Oh god, where to start with paints?

[llamaegg]

Hello!

Hopefully you guys can help me out on where to start, because god knows all the different threads and forums and making deals to eldritch gods is probably making things worst instead of better, hah.

Anyway, I little background, a bunch of buddies and myself are recently getting into Warmachines/Hordes, which is nearly my first foray into miniature painting, and now that I've gotten finally gotten my first couple boxes assembled (and somehow managing to cut myself more on the mage hunters than my knife, baffling I know), plus having still to paint my weight in dudes from Seditions Wars, and soon enough I'll have a small fortune of Kingdom Death models to begin painting when they finally get released. Now, I've already ruled out most of GW's line, being that I had such a bad customer service experience that completely turned me away from miniatures when I was looking to get into Fantasy and 40k, not to mention a bunch of my buddies saying if it wasn't for the amount of money they've thrown into their paints they would have picked something else, and after digging around a bit I'm pretty sure I'll be going with Reaper, or at least to start, maybe I'll start playing around with other stuff down the line.

But where things get dicey is when I try to figure out what I need for paints. Hop onto the Reaper website and the byops is throwing like 300 different colours in my face, which I'm then trying to drop down to the 54 grouping, and I have no idea what I should be grabbing (also I'm pretty much stuck ordering, closest gaming store is roughly 3 hours away, and even then from what I've seen it's mostly either GW, or a small selection of P3 or Vallejo, so it's a lot easier to just order). I mean, I know what I want to theme my scyrah army (Pink and blue, my elves are going to be fabulous!), but when I start looking at what's available, even in a single colour, my brain begins having a melt down.

What are the must have colours? Should I just grab a couple of every grouping and call it a day being able to mix what I need from them?

 

[Rothskin]

Hi. I think gw starter set is enough, but you will need some metal colour and my favourite badab black. Every other you need i think is some vaiant for the army (to save time) is pink and blue variants. I like the vallejo colours too. The mixing problem: if you do many modells, hard to do same colour twice, so you can choose the starter colours and buy it. I hope it is help.

 

[MAXXxxx]

must have: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow.
nice to have: some flesh, metallic, brown, offwhite.

But the best you could do: think about the colors you'd like to put on your models. Buy a color that looks similar (one that you like), also get a darker and a lighter shade (you don't exactly need them, they can be mixed from the base+other colors).

so staying with the mage-hunters (the PP color-scheme):
- at least one brown you like ( leather parts)
- a light skintone (skin)
- silver metallics (swords and such)
- white/offwhite (armorplates)
- black/dark grey (other clothes)
- greyish blue (cloak)
- light brown (base)

and that's about it, 9 colors at most for that unit, most can be reused with the warjacks/other units. Other colors are just for help in getting a shade without mixing / make things faster.

or you could go the rich'n'lazy route and buy simple every paint ever released , you'll use about 20-40 colors at most, rest is just table-decor.

A good middleground is getting a starter-set, like Rothskin suggested. It will probably have a few colors you'll never use, but everything else in one box.

 

[shponglefan]

I was in the same boat about a month ago

What I ended up doing was breaking it down into basic primary & secondary colors (yellow, orange, red, violet, green, blue) and buy three shades of each (i.e. dark, medium, light). The Reaper line makes this particularly nice since they have their paints organized into triads to begin with. Then I added a couple whites and blacks, a few greys, browns, skin tones, and metallics (gold, silver, steel, brass). Altogether, that accounts for about 30-35 colors.

Now you don't need that many to start, but that should give you a reasonably comprehensive starting point.

 

[me_in_japan]

What folks have said. A basic starter set (probly not GW, though) could be helpful, but really the best thing to do is look at what you want to paint. If you want to paint your scyrah pink and blue then buy some nice pink and blue paints, as well as darker and lighter shades of each. You'll need black, white, yellow, red, blue, gold and silver, and other handy colors are a dark brown and dark green-blue for shading and a pale bone/pale green-blue for highlighting. Purples, skin tones and browns are a bugger to mix reliably, so consider getting a couple of those. Everything else is just gravy.

ps - for what it's worth, I like Vallejo, although I believe reaper's triad system is good, too. Don't feel tied into one paint line. They're all intermixable.

 

[Kalidane]

Sometimes the mid-tone can be skipped and just mix it from the shade and highlight.

I've picked up a fair few Reaper paint triads before reading that idea though!

One of the nicest things about the Reaper paints is they don't separate aggresively in the bottle. I find I'm passing over VMC colours and looking for something similar in another range rather than bothering with two minutes of paint agitation every time I pick up a bottle.

 

[llamaegg]

must have: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow.
nice to have: some flesh, metallic, brown, offwhite.

But the best you could do: think about the colors you'd like to put on your models. Buy a color that looks similar (one that you like), also get a darker and a lighter shade (you don't exactly need them, they can be mixed from the base+other colors).

I was in the same boat about a month ago :smile:

What I ended up doing was breaking it down into basic primary & secondary colors (yellow, orange, red, violet, green, yellow) and buy three shades of each (i.e. dark, medium, light). The Reaper line makes this particularly nice since they have their paints organized into triads to begin with. Then I added a couple whites and blacks, a few greys, browns, skin tones, and metallics (gold, silver, steel, brass). Altogether, that accounts for about 30-35 colors.

Now you don't need that many to start, but that should give you a reasonably comprehensive starting point.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, my biggest problem was getting overwhelmed when I went in and saw a gazillion greens, hah. That makes it a lot simpler.

What folks have said. A basic starter set (probly not GW, though) could be helpful, but really the best thing to do is look at what you want to paint. If you want to paint your scyrah pink and blue then buy some nice pink and blue paints, as well as darker and lighter shades of each. You'll need black, white, yellow, red, blue, gold and silver, and other handy colors are a dark brown and dark green-blue for shading and a pale bone/pale green-blue for highlighting. Purples, skin tones and browns are a bugger to mix reliably, so consider getting a couple of those. Everything else is just gravy.

ps - for what it's worth, I like Vallejo, although I believe reaper's triad system is good, too. Don't feel tied into one paint line. They're all intermixable.

Yeah, I was looking at Vallejo, but most of the gaming stores I did hit that actually carried it seemed to have a fairly small selection. I'm sure I'll eventually give them a try as my collection grows, same with P3 and Secret Weapon washes, either way, chances are I'll have to order what I need which is surprisingly hard to find good places in Canada.

Thanks guys, helps get that billion colour list into a much more manageable list.

 

[RuneBrush]

You've got the overall idea right - don't stick to a single paint range Different colours in different ranges have pro's and cons. Vallejo Model Air and Citadel (GW) are well renowned for good quality metallics for example. MiJ has pretty much said what I'd do if I were in your shoes - get some core base colours and then a selection of the ones you're going to need for a specific unit.

Whatever you do, don't go out an buy dozens of paints until you get going Vallejo have I believe the biggest selection of colours available (avoid Vallejo Game Colour by the way - stick to Model Colour and Model Air).

 

[SkelettetS]

avoid Vallejo Game Colour by the way - stick to Model Colour and Model Air

QFT! also, avoid vallejos model color metalic paints, the few ive tested has been really bad. vallejos model air metallics are sooooooo much better!

 

[dispake]

avoid Vallejo Game Colour by the way - stick to Model Colour and Model Air

Curious as to why you say that?

 

[me_in_japan]

VGC has a tendency to separate badly. It's not irredeemable but it's a pita to shake up the bottle every single time.

 

[Chrispy]

VGC has a tendency to separate badly. It's not irredeemable but it's a pita to shake up the bottle every single time.

Actually, it does eventually become horrid. My regular vallejos are still usable 5+ years later, the VGC became gritty, tough messes I can't clean out to just get an empty bottle. Speaking of paint longevity, I still have an old Reaper twist off pot and a citadel hexagonal flip-top that show only very limited signs of dried paint around the rims. :Sigh: they just don't make them like they used to...

 

[dispake]

So it's not necessarily the paint result and more so the longevity of it? Thanks for sharing this info - just starting out to paint so any info is great

On that note, is there any side by side comparison of the major paints and maybe, their sub paints (e.g. we're talking about VGC vs VMC)? I've read most of the pros and cons of each but it'd be interesting to see a single place that gives a good summary of them all in case our mind misses something - such as this longevity issue you guys bring up. Would be a great sticky for this forum and newbs.

 

[Chrispy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB8_kmoSvaU
This guy takes a half hour to go over all the differences. At around 22:00 he sums them all up. This was the first youtube vid I put auto captions on and the results turned out hilarious at times due to it misinterpreting his mouth words!

 

[shponglefan]

Actually, it does eventually become horrid. My regular vallejos are still usable 5+ years later, the VGC became gritty, tough messes I can't clean out to just get an empty bottle.

That's discouraging given I just picked up a dozen bottles of VGC. I wonder if adding agitators to the bottles and periodically giving them a good shake would help?

 

[Chrispy]

That's discouraging given I just picked up a dozen bottles of VGC. I wonder if adding agitators to the bottles and periodically giving them a good shake would help?

If you do- make sure the agitators are 100% non-reactive.(Glass) I had some metal BB's in mine, and that may have contributed.. but again- the regular Vallejos had the same things, and they are fine.

 

[Dragonsreach]

That's discouraging given I just picked up a dozen bottles of VGC. I wonder if adding agitators to the bottles and periodically giving them a good shake would help?

Some paints in the VGC need more agitation than others.....Ditto the Army Painter bottles and Some VMC.
Wear a wrist support and put yourself in the mind set of trying to put a smile on the face of an elephant with E.D. and watch your muscles grow.

All paints need a damn good shaking and I'm not talking about one, two, three that'll do, some like VMC Reds require as much agitation as a rattle can primer.

 

[llamaegg]

So while on the discussion of paints, what's up with washes? I mean, Reaper only has like 3 by the looks of it, Games Workshop has around 10, P3 has 2, why is there so few colour options for washes? Is it one of those things that you don't really need your wash to be close to the base paint, or do people just water down the paint they're using to do the same thing?

 

[shponglefan]

So while on the discussion of paints, what's up with washes? I mean, Reaper only has like 3 by the looks of it, Games Workshop has around 10, P3 has 2, why is there so few colour options for washes? Is it one of those things that you don't really need your wash to be close to the base paint, or do people just water down the paint they're using to do the same thing?

All a wash is, is highly dilluted paint. So you can make a wash out of almost anything. And you can mix regular colors with washes as well. For example, I tend to mix in Vallejo model colors (dilluted down somewhat) with GW washes to get the colors I want.

 

[llamaegg]

Ah, figured as much, I just wasn't sure if it maybe had some additive in it or something that prevented that. Thanks!