A local store finally started selling Warhammer stuff. Any pointers on where I should get started on the painting, or maybe which sets? I saw a decent one that comes with several paints and 3 space marines (it's not on the GW website), I'm not looking to build a giant army right now, just get started on the modeling side and get to grips with the process.
The thing is that a fair deal of the armies paint differently.
- Space Marines tend to have large, flat surfaces with the occasional bling. Replace bling with spikes and horns for Chaos Marines.
- Daemons have a lot of skin, and some tend to have horns and claws that have one color flow into the other.
- Eldar have armor with pads that have to be accented, and their vehicles have flat surfaces with the occational grooves. Also don't paint Harlequins if you don't want to hate yourself.
- Dark Eldar have lots of skin, leather, spikes and very sharp edges.
- Orks have a wild variety of cloth and armor that's made to look like it is just bolted together. Which it frequently is.
- Tau have mostly large angular plates of armor mixed with metallic (or cloth if it's infantry) bits here and there.
- Imperial Guard have a mix of uniforms and large vehicles that can be mostly the same color.
- Tyranids are all chitin, sinew and flesh.
- The Adeptus Mechanicus have a lot of exposed machinery alongside large plates of armor.
- Necrons are easy as fuck to paint: metallic basecoat, black wash, apply green where needed.
Space Marines are amongst the easiest to paint, alongside Tau, Necrons and a tank-heavy force of Imperial Guard. The paints + 3 Marines kit is a good place to start, mainly to get a hang of how that works. Do note that these kits are very light on the modelling part: if those are the Marines that I think they are you just got to clip the bolter on and you can call it a day. A Marine from the Tactical Squad box however can easily be 10 parts, more if you want something fancy.
Also, while you might feel the urge to clip the bits out and assemble a miniature before painting: don't. It'll only make things more difficult. Leave them on the sprue and paint them there, they're far easier to handle that way.