Most of you who follow Play it Painted! on social media has figured out by now that we offer a commission painting service. Yet, we’ve never really clarified how it all works. Why? Because in the past, we used to take each situation and consider…

Oh wait, nevermind. I was just too lazy to sit down and spell it out. Let’s try to do that now:

Play it Painted! commissions is a painting service designed for high quality tabletop standard miniatures, delivered in a timely manner at a reasonable cost to our customers.

Essentially- the idea is to produce painted projects that gamers will enjoy gaming with, at prices that are reasonable to our customers and ourselves. Being ourselves gamers, we know the excitement and anticipation of playing miniature games. The urge to buy boxes and boxes of minis, all the while dreaming of how glorious it will all look on the table as you lead them to victory, is immense and you want to get to that endpoint as soon as possible, and we want to help get you there. Let’s go over the basics of what most projects entail, and how much it will cost.

The Ideal Project

The ideal commission for us is based around small skirmish games, typically 6-10 models, assembled, painted , and based to a high tabletop standard. We call this ideal because we believe this is the best value to our customers and is optimal time and pricing to make this worthwhile to our painting team. For projects like this, our pricing is 100% of the MSRP of the models. So for example, submitting a 6 player Guild Ball team that costs $85 at full retail, will cost you $85 to be assembled, based, and painted to a high tabletop standard using the basic color scheme of the Guild, and a turnaround time of no longer than 14 days upon receipt of all materials and 50% payment.

We find that this is the ideal setup for turning around quality commissions at a reasonable price and not burning us out as we paint.  Of course your project may not fit exactly into this, and as these are your models you probably have some stipulations of your own. Let’s look at some modifications to your project:

Pricing:

• Build and paint: 100% MSRP. Includes basic painting service plus basic model assembly and basing.
• Un-supported system (a game we don’t play) Add +10% MSRP to project cost.
• Specify color scheme: +10%MSRP.
• Freehand: Freehand is not included in the painting of your miniatures outside of dotting the eyes, or other as the result of a basic painting technique (gems for example). In some cases freehand may be included at the painter’s discretion.
• Over quota: +15% for each model above over 10
• Board games: For board games, please use estimate of $4 for low detail, up to $8 for high detail, and use equivalent MSRP for miniatures compatible for tabletop wargames (so a Terminator from the Space Hulk board game would use the starting MSRP of a WH40K Terminator).
• Larger projects may be split into smaller 10pc quotes to mitigate over quota costs, however split projects may see interruption between sets.

Limitations/Exemptions:

• For purposes of this guide a single model is defined as a single, assembled piece no taller than 3” on a base no larger than 40mm. Single models on bases larger than 40MM may be considered a large model/Vehicle (+10%), or considered a giant model if it’s assembled dimensions exceed 60 cubic inches (+25%).
• In general I do not paint models for Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40,000. However I will accept models from GW specialist games like Blood Bowl or Necromunda.