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Hi,

i've been reading and hearing lots of good things about vallejo paints. How they are good quality and better value for money then GW paints. Also i like the idea of the dropper containers. However allthough I want to find an alternative to GW I have not been able to get out the cycle. No local stores sold them so the internet was the only place to go. But being as I all ready have a lot of GW paints buying a set seemed a bit wastefull, and getting them one at a time seemed less cost effective oweing to postage.

But I went to a model shop in town today and they have just started selling vallejo model paints. So i looked at the conversion chart on here and there are colours in this range that say they match allot of the colours I am all ready using but i'm wondeing how closer match they are? as I have allready half painted my army. The main colour that concerns me is the shadow grey equivalent.

Also I have read that Vallejo game range is the better range of paints for 40k etc. what's the difference?


Any info on the above will be a big help.

also does anyone know of a shop near nottingham or derby (UK) that sells the Vallejo Game colours. As this might help with the situation over all.

I started swapping to Vallejo game colour recently as they offer (so far in my experience) a perfect version of GW colours while just being in better bottles and IMO a slightly easier to work with mix.

I could not find any stockists so just ordered them online, considering you are already in Britain, the British online stores I ordered them from could be perfect

game colour is a close match, model colour not as close. Grey is amongst the hardest to match up in any range - buy 3 pots of GW greys over different periods and you'll get different colours based on how dry the paints are, and when they were made. Really though, if you are using washes and highlights on top of the base colours, you can get away with a surprising amount of variation in tone.

I've been told that the equivalent colors are very close. I don't have any crossover between my Citadel paints and my VGC, so I can't vouch for that, personally, but I can vouch for the quality. VGC tends to separate in the bottle rather quickly, so be prepared for a bit of shaking, but aside from that, I prefer it over GW in pretty much every respect. Only GW paints I use are a few metallics, washes, and a handful of foundation paints.

I also agree with Lego about matching colors. If you paint a large area with one gray and lay the other gray next to it, you'll probably notice a difference. If you move them a foot apart, you'll notice it less. If you add a bit of variation over and around it, you'll notice it even less. Even with my rather rudimentary shading and highlighting skills, I've used craft paints with only passing similarities of color to my GW/VGC and once the model is done, you really have to look closely to notice a difference. On the table or on the shelf, they look no more varied than any other models painted by human hands. The color variation due to lighting conditions is going to be more severe than that from the pigmentation, I'd wager.