Hi everyone,

When I started painting the Bug Army, I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the sheer volume.

I wanted to print almost everything — not just to check supports, but also to catch defects. Some problems only reveal themselves once you actually start painting a miniature. I’ve painted miniatures for years — probably somewhere between five and ten thousand by now — so painting large groups quickly isn’t new to me. But sculpting, printing, and painting everything as I went was a very different experience. Fascinating, but extremely time-consuming, even with help from my wife.

Over time, I’ve developed a few tricks to avoid the infamous pile of shame. One of them is leaving a tray with a ready to be painted squad in a strategic place, with everything needed to finish it already laid out. Whenever I have a bit of time, I sit down and paint one color. Or rather, that’s the lie I tell myself — because I usually end up painting another color, then another.

Paint is expensive too, so when there’s a bit left, I use it on the next squad. By the time I finish the current one, the next is already a third done, and suddenly it feels much easier to continue. In the end, it’s all about lowering the initial barrier, not setting unrealistic goals, and then continuously lying to yourself in small, productive ways.

But in this case, I was facing a massive amount of models to paint in a very limited time. I knew these habits alone wouldn’t be enough. 

At some point, I had to accept a simple truth: if I wanted this army to actually be played, I needed a different way of painting.

That meant compromises. For example, painting certain areas with a single color instead of two or three. That wasn’t really a problem — the miniatures were designed to still look good with very simple schemes. But I also wanted to take this opportunity to seriously test Army Painter speed paints over a white undercoat.

Once you paint a full army this way, you immediately see what works and what doesn’t. Too much micro-detail becomes visual noise. Clear separations between materials matter far more than tiny textures. Large, readable surfaces take washes beautifully, while clutter just turns muddy. Painting taught me things that sculpting alone never would.

So the miniatures were gradually adjusted with that in mind. The details are still there, but placed where they help the paint instead of fighting it. Armor plates, organic growths, weapons — everything is designed so that a few passes already look good, and extra time becomes a choice rather than an obligation.

In a way, painting with speed paints over white felt like going back to my roots. When I was a kid, I used to mix certain Citadel paints whose pigments didn’t behave well together, specifically to create strong contrasts in a single pass. I could paint entire hordes in a few days with a decent result. But I had forgotten how unforgiving that approach can be. One recess left white looks awful on a miniature, something I never really experience with black or brown undercoats.

That’s why I’m now considering mixing techniques for what’s left to paint — starting with a brown undercoat, doing a slapchop-style white highlight, and then applying speed paints on top.

Almost the entire Bug Army you see here was painted using speed paints and simple techniques. No airbrush tricks, no marathon sessions. Just efficient painting focused on tabletop readability. And because of that, I was able to put entire armies on the board, play full campaigns, test scenarios, tweak rules… instead of staring at half-finished projects.

Painting stopped being a barrier and became part of the flow again. Something that supports the game instead of delaying it. And for a wargame meant to be played — not just admired — I think that makes all the difference.