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I was in a local hobby shop today and I found this neat company that sells spray paint called tamiya. Has anyone used this brand? It seems pretty good, and it's made just for plastics. They've got some pretty cool colors, including a nice dheneb stone-ish color that would be really good for basing my Guardsmen. Their prices seem pretty good too. Should I go for it, or should I look for army painter instead?

Tamiya also do model kits (in case you hadn't noticed).

Most of their paint colours are for the "realistic" scale model market (so they have colours used by militaries around the world). Their olive greens are quite nice, and the desert yellows also cover quite well.

I've used them on and off. Their acrylics in jars are better suited to airbrushing than brush painting as well.

I have a dark red spray as my Eldar are this colour. Can be great if you want to base coat in something other then white or black. Im going to use it for my Eldar vehicles as brushing can take forever.

Ed.. Iv heard of Dakka's using Tamiya paints for blood effects. Never tried it though.

chromedog wrote:Tamiya also do model kits (in case you hadn't noticed).

Most of their paint colours are for the "realistic" scale model market (so they have colours used by militaries around the world). Their olive greens are quite nice, and the desert yellows also cover quite well.

I've used them on and off. Their acrylics in jars are better suited to airbrushing than brush painting as well.

This.

However, it's also worth noting that Vallejo has a very good line of realistic paint colors that they have for both airbrushing and brush painting.

tamiya paints diluted with a bit of tamiya acrylic thinner is wonderful for airbrushing. I like it better than Vallejo Model Air.

It is also worth noting that Tamiya paints (in the jars) are a different sort of acrylic to the Citadel type.
They are possibly different from the Vallejo range, but not sure what sort of polymers their mediums use.

Tamiya acrylics are alcohol based. You cannot brush them on well with just water as a thinner. They need either Tamiya thinners or isopropol (spelling?)
The "hot" nature can affect other types of acrylic paints so be careful of overpainting with the different systems.

They cannot be mixed with paints like Citadel as they will curdle.

As mentioned they are good for airbrushing. I don't really use them now but they can be tamed with a hairy stick, but the water based acrylics are easier to brush on imho.

I used Tamiya Clear Colours a lot (until GW released their washes).

As Chibi says, Tamiya acrylics can't be thinned with water (although brushes can still be cleaned with water) - other than that, they're nice to use.

Also note that although you can use Tamiya's thinner on GW paints don't add it to the paint pot (like I did). It cures the paint in to one big lump!

Wouldn't recommend using Tamiya thinners with Citadel paints. There are better alternatives to use that are cheaper and won't risk messing up your model.

I use Tamiya just as much as citadel paints and get great results from them generally.
The only downside I've found is their metallics;they just don't work!I'm surprised to see that other posters
reckon you can't thin them with just water,that has not been my experience(can somebody who posted explain what they were aiming to achieve with thinning?)
Tamiya are just the same as citadel,you need to build up the layers to get a good effect.
As far as I've found,they mix no problem with citadel.