I bought a new can of white primer today, figuring I'd coat my minis so that when the mood struck me they'd be good to go. By all that is holy, DO NOT USE "BOARD TO PIECES" PRIMER. I may as well have been pointing a regular old can of white spray paint at the minis. The details were obliterated and I've spent the last half hour furiously scrubbing them to try to tease them back out again (with only middling success). It was horrifying. Do not repeat my mistake.
(Also, test a new can of primer on a mini you don't care about rather than just spraying every major hero and villain in the game all at once. Rookie mistake.) :(
I'm always saying this, but a bag of army men from the dollar store is great for experimenting, practicing (not that you need that), and sacrificing to the gods of bad primer.
I've been using Krylon Flat Black for priming a lot of stuff lately. Depending on your priming color preference, there's always flat white or flat gray.
My nephew has a set of the minis which he doesn't care about, and he's offered to swap me for my ruined ones, so I'm not out of this yet. I'm going to wash a few with soap and water and then see how paint sticks to them without any primer at all.
I got my money back for the crap primer which ruined my minis and instead bought a can of Citadel Skull White primer. I shook the heck out of it to give it a good mix and tested it on the backs of the minis which I'd already destroyed (the backs not having been subjected to the devastation from the other day). The result:
The Citadel primer came out of the can in a fine mist just like you'd want (the other one was more of a liquidy spray), and gently kissed the minis with its essence, leaving all their detail intact. I then held down the button for a few seconds solid, trying to overcoat the minis to see if I could replicate the disaster from before (maybe it had truly been my fault after all). After three seconds of constant spraying, the details on the minis were unaffected.
Citadel is my brand from now on and I will never stray.
Since I need to wait until I can swap out the ruined minis with my saintly nephew's undamaged set, I decided to primer up Unity's bots so they'd be ready when the painting urge strikes. They look good, so my next report will be about how they actually perform when paint is applied to mini.
Thanks for the primer recommendation! I haven't had time to paint minis in years, and don't really expect to any time soon, but that is really good to know.
It turns out my stupidity when it comes to primering minis is nearly limitless. I actually sat down to paint my previously-primered Bots today and everything was going dandy. I was painting along Turret Bot's chest, up over his shoulder, down his back... now, why did his back feel different than his front? Fercrineoutloud, it was because I'd forgotten to spray primer on his back.
As moronic as my predicament was, it allowed me to do a direct comparison between painting a primered mini and an unprimered one. The paint on his unprimered back didn't stick as well as on the primered front, which isn't a surprise. It seemed to me that I probably could have gotten it to look fine on an unprimered mini if I had to, it would just require extra time and extra coats to make sure paint was sticking to every surface and no white was showing through from the plastic. I concluded that even just the thinnest layer of primer gave the brush more friction to work with when laying down the paints, and that seemed to be the way to go, at least for me.
Now to go primer Turret Bot's stupid back (and, it turns out, Raptor Bot's left side...).
What's the principle? Do they test their paint on animals, or do something else I'm not aware of? Their products always seem good and aren't crazily priced for the quality.
Shitty business practices towards fan-made accessories.
Imagine if Spiff World got a C&D from >G for the Sentinels stuff you are currently hosting, that's how Games Workshop has acted towards its fans in the past.
Yeah, when your intelectual property is based on other people's work and then you go crazy on your fans for doing anything with your game, you suck.
If GtG was GW they would sue anything using the word Legacy in it for copyright infringement. The fan community for SotM would be shut down pretty quick too.
I'm not unbiased at all here, I'm an old Battletech player, and Warhammer 40K is just an inferior game that costs more and constantly finds new ways to force their fans to spend all their money to keep playing, so that GW can be jerks to them.
Oh, I remember the days when Games Workshop was a decent company that liked their fans at least a little beyond how much they could milk out of them. Admittedly in those days they did have a pretty much near total monopoly on miniature gaming, so guess they were a little more relaxed about things.
Sad how such things change.
To remove the primer, you can soak the miniatures in simple green or purple power. For more advice and tips, look up some hardcore minature games. I play warmachine from privateer press, and their forums have hints on primer, and removing paint from both plastic and metal mini's, along with a lot of generic painting tips. You just have to watch how long you soak the miniatures depending on the plastic on taking off the primer. Hope this helps. I personally am going to use PP3 brands paints as i am familair with them, and have a bunch.
So, just wondering... how many people who've painted their minis can report on how well they're holding up after, say, a few weeks of playtime? Seems like by now, we should be able to tell for sure which primers and sealers are working well and which aren't...