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Is it just me or do glazes make life much easier for newbie painters?

They're good to simulate a wet-blending effect.

Not just newbies, but yes. I've found glazes to be a godsend when it comes to smoothing out layers. Don't have any of GW's dedicated glazes, but I've been using diluted inks or thin layers of premixed washes (neat, as they're less strongly pigmented than straight inks) to smooth out highlights and increase color saturation for a while, now. Works a treat.

I don't know what the 'new' GW glazes are, but the 'old' washes are AMAZING. Not too hard to paint decent table top ready models with the help of washes.

Super Newb wrote:
I don't know what the 'new' GW glazes are, but the 'old' washes are AMAZING. Not too hard to paint decent table top ready models with the help of washes.

As I understand it, the glazes didn't exist in the old paint range. They're different than washes; washes simulate shading, whereas glazes appear to smooth transitions between colors, making it look like a better paint job than it actually is. Glazes are a quick way to make a few contrasting layers appear to be a smooth transition, like a wet-blend as sing-your-life mentioned above.

Glazing isnt a new thing
It lets you make use of underpainting, and lets you achieve lots of colours that werent previously possible with the paints at hand.
Its a pretty staple technique used in all sorts of art applications.
Airbrushers call their glazes candies, allthough candies are technically dyes suspended in lacquer (which means theyre actually transparent and will always show the under painting no mater how many layers you go with).
The next step is to learn to mix colours by layering glazes; many airbrush artists have no need to mix colours prior to spraying as they mix them in transparent layers.

I've not tried it with GW's latest glaze paints, but I'd be interested to see if they become opaque after so many layers or if they indeed always show the under painting (most transparents do this.. only really candy paints do not).

Edit; as far as i can tell the main difference between GW's 'shade' and 'glaze' is that a shade is a dark colour and a glaze is not. The glaze still pools up in recesses if you let it. but as the colour is bright and not dark it will just lead to a weird effect of the colour being more saturated in the recesses if you allow pooling.

Glazes, inks, shades, washes, whatever make a bad paint job decent, decent paintjobs good, and good ones great. I love them!