A little tip of the hat to Roger Waters in the title of this blog ;)
I have decided on a project of dipping all the goblins for my Orc army. The models I have are mostly current edition goblins and I have to say I really enjoy them. They retain a lot of character and are scaled correctly to older editions of Warhammer Goblins which is very handy. So mixing and matching Goblins from various periods shouldn't pose much of a problem.
I have elected to turn these guys into something of a semi-speed painting exercise using the Army Painter dip that is proving popular amongst many gamers these days. I am certainly no expert in using this stuff, but what I have learned is that you need to paint lighter than expected as the dip will darken all your colours and I have also discovered that the dip is very forgiving of sloppy paintwork as it does a great job of hiding small errors and tying the paint job together. Take these Night Goblin fanatics for example, I sprayed them a grey/khaki colour as this is the colour I want all their clothing to be, then painted the skin, some brown areas and metal. No more than a few minutes spent on each. Very simple painting, nothing detailed and in truth rather heavy handed.
Then I dipped them and left them to dry overnight. The dip does an excellent job of shading the models and bringing them to a standard that I think is game ready. They are nothing spectacular by any means but an entire army painted like this will look very unified and comfortably to a tabletop standard.
I am unable to leave them like this as I have to add some highlights and details, but I am very comfortable playing with them in this state till I get round to doing that. With some flocking on the bases they will be welcome in my army any day. Here are the squigs that I have gone and dipped in the same manner.
Again nothing fancy but good enough to play with. They do all need a coast of matt varnish to get rid of the gloss look though! And finally here is a unit of squigs that have had a little more attention paid to them. Not much more than some simple dry-brushing and basing with a few details picked out. I am very happy with the results from a very simple painting process. More painted miniatures on the table is always a winner in my book! :)
There is a lot I can do to turn them into well painted miniatures but that really isn't the point of this project. So what are the cons of dipping? Well I would say that you are not going to get top quality paint jobs out of dipping so don't use it if you are looking for a Golden Demon winning army or anything that is going to grace the pages of White Dwarf or CMON. But for the time and effort involved I can highly recommend this for certain armies. Anything dark and dirty is well suited to dipping, undead are ideal candidates. High Elves, for example, are not going to suit dipping much though, there a cleaner, crisper paint job is required that dipping isn't going to provide. I do stand to be corrected on this point though as I do think it would be possible to get some good effects with High Elves, but the point in general stands I think :D
