Tutorial: Iron Warrior in 38 mins

Contrast paints not doing it for you? Need to paint armoured plates quick and easy? Don’t own an airbrush?

Try this.

I’m going to be stripping everything down to basics and trying to find the fastest method of painting that still remains fun.

Here’s my first effort:

Here’s my suggested recipe:

Prep environment by doing the following:

• Clean your painting area.
• Put everything that isn’t involved in this process away.
• Put all sprays, paints and equipment in front of you.
• Assemble the models leaving their 32mm bases and shoulder pads off.
• As the process involves washes make sure to check the models thoroughly for mold lines before starting. They should also be attached to a spare base to hold while spraying and painting.

For an upgraded painting experience follow the steps with a *

Start day 1

• Spray Leadbelcher on model – 2 mins.
• Spray Retributor Armour on shoulder pad sprues – 30 secs.
• Glue a single 1mm shard of plasticard or equivilant to each base – 30 secs.
• Apply PVA to base and scatter sand, static grass, lichen and details across it – 2 mins.
• *Tightly cut out appropriate transfer markings (cut 10 and 2 o’clock lines) – 2 mins.

Finish day 1 (5-7 mins)

• Cut shoulder pads from the sprue and glue to model – 1 min.
• Spray base all over with black primer, follow up straight away with ivory or white from directly overhead at a range of 6″ – 2 mins.
• Apply Dark Reaper paint in the following order: shoulder pads, gun, pipes, padding. Then repeat 3 times – 10 mins.
• Paint Averland Sunset in stripes over the gun casing, knee or shoulder pad – 2 mins.
• Paint Retributor Armour into leg details, helmet and areas left after the shoulder pads were clipped out – 2 mins.

Finish day 2 (17 mins)

• Apply your favourite contrast paint to the base – 1 min.
• Apply Abaddon Black to side of the base – 1 min.
• *Highlight selected areas with Stormhost Silver – 5 mins.
• *Apply transfer – 5 mins.

Finish day 3 (2-12 mins)

• Glue model to base, wait to dry – 3 mins.
• Wash model except shoulder pads with 1:1 Agrax Earthshade Gloss Nuln Oil Matt, start from the top and end with the feet – 5 mins.
• Wick away excess wash while it is drying – 5 mins.

Finish day 4 (13 mins)

Total 38 – 50 mins. Average of 10-13 mins per sitting.

It’s worth adding a caveat here that even though the whole process takes less than an hour, it’s not really designed to be done in one sitting. Some steps require a few hours for the primer or paint to fully cure before applying the next coat.

That being said if you own a hairdrier, bust it out and speed up that drying time.

The bonus for painting Iron Warriors is that due to their renegade nature you can mix and match the faster and slower methods inside a squad.

You can even mix the tones of wash as well. Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade and the Army Painter strong tone all add slightly different tones of colour to the models.

If you are thinking about batch painting using this formula you can simply apply all the steps in day one in one go and have a load of transfers, bases, models and shoulder pads ready for you to pick from. You will only need to spend 33-43 mins on each model from that point onwards.

What do you want to see me speed painting? Let me know in the comments.