"Easiest Medieval army to paint?" Topic

Which medieval armies do you think are the easiest to paint? Thinking in 28mm mainly

War of the Roses. No complicated shield designs to paint,footsoldiers in uniform livery colours and knights covered in metal!

I would say that there are a number of aspects to consider:

1.) Faces and hands: I tend to find that painting these well in skin colour and with all the details tends to take time. When these are covered with fully closed helmets and gauntlets (or other protection) the painting tends to be faster. For knights etc. this tends to be common practice by 13th century.

2.) Heraldry: if you want to go for complex patterns, this can be quite time consuming. Especially an issue for 13th and 14th century armies – by 15th century devices showing the heraldry on battlefield are getting rarer. Orders such as Teutonic knights which replace personal heraldry with the designs of the order are simpler.

3.) Armour: metal armour, whether mail or plate, is easy to paint, and cloth armour (gambesons, jacks etc.) pretty much so. Brigandines etc. which combine both metal and cloth can be trickier if you are obsessed with details. Large continuous areas of armour are easier to paint than models where there are small pieces of armour showing up at various locations.

Based on these, the easiest individual models to paint would be 13th century knights of crusading orders (closed helmets, full mail armour, surcoats and shields with order emblems) or later 15th century men-at-arms (full plate armour, closed helmets, no heraldic devices). Of course these both are found in armies that feature more complex figures to paint.

On another note, are you asking this out of curiosity or are you actually planning on starting a medieval force?

If you are thinking of putting together a force, it may also be worth considering how much visual spectacle or variety you want in the force.

On another note, also early medieval forces consisting largely of hairy, unarmoured fellows in tunics can be quite straightforward to paint, especially if you keep the shield designs simple.

The easiest to paint are the ones that have Little Big Men decals made for them. Seriously.

You can stamp out beautiful Perry Crusaders by the truckload.

Hussites from Kingmaker would be another great example.

The smallest one…

Irish!

If you keep the painted details on the shields fairly simple, Dark Ages infantry (Saxons, Vikings, Normans) are pretty easy to paint up. As stated above, any of them are pretty easy if you are using shield decals.

I would think Teutonic Knights. White surcoats, black crosses.

Painting is a time consuming and pain staking process so we are only talking about hard and harder.

Painting is a time consuming and pain staking process…

You are not wrong*

*coming from a guy who really enjoys painting.

Teutonic Knights ought to be easy but getting the white to look good can be tricky.
The crosses are easy if using decals – hand painting them is harder than you may think. With such a plain device, the eye is drawn to any flaw, differing thickness of line, curves in the wrong place etc.