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Some new toys are coming soon.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/05/06/paint-like-a-pro-with-the-new-stc-range-of-synthetic-brushes/

The Citadel brush range has been a stalwart companion of hobbyists for many years, giving painters the world over specially designed tools to get their models looking as good as they can be. Now, the range is expanding.



The first thing you’ve no doubt noticed is the distinct, all-white colour scheme to set them apart from our regular brush range – you’ll never mistake which one you’re reaching for in your Citadel Paint Box. These brushes are more than just a sleek colour scheme, though.



By using carefully designed, totally synthetic bristles, the Citadel Colour STC Range offers a different painting experience to the regular range of Citadel brushes. The synthetic fibres have a noticeable springiness with balanced stiffness and distinct snapback, making them excellent candidates for drybrushing and highlighting raised edges.

The brushes with rounded tips have been designed to keep their profile for longer even when used frequently, and the straight-edged brushes are specially made to help prevent curling at the end of the bristles, keeping your painting accurate and sharp.

The Citadel Colour STC Range is coming soon, so keep an eye out for more information on when you’ll see their distinctive white colour scheme on shelves near you. In the meantime, up your painting game with the Citadel Artificer Layer brushes, made to produce results you never knew you were capable of.

Maybe if a bunch of non-influencer painters come out and say they're actually good I might try one out, but something tells me they'll be a lot worse than things like Artist Opus brushes but will be about the same price.

Can look forward to my YouTube feed being full of "ARE GW'S STC THE BEST BRUSHES EVER?!" clickbait thumbnails for about a month.

That's cool. I love trying out new brush ranges, so I'll pick up a couple for an experiment. Although nothing will ever replace the worn out old brush pulling second duty as a dry brush.

Surprised they didn't save them for the big reveal on Saturday.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Surprised they didn't save them for the big reveal on Saturday.

I have this mental image of these having been Saturday's big reveal with Adam and Eddie 'gushing' over how amazing these brushes are for forty minutes and calling it the best Warhammer Fest ever.

What are they supposed to do, shrug and talk about how in their day sable was good enough for John Blanche?

Glad they didn't, it would have taken 3 hours of streaming to preview them individually and explain in detail how awesome they are, and how exited they are to use them

"First up it's the fine detail brush... this is going to be really excellent for painting your Primaris Space Marines blah blah blah Citadel paints blah blah blah... ah next up we've got the Medium Drybrush, now what I'm most excited about with this one is it's a bit bigger and that makes it really great for drybrushing these Astra Militarum tanks I'm working on..." etc for 30 minutes

I'm imagining this will fall into the usual situation for GW's hobby products: high quality mass market items at luxury good prices.

They can't be worse than the current GW brushes.

Billicus wrote:
"First up it's the fine detail brush... this is going to be really excellent for painting your Primaris Space Marines blah blah blah Citadel paints blah blah blah... ah next up we've got the Medium Drybrush, now what I'm most excited about with this one is it's a bit bigger and that makes it really great for drybrushing these Astra Militarum tanks I'm working on..." etc for 30 minutes

"Eddie, what are you most excited about?"
"It's definitely the new Glaze brush(tm). I have some Grave Guard(tm) I picked up ready for the new Soulblight Gravelords(tm) and Skeleton Horde(tm) Contrast Paint(tm) should go on them nicely."
"One of the best parts about this hobby is seeing what the amazing design team come up with. Who'd have expected a dedicated glazing brush?"
"I know Adam, this are.. definitely going to be a must-have for any hobbyist's toolbox. I can't wait to see what people do with these new brushes."

 Mammoth miniatures wrote:
They can't be worse than the current GW brushes.

They're synthetic, they absolutely can and almost certainly will.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Maybe if a bunch of non-influencer painters come out and say they're actually good I might try one out, but something tells me they'll be a lot worse than things like Artist Opus brushes but will be about the same price.

Can look forward to my YouTube feed being full of "ARE GW'S STC THE BEST BRUSHES EVER?!" clickbait thumbnails for about a month.

And Artis Opus is the same, but many times more expensive than, generic non-wargaming branded brushes you can get from various third parties.

You can just buy a round stippling brush on the cheap. for like, 1-3$. You're gonna beat the absolute hell out of it anyway, and the technique really super doesnt care if the tips hook or whatever.

 Polonius wrote:
I'm imagining this will fall into the usual situation for GW's hobby products: high quality mass market items at luxury good prices.

Are any of GW's 'hobby' products not just another company's average product rebranded and sold at a markup?

 Arbitrator wrote:

Billicus wrote:
"First up it's the fine detail brush... this is going to be really excellent for painting your Primaris Space Marines blah blah blah Citadel paints blah blah blah... ah next up we've got the Medium Drybrush, now what I'm most excited about with this one is it's a bit bigger and that makes it really great for drybrushing these Astra Militarum tanks I'm working on..." etc for 30 minutes

"Eddie, what are you most excited about?"
"It's definitely the new Glaze brush(tm). I have some Grave Guard(tm) I picked up ready for the new Soulblight Gravelords(tm) and Skeleton Horde(tm) Contrast Paint(tm) should go on them nicely."
"One of the best parts about this hobby is seeing what the amazing design team come up with. Who'd have expected a dedicated glazing brush?"
"I know Adam, this are.. definitely going to be a must-have for any hobbyist's toolbox. I can't wait to see what people do with these new brushes."

Almost perfect, just not enough "uhhhhs" and stuttering

Look forward to seeing the price tag on these

Voss wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I'm imagining this will fall into the usual situation for GW's hobby products: high quality mass market items at luxury good prices.

Are any of GW's 'hobby' products not just another company's average product rebranded and sold at a markup?

Very few, but they make a few things that nobody else does in the paint range. The texture paints for basing are unique as far as I know. Contrast paints were unique at launch, although we could probably litigate how different contrast is from a glaze. The dry paints aren't available in any range I know of.

GW's hobby paints have clear advantages: availability, color matching, size of range, and all the cool effects stuff. It comes at a high price, but there is some stuff you generally can't find anywhere else.

Their hobby tools are always marked up rebadged goods.

Synthetic brushes? brb, gotta check those "A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA" and "A VERY DUMB IDEA" from my bingo card.

 Polonius wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I'm imagining this will fall into the usual situation for GW's hobby products: high quality mass market items at luxury good prices.

Are any of GW's 'hobby' products not just another company's average product rebranded and sold at a markup?

Very few, but they make a few things that nobody else does in the paint range. The texture paints for basing are unique as far as I know. Contrast paints were unique at launch, although we could probably litigate how different contrast is from a glaze. The dry paints aren't available in any range I know of.

GW's hobby paints have clear advantages: availability, color matching, size of range, and all the cool effects stuff. It comes at a high price, but there is some stuff you generally can't find anywhere else.

Their hobby tools are always marked up rebadged goods.

Vallejo's had base texture paste for years, in 200ml tubs for about £10, as opposed to GW's 24ml for £5.

The only advantage to GW paints is maybe convenience if you live near a hobby/GW store and don't need to buy enough to justify shipping costs and that's about it. People just stick with Citadel because the vast majority of people have literally never used anything else and have this weird idea that applying a different company's paint will make their plastic spontaneously combust before their eyes. "What's the Citadel equivalent?" is a common question on tutorials which use non-Citadel stuff and the answer to why they want it is usually "I've always used Citadel." There are admittedly a few colours you can't get a out-of-the-pot equivalent to but those are few and far between, usually being replicated eventually.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Vallejo's had base texture paste for years, in 200ml tubs for about £10, as opposed to GW's 24ml for £5.

I remember when it was just their GW brand white glue that was the token "joke" product.

It's sort of depressing looking back over 20+ years of exposure to the warhammer hobby to see how corporate GW has become. The drift from a past where they would refer to non-GW brand products to help you build your own scratch built terrain or tanks out of deoderant containers, to every single article just being a gigantic advertisement for their myriad of products that you can find elsewhere for cheaper.

I'm finding it incredibly fascinating seeing how the new warfront for the Hobby™ is against 3D printing and how incredibly naughty it allegedly is to make anything yourself.

I love this thread.

Thanks for taking the ball and running with it, guys!

 jojo_monkey_boy wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
Vallejo's had base texture paste for years, in 200ml tubs for about £10, as opposed to GW's 24ml for £5.

I remember when it was just their GW brand white glue that was the token "joke" product.

It's sort of depressing looking back over 20+ years of exposure to the warhammer hobby to see how corporate GW has become. The drift from a past where they would refer to non-GW brand products to help you build your own scratch built terrain or tanks out of deoderant containers, to every single article just being a gigantic advertisement for their myriad of products that you can find elsewhere for cheaper.

I'm finding it incredibly fascinating seeing how the new warfront for the Hobby™ is against 3D printing and how incredibly naughty it allegedly is to make anything yourself.

As one of the biggest companies in miniature wargaming with shareholders to please, GW has a vested interest in keeping hobbyists entirely within their environment. That's why on official channels you'll only see Citadel paints, GW hobby tools, GW basing materials, GW brushes, etc etc. Most other companies operate the same way - Privateer Press pushes their P3 paints and their P3(TM) brushes and their P3(TM) superglue pretty hard in the modeling videos they've done, too. You're also not likely to see non-Vallejo or non-Army Painter product used in any promo materials for those companies.

 Mr. Grey wrote:

 jojo_monkey_boy wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
Vallejo's had base texture paste for years, in 200ml tubs for about £10, as opposed to GW's 24ml for £5.

I remember when it was just their GW brand white glue that was the token "joke" product.

It's sort of depressing looking back over 20+ years of exposure to the warhammer hobby to see how corporate GW has become. The drift from a past where they would refer to non-GW brand products to help you build your own scratch built terrain or tanks out of deoderant containers, to every single article just being a gigantic advertisement for their myriad of products that you can find elsewhere for cheaper.

I'm finding it incredibly fascinating seeing how the new warfront for the Hobby™ is against 3D printing and how incredibly naughty it allegedly is to make anything yourself.

As one of the biggest companies in miniature wargaming with shareholders to please, GW has a vested interest in keeping hobbyists entirely within their environment. That's why on official channels you'll only see Citadel paints, GW hobby tools, GW basing materials, GW brushes, etc etc. Most other companies operate the same way - Privateer Press pushes their P3 paints and their P3(TM) brushes and their P3(TM) superglue pretty hard in the modeling videos they've done, too. You're also not likely to see non-Vallejo or non-Army Painter product used in any promo materials for those companies.

For GW, it also enhances recruitment. You can know nothing about the hobby, wander into a GW store and leave with everything you need.

Are their cheaper, comparable products? Sure there are. But there are also similar products not as suited to the task at hand. Convenience and product confidence for a slight premium in price.

So a new almost certainly poorer quality range of brushes which will no doubt provide a convenient excuse to increase prices on GW's range(s).

Colour me impressed!

GW's current brushes aren't "bad", they're just a bit overpriced. I currently just have 3 -- the drybrushes. I think they're an ox hair blend? They're pretty tough and have held up well (I have multiple types of drybrush that I use including soft makeup brushes etc)

Their layer brushes are actually sable (not kolinsky) for like $8, which isn't much more than something from Rosemary and Co. Even some of those fancy brushes from Rafael and such need a hair trimmed now and again, so nothing is perfect. A Winsor and Newton #1 is similar quality to an Artificer GW brush for a similar price in my experience. If I needed a brush right now and was forced to get a GW one I wouldn't mind it.

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't mind a synthetic brush that didn't get tip hook so quickly, but I don't think these will do any better than anything else. My use case is painting fine metallic details with some of the better metallics like vallejo metal color--that stuff will absolutely destroy a good sable brush. It just wicks right into the ferrule. I've been using synthetic ever since for those paints, but all the ones I try get tip hook within days.

I'll probably buy one and see, but my expectations are low.

Synthetic brushes do have a place, though as mentioned they can be had for significantly cheaper. I've been using Princeton 3750 a lot recently, and looks like it should be easy to match size and shape to the GW ones if you really want.
https://merriartist.com/collections/princeton-3750-select-mixed-media-brushes

Kolinsky sable brushes are still the go-to though.

For standard brushes I buy Pro-Arte minature brushes from the local art shop. However, I am yet to find a dry brush as good as GW, except that the most recent GW dry brushes are too wide for some purposes. It looks like one of those dry brushes is narrower, so will probably give that a go.

Can't wait for them to fish hook and stain(seriously, white guys?)

It's nice to see more paintbrushes whose manufacture does not include killing animals. Good on GW.

Most Sable are ethically and sustainbily farmed. We use butt/tail hair that is shaved and reharvested for alot of Miniature paint lines
Besides, plastics are worse for the environment.