9 Tips For Buying Into Warhammer - How to NOT regret your early buys.

Me with hundreds of models and 4 different armies Hmm yes how can I make sure I don't make beginner mistakes getting into this hobby? Better listen carefully

My biggest thing for new hobbyists is to not be afraid of painting, you’ll only get better by starting and to be frank it feels more like a fill in the space coloring book than making your own full art, you don’t have to be creative, just color in the lines and you’ll be okay

For good cheap terrain go to a pet store and go to the reptile and aquarium section. Tons of caves, branches, castles, and other wacky stuff. Makes great terrain!

Terrain tip addendum: just don’t buy terrain at all. Find a store or club that has terrain available to use and just play there. Getting out of the house is more fun anyway and you free up time and money to focus on your models.

#10.) Don’t build towards what’s good now. Probably the fastest way to ruin the game for yourself. Buy what you think looks cool, because by the time you assemble and paint your models the meta has definitely changed

Rule #0 - Don’t overcomplicate things. Get what you think looks cool, figure out how it works by doing. The hobby is full of people that like to (over)analyse; avoid this trap by just building thing, painting it, and playing games. Everything else is secondary.

My biggest recommendation is instead of a paper plate or tile for a paint pallet make a wet pallet. You can make one using an old sandwich container some paper towel and a piece of parchment paper (Tabletop minions has a video on it) and it'll make your painting life so much easier at such a minor extra cost

Model train shops are an ok source for cheaper tools. Most such places will have pin drills for decent prices, and the replacement bits are much more affordable

Tip number 10: Learn to 3D print or make friends with someone with a 3D printer. You’ll never want for extra bits or customizable pieces again. I’m the printer for my play-group, and I’ve saved people an insane amount of money. Take those extra legs, bodies, etc. and print the pieces you need to make additional complete models.

Tip for painting; you can mix your paints. You don’t need to buy specific one off colours.

I'll echo a few things that's already been said, but I think they warrant repetition. 10. Kill Team is an excellent way to dip your toes into the hobby. It's a single box, less minis mean it's not as big of a hurdle to get everything ready, and it's fairly popular which means you'll find people to play with easily. 11. Try to paint your models to a battle-ready standard. Your first models will never look like the box art, they just won't. But, actually painting them up and bringing them to the table is still incredibly rewarding. Those are your dudes! 12. Be a little aggressive when playing! You got your team, everything is painted and ready, you're at the table about to start. I see a lot of new players hiding behind cover or scared to advance. Don't be afraid to trade a few models while playing. Unless you're playing a (hyper) elite team, part of the game is learning who and how to trade during engagements. Good luck and happy hobbying!

- When gluing your models, plastic glue is going to weld your minis together, whereas regular super glued parts can be snapped apart after a few hours in the freezer. Useful for if you might want to re-base some models later or something. - Was briefly mentioned, but don't be afraid of getting into airbrushing. It is another small expense to add (roughly 80ish doll hairs for a little compressor off eBay and another 80 or so for a decent Iwata or rougly 120 for a nicer Badger) but it is well worth it and can save a lot of time and just adds to your kit of things you can do. - Magnetize things. You typically don't magnetize super small stuff (even though you can with the right tiny magnets) but don't hesitate to magnetize stuff if you might want to swap weapons on vehicles or something later, also getting into the habit of magnetizing bases helps with the next tip. One thing I would avoid is if you are going to magnetize small stuff, just magnetize and paint what you are going to be immediately using. Don't spend a ton of time magnetizing an entire kit's weapons if you don't plan on using them in the near future. It becomes a real drag lol. - Make your own transport boxes to move your minis. There are plenty of boxes you can use but I like the "really useful box" in the in the 4 liter A4 paper size. Then just super glue some magetic sheets (make sure they are at least 35+ microns thick. I made the mistake of buying 16 micron sheets) to the bottom and now your magnetized bases will stick and the boxes set on top of each other and kinda "lock in" and don't move and it makes transporting a breeze. 4 liter for troops, 9 liter is great for larger models/vehicles. Cheaper than pretty much every other option AND your nice paint job isn't rubbing on foam all the time. - Invest in a good light. Different temperatures of light are going to change how your paint appears, so invest a little bit of money in a task lamp (don't buy the tiny lights). Just make sure it is capable of a color temperature of 5000K (less than that and the light will be "warm"/yellow, higher than 5000k and your light starts to get "cool"/blue) and you're good.

My tip is when you do start to get models, just get something you think looks cool at the beginning. Cool models are always cool, rules come and go and one day might be good but that model is always going to look cool.

What's annoying with tip #5 is that GW tools used to be really really good. The stuff I got back in like 2007 or 2008 are still going strong and tbh probably have been used more around the house than on minis.

START WITH A KILL TEAM. Kill Team is a fun secondary game you can play and the models are usable in full size 40k. Plus, you only have to build and paint 6-15 models. Its a really easy way to learn what you like/dislike painting before spending $150 minimum to find out you hate painting and building the army you thought you'd like.

To add to the Primer point: Hardware shops are good for cheap black and greys but car and motor service shops like Halfords (UK) are gold mines because they'll have spray primer for ALL colours you could need. It has saved me so much time and effort in painting.

I want to recommend not buying essentially an entire army in a short time. I got into actually buying models back in 5th edition because I made a joking pact with myself that I'd pick up models if Dark Eldar ever got any new ones (since I kind of expected them at the time to kind of fade away into obscurity or be squatted out). I ended up buying a massive amount of DEldar with my friends also picking up a bunch of stuff. I acquired sooo many grey models that my pile of shame to paint became so heavy on my mind I ended up not doing so for 10 years. I had like maybe two squads painted until I wanted to get into some other armies and forced myself to power through what I had to get painting experience/practice. If I had just done a measured approach of buy a box, assemble, and then paint it I probably would have been more effective in going forward with actually painting them.

I was literally just thinking about how I wanted to listen to a poorhamer podcast on my way to work, thanks guys

As the target audience, I wanna thank you guys for this. I’m gonna be jumping into the hobby once 10th comes out (likely picking Necrons btw) and information like this is so helpful.

So fun fact, while teaching some friends warhammer I was able to chat with an old guard Official GW Store Manager and he told me LGS stores are expressly not allowed to PUBLICLY advertise more than 15% off GW prices. Its why 15% off MSRP is the universal standard.