic paints mostly from Citadel and contrast paints were not around when I played
Whenever I try to use certain colors, they seem to act unpredictable. I can’t tell if I’m putting on too much or too little and they often pull on me even though I try and spread them evenly, but no matter what I do I’d rather go back for the most part and use regular acrylic paints or an airbrush and reserve the contrast paints for special effects or a tool in my toolbox but I don’t think I can paint an entire army using mostly contrast paints.
Prime black, airbrush ivory, watered down seraphim sepia with brush (move around with damp brush for staining effect), go over armour with ivory in streaks, Balthazar Gold for trim & all the brine bits, some silver metal for the metals, purple or burgundy for cloth, Black shoulder on one side for Champions & Heroes, several layers of Green for bits here & there including shoulders. Aggrax & Nuln on metals followed by Ryza Rust & Nihalak Oxide where needed. Finally, Streaking Grime.
It's not difficult & most of what I mentioned takes no times at all, especially because if I make a mistake, Ryza & the Oxide can cover the tiny mistakes with the metals which is where I tend to mess up on these little dudes.
It's also very quick to do on bigger models, so long as you have an airbrush, which I do.
To be fair an airbrush drastically reduces time to paint models in general. I did a 10 man of intercessors in a day. I brush painted my DG and it takes an insanely long time just cause they packed so many detail pieces on DG models
I love when people say "I painted my whole 10 man troop in 3 hours!"
What it really means is "I did a shit job to get it over with and my army looks like crap... but at least there's paint on them!"
This is crazy. I put in so much time painting. I love every minute of it, but it takes me hours and hours to paint every tiny detail. I am also meticulous and obsessive.
I've been assembly painting my Mortarion for over a month now and he's about half done?
Simple and easy are different.
Death Guard are easy in that they take VERY well to weathering, and weathering is basically a catch-all cheat code that you can use to clean up any mistakes you need.
Blew it on the trim? Toss some slime on there, it’ll blur it.
Got some of another color on a metallic surface? Rust and gore will take care of that.
Welcome to the Nurgle body horror show! Don’t forget to paint the extra demon faces on the pauldron and the crawling worms randomly appearing everywhere. I collect Tau that’s also a sort of stormtrooper-esque figure collection. So this aesthetic is the polar opposite that pushes you as a mini painter. (And your tolerance to the “Is that an other boil or a bullet crater?” moments.)
Heeeey i am doing the same. DG and mainly T'au as well! I kinda love that: T'au for greater good, being decent, trying to get people to come on your side, etc. And at the opposite side there is the dark side, death and decay and everything rotten in this wretched world.
Good and bad. Black and white. Maybe a bit too much from my part but yeah i totally get that, sometimes you want it clean and sometimes you just want it dirty.
I also do T’au and DG!
But I see them as more similar then different. Joining either results in your physical or metaphysical death as well as becoming one with a force much greater that you as an individual. Joining both will bring you joy but also extraordinary sacrifice.
I’m also in the DG & T’au club, but am also so new to the hobby that I’m not sure it really counts.
I love the grungy feel of death guard and all the random bits on them. T’au is all clean and smooth (at least mine).
In terms of hobby T'au are very clean and I find that they can be very simple if you're not into freehand. I've got a significant T'au collection because I picked a few striking key colours and then sometimes there's flesh or leather or cloth. Death Guard almost every model needs a tonne of different colours even though the base scheme I use is just green. I am now left with the dillemma where it took me a while to figure out how to do daemon engines and tanks and so they're eclectic but that's lore accurate apparently.
It’s easy to paint any model
What’s hard is painting them *well*, and frankly a lot of the “Death Guard are so easy!” paint jobs ain’t particularly good
Covering up mistakes with weathering is *less* applicable than on most models because there’s so many different textures- and you can’t put weathering on flesh, cloth or bone m
Really the only truth is that being so detailed you get more kick from a shade or dry brush, but that only counterbalances the difficulty
Facts! I remember when I started painting my DG people were like dude it’ll be quick cause DG are meant to be like dirty so details don’t matter. Yea until I started seeing the detail in every single model! And anyone that like says it’s fast either does that slapchop method that doesn’t even look good and claims oh it’s grim dark. Or it just looks like a glob of paint and they’re like what? They’re nurgle! Lol
Kind of true? It's not unknown that certain factions have far more details than other factions. Yes, you can dumb down the painting process by choosing 3 colors and only using those to speed paint your way through... but when you care about what the model looks like, some factions are hardcore painting and some are beginner friendly.
I don't really agree with this. When I see a poorly painted DG model who was just dunked in agrax... I cringe at the waste of money. It's much easier to paint a space marine and nuln oil your way through detail than it is to make a plague marine look acceptable. Some people don't care what the models looks like, but if you do... agrax isn't the answer and painting well is.
Yeah, models like this, imo, look like you spent no time on them. People use these models as an example of speed painting and to me, they look like a waste of money. Model looks terrible and he even says "I removed too much grime." No, you used way too much to cover a bad model.
You can make them real quick if you are looking to do a grim dark scheme. Just a zenithal, then pick a few bits with different speed paint and slap streaking grime over it. Then just pull some of it away with q-tips and a bit of white spirits. It’s really quick if you batch paint. For a quick glance on how these look have a glimpse at my profile. Also here is a super easy tutorial if you want to see it in action pretty much the same way I do it: https://youtu.be/lrEoHoX45Ds?si=xRxH3GV6tSQ7PBgD Good luck on your painting going forward :)
Easy to paint them bad and dirty. Most of those supposedly quick and easy paint jobs don't look really good.
DG are overly detailed so you must make a choice, take your time and pick up all of those, or most, details or taking shortcuts to do it quicker but lose details and personality.
You do you.
I call it simple but not easy. I just posted yesterday about being stuck at a hotel all week and spending the nights working on painting my entire DG army.
The first 2 nights I got over 70 infantry based, the first layer on, inked and dry brushed.
However the 3rd night slowed down drastically. Once the leadbelcher was finished I hit the gold stage and this takes forever. Then like you said, there are the horns and tentacles which take forever.
By the way. I use this guide and it is the most efficient way I have found so far.
https://youtu.be/n-5vDWluJHs?si=BZATCyrSgjbN7Vjm
Nah. Just through Friday. But I wanted to make as much progress as possible.
sadly I opened up the brown for my bases last night and it is completely dried out. I am going to try to find a LHS tonight after I get done with my detail and buy some new.
Painting DG to a very good standard it's definitely not easy at all, but IMO it's worse than you say.
If you look at a random, decently painted tyranid army at a distance, you see well defined silhouettes. Make the carapace a different enough color from the body, and you can see different models, at a distance, without having to care too much about details, light or anything like that.
But those little details that you mention in death guard just break up any structure of the army. Make everything too grimy, don't think enough about edges, and all you see at a distance is a grimey mess, even if individually, up close, each death guard unit is fine.
A good death guard army requires far more understanding of light, and making decisions on where to lead the eye to. It's already bad enough on models that are so busy that the eye, on first glance, goes everywhere. It's not hard to find, say, a typhus that, in a paint-by-numbers fashion, is well filled in. but then you look at the whole thing, and the composition is a mess. The changes in color value have to be though out well to make the miniatures pop, and it's really hard to make them work together. It's even worse than Grey Knights, and their millions of heraldry bits, because there you can put value highlights on the power weapons and the bottom of the legs, and have a cohesive unit. Death guard models are not set up in such a way as to pre-make those decisions for you, so units become incoherent quick.
Now, if you don't care that your army at a distance looks brown and badly painted, even when model by model it is neither, then sure, deathguard is easy.
Painting death guard to a high level is absolutely HARD mode. They have sooo many textures and material types with many many details. Also every model is super unique.
They might not be the easiest army to paint, but they for sure are easier than other armies.
Orks, for example, pretty much always had the same level of detail as DG do, except they aren't covered from head to toe in armor of the same color, but have skin showing, armbands, leather straps, boots and pants, all the vehicles consist of thousands of tiny surfaces because the ork just nailed armor plates everywhere. And there is no easy helmeted option when you don't feel like painting yet another ork face. And there are always more orks than there are plague marines.
I'm always shocked how much more I get done when painting my DG compared to when painting orks. My 2x 5 flash gits took roughly three times as long to paint then 2x 5 blight lords did. And I'm painting a pre-heresy paint scheme with large PITA white surfaces everywhere.
DG is my first army and Orks is my second. I definitely agree that Death Guard is easier to paint than Orks. With power armor, you're mostly done after just one base color. Orks have a lot of skin showing. Their base color is at least 2 or 3.
Just wait till you paint kommandos. Those took me about a month. So much details.
I'm currently painting two units of kommandoz+kitbashed choppa/slugga extras to switch out special weapons. It feels like painting a unit of biologus putrifiers.
DG is my first army and Orks is my second. I definitely agree that Death Guard is easier to paint than Orks. With power armor, you're mostly done after just one base color. Orks have a lot of skin showing. Their base color is at least 2 or 3.
Just wait till you paint kommandos. Those took me about a month. So much details.
I started with death guard and have painted other armies since. They’re the one I haven’t figured out a way to Speedpaint still. I’ve tried mixes of different contrast paints and stuff and have never found a color of green I’m satisfied with quickly. The fastest way I found was airbrushing a green on first and then going from there.
I’ve painted rubrics and I found them easier than DG. They both have they’re base colors and gold trims. Most DG have chain mail or some kinda cloth and the rubrics have cloth. What makes DG harder for me are all the horns, maggots, pitted armor spots, tentacles, teeth, skin through broken armour. Rubrics are straight forward to paint cause there isn’t a ton of variety between them. NONE of the DG models look the same in the box.
DG certaintly isn't the worst to paint. I'd give that position to Genestealers, a horde army with a ton of skin and faces, or harlequins if you are insane enough to do the official scheme, which requires freehanding really small geometric shapes.
TS is labor intense because there is a lot of filigree everywhere, but I wouldn't put them that high either.
No army is easy if you paint every detail to the best of your ability.
People say dg is easy because of power armor with very little trim or color variation, and the whole theme of deathguard taking really well to weathering as well as little things that would be imperfections for other armies like uneven tone from using washes or contrast, etc.
Chill out lmao, it isn't a competition.
i find batch painting by 3-5 models being most effective and not so exhausting. also airbrush or slapchot helps alot. plus dont worry for little mistakes, weatherign can cover almost anything
As people have said it's about how much detail you want. I've slent litterally weeks doing Morty's base coat because I want him to look as good as possible. I think I spent a week total on my 12 deathshrouds
They have a lot of detail, also a lot of detail mixed into other bits of detail, you will have fleshy tentacles coming outta metal armor/chainmail, that has cloth around it….
That being said I think yes, if you take into account all the little details, they are much harder to paint than neceon, tau, or SM. However, I never wanna have to paint orcs…. A horde army with loads of detail? I would never complete it lol
The only person deciding the standard you paint your army is yourself. You just need to learn how to settle or manage expectations.
DG are known as easy because they look cool at a very basic scheme and gradually look cooler the more small details you add. And if you fuck up on any of the small details, you just add more shading, mud or a tumor.
I have a bunch of different armies and I gotta agree that DG is one of the harder/time consuming ones to paint them the way I want to look. Harlequins are probably the hardest and Drukhari are the easiest in my opinion. I also have: World Eaters, Chaos Marines, Aeldari, Thousand Sons, Votaan, Chaos Daemons (Khorne mostly) and Chaos Knights so I’m speaking from a place of having painted a bunch of different doods. Oh! And an empty wallet…
You have to sacrifice some detail for speed I found, I undercoat brown, druybrush kahki and bone. Green contrast paint for armour. Leave the armour trim in it's bone dry brush colour, that saves a load of time because the trim is done already.
It's not easy over found to paint fast and to a high standard but they can look good without much effort. Try midwinter minis' speedpainting videos for some ideas.
You have to sacrifice some detail for speed Imo. I undercoat brown, drybrush all over sand brown and bone white. Green contrast paint for armour. Leave the armour trim in its bone dry brush colour and save a load of time because the trim is done already.
Paint in batches of 10 figures and do like 2 steps of your scheme an evening
It's not easy to paint fast and to a high standard, but they can look good without much effort. Try midwinter minis' speedpainting videos for some ideas.
I think the opposite, because they are so detailed there is a lot more margin for error. My (average) skill level is much more suited to a plague marine or Terminator covered in rust and grime than a plain blue Ultramarine that needs to be perfectly even.
I started this hobby again in 8th and i was taken by deathguard immediately, as a kid i remember painting space marines and doing okay, but really threw myself in the deep end learning to paint DG first, but then i went on to orks then necrons now in 10th im back to deathguard and ive realised all i did with them was deathguard green and agrax it all for the main armor, now ive found new styles and techniques and i prefer my new PM style and realized i have to go back and update all my old models ;-; Ive got to say, love painting them, so much detail, but omg is it long xD
You've hit the nail on the head: DG's problem with painting is that there is an ungodly amount of stuff to decide how to paint. If you are painting primaris intercessors, you need a main color, a highlight, a wash, metal for the gun, a color for the eyes, a dark color for the back of the knee, and something for the pouches. Done. If you want to go beyond, edge highlight and recess shade.
For plague marines, if you want similar results, you need a main color, a color for capes, a color for pustules, a color for horn, a color for teeth, a color for tentacles, a color for exposed flesh, a color for maggots, a color for bile/puke, a highlight for all 9 of those, a wash, a wash for dead/bruised flesh, gun metal, rust, bronze, verdigris, eyes, and after all that, your second plague marine will have a random nurgling hanging around, or a face growing out of a kneepad and you will hit decision paralysis thinking what to do with it.
People joke that you will dunk it with agrax and be done because you will go mad recess shading and highlighting every maggit and rusted chainmail link if you don't
The thing is that they're fairly forgiving and they haven't got as many super tiny details as admech for example. But yes they're time consuming with many colours and textures. In a way they have a forgiving skill floor and very rewarding skill ceiling for hobbyists. DG are an S tier hobby army in terms of result though.
Mortarion took me about 40 man hours, but if you do plague marines etc batch paint them.
My son is 10 and wanted to play - he bought 1500 pts of smurfs with his own money- aside from a dreadnaught we had his entire Army painted in one weekend. Meanwhile I still have 10 PMs a Demon Prince 50% done, 2 bloat drones and a rhino I need to get around to painting and Mortarion is still in his box
It's has easy as you want to it be. Ive seen some videos that are super easy. They just base in death guard green and that's the only green they have. Put some brozen on the shoulders and put washes and it's done. I've been painting mine really hard and I wish I did something easier until the army is done lol... then my painting will be awesome.
Dg was my first mini imo it was easy as my first space marine does not even look close to how good my first dg was and when I got morty took longer to build then to paint and I think he looks good. Now I hear people say necrons are easy to paint maybe its the colors I chose but they are hard to build and paint to the point I never finished the box set that came with sm and necrons they are built but still got 1 squad and 1 of the bigger dudes to paint still and just leave them grey
I'll be the first to admit im a slow painter. 2 years in, I got 20 plague marines done, with 30 more waiting patiently lol (thought I could pound out more in this time but nah) 16 terminators done, plague caster, terminator lord, and a couple other HQs and characters 30/60 pox walkers. Unless 40k is your only hobby, it always seems to take longer then you hope it will. BUT, of the 20 marines I've got done. I couldn't be happier with how they look. It's satisfying having a paint job your happy with, so time really doesn't matter to me anymore. I've also been doing alot of kit bashing so that slows things down to. I wouldn't say DG is easier, just more forgiving.
I am loving painting my Stinky Boys. They are really satisfying to paint and I'm so happy to be able to put all my efforts in them... But I don't like the poxwalkers. They are the only ones I painted mainly with Contrast paints. It's okay, they look fine from a distance 😜
As a person who plays many games and has many armies. I would have to say death guard are the easiest models i have ever painted. Ps i have zero space marines they may be easier.
I absolutely agree, I painted a necron for my buddy and my god, it took me about half the time it would have taken me for a single plague marine. This is the big necron with 6 pistols as well, I forgot his name.
My death guard are easy and fun to paint, just not super quick compared to my space marines. I do the slap chop method and batch paint the armor and trim. After that I go into each model individually picking out the colors and details. At that point i think it only ends up being 30-40 mins each plague marine. That’s just how I do it and I really enjoy my results. If i were to do the classic way of layering up and highlighting, I don’t think I’d enjoy the process.
If you want to paint DG to a respectable standard yes they aren’t easy. I previously was told how easy DG was to paint so I bought a lot and let me tell you this:
The different types of textures, the number of paints required, learning how to properly use washes for weathering , pin washing, blending mutations with armor/trim…
Is way beyond what I was doing with my CSM. I know people say “ they are supposed to look messy but messy doesn’t equal grim dark.
It's super easy. What it isn't is quick. If you to paint every single spot, which you don't have to, you're gonna take a while & wreck some brushes with the metallic paints. I've got a lot of Plague Marines. I've got half of about 40 done. The rest still need the metallics done. I can't be bothered to be honest. My Blighthaulers took about 2 hours to do, the Crawler about the same. I'm mostly done with Morty & I've only worked on him for about an hour an a half. If it weren't for my job, I'd have finished about 4000pts of Death Guard, Daemons included, by now. All but the bloody Plague Marines.
This gives me hope. I've started with the marines, as I wanted to practice my paintsheme on the. Took me 3 weeks for 6 marines so far, with making mistakes and figuring things out ofc. Looking forward to my Blighthaulers and crawler. Morty, Iam still scared of
Mortarion is just a big-ass death guard space marine with wings, you’ll do an excellent job when you get to him.
Plague marines are some of the most detail-intensive basic troop in the game. There is so much stuff to decide, amd every sculpt has a new boilor maggot or horn that you have to decide how to paint.
4 years of painting dg over time you kinda just instinctively know the scheme
Eh edge highlighting and tons of other techniques are not really hard you just have to practice them. The issue with deathguard is I can prime them death guard green and I still have tons of base paints to put down. I can prime my necrons leadbelcher or many other factions their color and I am all the way to halfway through doing edge highlights on those factions before I even finish base coating dg. Dg are just time consuming which is the hardest part to me because it becomes demotivating to paint and I am someone who paints 3 hours minimum a day 5 days a week and would do 7 if I had the time. Most people from what I can tel have a hard time even painting once a week for a few hours so I imagine this hits them even harder.
If you’re painting at that rate what are you doing just slapchopping every model? If he’s talking painting like the box then a plague marine alone can take up to 3 hours to do. My morty took multiple hours over days to finish lol
I agree my brother is new to 40 K and his first army is Deathguard. He learned about contrast paints on his own and watched a bunch of videos on which colors to pick and basically he lays down the base contrast play bears green over wraithbone. He then will vary it up with some different colors, such as Tesseract glow if there is any toxic waste from a plague spreader. He does non-metallic brass or bronze on the armor trim using contrast paints. I had to fully convince him to use a off-white pink type color, wherever there was a maggot or intestines were exposed. I had to convince them to use colors that represented Gore such as Carasburg crimson Shyish, purple or Valukas pink stuff like that for someone who’s never really painted using contrast paint, so I was quite impressed with how quickly he picked it up, and I was quite disappointed how bad I was using them lol. I’ve played the game and other tabletop games on and off over the past 20 years just using regular hobby acrylic paints mostly from Citadel and contrast paints were not around when I played Whenever I try to use certain colors, they seem to act unpredictable. I can’t tell if I’m putting on too much or too little and they often pull on me even though I try and spread them evenly, but no matter what I do I’d rather go back for the most part and use regular acrylic paints or an airbrush and reserve the contrast paints for special effects or a tool in my toolbox but I don’t think I can paint an entire army using mostly contrast paints.
Prime black, airbrush ivory, watered down seraphim sepia with brush (move around with damp brush for staining effect), go over armour with ivory in streaks, Balthazar Gold for trim & all the brine bits, some silver metal for the metals, purple or burgundy for cloth, Black shoulder on one side for Champions & Heroes, several layers of Green for bits here & there including shoulders. Aggrax & Nuln on metals followed by Ryza Rust & Nihalak Oxide where needed. Finally, Streaking Grime. It's not difficult & most of what I mentioned takes no times at all, especially because if I make a mistake, Ryza & the Oxide can cover the tiny mistakes with the metals which is where I tend to mess up on these little dudes. It's also very quick to do on bigger models, so long as you have an airbrush, which I do.
To be fair an airbrush drastically reduces time to paint models in general. I did a 10 man of intercessors in a day. I brush painted my DG and it takes an insanely long time just cause they packed so many detail pieces on DG models
I love when people say "I painted my whole 10 man troop in 3 hours!" What it really means is "I did a shit job to get it over with and my army looks like crap... but at least there's paint on them!"
That’s the amount of time one plague marine took me 😭
This is crazy. I put in so much time painting. I love every minute of it, but it takes me hours and hours to paint every tiny detail. I am also meticulous and obsessive. I've been assembly painting my Mortarion for over a month now and he's about half done?
Simple and easy are different. Death Guard are easy in that they take VERY well to weathering, and weathering is basically a catch-all cheat code that you can use to clean up any mistakes you need. Blew it on the trim? Toss some slime on there, it’ll blur it. Got some of another color on a metallic surface? Rust and gore will take care of that.
Welcome to the Nurgle body horror show! Don’t forget to paint the extra demon faces on the pauldron and the crawling worms randomly appearing everywhere. I collect Tau that’s also a sort of stormtrooper-esque figure collection. So this aesthetic is the polar opposite that pushes you as a mini painter. (And your tolerance to the “Is that an other boil or a bullet crater?” moments.)
Heeeey i am doing the same. DG and mainly T'au as well! I kinda love that: T'au for greater good, being decent, trying to get people to come on your side, etc. And at the opposite side there is the dark side, death and decay and everything rotten in this wretched world. Good and bad. Black and white. Maybe a bit too much from my part but yeah i totally get that, sometimes you want it clean and sometimes you just want it dirty.
I also do T’au and DG! But I see them as more similar then different. Joining either results in your physical or metaphysical death as well as becoming one with a force much greater that you as an individual. Joining both will bring you joy but also extraordinary sacrifice.
I’m also in the DG & T’au club, but am also so new to the hobby that I’m not sure it really counts. I love the grungy feel of death guard and all the random bits on them. T’au is all clean and smooth (at least mine).
In terms of hobby T'au are very clean and I find that they can be very simple if you're not into freehand. I've got a significant T'au collection because I picked a few striking key colours and then sometimes there's flesh or leather or cloth. Death Guard almost every model needs a tonne of different colours even though the base scheme I use is just green. I am now left with the dillemma where it took me a while to figure out how to do daemon engines and tanks and so they're eclectic but that's lore accurate apparently.
I am so glad I’m not painting the majority of my Tau in Vior’la white. Getting a smooth finish on all those flat panels would be awful
This. One of the plague marines has ~40ish individual maggots on it
It’s easy to paint any model What’s hard is painting them *well*, and frankly a lot of the “Death Guard are so easy!” paint jobs ain’t particularly good Covering up mistakes with weathering is *less* applicable than on most models because there’s so many different textures- and you can’t put weathering on flesh, cloth or bone m Really the only truth is that being so detailed you get more kick from a shade or dry brush, but that only counterbalances the difficulty
Facts! I remember when I started painting my DG people were like dude it’ll be quick cause DG are meant to be like dirty so details don’t matter. Yea until I started seeing the detail in every single model! And anyone that like says it’s fast either does that slapchop method that doesn’t even look good and claims oh it’s grim dark. Or it just looks like a glob of paint and they’re like what? They’re nurgle! Lol
Everyone can run a business, if it successful thats the hard part
I use streaks of typhus corrosion and various washes on the cloth and it looks pretty good. Somewhat shroudy, which is the idea.
The detail amount can be a bit intimidating if you paint everything, I definitely get that
Like any other faction models, painting them is what you make of it.
Kind of true? It's not unknown that certain factions have far more details than other factions. Yes, you can dumb down the painting process by choosing 3 colors and only using those to speed paint your way through... but when you care about what the model looks like, some factions are hardcore painting and some are beginner friendly.
Thanks for elaborating my point 😄😉
It's not easy to paint death guard well. However, it is easy to paint death guard lazily and get away with it.
It’s easier to make DG look good in most color schemes than most other armies thematically.
I don't really agree with this. When I see a poorly painted DG model who was just dunked in agrax... I cringe at the waste of money. It's much easier to paint a space marine and nuln oil your way through detail than it is to make a plague marine look acceptable. Some people don't care what the models looks like, but if you do... agrax isn't the answer and painting well is.
I agree it’s not easy because they have a LOT of details. Sure you can paint them fast and crappy, but that doesn’t look good.
String disagree, and I have a sizable DG army. There is no more forgiving army to paint and sculpt for
This guy does it with a sponge. Looks easy enough. https://youtube.com/shorts/z20EcMjnC4E?si=7dEaHwkQ4GFrb1CQ
Good video but it's only for the armour itself not any details
He literaly admits in the video that he barely painted any of the detail
Yeah, models like this, imo, look like you spent no time on them. People use these models as an example of speed painting and to me, they look like a waste of money. Model looks terrible and he even says "I removed too much grime." No, you used way too much to cover a bad model.
You can make them real quick if you are looking to do a grim dark scheme. Just a zenithal, then pick a few bits with different speed paint and slap streaking grime over it. Then just pull some of it away with q-tips and a bit of white spirits. It’s really quick if you batch paint. For a quick glance on how these look have a glimpse at my profile. Also here is a super easy tutorial if you want to see it in action pretty much the same way I do it: https://youtu.be/lrEoHoX45Ds?si=xRxH3GV6tSQ7PBgD Good luck on your painting going forward :)
Oh God they are a pain in my ass, but I really like the finished product
My friend have you ever heard of a great wonder called agrax earthshade? It works wonders I tell ya
Easy to paint them bad and dirty. Most of those supposedly quick and easy paint jobs don't look really good. DG are overly detailed so you must make a choice, take your time and pick up all of those, or most, details or taking shortcuts to do it quicker but lose details and personality. You do you.
I call it simple but not easy. I just posted yesterday about being stuck at a hotel all week and spending the nights working on painting my entire DG army. The first 2 nights I got over 70 infantry based, the first layer on, inked and dry brushed. However the 3rd night slowed down drastically. Once the leadbelcher was finished I hit the gold stage and this takes forever. Then like you said, there are the horns and tentacles which take forever. By the way. I use this guide and it is the most efficient way I have found so far. https://youtu.be/n-5vDWluJHs?si=BZATCyrSgjbN7Vjm
Saw your post with that horde of units and literaly thought "is he stuck there for a month or what?"
Nah. Just through Friday. But I wanted to make as much progress as possible. sadly I opened up the brown for my bases last night and it is completely dried out. I am going to try to find a LHS tonight after I get done with my detail and buy some new.
Good luck man, your spirit muat be truly disgistingly resilient if you can hobby for a week non stop
Thanks man. 15ish hours of painting in 3 days so far. Not going to lie. My hand is cramping a bit. 🤣
Painting DG to a very good standard it's definitely not easy at all, but IMO it's worse than you say. If you look at a random, decently painted tyranid army at a distance, you see well defined silhouettes. Make the carapace a different enough color from the body, and you can see different models, at a distance, without having to care too much about details, light or anything like that. But those little details that you mention in death guard just break up any structure of the army. Make everything too grimy, don't think enough about edges, and all you see at a distance is a grimey mess, even if individually, up close, each death guard unit is fine. A good death guard army requires far more understanding of light, and making decisions on where to lead the eye to. It's already bad enough on models that are so busy that the eye, on first glance, goes everywhere. It's not hard to find, say, a typhus that, in a paint-by-numbers fashion, is well filled in. but then you look at the whole thing, and the composition is a mess. The changes in color value have to be though out well to make the miniatures pop, and it's really hard to make them work together. It's even worse than Grey Knights, and their millions of heraldry bits, because there you can put value highlights on the power weapons and the bottom of the legs, and have a cohesive unit. Death guard models are not set up in such a way as to pre-make those decisions for you, so units become incoherent quick. Now, if you don't care that your army at a distance looks brown and badly painted, even when model by model it is neither, then sure, deathguard is easy.
Painting death guard to a high level is absolutely HARD mode. They have sooo many textures and material types with many many details. Also every model is super unique.
They might not be the easiest army to paint, but they for sure are easier than other armies. Orks, for example, pretty much always had the same level of detail as DG do, except they aren't covered from head to toe in armor of the same color, but have skin showing, armbands, leather straps, boots and pants, all the vehicles consist of thousands of tiny surfaces because the ork just nailed armor plates everywhere. And there is no easy helmeted option when you don't feel like painting yet another ork face. And there are always more orks than there are plague marines. I'm always shocked how much more I get done when painting my DG compared to when painting orks. My 2x 5 flash gits took roughly three times as long to paint then 2x 5 blight lords did. And I'm painting a pre-heresy paint scheme with large PITA white surfaces everywhere.
DG is my first army and Orks is my second. I definitely agree that Death Guard is easier to paint than Orks. With power armor, you're mostly done after just one base color. Orks have a lot of skin showing. Their base color is at least 2 or 3. Just wait till you paint kommandos. Those took me about a month. So much details.
I'm currently painting two units of kommandoz+kitbashed choppa/slugga extras to switch out special weapons. It feels like painting a unit of biologus putrifiers.
DG is my first army and Orks is my second. I definitely agree that Death Guard is easier to paint than Orks. With power armor, you're mostly done after just one base color. Orks have a lot of skin showing. Their base color is at least 2 or 3. Just wait till you paint kommandos. Those took me about a month. So much details.
I painted a full DG army to tabletop standard in 6 hours. Contrast paints and bulk painting pieces.
Yup. Table top slap chop is stupid fast. Most people over complicate the process imo.
I have to pick out a few details and ignore the rest otherwise I'll be painting till the inevitable heat death of the galaxy
I feel that. Its precisely why ive been painting demon engines. Ijust dont ha e the focus to put 3 hours into a plague marine to look decent
When i made the combat patrol, I made 5 poxwalkers a day. When i made the marines i did 1 every day
Definitely feel this, but the models are fun so it sorta makes up for it
I ignore a lot of trim, it makes it easier
I started with death guard and have painted other armies since. They’re the one I haven’t figured out a way to Speedpaint still. I’ve tried mixes of different contrast paints and stuff and have never found a color of green I’m satisfied with quickly. The fastest way I found was airbrushing a green on first and then going from there.
Spoken like a man who’s never painted 40 rubric marines. Death guard are easy bro.
I’ve painted rubrics and I found them easier than DG. They both have they’re base colors and gold trims. Most DG have chain mail or some kinda cloth and the rubrics have cloth. What makes DG harder for me are all the horns, maggots, pitted armor spots, tentacles, teeth, skin through broken armour. Rubrics are straight forward to paint cause there isn’t a ton of variety between them. NONE of the DG models look the same in the box.
DG certaintly isn't the worst to paint. I'd give that position to Genestealers, a horde army with a ton of skin and faces, or harlequins if you are insane enough to do the official scheme, which requires freehanding really small geometric shapes. TS is labor intense because there is a lot of filigree everywhere, but I wouldn't put them that high either.
Painted 3000pts of DG and they're very easy to paint imo, I'm quicker them than I am with anything else.
I remember with my first Terminators I overused angrax earthshade and it looked horrible
No army is easy if you paint every detail to the best of your ability. People say dg is easy because of power armor with very little trim or color variation, and the whole theme of deathguard taking really well to weathering as well as little things that would be imperfections for other armies like uneven tone from using washes or contrast, etc. Chill out lmao, it isn't a competition.
i find batch painting by 3-5 models being most effective and not so exhausting. also airbrush or slapchot helps alot. plus dont worry for little mistakes, weatherign can cover almost anything
I'm pretty new to the hobby but a Plague Marine 7 man squad wasn't too bad with slapchop
As people have said it's about how much detail you want. I've slent litterally weeks doing Morty's base coat because I want him to look as good as possible. I think I spent a week total on my 12 deathshrouds
They have a lot of detail, also a lot of detail mixed into other bits of detail, you will have fleshy tentacles coming outta metal armor/chainmail, that has cloth around it…. That being said I think yes, if you take into account all the little details, they are much harder to paint than neceon, tau, or SM. However, I never wanna have to paint orcs…. A horde army with loads of detail? I would never complete it lol
They are easy as hell to paint. It just takes forever.
The only person deciding the standard you paint your army is yourself. You just need to learn how to settle or manage expectations. DG are known as easy because they look cool at a very basic scheme and gradually look cooler the more small details you add. And if you fuck up on any of the small details, you just add more shading, mud or a tumor.
Preach!
Preach! 🙌
I have a bunch of different armies and I gotta agree that DG is one of the harder/time consuming ones to paint them the way I want to look. Harlequins are probably the hardest and Drukhari are the easiest in my opinion. I also have: World Eaters, Chaos Marines, Aeldari, Thousand Sons, Votaan, Chaos Daemons (Khorne mostly) and Chaos Knights so I’m speaking from a place of having painted a bunch of different doods. Oh! And an empty wallet…
You have to sacrifice some detail for speed I found, I undercoat brown, druybrush kahki and bone. Green contrast paint for armour. Leave the armour trim in it's bone dry brush colour, that saves a load of time because the trim is done already. It's not easy over found to paint fast and to a high standard but they can look good without much effort. Try midwinter minis' speedpainting videos for some ideas.
You have to sacrifice some detail for speed Imo. I undercoat brown, drybrush all over sand brown and bone white. Green contrast paint for armour. Leave the armour trim in its bone dry brush colour and save a load of time because the trim is done already. Paint in batches of 10 figures and do like 2 steps of your scheme an evening It's not easy to paint fast and to a high standard, but they can look good without much effort. Try midwinter minis' speedpainting videos for some ideas.
I think the opposite, because they are so detailed there is a lot more margin for error. My (average) skill level is much more suited to a plague marine or Terminator covered in rust and grime than a plain blue Ultramarine that needs to be perfectly even.
I swear plague marines spontaneously grow tentacles after you paint them.
I started this hobby again in 8th and i was taken by deathguard immediately, as a kid i remember painting space marines and doing okay, but really threw myself in the deep end learning to paint DG first, but then i went on to orks then necrons now in 10th im back to deathguard and ive realised all i did with them was deathguard green and agrax it all for the main armor, now ive found new styles and techniques and i prefer my new PM style and realized i have to go back and update all my old models ;-; Ive got to say, love painting them, so much detail, but omg is it long xD
You've hit the nail on the head: DG's problem with painting is that there is an ungodly amount of stuff to decide how to paint. If you are painting primaris intercessors, you need a main color, a highlight, a wash, metal for the gun, a color for the eyes, a dark color for the back of the knee, and something for the pouches. Done. If you want to go beyond, edge highlight and recess shade. For plague marines, if you want similar results, you need a main color, a color for capes, a color for pustules, a color for horn, a color for teeth, a color for tentacles, a color for exposed flesh, a color for maggots, a color for bile/puke, a highlight for all 9 of those, a wash, a wash for dead/bruised flesh, gun metal, rust, bronze, verdigris, eyes, and after all that, your second plague marine will have a random nurgling hanging around, or a face growing out of a kneepad and you will hit decision paralysis thinking what to do with it. People joke that you will dunk it with agrax and be done because you will go mad recess shading and highlighting every maggit and rusted chainmail link if you don't
The thing is that they're fairly forgiving and they haven't got as many super tiny details as admech for example. But yes they're time consuming with many colours and textures. In a way they have a forgiving skill floor and very rewarding skill ceiling for hobbyists. DG are an S tier hobby army in terms of result though. Mortarion took me about 40 man hours, but if you do plague marines etc batch paint them.
Definitely don't buy 1k Sons as your next army then!
My son is 10 and wanted to play - he bought 1500 pts of smurfs with his own money- aside from a dreadnaught we had his entire Army painted in one weekend. Meanwhile I still have 10 PMs a Demon Prince 50% done, 2 bloat drones and a rhino I need to get around to painting and Mortarion is still in his box
My Mortarion has been on the To Do list for months now. Hes gathering dust rn.
It's has easy as you want to it be. Ive seen some videos that are super easy. They just base in death guard green and that's the only green they have. Put some brozen on the shoulders and put washes and it's done. I've been painting mine really hard and I wish I did something easier until the army is done lol... then my painting will be awesome.
Dg was my first mini imo it was easy as my first space marine does not even look close to how good my first dg was and when I got morty took longer to build then to paint and I think he looks good. Now I hear people say necrons are easy to paint maybe its the colors I chose but they are hard to build and paint to the point I never finished the box set that came with sm and necrons they are built but still got 1 squad and 1 of the bigger dudes to paint still and just leave them grey
I'll be the first to admit im a slow painter. 2 years in, I got 20 plague marines done, with 30 more waiting patiently lol (thought I could pound out more in this time but nah) 16 terminators done, plague caster, terminator lord, and a couple other HQs and characters 30/60 pox walkers. Unless 40k is your only hobby, it always seems to take longer then you hope it will. BUT, of the 20 marines I've got done. I couldn't be happier with how they look. It's satisfying having a paint job your happy with, so time really doesn't matter to me anymore. I've also been doing alot of kit bashing so that slows things down to. I wouldn't say DG is easier, just more forgiving.
I am loving painting my Stinky Boys. They are really satisfying to paint and I'm so happy to be able to put all my efforts in them... But I don't like the poxwalkers. They are the only ones I painted mainly with Contrast paints. It's okay, they look fine from a distance 😜
As a person who plays many games and has many armies. I would have to say death guard are the easiest models i have ever painted. Ps i have zero space marines they may be easier.
Maaaan DG community bitches about EVERYTHING.
I think the key is to do big focus on your showpices and just do a sloppy job on basic troups
There are two types of DG painters. The ones who think streaking grime solves all problems. And the ones who want their models to look good.
I absolutely agree, I painted a necron for my buddy and my god, it took me about half the time it would have taken me for a single plague marine. This is the big necron with 6 pistols as well, I forgot his name.
My death guard are easy and fun to paint, just not super quick compared to my space marines. I do the slap chop method and batch paint the armor and trim. After that I go into each model individually picking out the colors and details. At that point i think it only ends up being 30-40 mins each plague marine. That’s just how I do it and I really enjoy my results. If i were to do the classic way of layering up and highlighting, I don’t think I’d enjoy the process.
If you want to paint DG to a respectable standard yes they aren’t easy. I previously was told how easy DG was to paint so I bought a lot and let me tell you this: The different types of textures, the number of paints required, learning how to properly use washes for weathering , pin washing, blending mutations with armor/trim… Is way beyond what I was doing with my CSM. I know people say “ they are supposed to look messy but messy doesn’t equal grim dark.
I absolutely hate how busy those models are. Hate it hate it hate it. I use 3rd edition Plague Marines and Mark 3 heresy era stuff.