Paint miniatures faster using the slapchop method

The biggest obstacle to minis gaming is painting the miniatures. Your minis must be properly painted in order to take part in tournaments. Everybody loves seeing their Skavens or Space Marines look their best before heading out on the field. But while there are ways to scrimp and save on the minis themselves — 3D printing chief among them — often your time is the most precious resource of all. What if you could paint miniatures quicker? Allow me to introduce you to the “slapchop” method.

A YouTube video featuring Slapchop by The Honest Wargamer was made last month. It only got to my newsfeed a few weeks back. Rob Symes, the founder of The Honest Wargamer makes some key points in the video while gently criticizing a number of YouTube painting tutorials that seem to be too serious.

Symes points out that an army’s shelf life is very short before any slight benefits it may have in the meta are lost. Once you’ve put down the money on some new miniatures that you’d like to use, the clock is already ticking down to the moment they get nerfed. This makes it imperative to get them ready for action and painted.

Symes combined the popular drybrush technique used by Artis Opus with the Army Painter Speedpaint and Citadel Contrast specialty paint lines to create the slapchop. The drybrush is used to create a high-contrast basecoat, and the Contrast/Speedpaint does its thing — providing a nuanced layer of color and a highlight in a single coat. These results are amazing, thanks to their grace and precision.

Is this the best way to win a Golden Demon? No. You won’t. Will your miniatures look like they’ve been kissed by a fey creature, granted a light pastel tinge, and sent to an Easter picnic? Maybe. It really depends on which colors you select. However, will it be possible to get your army painted quicker than ever before. Yes. It is possible. And later on, if the mood strikes you, you can go back and paint over those few units that really catch your fancy using all the other elaborate tools in your toolbox — thinks like wet blending and edge highlighting and all that other stuff that takes hours and weeks at a time.

As they say, quality is relative to quantity. The phrase is commonly used to refer to the number of fully painted miniatures you’re able to put on the table. But it’s just as true of the number of games you actually get to play before your army goes out of style. So, get crackin’.