Adultery! Or: Why I Abandoned Citadel Paints

[Leftblank]

Blogpost about comparing several paint brands with Citadel, with links to other, longer reviews, link here: http://amsterdam6shooters.nl/node/927

I was getting doubts however about GW-paints and about the necessity of buying specialist 'miniature paints' in general after a creeping discontent with GW's current range of acrylics. Despite positive reviews, I feel that the paint dries out relatively quickly and and doesn't mix with water as good as the 'old' range.

[Sir_Theo]

I gave up on GW paints a few years ago and haven't looked back.  My paints are a mixture of AP,  Vallejo and Coat D'Arms with a few bits and bobs if other stuff. 

[has.been]

I stopped relying on them when I highlighted one of their greens with another, only to find they were (supposedly)
the same colour!!!!!
I now do my undercoating with a 'burnt umber' match-pot & most of my painting with sets of acrylic paints from £ land.

[Nord]

You bought Army Painter because they don't need thinning? You are in for a hard time if you never thin your paints. Paints are never the correct consistency straight out of the pot/tube. And they are affected by all sorts of things - temperature, humidity, etc. I have some Army Painter stuff and it's probably thicker than most of my others - coat d'arms, vallejo, GW et al. It doesn't matter, you  just have to thin it down a bit.

[Froggy the Great]

I found Reaper's Master Series paints and never looked back.

[SotF]

Never really focused exclusively on any specific brand of minipaint.

I'd also used normal craft paints (There's a great metallic blue and red colors I've really liked there), and I've used decoration paints (My old Vampire Counts force utilizes a glow in the dark blue paint that I get from a friend who works on various decoration things from haunted houses and the like, and getting a few things of it off and on is rather easy).

Hell, some of the heavier latex paints for house painting have uses (It tends to work rather well for a lot of applications in gap filling and is a cheaper/easier option than working greenstuff into the gaps or liquid greenstuff).

I've got Citadel, Army Painter, P3, Reaper and a few other paint types scattered through my stuff that I tend to use.

[FramFramson]

I found Reaper's Master Series paints and never looked back.

That's funny. I got a free sample of some of those MSP paints and it was such junk I threw it out (only time I've ever thrown out minis paint save the time my old Ral Partha paints sat for ten years unused and all went hard).

[Froggy the Great]

That's funny. I got a free sample of some of those MSP paints and it was such junk I threw it out (only time I've ever thrown out minis paint save the time my old Ral Partha paints sat for ten years unused and all went hard).

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.  I love them.

[Johnno]

I still use GW stuff I have kicking around but mostly buy Vallejo and Reaper now. Got into using Vallejo when I started doing WWII and Reaper when they sent me a bunch of free stuff for a club I run. Use whichever colour I find most appealing...

[Tactalvanic]

Vallejo, Scale75 - other oddments - craft paints, acrylic gesso and some enamels to, even some old 90's pots of GW paint - that still are usable.

None of the newer GW paint.

Basically Vallejo most of the time until recently and finding I really like the Scale75 stuff a lot, now that I bought and tried some.

[FramFramson]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.  I love them.

The bottle I got felt very separated, like there was too much carrier and the paint wasn't sitting well in it, so when painted it was thin and almost oily (in a bad way). It could just have been a bottle that got very separated (I shook it well, as I do with all paints, especially dropper bottle ones). It's possible it was a bad batch, but that was the first, and so far only, bottle of MSP I've tried.  

I got it directly from Reaper though, as a sample with a minis order. So I figured if this was direct from the company (instead of, say, sitting around in a store for ages) and specifically intended to show me how great their paints are, it didn't really reflect well on the line!

[Dolmot]

I got a free bottle of Master Series once too. I tried it. It felt really thin. Then I forgot about it. Maybe a year later my brain finally registered that it's called "Green Liner", which apparently means very thin paint you're supposed to use for gentle shading or darklining.

Maybe not the best option for a sample pot, sent without any explanation...

[FramFramson]

Mine was just a generic brown.

I suspect they send out whatever they've got too much of at the moment.

[Pijlie]

I ditched GW paints years ago because of the short lifespan of their pots.

I now use a mix of brands, mostly Vallejo/Model Color paints, GW inks, Talens 115 varnish and various brands of spray-on primers.

Tried Armypainter dip a few times but found it too smelly, to slow to dry and too shiney. And on top of that it reacted with some underlying paints and plastics and never dried in those cases. I still have to strip and repaint my entire Zombicide base box for that reason.

[Daeothar]

For many years it was only Citadel paints for me, mainly because it was the only brand available around here. Then a local modeltrain shop started carrying Vallejo and I haven't looked back since.

Right now, my paint drawer is loaded with about 80% Vallejo, 18% Citadel/GW (all leftovers from back when really; I haven't bought a GW paint in years) and some small amounts of special paints, washes etc from Modelmates, Armypainter and others.

In the garage, I have about 20 cans of acrylic spraypaints and primers of assorted brands. Only a few are actual 'miniature paints' though; most are from either the crafts store or Action. I seem to use Armypainter white for undercoating mostly, and Testor's Dullcote for varnishing.

And I have some cheap craft paints for terrain projects as well. Plus a huge bucket of latex wall-paint I had mixed up to match GW Graveyard Earth as closely as possible for use on terrainboards etc. I've been using it for years, on some very large projects too, and so far, I haven't even put a dent in the contents! I do most of my basing with it too, and I'm good to go for many, many years to come with that bucket...

As an aside; it bears noticing that about a quarter of those Citadel paints still in my drawer are the old soft, white flip-top, hex-pots, which are probably 25 years or so old and are still usable today!