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So I've started to base and paint the models from Blackstone and the adventures being in bright red is really annoying. Did my normal spray base in black and there is a lot of tiny bright red spots. Took a decent amount of brush work to touch it up. Compared to a grey model, it was more work than usual. Some of it was due to the detail level of the models but I really would prefer for them to just stick with grey plastic.

I don't like the red plastic, but some of the other colors work pretty well. The easy to build Primaris and Death Guard being blue and green respectively, work out pretty well. As does the weird purple-grey of the Kill Team GSC models. I will definitely agree on the red, though, it's an eyesore until it's covered up very well. Although the positive part is that you can see anywhere you missed with your primer very easily.

Yeah especially when you have chips, doesn't matter how much varnish you use, you always get chips here and there and you don't want bright red showing up through your models, especially if they are painted grim dark. Plus you don't need it, new players can easily just spray their models. Bad idea GW had there.

GW is starting to make the game more beginer friendly amd no paintin required to start playing the game. I'm sure GW japanese branch had a say in it.

It's not like GW didn't mold things in color back in 2E/3E...

 skchsan wrote:
GW is starting to make the game more beginer friendly amd no paintin required to start playing the game. I'm sure GW japanese branch had a say in it.

To me this is just silly, bare plastic looks bad compared to even a spray base. All GW is doing is making it harder to actually paint your models.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah especially when you have chips, doesn't matter how much varnish you use, you always get chips here and there and you don't want bright red showing up through your models, especially if they are painted grim dark. Plus you don't need it, new players can easily just spray their models. Bad idea GW had there.

Are you dumping your models on the floor after every game? How are plastic models chipping? If you prime and varnish your models shouldn’t be chipping. I have hundreds of metal models I use regularly with barely any chips.

That being said it doesn’t really bother me except I do find the red annoying for no good reason.

It might have been nice if they had opted instead to stick with grey plastic, and use colored bases to denote the different factions.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It's not like GW didn't mold things in color back in 2E/3E...

Why is that relevant?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kommisar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah especially when you have chips, doesn't matter how much varnish you use, you always get chips here and there and you don't want bright red showing up through your models, especially if they are painted grim dark. Plus you don't need it, new players can easily just spray their models. Bad idea GW had there.

Are you dumping your models on the floor after every game? How are plastic models chipping? If you prime and varnish your models shouldn’t be chipping. I have hundreds of metal models I use regularly with barely any chips.

That being said it doesn’t really bother me except I do find the red annoying for no good reason.

I've got very acidic sweat, it'll strip paint off my models, even with gloss and anti-shine spray, it'll still strip. I'll have to buy guitar strings every weak its that bad.

You didn't primer it correctly then.

Wear gloves, or take your models by their bases

I like the coloured plastic, shows any missed spots from priming so I can quickly touch it up and paint over.

Nothing worse than for me to apply a wash, didn't spot a missed primer part and now a part hasn't shaded correctly!

Worst is that some of those are inferior plastic, Nightvault ghosts are of much softer plastic than the stormcast eternal mages

Easy to build Primaris are great though

It's the same plastic, it's just dyed a different colour. Grey isn't the natural colour either.

 Dovis wrote:
Worst is that some of those are inferior plastic, Nightvault ghosts are of much softer plastic than the stormcast eternal mages

Easy to build Primaris are great though

Nightvault ghosts are just much more fragile, thinner models than stormcast.

The plastic is always the same, including the "standard grey" which is also just a colour added to the mix for contrast (HIPS untreated is clear).

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Dovis wrote:
Worst is that some of those are inferior plastic, Nightvault ghosts are of much softer plastic than the stormcast eternal mages

Easy to build Primaris are great though

Nightvault ghosts are just much more fragile, thinner models than stormcast.

The plastic is always the same, including the "standard grey" which is also just a colour added to the mix for contrast (HIPS untreated is clear).

Try bending the sprues themselves, they're way more flimsy, I ousually don't use sprue clippers and simply break the parts out, this was especially easy with nightvault

Well, that's one way to ensure the Models won't hold up well. 'Breaking' them out of sprues is going to apply some of that force to limbs, weapons and bits.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It's not like GW didn't mold things in color back in 2E/3E...

Before 1990, you could get sprues in white, black, grey, dark and light blue, green, yellow, red, orange and beige (and bases in black, grey, green, brown, blue and red, for various special cases). In the case of space marines (RTB01 and epic models), they came in any of three colours, apparently depending on the whim of the manufacturing department.

I find that with spraying I tend to do two sweeps now rather than one. The first sweep starts covering and covers most of the model, but there will be small gaps here and there. On grey or white plastic you might not see them so clearly, on a coloured plastic (or with a stronger coloured spray) you likely will. I find it useful though because sometimes that first sweep highlights bits of mould line or other gaps/imperfections that you might have missed during assembly. Yet without the full coat on its easy to touch up right there and then.

Two sweeps is like two thin coats

I like the colored plastics, it beat fighting field of grey, now it can be fields of x color when people do not paint or have not painted yet. the oens i have done I use a airbrush in a well lighted filter box, when i used rattlecans i would miss spots under arms and other areas, have not had that issue and airbrush primer is cheaper than the rattlecans were, it just requires a higher initial investment.

Part of the reason they are doing coloured plastics is because these boxed games are marketed to wargamers and boardgamers. Ergo two different markets. The boardgame players would prefer prepainted, but that isn't on the cards. So GW ships them with coloured plastic. Pushfit kits and easy build kits make them simple to put together for that market segment; meanwhile the high detail and lack of pre-painting keeps them acessible and open to GW core model making market

Tell me about it with the fething bright yellow models from speed freeks...complete PITA.

Are the GW boar games actually popular enoughand played, so that making different coloured models is a valid investment?

Karol wrote:
Are the GW boar games actually popular enoughand played, so that making different coloured models is a valid investment?

Depending on their equipment it might be almost no investment at all.

A lot of injection molding machines are set up to handle the dye separately from the raw plastic so changing colors is as simple as switching dye colors. Even if they're buying their plastic with the dye already added (which isn't uncommon either) getting batches in different colors probably wouldn't cost them very much extra if they're still buying it all from the same supplier. It depends on how their supplier handles their bulk discounts. And raw plastic is dirt-cheap to begin with.

The wrinkle is that it's more efficient for even a mid-sized manufacturer to have a single central plastic and dye storage that delivers raw material to the machines using vacuum pipes, retrofitting existing pipes to switch colors would be expensive. Although if they'd expanded production for the new boxed sets they could have built that into the new lines, that would help explain why only the big boxed sets are getting different colors and all the other "normal" kits are still grey.

What I'm seeing here is that there apparently are a ton of people who don't prime their models properly. . . or are maybe just using Citadel sprays?

The colored plastic GW models I've painted in the past (space hulk, death guard, primaris, kill team admech) have given me zero problems.

Quasistellar wrote:
What I'm seeing here is that there apparently are a ton of people who don't prime their models properly. . . or are maybe just using Citadel sprays?

The colored plastic GW models I've painted in the past (space hulk, death guard, primaris, kill team admech) have given me zero problems.

Agreed

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah especially when you have chips, doesn't matter how much varnish you use, you always get chips here and there and you don't want bright red showing up through your models, especially if they are painted grim dark.

Don't think of it a bright red plastic chips, think of them as bullet wounds.

But on a serious note, I've been painting for over a decade and can confidently say that I've painted over 1,000 models.
Even when you prime a model, it is always a best practice to base coat after that. It keeps the finish the same it you need to do touch-ups as you paint and fixes any spots missed by the spray primer.
Also, I never use varnish to finish my models (except for metal models with I no longer deal with) and have models I painted years ago that have never chipped.
If you are occasionally experiencing chipped models, you either aren't using the right paints, or could probably take slightly better care of your minis.

The only real issue I have with the colored plastic is that the dye used kinda affects the rigidity of the plastic. It's sometimes harder than usual, or softer.
This can make cleaning the model of flash and mold-lines feel different

-

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah especially when you have chips, doesn't matter how much varnish you use, you always get chips here and there and you don't want bright red showing up through your models, especially if they are painted grim dark. Plus you don't need it, new players can easily just spray their models. Bad idea GW had there.

I've never had plastic chip, metal and resin sure but never plastic.

Quasistellar wrote:
What I'm seeing here is that there apparently are a ton of people who don't prime their models properly. . . or are maybe just using Citadel sprays?

The colored plastic GW models I've painted in the past (space hulk, death guard, primaris, kill team admech) have given me zero problems.

This.

Also, failure to prep the plastic before priming.

1000% user error should not be blaming GW.

I am not sure I see any issue with the colored plastics. I have painted up a set of Skitarii Rangers/Vanguard from the Kill Team starter and a set from the Start Collecting box, and if if wasn't for the fact I know which ones I built first, I couldn't tell the two apart. In a few months when I forget where which I know I won't be able to know which were red plastic and which were gray. Here is a picture in both sets in the spoiler.



Granted, I am not a great painter, but I would like to think I can achieve a decent tabletop quality. And the Skitarrii above still need some additional paint still as the many of the colors are still pretty weak (like the white portion of the Admech insignias). But they look good enough at a distance for me to field them as is. As much as I would prefer other players to paint their models, many don't. Especially, the ones jumping into 40K via Kill Team. So while colored plastic is a good amount of steps down from basic blocking of 3 colors up, it still at least a step up from the usual gray (or silver if you have been playing a while).

I have to agree with those posting about using a primer. That goes a long way to keeping the paint sticking to the model. I am of the opinion you don't even need to get complete coverage with the primer. The deep recesses usually aren't disturbed enough and still get a little primer even if it doesn't look it to not bother with an additional application. I usually prime more that twice don't since I don't usually have the primer in the same color as the model. The Skitarii above were primed with Krylon Camouflage ultra-flat light brown. I also agree to placing a good base coat of the primary colors. I usually paint my base colors 2 to 3 times over since I usually run my paints a little too thin which I make up for during the detailing portion since the thinner areas are also the high spots.

As for different qualities from the plastic due to the dye, I don't think that is the case. I think it is more a case that GW has changed their plastic formula over time than the dye having any effect. The Skitarii where a far harder plastic than a set of Necron Warriors I picked up recently which almost felt like 'restic' in comparison. The Warriors even had nearly as bad mold lines as some the better restic models I bought. The Skitarii had almost no mold lines combined with better sprue gates made the clean up orders of magnitude better than the Warriors (seriously GW gates under the cheekbones of the heads?). I have had the samething with older Chaos Space Marine kits too. It just seems like GW is doing a better job over all with quality of plastic and sprue layout than they did year ago. I don't think the dye has anything to do with it.

I can honestly see how it would be annoying to folks applying their base coats by hand. I use an airbrush, so it's not a big deal. Also, matte varnish will seal the paint pretty well and you won't get chips. Just a light dusting is enough on the areas that will scuff against your foam / box.