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I've had a crack at painting again, and the main thing I found was that my old (as in, ooooold) GW paints have all died some degree of death, and I'm now looking to more or less start afresh buying paints.

I've only used GW paints before, but I've heard of several other brands being thrown around here. What paints do you think are best?

If you're an advanced tabletop painters, add Army Painter washes to the list.

EDIT: I often use them with colored primers, applied as brush-on. This both primes the miniature and gives a head start towards a shade or basecoat!

News and Rumors has a Holiday sale thread, and ask for paint sales.

Best you say?
Kimera kolors - easily the best paints. Mixing true colors with their pigments is easy and holy cow they're amazing.

Scale 75 has great metallic paints. Totally worth getting.

Vallejo is just good paint all around.

I also suggest fowler Rowling and or liquitex inks.

Wow, two almost identical topics in the top 5 thread today (earlier they were in the top 3 threads today).

There is no "best" paint, only paints that a painter prefers. General concensus is that all lines have paints that are better then their competitors. There is a huge and expanding list of paints that get brought up:

Citadel/GW
Coat D'Arms (old school citadel)
Reaper
Wargames Foundry
Vallejo
Army Painter
Scale75
DarkStar (though I'm not impressed)
InStar
PollyS

And many others I'm not recalling off the top of my head.

There are dozens of threads in P&M around this topic, as well as a thread about what people's favorite colors are in each of the range (or the must haves). A little poking around would go a long way.

I usually recommend finding paints that are accessible - what does your local LGS carry. Buying paints over the internet is excessively expensive for some reason. If you can find a decent paint selection nearby, go with that one.

There is no magic paint that makes it easier to get good results. I've seen amazing things done with craft paints, and horrible paintjobs with "the best" paints.

Apparently most of paints all get made in the same factory...At least it used to be the case or so ive read on one of old threads when this topic comes up.

Citadel paints are decent quality and I would say they are on par with vallejo, P3, and or army painter.

The upside to non citadel miniature paints is that they come in dropper bottles. This is very good as it allows you lot more control in terms of mixing paints and getting consistent proportions as well as not loosing a bunch of paint coz it gets stuck to the back of the lid/pot.

The upside to GW paints is that they are very common, and get used exclusively by GW painters so most recipies and tutorials will have GW citadel paints meaning you will have to find other branded alternatives to get same results and those results may deviated from what you want to achieve..

All that said. I think its just personal preference and brand loyalty...

At the end of the day.
Paint is paint..

Personally Ive been making the switch to vallejo wherever possible due to dropper bottles but still mainly have GW paints and keep buying GW paints.

I’ve gotta give a shout out to Green Stuff World paints. A lot of people think about them doing special effect paints but they also do your standard acrylic paints, I has some and they are very good and they are now my go to company if I need new/replacement paints.

They also do paint sets which are great, so the blue paint set has a set of paints that’s allow you set a base colour and then layer and highlight.

The black paint set has great colours in it.

They also sell all the bits and bobs a beginner should have at good prices such as brush cleaner and acrylic thinner.

Of course if you want specific colours for the GW shop window colour schemes then you might struggle to find matching colours.

Another somewhat underrated brand that I have had very good results with is Reaper. If you hate thinning your paints (like me), the MSP and MSP Bones lines come pre-thinned. They are sold in triads, which come with a shadow, mid-tone, and highlight. You can also purchase them individually. The one thing to steer clear of is the MSP HD line. They are thick and gel-like, which is normally fine (Scale75). However, these ones don't thin down well and separate quickly.

it doesn't matter which brand you choose or what bottle they come in, if you leave them unattended for a long time they may dry out unless its oil paints.

what you want to do is learn how to maintain your pot of paints. you will want to get a bottle of distilled water, acrylic thinner medium, acrylic metal medium. about 5-10 drops and some distilled water in your pots every now and then to keep it fresh and from drying out.

The best paints are the ones that end up on your models, point blank.

That said, if you're used to vintage Citadel the best modern equivalents are P3 and Coat D'arms. Are you trying to match specific old colours, or just start afresh with a whole new palette?

What style of pot are your now-dead Citadel paints in?

MkI - round, soft white flip tops. '88-'93
MkII - hexagon, soft white flip tops (black for metallic, blue for wash, red for glaze) '93-'98
MkIII - crystal clear hex pot with black 'bolter shell' screw lid (white lid for inks) '98-'04
MkIV - crystal clear hex pot with hard black flip top. '04-'10
MkV - Dome top lids that don't stay open. '10-'12
MkIV - Dome top lids, lid locks open. 2012+
(Might be more variations beyond this but it's not really 'old' Citadel paint then.)

 Big Mac wrote:
you will want to get a bottle of distilled water, acrylic thinner medium, acrylic metal medium.

Maintenance is extremely important, could not agree more there.
I have to disagree on the adding of acrylic thinners or medium to paint pots. Neither of those evaporate out of the pot, only water does, so water is the ONLY thing that should be added back in to maintain paints. Putting in other chemical mixes, which often aren't going to be the same as the base paint is asking for trouble.