Painting the Miniatures for Cthulhu Death May Die
You get the box, you look at the gray plastic, and you realize you need to paint them. The miniatures in Cthulhu Death May Die are fairly small—most of the cultists and investigators sit around 25mm height. That changes how you approach priming and detailing compared to larger tabletop figures. I started with these figures about five years ago. The first batch looked terrible because I treated them like standard 28mm hero miniatures. They don't scale that way. The cultist heads are barely 12mm across from front to back. You need to accept that most of your detail work will be about four or five brush strokes per figure, not twenty. Prime everything in black or dark gray. White primer causes problems here because the figures have deep recesses in their clothing folds and the cultist robes create heavy shadow areas. Dark primer lets you do two thin washes and still have visible detail. I spray the whole batch, set them on the primed backing, then lay out my paints. This keeps them organized by type while you work.
Basecoat the cultist robes a mid-tone brown or dark red depending on which faction the miniatures represent. The original game uses different cult allegiances. Keep this consistent or you'll end up with figures that look like they came from different boxes. The investigators wear varied clothing, so mix in some blues, browns, and grays for their coats and shirts. Wash everything after the basecoat is dry. Use a brown wash for the robes and a black wash for the skin tones and equipment. Let it pool in the crevices naturally. Do not scrub or blow on it to move the wash. You will lose the detail you just painted. Just set it down flat and wait twenty minutes. I hit a real problem with the Cthulhu monster figures themselves. The slime texture they molded into does not hold wash properly. It runs off the surface in rivulets and leaves patchy coverage. My workaround was to mix a bit of matte medium into the wash before applying it. The thicker consistency stays on the smooth plastic and gives you even toning instead of streaks. This adds about three minutes per figure but saves you from repainting half of them later.
Highlight selectively. Drybrush the edges of the robes with a slightly lighter shade of whatever basecolor you used. Skin gets a quick pass with a lighter tone on the faces and exposed hands. Do not highlight everything. These figures are small enough that full highlighting makes them look busy and muddy when they are standing on a game table. The weapons and accessories need separate attention. Metal weapons get a dark metallic basecoat first, then a lighter drybrush over the edges. Some of the cultist daggers and guns have separate pieces that need glue before painting, so handle those individually. I paint them on the sprue until the adhesive cures, then assemble. For the Cthulhu Death May Die Painting Guide work, keep your expectations realistic. These are not gallery pieces. They are functional miniatures for a board game. The point is readability at a distance, not microscopic detail. A figure should be identifiable as a cultist or investigator from across the board. If you spend more than eight minutes on an individual cultist miniature, you are probably overworking it.
Get the Full Details
Some people recommend using an airbrush for the basecoats. I find it faster for large batches but less controlled for the smaller figures. You end up masking more time than you save. A fine brush in the 00 or 000 size handles everything these miniatures require without the setup overhead. The biggest mistake beginners make is trying to paint every single figure in the box at once. The box contains around forty miniatures between cultists, investigators, and monsters. Break it into sessions of ten figures each. Finish one type completely before moving to the next. You build consistency and finish faster than someone who jumps between all the types every session. If you run out of time mid-project, the figures do not need to be perfect to play with. The original game was designed for casual tabletop use. Slightly uneven painting never affected anyone's ability to roll dice and move wooden meeples around a card-based board. Just get them close enough that you can tell friend from foe during a game.
Total time for a full set, painted competently but not obsessively, comes to roughly four to six hours spread across three sessions. Anything beyond that is optional and usually happens when people start painting the individual eyes and teeth details. You do not need to do that.
