Tome of Minis

When Games Workshop announced their spray stick, I did wonder to start with whether it was a practical joke. It wasn't April 1st, so it did seem to be real, but with my existing method of using a box to spray in, I didn't have a need for this. Much later, once lockdown in the UK was relaxed, I visited the local store and decided to get one of these as part of the spend needed to get one of their monthly coins (technically medals as they're not legal tender). It was an on-the-spot decision, thinking that it would be worth trying out when priming my newly purchased Battle Sister squad. My line of thinking was: could this save time when spraying?

I'd not done my research on this spray stick beforehand - I thought the way it'd work would be similar to the paint handle that they also make. This is not the case. Once you've assembled the two parts of plastic to create the stick, you then put elastic bands in place where you want your models to be secured. These can be attached in different places to accomodate the different base sizes. My first thought on seeing these was, "how long will the elastic bands last before spray paint makes them go brittle?" There is however a good supply of them included, so it may be something they've thought of, or felt it good to have replacements for whatever reason.

I guess the big question is, how well do the elastic bands hold the miniatures in place? I was a little unsure so for my first use of this I made sure I was standing on grass in case they fell off. To make best use of the space on the stick I made sure that sub assemblies were on spare bases that I'd put in between miniatures. Without the sub-assemblies creating spacing, I'd have needed two bands per-model put on the stick, with these in-between I only needed one extra elastic band per miniature.

It felt a little clumsy to use - I wanted to keep the spray can an arms length from the miniatures whilst also avoiding getting coated in paint myself. I think this may get easier with more use, as I still ended up with a fine mist over my hands. Swapping hands so I could paint the reverse side also felt awkward, and this ended up being a struggle to get an even coating, though there may be better ways to do this. The handle has holes in which suggests grips for your fingers, but they're not adult sized holes. What I can say though is that the miniatures were completely secure and I never felt like I might lose them.