Games Workshop has played a massive role shaping the market for hobby paints, with the massive success of Warhammer 40k creating a market for paints with different colors and properties from those favored by military modelling or Gunpla hobbyists. Games Workshop has often been at the forefront of innovating new paint formulas, but having tested several new paint ranges at this year’s UK Games Expo, it’s clear to me that it’s being left behind.
First up are Ammo’s Ionic Smart Colors, and frankly, they’re the best paints for miniatures I’ve tried in years. These are a traditional acrylic paint, supplied in a lidded bottle. I spent an hour painting up a 3D printed demo miniature, testing everything except for the yellows (though I observed those being used).
The opacity and brilliance of the colors is incredible. The red is the reddest red I have ever seen, the red that fire trucks are in your memories of childhood.
If you just want to slam through painting your Warhammer 40k faction, the opacity and brilliance will make it easy for you to get great coverage in very few coats. If you want to use them for thin color glazes or very thin layers, they thin down very well, without noticeably losing their surface tension at the point they become translucent. I did a little wet blending with them and was very satisfied.
When compared to Citadel paints, the Ionics have coverage like Base paints, but a more liquid consistency that’s a lot closer to what you actually want to thin them to. I haven’t tested the full range, and haven’t given them a test over a long time period, so perhaps they’ll be prone to separation or have some really weak colors. Right now, I’m incredibly impressed.
For paints that are designed for utter beginners, you have AK Interactive’s Playmarkers. These are similar to fine art brushpens, a chunky marker body loaded with paint that feeds into a brush tip. Fine art brushpens use alcohol based paints or inks, but Playmarkers are loaded up with water based acrylic paint that’s formulated to stick onto miniatures.
That change in form factor brings a load of convenience for first time painters and for speed painting. There’s no way to spill a paint pot, you don’t need to mix paint to consistency, you don’t even have to reload your brush.
Editor Alex has been playing with some metallic Playmarkers to speed through the armor trim on some Imperial Fists. He’s achieved good tabletop results combining them with a silver drybrush, but he has found one irritation with the paints. Should the nib dry out, it needs to be cleared with water, and then new paint fed into the tip from the body. While there’s excess water in the tip, the paint mix will be too thin, and that needs to be flushed through before the marker is usable again.
They’re not a fine detail tool, but that’s not the point – they’re the embodiment of the idea that something is better than nothing, and everyone has to start somewhere. And they’re a better starting place than Contrast paints because they’re opaque – you can use them on top of any base color, and you can easily correct mistakes without having to rebase in white.
For a more direct comparison with Contrast paints, look to Speedpaint Markers, a collaboration between Army Painter and Deep Cut Studios. These are simply Army Painter Speed Paints loaded into a brush pen.
The current formulation of Speed Paints would be my favorite Contrast-equivalent were it not for the wretched dropper bottles, which have a habit of becoming clogged by their agitator ballbearing and then bursting when squeezed. Sticking them into a brush pen is a perfect solution. Editor Alex tested these at Expo and was effusive about how well they worked.
I’m singling out these paints because Team Wargamer has tested them all recently, but the market as a whole is really vibrant. Two Thin Coats color matches the Games Workshop range but provides better paint consistency; P3 paints are back, a bit prone to separation in the metallics that means you need to stir well before using, but with an incredible range of colors and great working time for wet blending; and there’s many more that I want to test.
Do you have a favorite paint range? Had more experience with one of these new products? Come and chat about it in the official Wargamer Discord community, and show off your minis in our painting gallery!
If you’re new to the hobby, we have a whole guide on painting miniatures that you’re bound to find useful!
Source: Wargamer
