Your first month of Warhammer 40K

Warhammer 40K is three hobbies in one: assembly, painting, and a miniature war game. Most people fall in love with one and tolerate the others. Here's what to expect in your first month of all three.

By The JustBeginning Editors · Published May 24, 2026

Nobody sits down with a box of Warhammer and instinctively knows what they’re doing. The hobby is genuinely dense at the start — clippers, sprue gates, mold lines, primers, washes, detachment rules. There’s a lot. But it frontloads the complexity. Once you’ve done it once, you’ve done it forever.

This is what the first month actually looks like, without the marketing version.

Week 1: Unboxing and assembly

Open the box and you’ll find sprues — flat plastic frames with parts attached by small connection points called gates. Every model is broken into head, torso, arms, and weapon components that you clip off the sprue, clean up, and glue together.

Step one is to clip parts off the sprue using flush-cut nippers. Cut close to the part but not directly on it — leave a small nub, then trim the nub with a second cut once the part is free. This protects fine details from your first cut.

Step two is mold line removal. Where the two halves of the mold met during manufacturing, a faint ridge runs across every piece. Run your hobby knife along the ridge to scrape it away. Do this before priming. Once paint and primer are on, mold lines become permanent.

Step three: glue. Plastic cement (not super glue) is what you want. It chemically bonds plastic to plastic and sets in about 30 seconds. You can’t reposition after that — dry-fit parts before you glue and have a plan.

The temptation to rush assembly is real. You want to paint. You want to play. Slow down. Five minutes of careful assembly per model saves two hours of frustration repainting mold lines you missed.

Weeks 2–3: Painting your first model

Primer first. Take your assembled models outside on a dry day above 50°F, hold the spray can 12 inches away, and apply a thin, even coat. Two light passes beat one heavy pass — heavy primer fills in details and creates a grainy texture. Let it dry 30 minutes before touching.

Then: base coat, wash, and highlight. That’s the three-step formula every beginner tutorial follows, and it works.

Base coat: apply your primary colors with a medium brush. This doesn’t need to be perfect — just cover the plastic. Two thin coats beat one thick coat (the thin-coat rule applies to every step of painting, forever).

Wash: apply a dark ink (Nuln Oil for silver/grey armor, Agrax Earthshade for brown tones) liberally over the whole model. The wash flows into recesses and creates instant depth and shadow. This is the most dramatic single step in painting — a washed base coat looks like a proper miniature. Give the wash 30 minutes to dry completely.

Highlight: with a small brush and a lighter version of your base color, paint only the raised edges and high points of the model. You don’t need to be precise — one stroke along armor edges is enough. This is what makes a model look three-dimensional.

Your first painted model will not look like the box art. That’s normal. The box art was painted by a professional with years of practice. Your model will look like a model painted by someone in their first month, which is exactly what it is. Put it on the table anyway.

a group of objects on a table — Photo by Fox & Hyde on Unsplash

Week 3–4: Playing your first game

Warhammer 40K uses 28mm plastic models but plays like a board game without a board. You measure distances in inches, take turns moving and shooting, and roll dice to resolve everything. The rules have depth, but the surface layer is simple enough to learn in a single afternoon.

The best way to learn is Combat Patrol format — 500 points per side, a simplified points system, and specific rules designed for new players. Find someone else in the same position (a local game store almost certainly runs new player nights), set up on a 44”×30” table, and start moving.

A few things that will confuse you the first game:

Coherency: units must stay within 2” of at least one other model in the unit. Spreading out is tempting; it’s usually wrong.
Line of sight: in 10th Edition, most shooting rules require your model to have actual line of sight to the target model. If you can’t see it, you usually can’t shoot it.
Stratagems: every faction has special abilities you can activate by spending Command Points. Don’t try to memorize them before your first game. Just notice when your opponent uses them and ask what they do.

You will lose your first several games. That’s not bad news — that’s how games are learned. What you’re actually building is the mental model of how units interact, which decisions matter, and which threats to address when. That takes games to develop, not reading.

The things that will slow you down

Painting fatigue: Combat Patrol has 15–25 models. Most beginners underestimate how many models that is. Batch paint — do the same step on all models before moving to the next step — instead of finishing one model at a time. Assembly-line painting is 3–4x faster.

Analysis paralysis on colors: Pick a color scheme before you prime. GW’s official schemes have tutorials for every faction; just follow one. You can develop your own scheme on your second army. Decision fatigue on colors stalls more projects than bad brushwork.

Buying more models before finishing what you have: This is the single most common hobbyist failure mode. You get excited seeing a cool unit online and order it before your current box is done. You end up with a half-painted pile of sprues and no finished army. Don’t buy anything new until the Combat Patrol is assembled and primed.

What you’re actually building toward

At the end of month one, you’ll have a rough-but-complete painted Combat Patrol and two or three games under your belt. That’s a lot. Most people who open a Warhammer box never get that far.

From here, the hobby branches. Some people become dedicated painters — they care less about winning and more about the craft. Some become competitive players — they focus on lists and meta and tournaments. Most fall somewhere between. All three paths are valid.

The one thing they have in common: the models on the table are the ones you built and painted yourself. That’s worth something that’s genuinely hard to describe until you experience it.

Ready to buy your first box? See our Warhammer 40K gear guide for the exact products to start with, which faction to consider, and what to skip entirely.