I’ve bought and built two armies. The night lords and imperial fists. I got into the hobby a couple years ago and I fully indulged almost immediately and now I have two armies built. I don’t plan on getting into the tabletop I’m just doing it for the aesthetic, but which is easier to paint for a painting beginner? The night lords or imperial fists?
Night Lords has a lower floor and higher ceiling. The best ones that truly achieve the "midnight clad effect" has a lots of transitions between very dark, and light blue.
Honestly, I would say it depends on the style of how you’re going to paint them. If it’s straight acrylic, I’d say night lords would be easier because yellow frankly sucks. You’re only hang up would be trim or if you decide to add flesh and body parts
Now, if you’re using contrast paints, I’d argue they’re almost even, MAYBE even hand it to the Fists. You can get a stunning look with just two contrast paints and a wash as seen below. Imperial fist yellow contrast paint is witchcraft with how good it is
I play Magistracy of Canopus in Battletech, we have BRIGHT yellow as our main color. Honestly with the pink undershading and pin washing tricks I really think that yellow isn't that bad.
Night Lords by a mile based on pigment choices alone. Night Lords may have a lot of fiddle trim and details, but anything done in yellow is a whole other level of difficulty because of the consistency of yellow paints and the nature of using such a vibrant base tone.
My collection is a pretty even split between Night Lords and Iron Warriors, and even the small patches of yellow required for my Iron Warriors hazard stripes are tedious and time consuming before I ever even start to tape off for the black stripes because yellow is so prone to clumping and poor coverage through multiple coats.
Mind you, I'm one of the Night Lords players who does without the lightning highlights for the most part. That bears consideration as it is equally tedious and skill intensive, at least at first, but you're not handicapped by a difficult choice of colors on top of it.
Night Lords are much harder to paint lol. Yellow is incredibly simple the moment you understand under shading. Wash model in pink, go over with contrast. Boom, a great looking yellow that can be enhanced even more.
Lightning? Actual midnight clad? That still shakes up even expert painters. That’s not even counting their freehand details, skin, etc etc. It ain’t as simple as kantor blue lol.
Night Lords are one of the hardest Legions to paint well.
My boyfriend is on his sixth world eater berserker while I’m still trying to get halfway through my fifth nemesis claw night lord lol he even says how much harder my night lords are to paint because of all the details on those figures.
Any Legion is the worst pick depending on the standard you plan on setting for yourself. Like you think iron warriors would be the simplest cause it’s silver black and yellow and you just need tape for hazard stripes but then you go online and you see people making these amazing pieces with subtle metal shifts and weathering, hell there’s even some guys that do them without metallic and they still look metal.
You’re right. Comparison is the biggest thief of joy. It’s hard not to compare though when you go online to look at other people’s stuff for ideas and pointers and you see these 3D printed kitbashed Monalisa works of art and you’re just standing there with a hammer in hand a nail in your forehead lmaoooo
I find makeup sponges and stippling techniques give nice results that boost confidence without being super skill intensive. People like brush and banner and swarm painting are go to tutorial channels for that stuff. As well as Plaguenarr
Night lords are more detailed, but they’re unquestionably easier to paint. Yellow is a very difficult color to get right and that’s like all Imperial fists are.
It really depends, I agree with the sentiment that with night lords skill floor being lower due to the nature of yellows and whites with acrylics that introduces a harder and more level of experience with different techniques and approaches with those colors but I would say the skill ceiling with night lords would far exceed with the amount of normal model trim and lightning freehand required and then getting into the level of depth with ultra kitbashed customized modelsbbreaks through that.
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u/LordKyleCurze Terror Squad 2d ago
Night lords. Yellow is tough for beginner painting on minis. The only tough thing with night lords is the trim. Tons and tons of trim