Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Early Thoughts on the New Citadel Paint Line

Last year, April, I took a class at Adepticon in Advanced Painting that was taught by Mathieu Fontaine.  A bonus point of that class, beyond completely opening my eyes to a new method of painting, was that all painting classes that weekend would be supplied with Formula P3 paints for everyone to use. 

I was beyond impressed with the quality of the paint itself.  The pigment saturation, the flow and the ease of use were all wonderful.  I ended up sidelining the main Citadel paints, though I kept the Metallics, Foundations and Washes.  I changed a paint loyalty that measured nearly a decade in the space of a 4 hour class.

Now, a year later, Citadel goes and throws a curve ball at me with this newly remained paint line of theirs.

First things first, as I want to give props to the first blog I read today who had the full paint line up, Dark Future Games, who also gives props to Miniature Wargame Conversions.  I've since read about the paint line on various other blogs including Faeit 212, and Apocalypse 40K.  Please visit any of them for the full list of paints and tell em Tim sent you if you've never been there before.

Second things second, my reaction:  sonava!@#$%

This is reaction born of a mix of elation and frustration, hope and trepidation.  Why such a mix of emotions?

The frustration lies in that it took quite a bit of time, effort and money to test and try out different paint brands before I found one, two actually, I was happy with.  Both Citadel and P3 do very well in the areas I purchase them for, in my opinion.  Now Citadel has to go and improve their paint line?  How dare they!

The elation and hope springs from the fact that my first love of paint brands is actually improving their paint line.  Not just Improving, but expanding to a line that include categories named Bases, Layers, Shades, Dry, Glaze, Textures and Technical.  First impressions lend themselves to a very diverse and flexible range, with rumors of a higher pigment count and better flow.

Finally the trepidation stems from a painters reluctance to change his newly-changed ways, as well as not wanting to be let down if the afore mentioned quality isn't there.

Will I give the new line a shot?  Of course I will.  Will I go and empty my wallet on a new Mega Paint Set immediately?  Not on your life.  I'll purchase specific colors from all the categories to test, and will report all findings here.  I'll attempt to do so honestly, and with as little bias as possible. 

Chime in here folks, what are your thoughts when it comes to this new paint line from Citadel?

- Tim

6 comments:

  1. I'm all for it, GW whittled their range down over the past few years and its been a real shame losing excellent and frankly brilliant colours (scaly green for example, lovely for washes in rockery and such).

    I have also been making a change to p3 paints in the past couple of months, they are fantastic, their reds are excellent.

    I will probably buy quite a lot of the new line (I have a suspicion some of them will be the old colours revived).

    I am a sucker though - I continually hope and pray that GW will make changes to benefit modellers and veterans and as far as it goes I think this move is one in the right direction. Please don't get me wrong I'm not a GW basher at all but sometimes I get frustrated. This is a lovely piece of news. I think it will open out the niches of painting with some robust and tested techniques with the 'base, shade, layer, glaze' thing to people who are starting out.

    It is good, the only slight thingaputting me off is tha I will have to learn the names of the new colours (with the old ones being renamed etc)...

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  2. I am a bit terrified of how HUGE the range will be! Maybe I would be better sticking to a smaller range like the new Army Painter Warpaints set...

    If the decrease the size again AND increase the price I will not be amused.

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  3. schoolcormorant: You and I, sir, are the same sort of sucker when it comes to holding out hope that GW will make those changes that benefit hobbyists and vets. We'll have to see. I do think that this move towards the larger and more diverse paint line with all it's components and applications they are planning does lend itself to giving us hobbyists more tools in our arsenal, though :)

    Minitrol: All indications point that pot size will remain the same as it is now, as should prices. I think they are counting on the doubling of the paint range to empty our wallets rather than the cost. Though I'm sure they will have a price hike sometime this year.

    I will have to say that I like the larger range. It can greatly help out those who aren't quite confident in the mixing skills to have a larger palette to use without custom mixing colors.

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  4. Most of the GW paint range is consistantly good quality and has been innovative over the years. The main problem is that they're feeling the pressure from other brands now which are as good quality as GW if not better but the same price for twice as much paint. I think i'll try the glazes etc but otherwise vote with my wallet. There's lots of good products out there that work just fine.

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    1. Good quality, yes. But you hit the nail on the head when you followed that up with other brands which are as good, if not better. Personally, I'll go ahead and call better for at leas the "opaque" line from P3. Though P3 only has about 1 more ounce of paint per pot than GW does if I'm not mistaken. While my wallet does indeed have a voice in what I buy, quality wins out every time.

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  5. I really hope that they release some nice charts showing triads like the reaper line. In the past, I have found that the recommended highlight colours don't really match very well within the GW paint line. Hopefully the bases and highlights allow nice matches and less mixing for highlights (obviously blending will always be necessary for great blending, but not mixing would be nice for tabletop painting).

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