Lately at Warhammer Community Towers, we’ve been having something of a debate.* With both sides at an impasse, we’ve decided it’s time for the community itself to pitch in on our newest occasional feature – the Big Debate. The first question on the docket – some of us believe that drilling the barrels of your miniatures’ guns is a quick and easy way to enhance their appeal, while others are convinced that it’s a complete waste of time.
It’s not a deadlock you can settle with dice, so we’re presenting the case to you, the loyal fans of all things Warhammer.
Before you make your own call, here’s the case for the prosecution:
Luke
I drill about 90% of my barrels. It takes about 30 seconds per model, and you don’t need to drill too far in to get the effect. Just a decent enough indentation that’s a few millimetres deep. For me, this is somewhere between removing mould lines and filling the gaps on assembled miniatures.
I don’t particularly care if other people do it or not, but every undrilled barrel and unscraped mould line that I see on my own miniatures haunts me. There might have even been a few that have been immortalised in photography in articles on this very website…**
Jon
Of the plethora of hobby options available when building and painting your miniatures, I find very little else has a bigger visual impact compared to the level of time and effort required as drilling out a barrel – particularly on larger weapons like bolt rifles. As Luke mentions, just a couple of mm will give you a super crisp detail that can really lift your little guys.
My top tip to make the process as stress-free as possible is to carefully make an indentation in the plastic, wherever you’d like to centre the hole you want to drill, using a small sharp object – like a pin, or the tip of a hobby knife. This will help you to stop the tip of your drill wandering when it starts to turn, so your hole can end up exactly where you planned it.
Rob
I, like most Warhammer hobbyists, spend the grand majority of my time at least three feet away from my miniatures, and at that range you can barely even see if a barrel is drilled or not. I have nothing against those who feel that taking the time to scrape a tiny amount of plastic out of a tiny gun is worth the effort, but the idea that you should be doing it is patently ludicrous.
That’s not to say weapons don’t deserve a little attention, but a nice dot of black paint with a small brush takes a fraction of the time and looks nearly identical. Take a step back and you’d never know the difference, and you can get on with painting the rest of your grey hoard without needing to whip out the pin vise.
Tom
There are only so many years left in any of our lives, and these could be spent doing literally anything else than making an off-centre incision in the barrel of a tiny gun. A black dot will do just as well, but so will an all-over dunk in Nuln Oil, or just leaving it blank!
It takes me long enough to paint my models already, and most of us struggle to even get the colours between the lines – drilling a boltgun’s barrel while my squad’s pauldron rims are smeared like Harlequin motley feels like very slowly and painstakingly closing the stable door after the domestic horse has gone extinct.
Obviously – before 300 pin-drill superfans get worked up in the ‘all comments’ section on Facebook – this is very much a “you do you” situation, but I would prefer to enjoy the last few moments I have on this Earth without feeling pressured to make unnecessary performations in my unsprayed grey plastic.
Do you drill your barrels? Do you think it’s just a pointless exercise? Have you dodged the question by arming your troops exclusively with slings and arrows? Show us your own models on Facebook and Twitter/X, and pitch into this extremely important debate.
* We’ve been having lots, actually
** Now that he mentions it, we can’t remember seeing a single drilled gun barrel on Luke’s Ushoran. For shame!