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 Garfield666 wrote:
Well, if you cannot paint over them without issues, they really are a "one coat solution"

Or, perhaps, a "one coat problem"

 Azazelx wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

They're going to be slower if you're looking to apply other paints over the top of them, but that's not what they're intended for.

People keep saying that, but unless you can point out to me where AP specifically made a statement to that effect, you're just water carrying for a corporation and putting your assumptions out there retroactively.

I quoted it upthread, but it's the item description on the AP website:
https://shop.thearmypainter.com/us/wp8054p
"The all-in-one Warpaint Speedpaint is truly a one-coat painting solution. In the Speedpaint Starter Set you’ll find all the basic colours you need to begin painting beautiful tabletop-quality miniatures in no time. Simply apply one rich coat of Speedpaint directly over a primed miniature and you are done! All of the colours are using tried and true high-quality heavy pigments.

Combined with an innovative resin medium solution that flows perfectly over your miniatures creates an unparalleled painting solution to help you get more time for gaming."

That's how they're marketing them, that's how they intend them to be used. As such, I've got no interest in them but it's pretty straightforward.

If you click to "Instructions" it also says "If you wish to add layers or highlights with acrylic paints, like our Warpaints, we recommend applying a layer of our Anti-Shine Matt Varnish Spray or Airbrush Varnish first. If you do not plan to highlight your mini, use the varnish to seal in and protect all of those rich, one-coat colours and make your miniature tabletop-ready." - though I don't believe that was there when they first launched.

deano2099 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Azazelx wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

They're going to be slower if you're looking to apply other paints over the top of them, but that's not what they're intended for.

People keep saying that, but unless you can point out to me where AP specifically made a statement to that effect, you're just water carrying for a corporation and putting your assumptions out there retroactively.

I quoted it upthread, but it's the item description on the AP website:
https://shop.thearmypainter.com/us/wp8054p
"The all-in-one Warpaint Speedpaint is truly a one-coat painting solution. In the Speedpaint Starter Set you’ll find all the basic colours you need to begin painting beautiful tabletop-quality miniatures in no time. Simply apply one rich coat of Speedpaint directly over a primed miniature and you are done! All of the colours are using tried and true high-quality heavy pigments.

Combined with an innovative resin medium solution that flows perfectly over your miniatures creates an unparalleled painting solution to help you get more time for gaming."

That's how they're marketing them, that's how they intend them to be used. As such, I've got no interest in them but it's pretty straightforward.

If you click to "Instructions" it also says "If you wish to add layers or highlights with acrylic paints, like our Warpaints, we recommend applying a layer of our Anti-Shine Matt Varnish Spray or Airbrush Varnish first. If you do not plan to highlight your mini, use the varnish to seal in and protect all of those rich, one-coat colours and make your miniature tabletop-ready." - though I don't believe that was there when they first launched.

They also posted this video just over two weeks ago once the reactivation issues became more widely known.

deano2099 wrote:
"The all-in-one Warpaint Speedpaint is truly a one-coat painting solution. In the Speedpaint Starter Set you’ll find all the basic colours you need to begin painting beautiful tabletop-quality miniatures in no time. Simply apply one rich coat of Speedpaint directly over a primed miniature and you are done! All of the colours are using tried and true high-quality heavy pigments.

Combined with an innovative resin medium solution that flows perfectly over your miniatures creates an unparalleled painting solution to help you get more time for gaming."

That's how they're marketing them, that's how they intend them to be used. As such, I've got no interest in them but it's pretty straightforward.

...can anyone think of a model that would be completed with just 'one rich slap of paint'?

I mean, even necrons and nighthaunt need at least 5 different colors for acceptable results, and these are the most minimalist GW paint schemes...

Even if we generously assume they meant 'one rich slap of paint' on different parts of the model, inability to fix any errors or spillovers thanks to 'rich' application kind of clashes with this rosy picture. Especially seeing they are marketing it to new modellers who will make more of them.

deano2099 wrote:
If you click to "Instructions" it also says "If you wish to add layers or highlights with acrylic paints, like our Warpaints, we recommend applying a layer of our Anti-Shine Matt Varnish Spray or Airbrush Varnish first. If you do not plan to highlight your mini, use the varnish to seal in and protect all of those rich, one-coat colours and make your miniature tabletop-ready." - though I don't believe that was there when they first launched.

Translation - "remember how we bragged it would be cheaper and faster than contrast? We lied. Be prepared to waste a lot of time, money and modelling supplies for our product to work like we promised it can (and how all the competing ones do)"

And nope, it wasn't there until weeks after real reviewers, not shameless shills like goober, tried it. Which makes it nice bait and switch as I can't believe painting company is incapable of spotting issues a lot of normal painters caught on the first try...

Has anyone tried just mixing in some contrast medium? How is the to AP "contrast" medium? I would suspect adding in more medium (how I like to use these paints as a smoother less grainy/blotchy/patchy wash) might fix the reactivation issues pretty okay. Like how adding PVA glue with future or whatever keeps it from reactivating with water and paint in the old magic wash recipes. Which I maintain are the precursors to all these new contrast paints btw..

 Irbis wrote:

I mean, even necrons and nighthaunt need at least 5 different colors for acceptable results, and these are the most minimalist GW paint schemes...

A basic Necron scheme would need a base spray of silver, and a wash of green over relevant parts. Give the silver a wash of black of you really want to.

That would give you a simple tabletop scheme. It wouldn't win you any awards, but it would be on par with (or better than) the models that a lot of gamers are already using.

Translation - "remember how we bragged it would be cheaper and faster than contrast?

Did they?

 insaniak wrote:

Translation - "remember how we bragged it would be cheaper and faster than contrast?

Did they?

It was mostly the shills on YT saying that.

One area I'd love to see contrasts compared to speed paints is painting a model dark brown, drybrushing it white, then applying either speed paint or contrast. I think that's a usage scenario that could look quite good for only slightly more time input than prime white -> ink.

At this point I can't really tell if I should try these or not.

I’m pretty excited to use these for all the non-hero miniatures. One coat of paint and done? Nice. I like how the mini a page or two back came out. If mine look close to that good I’ll be happy.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’m pretty excited to use these for all the non-hero miniatures. One coat of paint and done? Nice. I like how the mini a page or two back came out. If mine look close to that good I’ll be happy.

It's no different to what you could have achieved with Contrast paints for the last two years.

Except I would have had to pay more and give GW money to use Contrast paints. I’ve been using Vallejo and Army Painter for years.

jullevi wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’m pretty excited to use these for all the non-hero miniatures. One coat of paint and done? Nice. I like how the mini a page or two back came out. If mine look close to that good I’ll be happy.

It's no different to what you could have achieved with Contrast paints for the last two years.

And some would argue it's very similar to what you could have achieved with inks for the last three decades.

 Irbis wrote:


And nope, it wasn't there until weeks after real reviewers, not shameless shills like goober, tried it. Which makes it nice bait and switch as I can't believe painting company is incapable of spotting issues a lot of normal painters caught on the first try...

That's where it gets complicated to be honest. When the question of what "when did Army Painter say it only works this way?" came up I did some digging and the reality was that Army Painter themselves put out very little in terms of announcing the thing *themselves*. They had clearly sent a press release to a bunch of sites and bloggers and YouTubers, but that release wasn't even put up on their own website as a news article. They did one video but it was more "how we came up with this" rather than "what it does". So all the news announcing this came from third parties and they started plugging it as a "Contrast killer" or whatever. Nothing from AP themselves made that claim, but equally by putting out no announcement themselves, they'd kind of encouraging it.

I stand by the fact that if you actually go through AP's own coverage and claims around the paints, they are focused entirely on "one coat" and the speed painting element. They've never claimed that they're for any other use. But then they've put out so little, and have also been happy for other folk to make those claims for them.

I tried GW's contrast paint to one step my Emporer's Children in purple. First problem their purple was more red than blue. So then I had to wash the figure in blue to get the correct shade. Then I tried priming the figure blue and applying the contrast. It worked somewhat but I still needed to wash over it to get to purple. All I'm saying is that contrast paints are not the be all end all in one coat painting. I may give the army painter speed paint a try when I next need some figures painted.

deano2099 wrote:
I stand by the fact that if you actually go through AP's own coverage and claims around the paints, they are focused entirely on "one coat" and the speed painting element. They've never claimed that they're for any other use.

In my mind, being able to paint over another paint is such a basic feature of acrylic paints that you wouldn't expect it to be explicitly stated, rather if it is unsuitable for that purpose then there should be a disclaimer as such.

Like, you don't see in car advertisements "And it can be driven in the rain!" because that's just assumed in the modern world that a car can be driven in the rain.

Acrylic paints dry fast and you can paint over them. That's just how they work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
I tried GW's contrast paint to one step my Emporer's Children in purple. First problem their purple was more red than blue. So then I had to wash the figure in blue to get the correct shade. Then I tried priming the figure blue and applying the contrast. It worked somewhat but I still needed to wash over it to get to purple. All I'm saying is that contrast paints are not the be all end all in one coat painting. I may give the army painter speed paint a try when I next need some figures painted.

I'd argue that "one coat painting" is a somewhat unachievable goal unless your standards are very low or in a few very specific cases where being monochromatic is the goal, because contrasts or speed paints or whatever will always end up monochrome where as you'll almost always want some amount of colour variation.

So either starting with a coloured undercoat or applying additional layers of washes, edge highlights, etc are usually desirable and don't add much to the painting time.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I'd argue that "one coat painting" is a somewhat unachievable goal unless your standards are very low or in a few very specific cases where being monochromatic is the goal, because contrasts or speed paints or whatever will always end up monochrome where as you'll almost always want some amount of colour variation.

So either starting with a coloured undercoat or applying additional layers of washes, edge highlights, etc are usually desirable and don't add much to the painting time.

There are a lot of gamers out there right now painting a base colour and throwing a wash over it and calling it done. Speedpaints take that from two steps to one, by removing the need for the separate wash layer. Hence the 'one coat solution'.

There are a lot of other gamers out there just painting base colours and calling it done. Speedpaint will potentially give these people better results for the same painting time.

Not everyone is interested in applying multiple wash layers or edge highlights. And an awful lot will be more than happy to not need to apply edge highlights.

I'll still be picking up these paints, as I like GW contrast, but hate the bottles as I find it a total faff to mix colours using their pop top lids.

Hence I was quite excited by AP speedpaint as I immediately thought of how easy it would be to create great tones and precise mixtures using a contrast type paint in a dropper bottle!

Obviously the re-activation issue is a giant ball-drop. No point in pretending otherwise. Even the most novice of painter wouldn't like the idea of being told, "Look you don't need more than one coat because it looks fine, but even if you did want more than one coat, you can't do it without messing your model up."

Thats not a quirk or idiosyncrasy, its just an error in product development that obviously got discovered beyond the point of no return.

As someone whose just a punter, I have no idea how something like that happens? They never thought to try painting over their own colour range to see what happens? Such as using the grey over a white prime and then adding a blue on top of that?

The whole fiasco seems bizarre to me.

 Gregor Samsa wrote:

As someone whose just a punter, I have no idea how something like that happens? They never thought to try painting over their own colour range to see what happens? Such as using the grey over a white prime and then adding a blue on top of that?

It's quite likely they did, but had the models sitting long enough between coats that it wasn't an issue. The actual curing time seems to be highly dependent on local conditions. They showed a model that had been sitting overnight in their office, and it had no apparent reactivation. Others have mentioned it still being an issue after a week. So most likely triggered by humidity and temperature, and also affected differently by different brands of sprays.

For me worst part of reactivation is that it screws even one coat solution like i can do with contrast. Can't touch up.

A) don't remember when i haven't done mistake and botched paint stroke at wrong part
B) if i need to either be careful to not or varnish in between(and o this if i do slip) then...well bye bye speed painting, it goes from fast one coat solution to slow one coat solution.

So we are left with slower solution whose selling point is price, not quality.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
I stand by the fact that if you actually go through AP's own coverage and claims around the paints, they are focused entirely on "one coat" and the speed painting element. They've never claimed that they're for any other use.

In my mind, being able to paint over another paint is such a basic feature of acrylic paints that you wouldn't expect it to be explicitly stated, rather if it is unsuitable for that purpose then there should be a disclaimer as such.

Like, you don't see in car advertisements "And it can be driven in the rain!" because that's just assumed in the modern world that a car can be driven in the rain.

Acrylic paints dry fast and you can paint over them. That's just how they work.

While that's fair, I'd also note that at no point in AP's product description are they even called acrylic paints. For that matter they're not even called paint. It's always "SpeedPaint"

Orwell style then

I could see myself using these, to be fair. Get a bunch of basic troops tabletop-ready with Speedpaint, varnish, potentially come back later to add highlights if I can be bothered. But that still feels like an edge case, really.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I could see myself using these, to be fair. Get a bunch of basic troops tabletop-ready with Speedpaint, varnish, potentially come back later to add highlights if I can be bothered. But that still feels like an edge case, really.

Can see this working very well for swarms of little tyranids. Prime, one coat, gloss varnish.

Agreed, though I've tended to just use a couple of colours of Contrast for the same purpose.

I think for me the edge case is troops with large areas of hard inorganic armour. Speedpaint is definitely superior there.

BUT, I have a full range of Contrast paints and use them daily. The same colours that make for cool, crabby-looking Nids also work well as hair colours for humans, or jumpsuit colours for space dwarfs, among many other uses. Whereas I'd probably buy specific colours of Speedpaint for specific troop armour painting.

deano2099 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
I stand by the fact that if you actually go through AP's own coverage and claims around the paints, they are focused entirely on "one coat" and the speed painting element. They've never claimed that they're for any other use.

In my mind, being able to paint over another paint is such a basic feature of acrylic paints that you wouldn't expect it to be explicitly stated, rather if it is unsuitable for that purpose then there should be a disclaimer as such.

Like, you don't see in car advertisements "And it can be driven in the rain!" because that's just assumed in the modern world that a car can be driven in the rain.

Acrylic paints dry fast and you can paint over them. That's just how they work.

While that's fair, I'd also note that at no point in AP's product description are they even called acrylic paints. For that matter they're not even called paint. It's always "SpeedPaint"

I could probably take my comment a step further and say that every miniature hobby paint on the market is an acrylic and the only ones that aren't are clearly labelled as such (e.g. enamels from AK, oils from Abteilung, they're very clearly advertised as being what they are).

Basically, my point is there's a certain expectation that a product will behave in a certain way because that is by far the norm, so when people read "one coat solution" they don't tend to think "a right pain in the arse if you want more than one coat".




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I could see myself using these, to be fair. Get a bunch of basic troops tabletop-ready with Speedpaint, varnish, potentially come back later to add highlights if I can be bothered. But that still feels like an edge case, really.

Can see this working very well for swarms of little tyranids. Prime, one coat, gloss varnish.

In my experience, tyranids actually have a lot of big flat or gently surfaces that lack fine detail on them, so I'm not sure Contrasts or SpeedPaints are the way to go with them. My Tyranids are primed white followed by a brown wash, and it was surprisingly difficult to avoid stain marks and keep them looking smooth.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I could see myself using these, to be fair. Get a bunch of basic troops tabletop-ready with Speedpaint, varnish, potentially come back later to add highlights if I can be bothered. But that still feels like an edge case, really.

Funnily enough, that's pretty much exactly what GW used to recommend, just without the Speedpaint, obviously.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

While that's fair, I'd also note that at no point in AP's product description are they even called acrylic paints. For that matter they're not even called paint. It's always "SpeedPaint"

I could probably take my comment a step further and say that every miniature hobby paint on the market is an acrylic and the only ones that aren't are clearly labelled as such (e.g. enamels from AK, oils from Abteilung, they're very clearly advertised as being what they are).

Basically, my point is there's a certain expectation that a product will behave in a certain way because that is by far the norm, so when people read "one coat solution" they don't tend to think "a right pain in the arse if you want more than one coat".

Contrast has been great for certain models, but not a solution for everything. I've painted a lot of Seraphon with them and they look outstanding.

They just happen to be pretty poor for GW's most popular line of miniatures: Space Marines.

For other minis they work "good enough" and mostly as advertised. Especially for board game minis.

At this point after reviews I'd only even consider Speedpaint for some color that I can't get with Contrast. I really don't use so much of the stuff that the price difference would sway me. I've continuously had poor performance from Army Painter paints, but I do like their wet palette. I think the only paint I use from them anymore is their black since it's in a dropper bottle and I can buy it at my FLGS.

 insaniak wrote:

 Gregor Samsa wrote:

As someone whose just a punter, I have no idea how something like that happens? They never thought to try painting over their own colour range to see what happens? Such as using the grey over a white prime and then adding a blue on top of that?

It's quite likely they did, but had the models sitting long enough between coats that it wasn't an issue. The actual curing time seems to be highly dependent on local conditions. They showed a model that had been sitting overnight in their office, and it had no apparent reactivation. Others have mentioned it still being an issue after a week. So most likely triggered by humidity and temperature, and also affected differently by different brands of sprays.

If you're talking about this from their twitter account, then it was painted on a Monday afternoon and then again sometime near midday on Wednesday so it had almost 48 hours to cure, not 'overnight'.

Being unable to do basic things like paint buttons/buckles over something you slopped the speedpaint on makes it seem essentially useless. Saving a few bucks to spend a lot more time to get essentially the same result is a poor trade unless you're just that broke.