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Ive found the Vallejo game colour 72 paint set for £136 on the internet, is it worth it? I dont really know what colours i need so buying a whole set i can top up as and when i run out is a good idea and its cheaper than buying them seperately (and you get a case and brushes), but still... its a lot of money. Its mainly for Infinity and Warmahordes.

I've been looking into getting the full set but not anywhere near that cheap. Can you provide a link

http://elementgames.co.uk/paints-hobby-and-scenery/paints-hobby-and-scenery-by-manufacturer/vallejo-paints/game-color-mega-paint-set here you go. Hope this isn't breaking any rules or anything

Vallejo Game Colour is a great range of paints if you're looking for vibrant colours for sci-fi and fantasy. If more muted, camo/military looking colours are your thing, Vallejo Model Colour or Vallejo Model Air would be better. if you airbrush at all, any will be fine but VMA is easier. VMA is my favourite range so I use colours from that where possible, then go to VGC if VMA doesn't have the colour.

Buying a set is a good idea if you plan to stay in the hobby for a long time and paint multiple armies. It'll give you a good base to work from so you won't need to go out and buy paints so often (or at all). Having the colours in front of me helps me greatly with creativity I find so it was worth it for that alone.

Is VMA just for airbrushes? Also, so far i have Nomads and SKorne which are bright, and Cryx and Ariadna which are muted (Black/bright green, and camo..) so...thats annoying haha.

ImAGeek wrote:
Is VMA just for airbrushes? Also, so far i have Nomads and SKorne which are bright, and Cryx and Ariadna which are muted (Black/bright green, and camo..) so...thats annoying haha.

There work fine for brush painting, but any range designed for a brush would be better.

I use VMC for muted colours, which is VMA but unthinned and with more tones.

Can i still get brighter tones with the VMC?

ImAGeek wrote:
Can i still get brighter tones with the VMC?

The line has a couple of brighter tones.

I have the game colour bundle. I got it about two years ago, for christmas, and I still have all the original colours (low on white and gun metal, but there is still enough left!).

I've never brought any other paints to compliment this set, I just mix the colours in it. The only thing I've gone outside the set for, is washes and airbrush colours.

Despite me generally liking the set, I will say there are a few colours i've never used (about 5 colours?). But that is more to do with what I paint that the set itself. So, if you're going to be painting a set scheme, like ultramarines, this set is probably overkill.

Im gonna have a few factions to paint, a couple of warmahordes and a couple for infinity and ill probably get more soon. If i only got one, which do you think would be the better option?

ImAGeek wrote:
Is VMA just for airbrushes? Also, so far i have Nomads and SKorne which are bright, and Cryx and Ariadna which are muted (Black/bright green, and camo..) so...thats annoying haha.

You CAN hairy brush paint with VMA, but I personally don't recommend it. They have a weird sheen when you hairy brush paint them. I used some VMA black with a hairy brush on some Night Goblins and it took a couple of coats of satin varnish to get rid of the annoying sheen.

When you airbrush them, they have a nicer texture to them.

Ah okay. Maybe one day I'll get I to airbrushing but I doubt I'm even good at normal painting at the moment!

ImAGeek wrote:
Im gonna have a few factions to paint, a couple of warmahordes and a couple for infinity and ill probably get more soon. If i only got one, which do you think would be the better option?

Well, if you've got multiple factions on the go, then the VGC bundle might be a good idea.

Game colour as opposed to Model colour? Okay thank you, how come? sorry I'm asking so many questions, but I'm itching to get painting and I wanna make the most of my money

VGC is a very much brighter palette than VMC, as has been mentioned, so is better suited for the fantasy/sci if end of the spectrum, so if you're looking to do more that than the FoW/Bolt Action historical stuff, it will have a higher hit rate of useful colours than any sort of VMC bundle.

Don't ignore VMC altogether though, as there's some great technical and special paints in that range, such as all the mediums, transparents, fluorescents and specifically one that a friend of mine tipped me off to, Smoke, which is superficially just a brown, but when thinned makes and excellent wash to weather/age just about anything you care to apply it to.

If you are after a cheap paint set then I would strongly suggest that you look at mixing your own.

You can get larger 60ml bottles of Vallejo Premium to use as primary colors. LINK

And you can get all kinds of pots off ebay to keep your mixed colours in. For example Jars or Dropper Bottles

I have these paint pots which were really cheap, and I can attest work well for storing paint. However I have come to the conclusion that 10ml pots are probably way too big for most colours. Unless it is a colour that you're going to use all the time (such as black/white or your army base colour) then 5ml pots should be more than sufficient. I think the jars would probably be better than these.

With 60ml bottles of White, Red, Yellow and Blue you could potentially mix 50+ small pots of colour. You also have much more freedom to mix the colours you actually use, like specific highlight and shadow colours.

You don't need to buy a 60ml bottle of black, because just one drop of black will turn most colours almost pure black. So a regular sized pot of black should be sufficient to mix all your dark colours (you only need a speck).

I would recommend getting some acrylic medium or fluid retarder which you can use to thin your paints, and also make any washes that you want. It's also useful for very fine detail works, as it prevents paint drying too quickly on fine brush tips, and it's useful for wet blending.

glaze medium is also very useful. I like it a lot for toning, and smoothing out highlights and gradients.

If you choose to go with dropper bottles you will probably need some alcohol to transfer the paint with. Personally I wouldn't go this route. I like dropper bottles for paint that I'm going to mix with, but for paint I've already mixed: pots are definitely better.

You can also get metallic mediums, which can be fun to play with, but they tend to be a bit sparkly. It's probably easier just to grab a small pot of gold or silver as you need them.

Obviously this is a bit more involved than just buying a premixed paint set. It might take practice if you have never mixed paint before to get colours right. You will probably also need to keep notes on how many parts of each colour you used in certain mixtures, so that you can recreate them easily later. However all this stuff will probably cost you less than £35, and I believe it would serve you far better than £136 paint set, full of colours that you'll probably never need, and missing ones that you do (decent triads for example).

As an afterthought I've also enjoyed working with these . If you want to mix colours that really 'pop' like power weapons and such, these really come into their own.

 azreal13 wrote:
VGC is a very much brighter palette than VMC, as has been mentioned, so is better suited for the fantasy/sci if end of the spectrum, so if you're looking to do more that than the FoW/Bolt Action historical stuff, it will have a higher hit rate of useful colours than any sort of VMC bundle.

Don't ignore VMC altogether though, as there's some great technical and special paints in that range, such as all the mediums, transparents, fluorescents and specifically one that a friend of mine tipped me off to, Smoke, which is superficially just a brown, but when thinned makes and excellent wash to weather/age just about anything you care to apply it to.

Thanks, so if I were to get the VGC set to start with and then VMC as and when I need them? Are the big sets actually worth getting?

As for mixing my own, while I like the sound of saving all that money, I'm not sure, my main reason being consistency. If I mix a colour and then it runs out and I need it again, I dunno if I'd be able to get it exact and that would pee me off haha. Also I have 2 infinity factions so far with a view to add more cos those models are addictively excellent, and 2-3 warmahordes factions, I dunno if there's many paints I wouldn't use. But thank you for the advice and idea, I will certainly consider it and bear it in mind

Yeah, buying large quantities of paints on spec, with no clear idea of what you're going to use them for is prolly not a great idea for efficiently spending your cash.

Without saying what you should and shouldn't do, I will share my approach. When I first started again after 10+ years out! I bought a small starter (the Citadel one, I was ignorant of Vallejo at the time) and a few other key colours for the first project.

Subsequently, as I've done more units, I plan out the colour scheme in advance, and if I'm lacking something, I pick it up. Or I'll sometimes just throw in a colour I don't have when I'm at the checkout, as £2 here or there is near insignificant.

Over the three years I've been wargaming and painting again, I've built up quite a collection...

Yeah but the thing is, I'm not sure what colours I'll need, especially for things like highlights, etc, so if I could buy them in one go and just get stuck into painting, that would be great. But there only seems to be huge sets, or little sets, or buying them separately, with no in between.

Don't know what to doooo, just wanna start painting as soon as possible.

Well, highlights are relatively simple, as you simply add another colour (normally, but not always, a small amount of white) to your base colour, there really isn't a need to have "highlight" colours, albeit it is convenient and consistent of you do.

I notice you're starting some Warmahordes? Why not pick up some P3 sets? They do faction specific sets with all the correct key colours, and in most cases they do a specific highlight and shade for them too. The paints are very good quality, although they are a little thick in my experience, but they stand thinning down very well, so not too much of an issue.

They only come with 6 paints don't they, so aren't they going to look a bit simplistic?


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Although I guess the Skorne would work for my skorne and nomads...

Circle for Ariadna? Except I'm mainly going FRRM which are a more blue police type scheme...


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And then get some separate paints too to highlight, or some washes or something..?

ImAGeek wrote:
I'm not sure, my main reason being consistency. If I mix a colour and then it runs out and I need it again, I dunno if I'd be able to get it exact and that would pee me off haha. Also I have 2 infinity factions so far with a view to add more cos those models are addictively excellent, and 2-3 warmahordes factions, I dunno if there's many paints I wouldn't use. But thank you for the advice and idea, I will certainly consider it and bear it in mind

Yeah, I think consistency is a legitimate concern, but it actually comes up a lot less than you might think. For example: you probably aren't going to use heavily mixed colours on a large scale (such as your army's main colour). For very large noticeable things like that, it would make more sense to get a spray or buy the 20ml pot. Heavily mixed colours tend to be for more specific detail things, like the perfect NMM gold, or "the perfect highlight for Asian flesh tones". As such these colours rarely run out, and a small variance is difficult to spot even when layered next to each other. On different miniatures it would be impossible. Having said that, you can usually remix colours very accurately just by testing the new colour against a sample of the old, from the old lid for example. It's also worth noting that buying premixed paint doesn't make you immune from this. Sometimes manufacturers change the recipe, or you get an odd batch, or your colour just gets replaced/discontinued (GW have done this quite a few times over recent years), so in some ways knowing the recipe for your colours is actually better insurance against deviation.

On the subject of using paints: there is a big difference between trying out a paint, and actually getting through 20ml of it. For example I have a 12ml pot of Warlock Purple that I bought about 5 years ago... I have about 5 armies, a bunch of FF games and no use for Warlock Purple, which makes me sad, so I end up making up things to use it for. The odd gem stone here, or a detail there. It's still pretty much full, and most of what is missing was probably wasted having to stir it, because it's slowly congealing in the pot. In retrospect it was a waste of £2.50.

Like azreal said about buying paints on spec, not being efficient spending... You're probably going to end up with a lot of "Warlock Purples". I noticed in the set that you linked, there was something like 10 paints listed as "green". Green is a useful colour for basing, cammo, orks... and such, but even then: you'll probably find among all those greens there are only a couple that work well, which you'll gravitate to. maybe a few more that might come in handy occasionally, and a whole bunch that are ugly and sit unused. And there is no guarantee that you'll find any decent triads (highlight/base/shadow) among them, so you might have to mix those anyway.

 azreal13 wrote:
I notice you're starting some Warmahordes? Why not pick up some P3 sets? They do faction specific sets with all the correct key colours, and in most cases they do a specific highlight and shade for them too. The paints are very good quality, although they are a little thick in my experience, but they stand thinning down very well, so not too much of an issue.

I have a few of those. Their 'Beast Hide' is one of my favorite colours of all time. It's my go to paint for a lot of browns and leathers. Though I have to say I don't find there is any difference in quality between P3 (made by Coat'd Arms) and the regular Coat'd Arms paints (cheaper).

Yeah, I see your point not gonna get the big set because I think there will be quite a few I wouldn't use. And I get the point about consistency, I just don't feel up to mixing all my own paints, even if it would save me some money... I'll leave that to the experts, and mix the odd thing when I need to.

How much cheaper are the Coat'd Arms than P3? And is the range of colours smaller?

Probably gonna use a mix of P3 and Vallejo, and the odd GW (I have like 4 citadel paints and their washes are meant to be pretty damn good). The difficult part is getting started -.-

While one. Per paint basis those sets may be cheap the fact of the matter is many of the paints I the set you will never use, better to just buy what you need when you need it.

So what if I got a few of the P3 faction sets and some individual Vallejo? Good place to start, or..?

ImAGeek wrote:
Yeah, I see your point not gonna get the big set because I think there will be quite a few I wouldn't use. And I get the point about consistency, I just don't feel up to mixing all my own paints, even if it would save me some money... I'll leave that to the experts, and mix the odd thing when I need to.

How much cheaper are the Coat'd Arms than P3? And is the range of colours smaller?

Probably gonna use a mix of P3 and Vallejo, and the odd GW (I have like 4 citadel paints and their washes are meant to be pretty damn good). The difficult part is getting started -.-

That's perfectly understandable. I think the price difference is about 30-50p. Coat'D Arms usually come in about £1.80, for 20ml, P3 are around £2.25 (ish) for 20ml. I think the Coat'D Arms range is probably a lot bigger actually, and includes all the retro GW colours (Coat'D Arms used to supply Citadel paints before GW found a cheaper supplier).

Definitely if you want to save money easily, buy a £5 pot of acrylic medium instead of washes. GW wash is basically just thinned down paint, there is really no reason to pay them full price for watered down paint, when you can water it down yourself.

Ah okay, so acrylic medium is what you'd water a paint down with to make a wash instead of water? Bargain, I'll get some of that then I've got any colour wash I want!


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The Coat'd arms German set looks pretty good for the Merovingian blue/grey scheme?

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/coat_darms/paintsets.php

Yep! Or you can just use water, watery paint will work as a wash quite well. Some people use water with a tiny bit a soap liquid in it to break the surface tension, which is supposed to help it flow. There are also ink washes, which tend to be a bit more contrasty (I think Coat'd Arms still do these), I never had much luck with them though.

Awesome! Okay, think I'm gonna go with a mix of P3, Vallejo and Coat'd Arms and build up from there, with some of the faction p3 sets and the Coat'd arms German for my Merovingian force. This sound good?

Hmm, personally I think WWII German has a few too many similar colours for my liking. Slate grey, Iron Grey and Field Grey all look very much like grey. If you think you need that many, I guess it's your call

Though for Coat'd Arms greys I recommend the #141 'Grey Primer'. It's a light grey but has really great coverage (or at least mine does).