Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi,
I recently got back into the Warhammer hobby after a ten year hiatus, and found that all my old citadel paints were dried out. My wife and I have decided to start new armies, but we need new paints. I understand that a lot have happened in the last ten years, so I need som input. Based on reviews I'm leaning towards buying an Army Painter Warpaints mega set, they're cheap and seems like good stuff. However the selection seems somewhat limited, so I'm planning on buying Vallejo Game Colors for the rest. What do you guys recommend me getting from VGC?

I'm starting an all Night Goblin army, and my wife goes for Wood Elves, so browns, greys and greens seems like a good starting point. I've found the table comparing Citadel paints to Vallejo and others, but I haven't found a comparison between Army Painter and others... Any thoughts?

Avoid VGC white and greys... they tend to thicken up an awful lot, from my experience. Better to go with P3 or Coat D'arms for those.

I've never much liked Vallejo's metals either, although apparently their airbrush metals are good.

Don't buy a full set of paints. It is generally a waste of money as you will buy a bunch of paints that you will never use. The best thing to do is look at all the paint brands and buy the colors you like.

 insaniak wrote:
Avoid VGC white and greys... they tend to thicken up an awful lot, from my experience. Better to go with P3 or Coat D'arms for those.

I've never much liked Vallejo's metals either, although apparently their airbrush metals are good.

I have never had a problem with my VGC greys or white; VGC White Primer (002) is a personal favorite of mine and a cheaper alternative to GW Ceramite White, which I think is a little chalky. I do agree that the VGC metallics are a bit lackluster, but you are correct is assuming the Model Air metallics are good. They make a wonderful addition to any paint collection.

All P3 paints are great; unique colors and their Pig Iron metallic is a near perfect replacement for the old GW Boltgun metal. It also sprays wonderfully in an airbrush. I also am a fan of Reaper Master Series and would definetly recommend them to anyone.

I came back after a similar ten year hiatus a couple of years ago, most of my old ones in the loft were useless, actually, al the ones in the hexi-screw top shaped like boltgun shels had dried up completely.
Most of the older ones in hexagonal or even older,round flip tops are still usable right now
I bolstered out my collection of what was left with citadels (the just recently-ish old line.
I've also bout some of the new range, not all of it though thats a bit much
I didnt go and buy all the colours at any point, only what I thought was needed for a project I was undertaking, considering what I have already, plus any ona whim purchases (when you think; ooh that colour is nice and buy it for little other reason)
To that end I've racked up 77 colours that span a wide range and wont need to buy much else for any other project i might want to do unless its really uncommon.
After seeing the price rise on the paints recently at GW I don't think i'm getting any more. They were already steep for 12ml, but having a talk with my local GW stores manager some time back he said explicitly to me that the paint is the only thing theyve never risen the price of, which i disputed as Im sure they were £1.90 when i was a kid....but I didnt get them from official gw store then as we only had a 3rd party shop, now we only have a GW in town hehe. But here we are, paint has gone up. In fairness he didnt claim it wouldnt go up in future... but now he cant say they never put it up
Vallejo look like my future weapon of choice unless anyone can convince me another is going to be better for me.
I dont really mind paying the GW price for their paints... theyre genuinly good paints. For me its going to be more like me taking my custom elsewhere and talking with my money.

HairySticks wrote:
Most of the older ones in hexagonal or even older,round flip tops are still usable right now .

These are still being sold, under the Coat D'arms brand. They have slightly different names, but they're mostly close enough to figure it out.

yeah ive seen those paints Might be tempted, but the range wasnt perfect when GW had it. its not without its kinks.... some great colours though!.... one example i can think of is that the newer generation of gw red and yellow seem much better, while theres nothing quite like bilious green anymore :/ swings and round abouts hehe

edit; looks over to my bilous green survivor brightest dammned green going in my box... it looks radioactive! moot green isnt quite there.
I prefer the new ranges bone colours; zandri dust through ushabti bone through screaming skull upto white, gives me nicer results that i ever got mixing browns and bleached bone and white to do it. I think boltgun metal was better than leadbelcher though, The new shade washes are great, but the old ones were fine too. theyre better than what we had when coat d'arms was the supplier, but they were more glaze type paints mostly, even the washes werent the very dark shading kind of tones that theyre putting out now at GW. I noticed there s'super washes' on coat d'arms now.. maybe its those.
also i think that the new gw range is incomplete without those edge paints that they made limited editions of, theres now 4 you cna get, but there was more in a box set, the range is devoid of pastel colours unless you use the dry paints. which give a chalky dusty finish due to having to be dryrbrushed. this left me with having to mix all my pastel highlights, i did by th eset but as they run out il have to mix again... i like convinience of having pots mixed up as painting time is a premium, i always get a pot of a colour i find my self mixing up more than once or twice.

HairySticks wrote:
also i think that the new gw range is incomplete without those edge paints that they made limited editions of, theres now 4 you cna get, but there was more in a box set, the range is devoid of pastel colours unless you use the dry paints. which give a chalky dusty finish due to having to be dryrbrushed. this left me with having to mix all my pastel highlights, i did by th eset but as they run out il have to mix again... i like convinience of having pots mixed up as painting time is a premium, i always get a pot of a colour i find my self mixing up more than once or twice.

For the most natural-looking edge highlights, using a dab of white to the color you're highlighting works best.

I agree with that, and its how ive always done it when lacking a pre mixed paint suitable. I may have sounded like I never mix paints far from it, I mix every colour but when going through a gradient upto very white, or pastel highlights, i like to be able to do a bit of work, and be okay to carry on at anytime and not have to waste time mixing to the point that i left off... as my painting time is at a premium between work, access to my child, and general adult life
when i was a youngster I would happily sit and paint for hours on end. Unfortunatly I just cannot very often anymore. And premixed paints are a massive time saver for me

Choosing individual colours based on sampling in a store would be the best, and that's how I used to go about buying paints. However, I can't get anything other than GW locally, and I trust recommendations better than online colour charts. That's also part of the reason why I'm considering Army Painter. Not only do they get good reviews, but their scheme of a small set of basic colours makes their set make more sense. However, I guess I will need more diversity when it comes to greens, greys and browns, and it's difficult to see what colours I should get from other ranges...

By the way, buying Citadel locally is out of the question, as I can get all 36 Warpaints for the same price as about 10 GW bought locally... :-(

ouch, thats quite a diference; 36 paints or 10 :-o
http://www.thetrolltrader.com/
seems to have vallejo's for £1.90 a bottle, and coat d'arms for £1.80, and army painter warpaints for £1.80 too.
Compared to gw's new £2.40 for a smaller amount in every case hehe. Nothing wrong with citadel.. theyre damned fine paints imo, but arent good value, these others i've not tryed really, coat d'arms being gw's old supply, ive got an idea of what theyre like, and also theyre fine paints. Vallejo seem all the rage, and i don't doubt that theyre also fine quality.
Army painter.. i couldnt guess at, I've only ever came into contact with their spray primers, which are bloody great quality altho the price is a bit high on them. Id love to know if theyve actually reformulated their own primer with models specifically in mind, or just repackaging something they found a supply for?

As for the containers of each, the dropper bottles of vallejo and army painter look good, get a lot of priase, but alse bear in mind that the only paints I have surviving form my once astonishing citadel collection that existed before my own decade break...we're the coat d'arms ones, they weren't even thickened up over the passed 10-15 years tbh. I've got some from the 80's (handed down from my uncle) before they had stickly labels and just taped a lil plastic tab on with the colour name, half of those remained usable too.

I also like the idea of the dropper bottles, but the price is the major aspect behind moving to Army Painter/Vallejo... The Warpaints do seem to get a lot of praise from almost everyone, but so far I haven't found anyone comparing the colour selection to others, but most recommend supplementing the narrow palette with paints from other ranges...

I dunno it is a fairly complete range of colours, I think the idea is that you mix all the intermediate shades with them, in contrast to GW who want you to buy every shade... each to their own tbh, I enjoy having premixed pots of shades and tones I use often, I have a smll amount of painting time as it is and it helps me out on that front. But I am quite capable of mixing these colours myself and that is how I've done it before and still do for the less common items and to progress highlights.

For example; you want to blend form red through yellow to white on a power sword maybe; You only need red, yellow and white... but with a series of tones leading the way through in premixed pots, you can stop working, and carry on later without worrying about finding the point you left off mixing colours.

What I like most about the Army Painter line is that the sprays have a matching dropper bottle. You can use the spray to primer the army, do the detail work, touch up any mistakes with the matching bottle and then dip with your choice of product. It works for getting a table top standard army very quickly.

I'm in the process of phasing out GW paints. The only ones I'll continue using are Mephiston Red and Ceramite White(the only colors that really needed to be redone in that entire paint line).

For everything else I use a mix of VGC and VMC, but I agree that their whites are meh. I also use VMA paints, which are incredibly thin but the metals are the second best ones out there.

The best metals out there are Vallejo Liquid Gold series. They are alcohol based, so no water and no natural hair brushes. Thin with Isopropyl alcohol, clean your brushes with it as well, and only use synthetic brushes as the alcohol will destroy natural hair ones.

Vallejo Game Colour Heavy paints are quite good as well, and are fairly good matches to the old Foundation paint line from GW(some are darker, like the red).

Ultimately, you should use anything in a dropper bottle, as pots are terrible for myriad reasons. I transferred all of my GW and P3 paints into dropper bottles and they've lasted much longer.

I'm just starting to paint and living in Eastern Europe, my choices are limited. GW is expensive, but readily available. I can get Army Painter or Valejo online, but shipping and handling is so expensive that they end up costing the same as GW. The plus side is as a beginner, they give me set color schemes. My only concern is buying too many paints and having them dry out. If I paint with a palette and keep the lids clean, is it safe to pick up a few pots without fear of having them dry out?

Dropper bottles. I also add in a few drops of Liquitex Slo-Dry retarder to prevent them from drying out in the bottle.

I've got dropper bottle paints from 2004 that are still in working order.

There are plenty of places that offer Vallejo at a discount, and if you order enough of it you absorb the shipping easily.

As others have pointed out Vellejo Model Air metallics are great. My personal opinion is the are exquisite. Specifically Gun, Metallic Black and Steel. The whole line brushes on beautifully!

If you need a gold, silver or copper color, I would also recommend you take a look at Vallejo's Liquid Gold series. They take a bit more care and dedicated brushes, as they are alcohol based, but the results are worth every bit of hassle. There are no smoother metallics than Liquid Gold series.

As for regular paints, I have to admit I have started painting with Vallejo Model Air paints and Daler and Rowney inks. No thinning, super smooth and I can have the exact same colors in my airbrushes as I do on my regular brushes.

 Aerethan wrote:

I've got dropper bottle paints from 2004 that are still in working order.

And I've got citadel fliptops from prior to 1990 that are still perfectly fine. While I had (I threw lots out) about half of the range of the screw top pots they did. So honestly... im not impressed by your 9 year life span yet, say theyre good when your talking 3 decades


I had paints from all these generations,(and the one prior) theyre all perfectly workable except the most recent of the bunch (right hand side) where every single colour dried up, theres one pot left; magenta ink.

Being unable to replace them has its issues with army continuity.. and hence i only use them for odd details usually.
But dropper bottles arent the be all and end all, arent even the best, vallejo ones are just eye dropper bottles, theres other kinds too, twist tops and flip caps.

Good to hear the GW pots stood the test of time. Gives me hope for the new range. With the current exchange rate over here, they're something like 3 euros a pop. I looked at Army Painter cause as a beginner, I'm really interested in the color / primers. Funny thing is that on the official site, the bigger set is 99 Euros for paits, metallics, inks etc. 36 pots in total which gives me almost the price of GW (10 Euro cents cheaper per pot) :(

Yes the new generation of pots do need to be tested via time
unfortunatly that takes a long time,
Those hard clear plastic with black screw top ones were totaly garbage compared to the older ones to its left in that picture. Prior to those they had the same round pot with white flip top, only with a very unproffessional looking label. It was just a taped on bit of printed card stock. Those paints .. some still work fine, some turned to lumpy messes or a weird gunge hehe. I dont mind though as time goes by paint technology gets better.
The new itteration of citadel shades (well the old washes were on par) Are something that we didnt have when I was younger and are really helpful, especially to a begginner painter for achieving natrual looking shading without being a master artisan.

They never used to do 'base' style paints with higher pigmentation, they were just paints, and citadel also didnt advocate a painting medium (lahmian medium atm), theyre going the right direction to being a professional level of painting supplies. Not there yet tbh, they need to look at what professional artists are using from companies like Liquitex, Windsor and Newton, Daler Rowney etc etc, aswell as airbrushing companies like createx, badger, iwata etc
I would place the citadel paints as a semi pro level product. Its missing things in its range that have to be supplemented elsewhere or just not used. Its all part of their selling strategy to attract newcomers and not have them instantly off put by modelign being hard (hence mono pose snap fit starter boxes) or the painting looking crap and disheartening. To this end GW actually put lots and lots of effort into teaching newcomers to the hobby their way of doing things.For a newcomer, taking advantage of the 'classes' and beginner sesions the GW stores run goes a long way to makig the high price point good value for money, as these sesions are free and will (should) be offered by the staff upon making sales.For the more experienced guy its a bit useless tbh, they dont go too far into advanced techniques. GW have avery specific method and dont really teach people to stray from it much.
Its both good and bad, as all the new comers are getting better results than if left to figure it out on their own. The new paint range is specifically designed to take work out of the painting process. But it can teach a narrow minded method too.
When i was a child, I didnt have a local GW, or know anyone else that collected for quite a while. There was a local book shop, that had an area of the store full of games workshop stuff, not the whole range mind, but a decent selection.
I used to spend my weekly pocket money on it, buying a single blister pack of metal figures, or a small box set at a time, sometimes saving up to buy something larger. Nowadays the money I used to recieve as pocket money wouldnt cover a single mini. I started at about age 8, recieved some paints that my brother had when he was even younger; he had 1 box and never really stuck with it long before i got into it. My collection grew by 1 or 2 mini's at a time, not particularly any army, just a collection of what i wanted to paint each week; mostly it was bretonia stuff tbh. As i got older I found others to actually play the game with although since my 10 year break im now back to just painting and not playing, mainly for not really knowing anyone to battle with. But my shelf is getting full of Dark Angels that havent seen battle! The painting takes up plenty of my time and is ample hobby for me though I'm a father now, and between work and my child time is precious as the daughter will always come before anything I may wanna do hehe but thats life isnt it

I probably spend more on paints, brushes, tools, and that kinda stuff than I do on models nowadays. The model takes me so long to paint anyway that I esily get my hours of activity out of the GW price point hehe.

I need to take advantage of the painting classes at GW, for sure. And I'm going to get most of the washes, but the Warpaints set makes sense for the basic colors and some metallics. They're half the price of GW and that way, you can still get the layer colors from Citadel and still have money left over.

For sure I can't fault the idea that picking the best parts of different brands for you will net you the best result
generally speaking... acrylic paint is acrylic paint, each brand has its own slighty different medium preferences, general viscosity, and pigment density, some are truthfully better than others... pigment density means the most becasue all the rest is changable.... if you got some liquitex heavy bodied artis acrylics, theyre so thick theyre like butter. but the pigment density is insane, you can reduce them down with mediums incredibly far before the colour is getting too weak to get coverage. Lots of brands make quality paints, while some brands make watered down ones... price is usualy the give away. Tbh for the price of all of the hobby brands I would want a reasonable pigment density across the board.
The actual pigments themselves will often be the same elements possibly from the same places.
For example Most white paint is titanium dioxide, transparent white paint is based on zinc, ultra marine blue... well the pigment is likely ultramarine. The space marines are named after a colour which is named after its pigment.
Layering them up should pose zero problems, and if you do encounter one, itle be solved by putting a thin varnish coat between them.
Most brand will intermix, Theyre all making largely the same product with slight little differences. Liquitex invented the water based acrylic paint that we use quite a while ago, and the basic technology isnt much different now, just progressed by some decades of research (in the 70's i think... not totaly sure tho)
Never tryed the warpaints as I've got alot of citadels, but they look fine to me, colours mimic the citadel range i recall as a child. Matching sprays got to be a bonus unless you can airbrush and then its mildly convinient as any colour can be sprayed

No airbrush which makes the Warpaints even more attractive. I can spray paint prime and base an Ultramarine tactical squad in minutes. I like their washes which mimic the basic black, earth and sepia washes from GW. The 3 silvers look nice too. Just need to get some golds from GW and I'm ready to go

Thanks for the input guys!

I will get the Army Painter Warpaints Mega set. If I order individually shippings costs will be too high, or locally it's be insanely overpriced Citadels... I'll also get some Vallejo Model Air Metallics, and possibly, a few of the Liquid Gold series. That should get me started at least...

tmod, did you get the Mega Set? I just got mine and will probably sit down tomorrow and start painting. I was curious if you started and how you like the Warpaints...