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I just got this for Xmas from family members who know I'm into toy soldiers, but wouldn't really know what GW is from a hole in the ground.

Now from what I can tell after shaking the bottles and opening them, the colors are fairly similar to GW. I also wonder if there yellow is a stronger pigmant than GW's sunburst yellow (which is what it looks like)... that'd be nice.

Still, I wonder how Testors stacks up to GW or P3?

I'm actually thinking of using those on my ork boyz (I have over a 100 to paint) in order to save some cash... so it's not like they need to be ZOMG AWESOME paint... I just don't want the models to be outright ugly either.

A cursory google search didn't yield much... most of the info is close to 10 years old and warn that testor paints is enamal, not acrylic... but the paint set I have is clearly labelled as Acrylic...?

Any help/opinion would be appreciated.

They are:

Glossy

Thicker

Far below GW/P3/Vallejo standards

Seriously, if you're not a good painter to start with it's not a good idea to handicap yourself with poor materials as well.

99% chance those are enamel paints too, they'll require thinner to clean up and I don't know how well they work with acrylic hobby paints. I used the Testors paint back in my model car building days, but the hobby acrylics are MUCH easier to use and I figure you go with one or the other

Stay away unless you're looking to paint glossy sports car models.

Enamel paints. Testors has been around forever.

They are decent, but use situationally. Also, you will need some paint thinner to clean up.

You will prob need some dullcoat to dull them down a fair bit.

Even if it actually is real acrylic I am very skeptical as to its effectiveness. There is a reason testors has a Model Master line of product.

Testors sells one useful product, dull coat.

and plastic glue!!!!

to all the above. Do not use that paint, you'll wind of with a laundry list of reasons you regretted it. Testors is not a bad company, it's just a bad application for this kind of painting.

Testors paints are excellent...essentially they are the standard for scale model work.

However, that set there is more for scale car models...you probably dont want to paint gaming miniatures with them. As stated above they are much heavier/thicker and are high gloss.

For many years I used testors flat paints to do miniatures. Even though I use mostly GW now I still have some testors flats I use.

Um, people? He clearly stated they are Testor's Acrylics, not Testor's Enamel.

They DON'T need thinner, and they may or may not be glossy, depending. Makes the rest of your criticisms suspect to me. I'm using some Testor's Acrylic right now, and it's not glossy or thick, nor does it need thinner. Seems good to me, but I don't have much experience to compare it to, so I'm also interested in answers to the OP's question.

All I'm sayin' is, if you're going to answer the question, make sure you're informed!

Hans Chung-Otterson wrote:Um, people? He clearly stated they are Testor's Acrylics, not Testor's Enamel.

They DON'T need thinner, and they may or may not be glossy, depending. Makes the rest of your criticisms suspect to me. I'm using some Testor's Acrylic right now, and it's not glossy or thick, nor does it need thinner. Seems good to me, but I don't have much experience to compare it to, so I'm also interested in answers to the OP's question.

All I'm sayin' is, if you're going to answer the question, make sure you're informed!

I think I'm fairly informed:



Pactra is a division of Testors. I've been using their paints since I have been painting.

If you follow the link he provided the paints he has are clearly glossy. All-Purpose Acrylic 9 Color Gloss Paint Set.

Gloss paint has it's place but he's just starting out and the chances of him being unhappy with the results of his labor are dramatically increased by using the wrong tool for the job.


To OP- Don't use the stuff you have right now. Testors is a good company but those are not the paints you want. They are for high-gloss race cars and the like. You want flat tones like their aircraft and military vehicle paints.

All of my Orks have Pactra Flat Light Green drybrushed over flat black spray primer for their skin tone. This is what it looks like:





In fact most of the paints in those pictures are Testors / Pactra. The blue on the Powersword is GW (Ultramarines Blue) and all of the metal bits are Boltgun Metal. But there's nothing special about GW paints. I have an entire army of Death Guard Plague Marines that hasn't seen a drop of Citadel paint on them since I ran out of the ink they used to make. Bottom line is there's a lot of companies that make quality products for our hobby, but in every case you want to go for flat paints. You can make something glossy after the fact with washes, glazes, paint-on gloss, etc.

You might be able to put them to better use on your vehicles. If the metallics in that set have decent coverage there's no need to waste them. The gloss colours don't necessarily matter that much if you're going to be dull coating anyway, unless they just don't take washes well.

Hopefully it doesn't need saying, but please don't use the brush that comes with that set for painting anything...

skalk: sorry for the hostility, I wasn't calling you out specifically.

I should say I agree that flat colors are the way to go.

My opinion is that Testor's flat "model master" acrylic paints are great.