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What up Dakkanauts,

I'm just inquiring on the consensus of GW's texture paints. I'm thinking of basing my Necrons in Astro granite to imitate a surface that compliments the limited colours of my Necron army.
Anyway, does anyone have experience using this type of paint, and how exactly you use it, such as application techniques and tools required etc.

I use them, but I also add sand and other tuff for texture.

I think they're pretty good, but I personally prefer the Vallejo texture paste. In the past, I've been experimenting with the acrylic texture pastes you can buy in art stores, which you typically paint over, but for the purpose of basing miniatures, I've found that the Vallejo texture paste to be really good.

Lately I've been using the Vallejo Dark Earth paste, which is really easy to apply, unlike Stirland Mud and Stirland Battlemire, which are typically slightly viscous and often difficult to work with.

I was planning to use the Dark Earth paste as it was, but I found I preferred painting over it with a dark brown paint (Vallejo 70.872) and drybrush the surface with two lighter brown shades (70.874 and 70.819), then washing it brown. I suppose I could have used a colourless, white paste, since I'm just painting it anyway, but I didn't know that at the time when I purchased the 200 ml container.

Painting it has the benefit that I can mix in a variety of small stones and grit, to make the surface uneven and varied but with a uniform texture, like lumps of dirt and mud coated stones. I also pick out the most prominent stones in a contrasting grey colour (70.830), highlighted with a nearly white grey (70.883), to imitate granite or basalt. I would have used different colours if I was going to imitate sandstone.

To answer your question, it really depends on the theatre you want to portray, like Vraks or Mars or Italy in WW2, and the scale of your miniatures. Smaller scales like 15 mm looks better with a fine grain texture paint, or the miniatures will look like they're standing in brown gravel.

As for the base surface, I prefer it looking at least slightly different than the models. I had an IG army once that I painted grey, standing on grey gravel bases, and it really didn't look good when viewed at a metres distance. Grey is not an easy colour to work with. As a rule I try to make the colours of hard surfaces and the ground less saturated than the models that are supposed to look alive.

They're ok, just a bit expensive because you have to apply it thick which means a bottle doesn't last terribly long.

I apply a thick layer, wait until it's almost dry and then use a toothpick to "stir" the partially dried paste on the base. That gives it a bit more texture.

Better than I expected them to be really, picked up the astrogranite debris one to try it out.



Needs seriously to have water added, that was cut about 50-50 with water and applied using a coffee stirring stick and a cocktail stick, left overnight and dry brushed light grey, thats all the base has had done to it.

Perfect? No, not massively cheap either, but quick and hits the 'good enough' category for me, a lot easier than painting gravel or filler

Look into texture mediums and pastes. Same thing, but not precolored and much cheaper. For example, pumice gels come in a variety of coarseness and could be used to simulate concrete. There is also crackle paste, glass bead gel, and all kinds of other options.