I’ll cut to the chase – if you prepare properly, you can totally paint Warhammer 40k and other miniatures on a moving train. It’s not even that hard. How do I know that – why would I ever think to test that? Allow me to explain.
All the writers in Team Wargamer work remotely, and we’re scattered across the British isles. About four times a year we get together at the company offices to plot world domination share expertise that will improve our coverage of Warhammer 40k, Magic the Gathering, DnD, and everything else that we write about.
My train journey to get to the quarterly meeting takes a minimum of five hours. American and Australian readers may think that’s not a crazy long journey, but I’m British, a five hour journey might as well be eternity. Eternity without reliable internet connection. You can see how painting miniatures might seem like an appealing – if not necessarily a feasible – idea.
The night before the ungodly early start to my journey, I packed a go bag with paints, brushes, a slim palette, and some miniatures I had already base coated. I’m working on an Aeldari army as a new Warhammer 40k faction this year, in equal parts because Games Workshop sent me a bunch of review samples, and because I want an army that will let me use a lot of vibrant colors. Into the box went five fire dragons.
After considering the practicalities a bit more, I added some extra kit: a plastic baggy to hold the palette when it had wet paint, and a pot with a screw lid to hold paint water, as I couldn’t rely on the trains having bathrooms I could empty dirty paintwater in. The carry case I used – another product sample from GW, a skirmish case lined with rubber tentacles that I call ‘the tickle box’ – held everything well enough.
The next day, not particularly happy to be conscious and moving before the sun had risen, I grabbed a seat on a train and got out the kit. I had a large communal table all to myself, and that space definitely helped – not only because I wasn’t worried about spilling paintwater onto a neighbour.
Perhaps it would have been possible to work if I only had room to lay out a palette and a water pot, transferring everything else back and forth from my bag as I needed it. But having the room to leave my carry case out and open was much more convenient.
I had anticipated that my biggest challenge would be the rocking of the train making my hands wobble all over the place. To my surprise, this turned out to be no problem at all.
I had overlooked the fact that, as my arms are both attached to one and the same torso, whenever my was rocked by the motion of the train, my hands remained motionless relative to one another. As long as I didn’t rest an arm against the table or train, my hand-eye coordination was only as bad as it normally is.
Tools placed on the train table were a little harder to use – I was moving and they weren’t. It wasn’t a huge problem, but it did make me glad I’d chosen dropper bottles and a palette rather than Games Workshop’s flip-top paints for miniatures. I’d made the choice so as to reduce the risk of an in-bag paint explosion or a spilt pot, but I was grateful to be using paint on a palette and not collecting paint from a titchy little pot.
Within half an hour, my only frustration was that I hadn’t packed a size two miniature paintbrush and was stuck basecoating with a size one brush. Two train changes, some shading and highlighting, and three hours into my journey, it was obvious that my actual skill as a painter was the limiting factor on the results, not the fact I was on a train.
So, let’s say you’re painting up a Space Marine chapter and want to maximise your painting time – is painting on a train an option? Potentially, yes. It’s going to depend on the train journeys you take. I took a long journey during off-peak hours, and always had a table seat. The lighting was pretty decent too, and that won’t be the case for every train. But yeah – you can do it.
This was fun! Though I don’t think this beats Team Wargamer’s current high watermark for hobbying on a train – Mollie Russell’s successful train-bound Gloomhaven campaign.
Source: Wargamer
