Monday 30 September 2013

How to build a best painted army part 3

Show piece, center piece and eye catchers.

 These will be the key to wining the best painted. They all differ slightly from each other though

Show Piece

This is usually your leaders and standard bearers. They can be similar to the eye catchers but they usually stand out more.

This is where alot of you time is spent. You can spend as much time on one of these as you would a whole unit. The idea here is to show of any special talents you may have, as in you may make great bases so go nuts on these guys or your freehand might be good so this is the place to do it.

But don’t despair if you don’t have special talents you can still make a show piece.
Show piece models should be you army leader and unit leaders and other character models. I like to put my leaders on larger bases so they stand out and this is all you really need to do. Make sure your base follows your theme and build your character accordingly. As you can see below my Spartan General is leaping into battle. This is in keeping with the Spartan theme and wasn’t very difficult to do, Just a reposition of the arms and changing the legs and a wire through the torso to raise him up. No real special skills involved. He was given a little extra attention paint wise.



With my ogre general he had to be the biggest ogre in the group. This took a lot of modding I also had his sword and luck knoblars built onto his base in order to make him stand out more. This took a bit more skill as I also did a bit more on the free hand but overall not too difficult. One thing to note with Show pieces is that you only need a few maybe one per unit or even just the main characters, This will also depend on time available to you.


I made my Spartan general before I did my first troop as a test piece and decided that I wanted one in every unit.

Center Piece.

Every army needs one of these. It needs to be seen from a few tables away and will probably take the most time to make and paint. With warhammer at least there is usually a large beast or warmachine that you can use for the purpose. Warmachine is similar especially with Collosus's.  Below you will see my Rhinox riders. I made these big and bright and built up the bases to make sure they stood out. 


In all infantry armies this can be a problem but there are ways around it. For instance in the Spartan army I made a unit filler where 2 Spartans are attacking a Minotaur, you could have 4 troops raising a banner or something similar. The center pice should define your army so give it a bit of thought before jumping in. And once again one center piece is good but you can do more if you have the chance. As Ive said before if you hear someone go to a mate and tell them they have to come look at this then you know you’ve got it right.



I modded this Slann to be a center piece for a lizard army

Orc Center piece he stands over 30cm tall

Eye catchers

Now they can be show pieces or center pieces but really what they are is subtle things that people discover as they look at your army. The longer someone looks at your army the more votes so you want to give them stuff to look at. You don’t have to put allot of time in but they should be in theme with your army and can be amusing but don’t have to be.

In my ogre army I put a lot of eye catchers. If  you look at the knoblar unit you can see coconut clappers and knoblars riding ponies. These didn’t take long to make in fact the theme for my army was based on this mini.

in some armies this would be a center piece but in this one its just an eye catcher

In my Spartan army I had the movement trays with piles of dead bodies on them. In my Chaos army I had different mutations and a unit with the seven deadly sins. You don’t need a lot of time but they are worth putting two or three in the army and one in each unit would be good. As Ive said the longer someone is looking at your army the better and if they come for a second look and notice something different it will really help out.

My cryx army has alot of detail to the bases. Took a bit of work but once its finished it will be worth the effort


So I hope this has helped out. The main points are in my opininion
  1. Limited pallete
  2. Bright paint job.
  3. Unique or little used idea
  4. Show piece
  5. Center piece
  6. Eye catchers
  7. Themed force

So anyone who can hold a paint brush and use a knife and glue could do this. It helps if you do a little research before you start your army but anything can be your inspiration. The further you go from the hobbie to get your inspiration the more likely you will come up wit something new so don’t be afraid to read google or phone a friend.


Thanks for watching and leave a comment to let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

Center piece for my wood elf army. I made a mum and dad treeman as well

Center peice for my merc and Kislev army I also used this as a Bretonnian army and they stood in as Pegusus's

Eye catcher in my Kislev army

More from my Ogre army


This guy I made for Golden Deamon but it didnt make the cut. It makes a great center peice though

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