Just a hobby I had as a child from 1987 to young adult hood in my 20's in 2006. Stopped playing in 97/98, painted my last ones in 2001. Stopped buying in 2006. Just got back into the hobby November 2016 thanks to all the God Emperor Trump meme's, me having over 1200 miniatures and thinking I am not getting any younger time to finish what I started and continue doing something I love. My collection I spent under 10k on, now its worth 44k unpainted, and over 120k for just being decently painted.
First one I have started painting is Papa Smurf, first time picking up a paint brush to paint a miniature in over a decade.


As I posted on a community FB page asking how many tubs of Macragge Blue I would need to paint a long miniature list. Stating I am hand painting one because they are already primed by spray, others hand primed. I do not care about Air Brushes, nor how many spray cans, weather in FL is all out of wack atm. Not going to wait. Well one guy was like you should spray primer them. I was like umm no at 8-25 dollars a spray can, a 4-5 dollar pot primer I can do it in the comfort of my man cave, not worry about the weather and paint the same amount. Well he went nuclear and got all nasty, and was like saying oh we will see you back in 2-3 days when you ask for help with removal of paint/brush streaks from your miniatures. Well I posted an APC pic of one I did I guess back in 2001, and two I hand primered no brush marks or paint streaks. He called me a lair they are are spray primered so since I had not fully assembled them I flipped a part around where I only put one thin coat of the pot primer it showed some of the plastic and a couple brush strokes because I was not going to waste primer on a part no one would ever see at any angle. Then he was like oh once you paint them we will see you back in 2-3 days after you base coat them. Well being the ahole I am once you piss me off, I grabbed the largest vehicle I had hand primered by hand, and base paint coated it in the main primary color in 30 minutes. Posted and told the dude to get off his high horse, I had been in this hobby for a long time when we had to do everything the hard way, had not forgotten the old tricks of the trade.  Not to mention while at EA before I ever went to Maya to model a major assets I would sculpt them out of modeling clay and or balsa foam and base coat them much larger than a miniature. Do not assume someones skills and be an ahole to them because they do things a different way that didn't work for you. If you are going to post and they ask a specific question just answer the question. I am not building a wall, central heat and air out to my back porch spending over 7k to do so when I can just buy a water based none toxic primer and paint it in my office. Here are the results 30 minutes at 2am last night. Straight up told him to get off his high horse, I just wanted to come and ask how many pots I would need, not get into an argument of why I do not want to use spray primer, and make you eat your own words after 2 in the morning.


 
Some of my old collection about 400-600 miniatures of it.


My work area before I built my active paint and LED lamp shelf.


Built this in 25 minutes with scrap wood.



 

Looks good man!
 
I play Warmachine which is very similar. I have about 400 points worth of units between my 2 armies that I'm working on painting. Definitely takes a lot of time and patience!
 
If you like painting they have some very cool models that you might enjoy (and they tend to be a lot cheaper than WH).

 
Nice hobby. Looks nice.        

Fantastic hobby, can't wait to have a man cave to display my loot over the years.

You have a serious looking paint hobby
 

I used to be huge in 4k table top. But it has all but died out in the Cleveland area so i stopped playing. I have a massive imperial guard army painted, and then a tau and space marine army mostly still in boxes. I have dumped enough money into those 3 armies to buy a car. But thats GW for ya....

ARMYguy
I used to be huge in 4k table top. But it has all but died out in the Cleveland area so i stopped playing. I have a massive imperial guard army painted, and then a tau and space marine army mostly still in boxes. I have dumped enough money into those 3 armies to buy a car. But thats GW for ya....

Yup, it's expensive but if you can paint you can turn your money of money spent of one car worth miniatures into 3-4 cars worth of miniatures. I spent under 10k over the years. Unpainted my collection is now worth over 44k, painted and painted well over 120k.

ARMYguy
I never priced out what my stuff is worth, cause selling it would be painful. Well maybe i will sell the space marines and tau, since i havent really touched them. There is so much power creep now with all the new rule sets, armies and formations they keep adding, so old codicies like my poor guard just cant compete anymore. Its sad, i would love to still play.

Yup its why I still have my 1200 of mine... painful to let go. let me know if the picture shows up not showing up on the mobile page.

I should crack open some boxes and upload some pix of my painted guard stuff.... cant right now though, at work. that looks pretty epic though , good painting skills.

How much does it cost to get into?

Depends do you want to just collect as he said or collect and play? Or just play even playing there is a tabletop paint standard.
You can probably jump in with about 160-200 as long as you do something specific if you want to play and paint, deathwatch overkill I think the tabletop side game is called, is a good start. There are also discounted but on cheaper plastic versions of stuff now as well. If you live in the UK you get like crazy discounts at crafts/hobby stores.

Deathwatch though is about 140-160 or the box game Dark Vengeance is about 90-120, some paints faction specific you are looking at about 50-100 bucks if not more depending on how far you want to take your miniatures, If you want to collect a couple box sets some paints you can do for about 150.

You also need a file kit, hobby cutters, hobby knife, glue, brushes. you can get it all for about 40-100 bucks depending on what you get. The Army Painter has a nice hobby kit box for about 20-25 dollars. I would suggest the X-Acto bundle that comes in a wooden box just for the seam remover flat blades alone.

Back when I started you could get into it for like 10-15 bucks lol

If you want to collect a minature to a box can run 20-60 or more, a decent base paint range 50-120, specifics saves you some money. 20-25 for the tools.

If you just want to try it out to see if you like it here
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D8KWT98/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2LD5KOFCRAIEJ
$30-35 dollars

$20-25
https://smile.amazon.com/...ords=Army+Painter+tool

Just to see if you care to do the hobby.
 Parchment cooking paper Get a roll from the local store, its cheap for cooking, you use that as a paint pallet. I use it in my home made wet pallet and I use a small square of plexi glass as my all around paint pallet.

Clickalot
How much does it cost to get into?

Let me know if you have questions, What I gave you will get you started to see if you like it.

If you run out of stuff to paint I have a ton of warmachine models that need painting :)

no but looks cool

Still have sword left to do, and needle painting to do on the fuel source of torches to break up silhouette where flames touch metal.