How to get addicted

A how to guide on becoming addicted with minimal investment

Addiction is a scary thing. As a child, I watched "Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F." and I was scarred by it. In the movie, some young kids smoke some weed at a party and about 7.5 minutes later they are selling their bodies at the train station for heroin. For years I was afraid that I'm just one bad friend away from shooting up heroin on a daily basis.

Little did I know that it would take me over twenty years to become seriously addicted.

My tale doesn't begin with smoking weed – this is something that I hardly ever do. Instead, it starts with a podcast host in the role of my bad friend turning my life upside down.

This specific podcast host was with me pretty much from the beginning of my podcast listener journey. He is a radio journalist with a very classic approach to podcasting, one that isn't driven by ad reads and controversial hot takes to create profitable outrage. Instead, he talks kindly about what is important to him. And I trusted him.

In one show, he asked his listeners for a little favour. A small side quest. To obtain something more valuable than money and at the same time really affordable. I should have known at the time that he set a trap.

He wanted a mini of the month.

Huh?

A mini of the month is a free gift you can get at Warhammer stores. Warhammer is a tabletop RPG created in the 80s by a British company called Games Workshop and they are very popular amongst a certain breed of nerds. For the game, a nerd collects little plastic figurines, paints them in pretty colours and makes them battle other painted miniatures. It is a kind of nerddom that I never connected with (unlike many other nerddoms).

Until that fateful day.

After work, I decided to take on that side quest from my trustworthy podcast host. He asked for a small angry rat man and I wanted to get him just that. What's the worst that could happen? Certainly not addiction!

I stumbled into the nearest Warhammer store. A bunch of dudes sat around a table, chatting and painting. It smelled of paint and a good time. A friendly man approached me. I (a fool) introduced myself as a clueless person wanting a free mini – specifically a rat person. The man's eyes sparkled with glee. He had found fresh prey.

He sat me down at a small table (separate from the others) and handed me a plastic grid with the parts to build a little man with a gun. "What about the rat man", I asked. "You can have the rat man when you are done with this one", he replied. He handed me a pair of nippers and I started building the little man. It felt good to build the little man.

I said "Sir, I need to go pick up my kids!" – "You have a couple of minutes, don't you? Here, let my prime that Space Marine of yours" and off he went. Seconds later he emerged with a now blackened tiny man with a gun.

He continued to show me how to dry brush a first base coat of colour onto the little man. I was glued to my seat. I checked the time, wanted to leave, but he insisted on showing me how to quickly do a highlight. So I did. I was too stunned to speak.

It took about 15 minutes in total to get my first little mini man with a gun painted in two simple colours. He was beautiful. A pretty little armed man. My pretty little armed man.

I really had to go, but were it not for my kids, I would still be sitting there, painting a whole army of little men with guns.

This is how I got addicted.

All it takes is a lick of paint

Later that day, I came home (I had successfully picked up the kids). I confessed to my partner what I had done. I couldn't stop talking about it. I felt shame, guilt, amazement, pride, joy, and, most of all, a deep urge to experience that feeling again. Images of addicts advertising their services at a train station sprung to my mind. I shuddered.

I wish I was exaggerating my amazement. But I'm not. I truly fell in love with painting the little dudes – for a couple of reasons: it is quick to get to really good initial result. Painting minis to perfection is skill that requires lots of work, but getting minis to look cool takes less than half an hour. With another hour of painting details I can get to something quite nice – and rewarding.

It is also very easy to get started. Painting a little man with a gun is a bit like painting by the numbers. The injection moulded body is covered in fine details and it is just a question of colouring in the areas to your heart's content. The details are already there, they just need a lick of paint.

And finally, for me, it is a way to make my brain shut up for a bit. When everybody has gone to bed I can deeply focus on painting my little dude and think about nothing else. It is just a question of dabbing the leather bits in brown colour and giving a cool edge light on the hammer or gun or sword or staff or other weapon.

Speaking of weapons: the miniature world is as violent as it is small. In the Warhammer universes (to my knowledge there are little fantasy warhammers and sci fi warhammers) everybody is angry and each and every single one of them has a big weapon and is not afraid to use it.

Which is a problem for me. Not because I don't like violence, I play lots of violent games, but because I don't want to have little violent men standing around my home, swinging their blunt weapons at me. With all the horror of the world, I like to keep my house as peaceful as possible (unless I fire up my PC).

I went back to the Warhammer shop and asked for peaceful minis. I asked at a different shop, with the fitting name of Battlefield Berlin. I googled and ChatGPT'd and reddited on my quest for peaceful little minitatures to paint. And the answer was a resounding "What the Fuck is your problem? Just paint the little angry men!"

I even found really cute little mice and hamsters – with shields and spears. The historic miniatures are not helpful members of different communities but little Napoleon armies and German Strumtruppen and other historically accurate violent men seeking to extend empires.

The most peaceful things I could find where lots and lots and LOTS of naked ladies. One moment I am looking at 3D printed furniture for a scene, the next some user has propped a naked woman with her legs spread wide onto the chair in question. I got a suspicion that painting minis is a male dominated field.

So I gave up. I bought some angry men and a bunch of supplies.

To paint a little angry man you need paints and brushes. I had old brushes that the kids use for watercolor and a gut feeling told me that they wouldn't work well for tiny men. I also had old acrylic paints. Really old. Old as in half of them had dried out in closed tubes.

With the few that were in a more or less liquid state I finished the first mini from the store. It wasn't as amazing as the kick I got out of the in-store painting but it also wasn't nothing. It was fine. The chase for the high continued.

Miniature paints are (mostly) acrylic - not unlike those used to paint on paper. So I got myself a cheap set of ten colours, including black and white, from the crafts store and did a second mini I had got for free from the shop. A big improvement over the dried out paints (what a surprise) but still not great.

Acrylic paints are made of a carrier substance, a water based solvent, and pigments. The pigments define the colour – no surprises here – but also the texture when the solvent has dried and the paint has fixed itself onto the mini. Craft paints have fairly large pigments to cover paper very well, miniature paints have very small pigments to give a nice finish on a small angry man. My angry man covered in craft paint now had a chalk like finish and getting small details painted was a challenge.

I had to come to terms with the fact that I needed to spend real money on real paints. A friend told me to get AK paints, so I did. So here is my first real advice: get good paints – and don't buy a big expensive starter set. Instead, buy a black, a white and two to four complementary colours. I got a deep red, a pink, a yellow and a green.

I had ditched the bad brushes after my first trip to the craft store. I got size 2 and size 0 brushes of the cheaper variety. Brush quality is mostly defined by the bristle material and these were cheap synthetics – which is more than enough for a beginner. I also got a harder bristle brush for dry brushing.

To paint a mini, you need to cover it in primer. A primer provides the necessary surface to hold whatever paint you want to throw on it. I already had a grey primer that worked well, but if you buy new, get a black primer spray can from AK for ten bucks. It works really well.

Now, we are going to enter crafty territory. I love a good DIY and if I could, I would make paints, primers and brushes myself. But I can't. What I can craft is a wet palette.

A wet palette is an ingenious tool. It holds paint and because of its overall wetness, it keeps the paints fresh for hours instead of minutes. You can buy a wet palette for 50 to 100 bucks or you can follow my example and cut up some kitchen kitchen sponge material, layer it up to your desired thickness and top it with a bit of parchment paper. Load the stack with water and you got a wet palette.

(Fun fact: this is not unlike the process I used in my bio lab days to transfer plant proteins from a separation gel onto a membrane to analyse them. You'd be surprised how many lab skills are transferrable to DIY and cooking.)

Another easy craft is a mini holder. For ten bucks one could buy a plastic device to hold minis, but where is the fun in that? Instead, use a champaign cork, a deo lid or build a little rod with a heavy base and stick some patafix/blue tack on top. Done. Now you can hold your mini without touching the paint.

With your primer, brushes, paints, wet palette and mini holder you are ready to comfortably paint your first of many miniatures. I won't go into detail about the actual painting techniques because I first of all have no clue about proper technique and second of all there are literal trillions of YouTube Videos with great tutorials out there. Trust them, not me.

Looking back, getting into painting minis is not a very expensive hobby – if you skip buying the wrong paints. Maintaining the hobby might be pricey, but doesn't have to be. Overall, I spent maybe 100 € on primers, paints and brushes, and 50 € on minis to paint – some of which I still haven't painted. 150 € is not nothing but it is also not too terrible to start a new hobby.

I am at the brink of painting my first Warband – a group of angry men put together to fight other men in a game of WarCry (I guess it's named after the crying one does after doing the war). I want to give the game a try and chase little men around a table top yelling attack names like a back alley pokemon trainer.

Painting minis has joined my portfolio of hobbies to relax to. Apart from using pre-made plastic men I am also learning to sculpt creatures. Sculpting my own things to paint lets me explore other genres such as Solarpunk. Instead of painting sword after hammer after sword, I want to make little happy scenes of community, collaboration and clean energy.

Rest assured though that I won't be selling any kidneys to fund my newly found addiction. I mean, I would if it was necessary. Fortunately, it simply isn't.

I can really recommend this addiction.

I want to take the time to thank some people. First of all, thank you Marcus, not only for the great podcasts to entertain me but also for your patience answering all my questions about Warhammer and minis and why the fuck you like to play with mean little men. Thank you. Another thanks to Arik, who gave me lots of hands-on tips on painting. He has a dedicated instagram channel for his minis. Go and check it out. And thank you, dear reader, for staying until the end of this long post on painting little angry men. I hope you are a big happy person.

If you want to learn more, check out the subreddits r/minipainting, r/WarCry, and r/miniaturesculpting. If you care more about painting larger nerdy things, check out North of the Border on YouTube. This channel fuelled my interest in painting and making small things. If you understand German go and listen to some of Marcus' podcasts at richter.fm. I recommend Indie Fresse for Gaming and Redebedarf for an old school Laberpodcast (in the best way).