Varnish

[JT-Y]

A light spray of aerosol varnish over that once you've done the bases will act to seal it all, especially the raised areas where your fingers continually go towards.
Army Painter is good, but I should add that it is best used after you've stood the tin on a bowl of warm>hot water. This is gets everything to the same temperature so that it mixes better, otherwise the propellant can sit in the bottom of the can very dense and cold and most aerosol issues are caused by improper mixing.
It's a good tip for any aerosol, regardless of the ambient temperature.

It might sound like a lot of aggro varnishing metal mini's in this way, but in many years of doing my own like that it's worked to protect them very well from the rigours of gaming. I've had a few survive some very hard knocks.

[hissa-lives]

I actually have a can of the army painters spray waiting for a weekend when I have time and weather decent. Your guide was invaluable and once nooby mistakes sorted is turning out pretty nicely. After investing the tiem and effort in painting I'd much rather make sure they're protected properly and already I knocked over my treeman onto 3 others and they survived without a mark so very happy!

Thanks to all advice in this thread, especially to JT-Y for sharing the guide. Once all done will take proper pictures (if I can get decent ones this time) and post them up. My old human team is now stripped ready to be painted properly next

[the solitaire]

Looking forward to that human team. The elves look quite nice already.

I´m not sure if the brand is available in your neck of the woods, but it should be readily available through ebay.

Dupli Color makes some spray on clear varnish as well. I used their paints to seal my dungeonbowl gaming board, my swamp pitch and most of my Cthulhoid Chaos team. It´s quite shiny but really tough, and it really helps keeping static grass where you intended it to be. It´s cheap as well.