Wandering Adventures

How to Prime and Base Coat Your Miniatures — A Beginner's Guide to Getting It Right If you've just bought your first box of miniatures and you're staring at them wondering where on earth to start, this is the article for you. One of the most common mistakes new painters make is going straight to a brush and a pot of paint without any preparation. The result is usually paint that rubs off, colours that look dull, and a model that ends up looking worse than it should. The good news is that avoiding all of that is straightforward once you understand priming and base coating — the two most important steps before a single highlight or shade goes on. We see a lot of new painters come through the doors at Wandering Adventures and this is consistently where the questions start. Here's everything I tell them. Assembling Your Miniatures — Don't Skip This Step Before primer goes anywhere near your model, it needs to be properly assembled — and that starts with mold lines. These are the thin raised lines of excess plastic that run along every piece from the manufacturing process. They're easy to miss when you're eager to get painting, but primer and paint don't hide them — they make them more visible. Run your finger along every surface before assembly and scrape them off gently with a hobby knife. Five minutes per model here saves a lot of frustration later. When gluing, use plastic cement for plastic kits rather than super glue. It actually fuses the plastic together for a stronger bond. Apply sparingly, hold firmly for 30 seconds, and leave to cure before handling. Check for gaps where pieces meet — filler or a small amount of green stuff smoothed over a seam before priming will be invisible once painted. Leave it and it'll show forever. Finally think about sub-assemblies. Some models are genuinely easier to paint in pieces — arms off, pilot separate from vehicle, backpack separate from torso. A little planning at the assembly stage saves a lot of awkward brush angles later. What is Priming and Why Does it Matter Priming is the process of applying a base layer to your model before you paint it. A primer is a specially formulated paint — usually applied by spray can or airbrush — that does two things. First it gives the paint something to grip onto. Plastic, resin, and metal are all naturally slippery surfaces and regular paint won't adhere to them reliably without a primer underneath. Second it creates a consistent surface colour to paint over, which affects how your subsequent colours look. Skipping primer is the single biggest mistake new painters make. You might get away with it for a session or two but the paint will start chipping and rubbing off surprisingly quickly, especially on areas that get handled a lot like bases and weapon barrels. A good primer coat takes five minutes and makes everything that comes after it dramatically better. Spray Can vs Brush-On Primer For most beginners a spray can primer is the easiest way to go. You hold it about 25-30cm from the model, apply light even coats, and you get consistent coverage without brush marks. Citadel, Army Painter, and AK Interactive all make solid spray primers. The Citadel sprays are the most widely available and they work reliably straight out of the can. Brush-on primers are useful when you can't spray — if you're in a flat with no outdoor space for example — or when you're working on a single model and don't want to open a spray can. They work well but take a bit more care to apply evenly without leaving brush streaks. One important note — always prime in decent weather. Cold temperatures and humidity are the enemy of spray primers. If you spray on a cold damp day you risk a chalky, grainy finish called frosting that ruins the surface of the model. Aim for above 15 degrees celsius and low humidity if you can. Choosing Your Primer Colour This is where a lot of beginners get confused because there's no single right answer — it depends on what you're painting. Black primer is the most common choice for dark armies — Chaos Space Marines, Nighthaunt, dark fantasy models. It pre-shades the recesses of the model naturally and makes darker colours look richer. The downside is that it can swallow lighter colours so you'll need more coats if you're going bright. White primer is the go-to for bright colour schemes, light armour, and anything where you want colours to pop with full vibrancy. It's less forgiving than black because every imperfection shows, but the results with bright colours are significantly better. Grey primer is the middle ground and honestly it's what I recommend most often for beginners. It works with both dark and light colour schemes, it's forgiving, and it gives you a neutral base that doesn't fight against whatever you're painting over it. Coloured primers are also worth knowing about. Citadel's Wraithbone and Skeleton Horde sprays are popular base colours for Age of Sigmar and anything with a warm bone or cream tone. Army Painter do a huge range of coloured primers that can actually double as your base coat, saving you a step entirely. What is a Base Coat Once your primer is dry, the base coat is the first layer of actual colour you apply to each area of the model. This isn't your final colour — it's the foundation that everything else gets built on top of. Think of it like undercoating a wall before you paint a room. The base coat establishes the colour and gives you something solid to shade and highlight over. Base coats should be relatively thin and even — you're not trying to get perfect coverage in one pass, you're building up the colour in two or three thin layers rather than one thick one. Thick paint obscures detail, fills in recesses, and dries unevenly. Thin paint flows better, dries flatter, and preserves the fine detail that makes miniatures look good. Thinning Your Paint This is the part where almost every beginner goes wrong at first. Paint straight from the pot is almost always too thick to apply directly to a miniature. You need to thin it down with water or a dedicated medium until it has a consistency closer to skimmed milk than to double cream. A good test is to put a small amount of paint on your palette, add a drop or two of water, and mix it. Drag a brush loaded with the thinned paint across the back of your hand — if it flows smoothly and covers evenly it's about right. If it sits in a blob it's too thick. If it's so thin you can see straight through it, add a touch more paint. Citadel Base paints are specifically formulated for base coating and have good pigment density that means they cover well even when thinned. Vallejo also makes excellent base colours with consistent pigmentation. AK Interactive's 3rd Generation range thins beautifully and flows off the brush really well — I use them regularly for base coating larger flat areas. A Simple Process to Follow If you're just starting out, here's the exact process I'd recommend: Clip your models off the sprue and clean up any mold lines with a hobby knife or file. Glue them together if needed and leave them to cure fully. Then prime — one or two light coats from a spray can, letting each coat dry before applying the next. Once the primer is fully dry, usually an hour or two, start your base coats. Work area by area — base coat all the armour first, then all the cloth, then all the metal, then skin and details. Don't try to do everything at once or you'll end up with a muddled mess. Two thin coats per area, letting each one dry, and you'll have a clean solid foundation to work from. From there you're ready for shading, highlighting, and all the fun stuff. But get the primer and base coat right and everything that comes after it is easier, more enjoyable, and looks significantly better.One more technique worth knowing about as you progress is zenithal priming — a two-coat method using black and white spray that pre-shades your model before you've touched a brush. It's a game changer for speed painting and making Contrast paints look their best. We've got a full guide on it over on the blog at wanderingadventures.ca/blogs/news. What You'll Need To get started you really only need a few things — a spray primer, a selection of base coat paints for the colours in your army, and a decent brush. We stock everything you need at Wandering Adventures in Vaughan. For primers check out our Hobby Supplies range at wanderingadventures.ca/collections/paint — and if you're not sure what to pick up for your specific army, come in and ask. Helping new painters get started is genuinely one of our favourite parts of running this store. Everyone starts somewhere. Get the foundation right and the rest of the hobby opens up in front of you.

If you've ever spent twenty minutes cross-referencing a decklist against a store's website, clicking through page after page trying to figure out what's actually in stock — this one's for you. We just launched a deck builder tool right here on the Wandering Adventures website, and it's pretty straightforward: paste in your decklist, and it'll pull up every single card from that list that we currently have in stock. Just the cards you need, ready to go. How It Works Head to the Decklist Builder on our site and you'll see a simple text box waiting for your list. The tool accepts pretty much any format you'd copy from Moxfield, Limitless, or wherever you build — quantities like 4x, set codes, collector numbers, section headers, it handles all of it without complaining. Paste your list, select your game from the dropdown (Flesh and Blood, Pokemon, Magic, and more are supported), and hit submit.   From there it gets good. The builder shows you exactly how many lines matched against our live inventory, broken into an "In Stock" section so you know right away what we can actually fulfill. For each card it shows you the variant — printing, condition, language, and price — with a dropdown if multiple versions are available. You can either hit "Pick Cheapest" to automatically grab the lowest price option across your whole list, or go full "Bling Out" mode if you want the premium versions. There's even a Format Legality checker so you can validate your list before you buy. Adjust quantities, swap printings if you want a different version, and when you're ready, hit the button to send everything straight to your cart. One shot, no hunting through individual product pages. Ways You Can Use It The obvious one is picking up singles for a deck you're actively building — you've got your list from Moxfield or Limitless or wherever you brew, and you just want to know what we have. Done. But there are a few other ways this thing comes in handy: Upgrading a precon. You've got a commander precon or a starter deck and you know the ten cards you want to swap in. Paste those in and see what we've got without digging through the whole singles inventory. Shopping for a specific format. Trying to get into Blitz for Flesh and Blood, or building a Standard-legal Pokemon list? If you've got a rough list together, you can check coverage fast before committing. Checking in before a tournament. Last-minute card you need before Friday Night? Drop the list, see if we've got it, and either order ahead or just come in knowing it's waiting for you. Helping a friend get into the game. If someone's new and you've put together a beginner list for them, you can check what's available right now and build around what's in stock rather than chasing things down. What We're Thinking About Next The builder is live and working, but there's more we could do with it. A few things on our radar: Saving lists so you can come back to them without re-pasting every time Filtering by format so the tool knows what's legal and what isn't Showing "we don't have this one, but here's something similar" suggestions for out-of-stock cards A wishlist feature so if we're out of something, you get notified when it comes back in If any of those sound like something you'd actually use, let us know. We build this stuff based on what makes sense for the people coming through the door — or the website. Come check it out, and as always, if you've got questions about singles, events, or anything else, we're here. — The Wandering Adventures Team

Warhammer 40K 11th Edition: What's Changing and What It Means for Your Army If you've been anywhere near the Warhammer community over the last few months, you already know that 11th Edition is coming. Games Workshop officially pulled back the curtain at AdeptiCon 2026 and the hobby world has been buzzing ever since. With a June 2026 release date and the Armageddon launch box already revealed, there's a lot to unpack. Here's everything you need to know — what's changing, what's staying the same, and what it means for your collection. This is Not a Hard Reset The first thing to know, and probably the most important for anyone with a fully painted army sitting on their shelf — 11th Edition is not a ground-up rebuild. Games Workshop has been very clear that this is an evolution of 10th Edition rather than a replacement. Think of it less like moving from 8th to 9th, and more like a thorough tune-up of a system that was already working but had some rough edges that needed sanding down. Your existing codexes remain valid. All current 10th Edition faction rules, recent campaign supplements, and upcoming books carry over into 11th. So if you've been investing in your army over the last couple of years, that investment isn't going anywhere. That's genuinely good news and worth emphasising — you don't need to panic buy or rebuild from scratch. The Lore — Armageddon Burns Again The narrative picks up directly after the events of Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick — the final major 10th Edition expansion. Wazdakka Gutsmek, the legendary Kult of Speed Ork warlord who according to lore has never once left the saddle of his enormous warbike Big Revva, has launched a devastating Speedwaaagh! and his vanguard force has already made landfall on Armageddon before the Imperium can properly respond. Commissar Sebastian Yarrick — battered, outnumbered, and somehow still alive — sends a desperate plea for aid out into the stars. The response is Operation Imperator, a coalition of Space Marine Chapters led by the Blood Angels with support from Salamanders, Ultramarines, Space Wolves and more, surging toward the War World for what GW themselves describe as a good old fashioned Space Marine Crusade. Looming over everything is Ghazghkull Thraka. Wazdakka is just the vanguard — Ghazghkull's main Waaagh! is still coming, and all signs point to him becoming a major focus as 11th Edition develops. Classic 40K, and exactly the kind of stakes-driven storytelling that got most of us hooked on this universe in the first place. The Armageddon Launch Box The launch box is called Armageddon and by all accounts it's the biggest starter set in the history of the game. It pits Space Marines against Orks — two of the most iconic factions in 40K — in a narrative set on one of the grimdark universe's most legendary battlefields. The box contains 23 push-fit Space Marines and 38 push-fit Orks across 12 brand new kits. Notably the Space Marine models include build variations that let you use some of the older helmet options alongside the new Primaris true-scale proportions — a small detail that will mean a lot to players who want their new models to feel continuous with their existing collection. On the Ork side there are some seriously exciting new kits including the Big Mek Dakkarig which looks absolutely mental on the table. The box also includes the core rules, datasheets for all included units, and two mission decks — the Dominatus Armageddon Campaign Mission Deck for narrative play and the Chapter Approved 2026-2027 Mission Deck for matched play competitive games. It's a genuinely complete package for new players and a compelling buy for veterans who want the new models and rules in one box. What's Actually Changing in the Rules This is where it gets interesting. GW has been fairly open about the direction of 11th and the theme is clear — clean up the clunk, not reinvent the wheel. Here are the key changes confirmed so far: Stratagem stacking is gone. This was one of the most complained-about aspects of competitive 10th Edition play. The ability to layer multiple stratagems on top of each other created some genuinely unfun interactions and made the game harder to learn for newer players. Removing it should make games flow faster and feel fairer. Combat has been tightened. Disembarking from transports now allows you to get straight into melee — albeit with a battleshock penalty. This is a quality of life change that makes transport vehicles more tactically interesting and removes some of the frustration of getting out of a Rhino only to stand there doing nothing. Objective markers are out, terrain is in. Instead of the standard circular objective markers, 11th Edition moves to actual terrain pieces as objectives. This is a significant shift that makes the battlefield feel more alive and creates more interesting tactical decisions around holding and contesting objectives. Detachments are getting a major overhaul. Over 70 new and updated Detachments are coming at launch, and crucially you'll now be able to combine multiple Detachments to create a more bespoke set of army abilities. Want to run bikes and terminators together in a way that actually makes sense? 11th Edition lets you do that. This is a huge deal for players who felt constrained by the single Detachment system in 10th. Narrative and matched play are being brought closer together. From the start GW has framed 11th as bridging the gap between competitive and narrative gaming — two communities that have sometimes felt at odds. The new mission structure and campaign deck system seem designed with this in mind. What Does This Mean for Your Army? For most players the answer is — not much changes immediately, and that's a good thing. Your models are still valid. Your codex still works. The core of how you play your faction remains intact. Where you'll notice the difference is on the tabletop in how games feel. Cleaner combat, no stratagem stacking, more dynamic objectives — these are changes that should make individual games more enjoyable regardless of what army you play. The new Detachment system is probably the biggest gameplay shift and it opens up army building options that simply didn't exist before. For new players this is actually a fantastic time to get into the hobby. The Armageddon box is the best starting point the game has ever had, the rules are being streamlined, and the community is buzzing with excitement. If you've been on the fence about starting a Warhammer 40K army, June 2026 is the moment to jump in. Getting Ready for 11th Edition If you want to get ahead of the new edition, the best thing you can do right now is get your existing army painted and ready. 11th Edition is going to bring a wave of new players into the hobby and there's no better time to have a fully painted force on the table to welcome them. We stock the full range of Warhammer 40K at Wandering Adventures in Vaughan — from the latest 10th Edition kits that will carry straight into 11th, to paints, brushes, and everything you need to get your army ready. Browse our Warhammer 40K range at wanderingadventures.ca/collections/40k or come into the store and we'll help you figure out the best place to start. 11th Edition is shaping up to be one of the most exciting releases in recent memory. The changes are smart, the models look incredible, and the Armageddon setting is dripping with lore. We can't wait.