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Hello!

My name is Kristoffer and i'm new into warhammer gaming and AOS, building a Skaven army.

I'm starting to get some models and need to get some paint now.
For a beginner there is a jungle out there with different brands and all that jazz.

I have heard good things about vallejo paint and wonder if anyone out there can help me with a list of colors for a start with.

I appreciate all help i could get.

/Kristoffer

Uhm. Depends on what color scheme (both clothing and fur) you'd be looking for. A yellow-brown fur needs different colors than a white, dark brown or black fur, and likewise what "other colors" you'd like to run with. for the armor, clothes, and etc. I'd definitely get a chocolate or leather brown (70.871 and .872--for weapon handles and/or brown fur), one of the whites (probably 70.951 --for eyes if you don't do something like red or green unnatural orbs, general mixing), german panzer grey (70.995, if I'm reading these faded numbers right--good as a "black" that can still be shaded because its actually more "very dark grey"), a black wash (76.518--good for silver metals), and a mid-tone metallic like steel (77.712 weapon blades), but beyond that it kinda depends on what you're looking for, color scheme wise.

Vallejo is much the same as many of the other options out there. There are differences (eg. Scale 75 tends to be much thicker than Vallejo Game Colour paints), but fundamentally they are all acryllic paints.

Whether you want to purchase should really come down to a few factors:

- What kind of finish do you want? Vallejo's Model Colour line tends to dry matter, but not always, both Scale 75 and Reaper Master Series are better for that in my experience with Scale 75 offering the mattest finish around.

- Do you prefer bottles or flip-top pots?

- Local Availability/pricing

- Are there specific colours in a particular line that you can't get elsewhere? Most of us end up with paints from a variety of brands for this reason.

Hi

I'm thinking about a brown fur and bech skin color. like the models are on the game workshops website. As of clothing im thinking of red, green and light grey/brown for the cloth and metal for the armor pieces.
As for the weapons i will go with your suggestion Vejut. And i will pick up a bronze color to worn down the spears a bit.
As for the Clans Skryres toxic stones, how many different colors is needed for getting that?

I see your point sockwithaticket, as for local availability/pricing there is not so much other the a few Citadel colors in my town. So i need to order the colors anyway so i will go with Vallejo because i have heard much good things about them.
For the finnish i don't know what i prefer yet. I will figure that out along the way i think.

/Kristoffer

kikke wrote:
Hi

I'm thinking about a brown fur and bech skin color. like the models are on the game workshops website. As of clothing im thinking of red, green and light grey/brown for the cloth and metal for the armor pieces.
As for the weapons i will go with your suggestion Vejut. And i will pick up a bronze color to worn down the spears a bit.
As for the Clans Skryres toxic stones, how many different colors is needed for getting that?

I see your point sockwithaticket, as for local availability/pricing there is not so much other the a few Citadel colors in my town. So i need to order the colors anyway so i will go with Vallejo because i have heard much good things about them.
For the finnish i don't know what i prefer yet. I will figure that out along the way i think.

/Kristoffer

Hello Kristoffer, welcome to the hobby!

I will share a few thoughts that should hopefully make painting a bit more straight forward.

1) Paint type: I only ever used GW paints for the first decade or so of painting and then branched out to Vallejo paints. While Vallejo are smoother and quite good for the money, they also come in larger bottles and cost on average 1.5 times more than GW paints. If you are looking to build up a range of colors quickly I hightly suggest Citadel (GW's) paints as they cost significantly less and have specific designed "highlight" colors which let you know what colors go together. To this day it is very hard for me to figure out which Vallejo colors will go well together as highlights, and I have bought a few that looked like they would go well on splotches online, only to end up with a totally different impression of them in real life.

My best advise is to look up "skaven painting tutorial" on youtube and see what color combos people are using and at the end of the video decide if that is the result you're looking for. Doing the same with red cloth, bronze, metal, weathering effects etc. will save you a lot of headaches and money in the long run. As it stands now, I mostly use GW paints (mostly because I own the majority of the range) and supplement with Vallejo whenever I need a more specific color that GW doesn't offer.

2) Specific colors for:

Fur: In the GW range you can pick up a variety of different browns which fit the role. For a chocolate brown go with: Base: Dryad Bark, Highlight 1: Gorthor Brown, Highlight 2: Baneblade brown. For a reddish/orangy brown: Base: Mournfang brown, Highlight 1: Skrag Brown, Highlight 2: Deathclaw Brown. For a deep reddish brown: Base: Rhinox Hide, Highlight 1: Doombull brown, Highlight 2: Tuskgor Fur.

Skin: For pale/deathly skin: Base: Rakarth Flesh, Wash with Reikland Flesh in recesses, Highlight with 50:50 mix of Rakarth flesh and Pallid Wytch Flesh, Highlight 2: Pallid Wytch flesh. Then apply Druchii violet in shadow areas. For pale human looking flesh: Base: Cadian Flesh. Wash: Reikland Flesh. Highlight Kislev flesh, Highlight 2: Flayed One Flesh.

Dark Red Clothing: Base: Khorne red, Highlight Wazdakka Red, Highlight 2: Squig orange.

Dirty Grey Clothing: Base: Skavenblight Dinge, Wash: Agrax earthshade, Highlight 1: Stormvirmin fur. Highlight 2: Administratum grey

Skaven stones: (This is how GW paints them) Base: Caliban Green, Highlight: Warpstone Glow, Highlight 2: Moot green, Highlight 3: Yriel Yellow. Glaze over the whole thing with Waywatcher green. (Dilute it with medium so it doesn't splotch)

Bronze: For bright, warm bronze: Base: Balthasar gold, Wash: Agrax Earthshade Highlight Sycorax Bronze, Highlight 2 (Any silver paint for the very top details) Then weather with Nihilakh Oxide in recesses.


As you can see, this is what it takes to do a GW style pantjob. Alternativley you can buy the base colors and then a lighter off-white color like Pale Wytch flesh and just mix it into the base color to create highlights. This is kind oif a pain because it means the ratios may be slightly different between models you paint and therefore the results may vary. This many paints are quite expensive, which is why it's a good idea I think to start with the GW range as trying to get 20+ paints at $7 USD a pop (Vallejo) is prohibitively expensive.

Hope this helps!

kikke wrote:
Hi

I'm thinking about a brown fur and bech skin color. like the models are on the game workshops website. As of clothing im thinking of red, green and light grey/brown for the cloth and metal for the armor pieces.
As for the weapons i will go with your suggestion Vejut. And i will pick up a bronze color to worn down the spears a bit.
As for the Clans Skryres toxic stones, how many different colors is needed for getting that?

I see your point sockwithaticket, as for local availability/pricing there is not so much other the a few Citadel colors in my town. So i need to order the colors anyway so i will go with Vallejo because i have heard much good things about them.
For the finnish i don't know what i prefer yet. I will figure that out along the way i think.

/Kristoffer

You can use the Dakka paint compatibility chart to find Vallejo equivalent's for the GW paints used by the studio on their skaven
https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart

They won't always be exact matches, bu they'll be close.


Clan Skyre's stones, it's all a matter of how complex you want to go. You could get away with just using one medium green and mix in a bit of black for your shading and mix in small amounts of a very light grey or white to create the highlight. I think Vallejo Game Colour Scurvy Green would be a great starting point for them, it's kind of a dark emerald colour. I've found Vallejo Model Colour Emerald is a pretty narural highlight colour for it.

 Hive City Dweller wrote:

kikke wrote:
Hi

I'm thinking about a brown fur and bech skin color. like the models are on the game workshops website. As of clothing im thinking of red, green and light grey/brown for the cloth and metal for the armor pieces.
As for the weapons i will go with your suggestion Vejut. And i will pick up a bronze color to worn down the spears a bit.
As for the Clans Skryres toxic stones, how many different colors is needed for getting that?

I see your point sockwithaticket, as for local availability/pricing there is not so much other the a few Citadel colors in my town. So i need to order the colors anyway so i will go with Vallejo because i have heard much good things about them.
For the finnish i don't know what i prefer yet. I will figure that out along the way i think.

/Kristoffer

Hello Kristoffer, welcome to the hobby!

I will share a few thoughts that should hopefully make painting a bit more straight forward.

1) Paint type: I only ever used GW paints for the first decade or so of painting and then branched out to Vallejo paints. While Vallejo are smoother and quite good for the money, they also come in larger bottles and cost on average 1.5 times more than GW paints. If you are looking to build up a range of colors quickly I hightly suggest Citadel (GW's) paints as they cost significantly less and have specific designed "highlight" colors which let you know what colors go together. To this day it is very hard for me to figure out which Vallejo colors will go well together as highlights, and I have bought a few that looked like they would go well on splotches online, only to end up with a totally different impression of them in real life.

(Vallejo) is prohibitively expensive.

That may be true where you are, but Vallejo in Europe is generally about the same or cheaper than GW, probably because Vallejo's a Spanish company. In the UK, recommended retail price is £2.55 for GW and £2.45 for Vallejo. However, you get 17ml of paint with Vallejo vs. 12ml with GW, so it's unquestionably better value. That's going to depend on where you are.

Vallejo model colour paints are often intended for you to create your own shades and highlight with washes and/or mixing. Online colour swatches are notoriously unreliable, it's better to google the paint in question to see if any images from various blogs/forums can demonstrate it in use on a model.

Paint lines like Reaper Master Series and Wargames Foundry do specific triads (Shadow, mid tone and highlight), so, if interested in a proscribed set of paints that work together, GW isn't the only option.