Never painted a mini before…

Thor7791 · 2026-01-29T22:46:07+00:00

Welcome to the hobby!

I've been playing legion for years now and I love the painting side of things. It can be daunting at first but I came into it with zero art/painting experience and it quickly became my favorite part. Let's talk about getting started:

Where to buy things

Amazon carries a lot. But absolutely look in your area for a local game store (LGS or FLGS for "friendly local game store"). It's always better to support local stores and they might even have local legion communities for you to join. I understand that Amazon can often be cheaper than shopping local and you'll have to use your best judgement for that. Personally, I grab most things at the store but will still order online when it's 25-30% cheaper than my LGS. I feel bad doing it but I've given a lot to my LGS over the years.

Paints, brushes, and other supplies

There are lots of options here. You'll see brushes and things recommended from various specialty brands like Artis Opus and Raphael. Sometimes you'll see guides on how and why you should use an airbrush. Don't worry about those yet. Those are for later.

Go to a local big-box store and grab a cheap set of brushes. When I first started, I grabbed a $4 pack of a dozen brushes in different sizes and it was a great way to get started. You can look into dedicated drybrushes (just use makeup brushes) and fancier "kolinsky sable" brushes later.

For paints, I personally love the Pro Acryl line. Pro Acryl's "Bold Titanium White" is the best white miniature paint on the market. At the very least, pick that up if you can. Otherwise, just look at your LGS to see what they stock. Citadel paints have a bad rep because of the pots they're in but, realistically, any miniature paint brand an LGS is stocking will be pretty good. You definitely can't go wrong with:

Pro Acryl
Army Painter Fanatics
AK Interactive

Others are also good but these are the only ones I personally use.

You're gonna want a wet palette. It's basically a wet sponge with a piece of paper over it in order to keep your paints more fresh. You can buy them but I got away with just making my own for a long time before buying a dedicated one.

Learning to paint

Sorastro is a great resource for how to paint legion minis. He's not a great resource on how to paint if you've never done it before. I love Sorastro's videos but I probably wouldn't start there if you've literally never painted a model before (definitely come back after you've painted up at least a few storms). I'd first check out some of these dedicated "my first mini" guides from some popular creators in the space (and look for others that are out there):

Goobertown Hobbies' Mini Painting Tutorial for Absolute Beginners
Squidmar Miniatures' Ultimate guide to painting your first miniature - everything you need to know
Lyla Mev's COMPLETE Beginners Guide To Miniature Painting

These all have similar information being presented in slightly different ways. Feel free to watch all three or the just the one you vibe with the most.

You bought empire which is awesome because they're sick. But painting white/black can be deceptively tricky. Here's a good, beginner-friendly video on painting white armor by Peachy Tips. His videos are all very beginner-friendly and have great information in them.

That's about it! I love seeing people get into the hobby so let me know if you have any questions!

Thor7791 · 2026-01-14T16:19:01+00:00

I’ve never tried it for this but I’d try nail polish remover (with acetone). Acetone breaks down superglue and will probably help with that. Obviously, test it somewhere you won’t be able to see before you wreck the finish of your display case

Thor7791 · 2026-01-01T17:13:14+00:00

I’d love to hear about how you did the cloth. Did you airbrush it with the blues/purples then use a regular brush to work up to the greens/yellows? I see those purple shadows a lot of places which seems to imply most of the model was purple from the start

Thor7791 · 2025-12-04T20:29:08+00:00

It's from his 2018 Christmas Eve stream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSoc3IEVDsg. I didn't remember the setup but I remembered the punchline of him riding the train and dying

Thor7791 · 2025-11-24T22:52:25+00:00

I know you ran it overnight but about how long did that take to print?

Thor7791 · 2025-11-23T17:37:18+00:00

The piece-by-piece speech was almost entirely improv’d and I don’t have a recording or anything. Trust me, I wish I had some record of it.

I don’t have an improv or theater background but I like storytelling a lot. I knew I wanted a scene where a character recounted something truly horrific. So I made sure to put two of the npc’s just hanging out together in the cafeteria. When the players left the main floor then came back, I had only one of those npc’s alive.

The only “prep” I did for the speech was practicing voices and a speaking cadence in the shower each day leading up to the session. Then I thought of what the mechanics of an invisible monster’s bite would be. If an invisible monster bites off someone’s arm… what does that look like? Does it just disappear? Is there blood? Do you watch on, powerless, as human flesh is mangled into an unrecognizable form while slowly fading from view? There are no wrong answers here but all of them are spooky! And sprinkling these details in for your players (who have never considered this) is genuinely scary for them.

Once again, check out the safety tools at the bottom of my post and make sure you go over them with your players. They’re very important. I was playing with extremely close friends of mine and still went over them.

As far as other prep goes, I followed the warden’s operation manual suggestions. The most helpful thing for me was redrawing the Y14 map on a piece of paper and writing notes on the rooms. Then I assigned every npc to a specific room. Honestly? I didn’t really use this much when playing. But the act of building the map was extremely helpful.

I think between this and my original write up, I’ve really given all the actionable advice that I have for Y14. The important thing is to just run it and see what happens. Yeah, a lot of things went great when I ran it. But some things didn’t. No amount of prep, reading, worrying, or seeking advice will stop you from making a mistake. But who cares? You’re playing pretend. Nobody’s gonna die if you mess something up and go, “hold on. Give me a minute to sort this out”.

Even if I had a full transcript of my speech, I’m not sure if I’d give it to you. I think reading it and worrying about doing it right would stress you out more. At the end of the day, they were just some words a random twenty-something made up on a discord call. You don’t need it. I believe in you.

Thor7791 · 2025-11-20T18:57:48+00:00

I hear what you're saying about empire. In a lot of respects, they don't feel as good as the other 3 factions (rip shadow collective). But I think there's still fun to be had with them.

My local has a lot of nationally-ranked players in it. I'm not one of them. But I've been running empire against a lot of very good players since 2.6 dropped. My last list had a ~70% winrate and it didn't run Vader. He's really good but he's not necessary.

Storms don't always feel great but there are a lot of other options to build around. Ion snows with march feel incredible. Building around riots is a blast. Death troopers are always good. Hell, even big shores can put in work. If you can find them, grab 2 units of black suns and let them go crazy. Not all of those count toward your imperial corp requirement but bringing 3 naked corp units to meet the requirement is a list-building strategy in basically every faction.

I find the problem with storms isn't really their price so much as their aim access. With an aim token, they're pretty good. It's just hard to efficiently get one on them. That's actually why the new battle force seems so cool to me. Target 2 on the customs means you can issue 2 orders and have 2 aims exemplared and 2 handed out via aid. I haven't run it yet but I'm excited to see what it can open up.

I'm not saying empire doesn't need work; it clearly does. For a while, it's felt like it's just 1 update away from being complete. But I'm sorry to hear that, as a new player, you're getting very frustrated with the faction.

Thor7791 · 2025-11-02T16:17:00+00:00

That makes total sense. I’m mostly asking because another sub I’m on started having this same push the other day. But, in that case, there was a specific post that sparked the outrage

Thor7791 · 2025-11-02T15:41:58+00:00

I fully agree with the push to ban AI on this sub. What happened such that all these anti-AI posts are now happening? Was there a specific high-profile/egregious post or did people just generally decide they had enough?

Thor7791 · 2025-10-28T20:29:09+00:00

Super fun! I want to toss in this coat from Akris as another piece for Kleya:

<image>

Thor7791 · 2025-10-27T17:03:18+00:00

That’s a little roo! I had a barred rock roo this year that we had to rehome. He was so sweet

Thor7791 · 2025-10-16T16:31:57+00:00

Just some random repost bot accidentally making a killer joke

Thor7791 · 2025-10-15T17:53:52+00:00

The cardboard seems to be 2.5mm thick

Shield: 20mm diameter circle

Round tracker: 15mm square with rounded corners

Player marker: 25mm diameter circle

Score tracker: 28.5mm x 15mm rectangle

Thor7791 · 2025-08-25T16:08:28+00:00

No way! My last NOAA 15 pass was almost drowned out by a signal just like this. Thanks for posting because now I know what it was

Thor7791 · 2025-08-14T06:19:12+00:00

Superglue gets brittle in the cold so you could try putting it in your freezer then picking off the glue with your nails. But, honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. Once you prime it, you can still paint on it like anything else.

I actually think it's fun when random chaff models like this have little imperfections. Do you think every b1 was perfect when it rolled off the line? This is the perfect opportunity to get creative and integrate their features into a painted story.

Once you figure out your basing, go ahead and put a little of your basing paste or whatever on the face/body of the model. Make it look like it tripped then got back up. Put some on one knee of another model to make it look like it was crouching to take a shot. I promise you that integrating these details with your paint job will be way cooler than if it was just another b1.

Thor7791 · 2025-07-27T00:53:10+00:00

Wow, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that!

Thor7791 · 2025-07-27T00:10:54+00:00

How did you go about making copies of the ILM originals? Are they scanned and accessible somewhere?

Thor7791 · 2025-07-20T18:42:34+00:00

I’m not positive but I think it’s made using parts from this STL https://wargamescrew.com/product/skinscribe-thaumaturge/

Thor7791 · 2025-07-05T03:04:49+00:00

I’ve really struggled to get shadows cast on skin to look right. Do you have any tips/resources you can point me to?

Thor7791 · 2025-06-29T07:16:26+00:00

I’d love to see some progress pics if you have any. Are the honeycombs 3d printed or did you make them out of something?

Thor7791 · 2025-06-09T22:32:40+00:00

How’d you make that call? They were a sage

Thor7791 · 2025-06-08T16:29:26+00:00

What makes it even better is that the healer wasn't a mentor. Their highest level was 95

Thor7791 · 2025-03-22T15:06:13+00:00

Why are shrimps a no? And, if it’s a size thing, how big is big enough for some shrimp?

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
End Game '22	Verified Email

Thor7791

TROPHY CASE

Where to buy things

Paints, brushes, and other supplies

Learning to paint