Review: The Army Painter Warpaint/inks and colour primers

In this review, we'll take a look at the paint range from the Danish company The Army Painter. They were kind enough to send me some samples to test out, so a big -Thank You- to them.

The Army Painter has a pretty small selection of paints and shades, numbering about 42(geek points right there), which makes perfect sense considering the approach the company has to painting and their system of painting.

In a previous review I covered the Quickshade part of that system, but just to recap; the point of the paint system is that you paint on some base colours, dip in Quickshade, base and be done with it.

Regardless of that, the range of colours is pretty solid and for most projects you won't miss many nuances of colours.

They do however, have a nifty little guide to mixing paints and the resulting colours which is a nice touch. The guide is pretty limited though and a few extra shades would have nice.

The paints comes in 18 ml dropper bottles, which I find extremely handy and the lids are colour coded, which makes it easy to distinguish metalics(black Lid)  from regular paints(white lid) and inks/washes(red lid).

They do need a good shake however, as some of the paints have a tendency to seperate a bit.

Coverage

In general the warpaints cover quite nicely, but seem a bit more opaque than other brands of paints. That aside, they do cover very well in a few coats and thin nicely.

As you might know, red, green and yellow can be somewhat problematic colours with regards to coverage, but in recent years most of the competition have made great strides in making them much easier to use with excellent coverage even on a black undercoat. Dont expect such performance from the warpaints though.

To get a good red, it takes several layers and a light undercoat. I tried painting red on a black undercoat, and after 4 layers(thinned) I still wasn't happy with the result.

Be prepared to prep before painting red

What I did instead, was using “Uniform grey” as a basecoat and the result was very pleasing. The reds are intense and I especially love the “Chaotic red”, which is a very dark, brownish red. Throw in a drop of “Oak Brown” and a drop of “Dragon Red” and you got the perfect colour for painting Blood Ravens.

Green and yellow can be problematic too,but using either a white or grey undercoat they do cover decently though not as well as the other colours in the range. They do produce very pleasing results, as the ork below shows, just remember to use a lighter undercoat.

Greenskin for greenskins

All in all, I really like the paints and the resulting sharp and vibrant colours.

Colours, colours everywhere

As said before, the range is pretty small compared to other brands, but they do cover all the bases and excel in some areas.

The metallics are very smooth, cover well and are a plain joy to use. They are pretty limited however, with 3 shades of steel, 1 gold and 1 bronze, leaving all the shades of gold and bronze up to your mixing skills.

The Warpaint range includes 7 inks(Picture below) and they are all fantastic to work with!

They seem to be less messy than the GW shades while producing better result when dry. I cant quite pinpoint the reason, but the surface tension seems to be higher compared to GW shade, which might have something to do with it.

The Dark tone ink resembles the old Devlan mud and is one of the best and most versatile inks in the box. Strong tone is more like Nuln oil, very black and soft tone is perfect for those subtle shadows.

I am painting a small Ork army atm in which case I use about three different inks on a single model; strong, dark and green tone inks and they have performed perfectly.
The other tones of inks work great too, if you need a specific colour af shades.

All in all it is a great range of inks on par and in some cases better, than what you might know from GW, which is no mean feat, since The Army Painter inks are considerably cheaper.

My only complaint is that there is no ink for fleshtones, which is a strange omission, considering the otherwise impressive range.

Painted using only warpaint

Spraying the spray

Armypainter has built up quite a reputation for the colored primers and covers a wide range of colors.

Armypainter was kind enough to send a couple of those my way; Leather brown, Angel Green and Plate Mail metal.

Leather brown

The trick of the colour primers is that they are a 100% color match to the warpaints range. Naturally I had to test that claim and primed up some Doom Eagles scouts and bikes(Plate Mail metal) and some Orks(Leather brown). The spray was easy to use, covered well without obscuring detail and when painting up the models the 100% match claim turned out to be 100% true.

Of course, if you own an airbrush you wont need colored primers, but for the rest of us, they are great timesavers.

Platemail Metal

Summing it up

When all is said and done The Army Painter has a great range of paints, especially if you use their system of applying base colours and dipping, but even if you hate dipping with a passion, their warpaints are still a great buy.

I have worked extensively with the warpaints, inks and primers and it has been a joy. They do act sligthly different than GW paints, but not worse, just different.

In my humble opinion The Army Painter has struck a near perfect balance between quality, options and cost, the paints are great, the price is even greater and the range is decent.

Each warpaint cost 2.5 Euro/2.99 Dollars and they have some great prices on a mega paint set, which gives you all the warpaints and inks.

When painting loads of these guys, price matter;-)

Please let me know, if you liked the review and if you want some specific informations about the warpaints.

You can buy the paints directly from The Army Painter