Army Painter set problems?

[Thindol]

Hi fellows,

I have recently gotten back into the hobby of playing and painting when some friends wanted to take up the new Age of Sigmar by GW. I haven't painted anything in years and during my last move I just threw out most of my paints and accessories by accident. I used to paint with Tamiya paints because the shop I frequented (it was one block away from my apartment) was a model and train shop and the Tamiya was the cheapest paint they had. They did have Vallejo, AK, Testors and a few other brands.

I still have my brushes thank the gods (anyone that will listen), but I need to restart with new paints and primers. Since I moved and I am no longer near a hobby store I bought a set of paints from Amazon, it was the Army Painter Super Dungeon Explore set,

https://www.amazon.com/Super-Dungeo...01N4WCPY4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Unfortunately when I got the set, over half the paints were congealed or on the way to being so. And the yellow and red were so thin on pigment it would have taken me a million coats. All that was over a light grey primer. I was really discouraged by that and threw out all the paints in a huff. (I used a gift card I got for Christmas so technically my mom bought me the paints so I didn't waste any of my own money). I kept the Mike McVey pamphlet though. I like his advice.

Since I had to drive to a hobby store now I decided to visit an actual game store. I was speaking with the kind gentleman behind the counter who is a painter as well. He suggested that Army Painter is a good line and that I might have gotten a bad batch. He also had the Army Painted D&D Adventurers set on sale for $30 CDN. I haven't opened the paints yet but I have opened the box so I cannot take it back. The colours seem a good selection so I am happy there.

https://admin.thearmypainter.com/files/products/DnD/75001_2.jpg

Does anyone else have experience with the army painter licensed sets? Are they just regular army painter colours that are renamed?

Cheers and thanks!

 

[Beatnik59]

I've been painting with Army Painter for about a year now. Here's the thing that a lot of people who get these paints don't understand: they are packed to the top with medium, which is rather thick and full bodied. You have to put down two or three good drops when you first open the bottle in order to get that extra medium out. People who don't understand the product, or treat it like a Vallejo, don't understand this and think the paints suck, are watery, have no pigment, and so on. Nothing can be further from the truth. These paints are some of the most heavily pigmented paints I own. But the medium is thick, like an artist acrylic, so there's no room to agitate the pigments without getting rid of that medium at the tip.

In other words, there was nothing wrong with your set. What you saw as congealed, thin on pigment, and so on was just that packing medium that needed to get squeezed out. If you use the D&D Adventurers set, you'll have the same issue, but don't throw those things out. Squeeze drops out until it starts to drop uniform. Then you're good to go.

Does this help?

 

[bullfrog]

It really comes down to your painting style but I’d rank the Army Painter acrylic paints at the bottom of my list of about a dozen tried brands. The exception to that are their inks which I think are fantastic. Sometimes it’s worth spending an extra few dollars for the colours you most commonly use.

 

[Beatnik59]

Hehe...they don't call Quickshade Strongtone 'liquid talent' for nothing!

To be honest, it took me awhile to get used to Army Painter. I was a Polly S guy, which was a rather thin-bodied acrylic, so making the transition to such a thick paint was a bit challenging. Army Painter is as thick or thicker than Liquitex soft bodied acrylic (which I've also used on models), but it coats stronger and dries faster than Liquitex. I almost never use it straight out of the bottle, but thin it to 50/50 with water on my wet palate, and it still coats strong, but not so strong that I can't glaze with it.

One drop can go a long way. So long as I stir it up with my toothpick occasionally (the pigments have a tendency to separate in the drop), I've found one drop will easily coat four to five 28mm minis (I've coated a squad of eight Void Junkers with about a drop and a half). Having a cup of fresh water with a dropper handy, and a pile of toothpicks, is the #1 and #2 thing I could suggest to anyone using these paints. They aren't as 'bottle ready' as Vallejo or Citadel, but I've found water and toothpicks can solve a good 85% of the challenges that crop up, like the chunkiness, the drying issues, the flow, and so on.

The other 15% can be solved by putting in additives, like extra medium, glaze medium, retarder (the paint dries wicked fast), and flow aid (the paint's viscosity is especially high), depending on what I need it for, typically very advanced techniques like glaze highlighting and freehand. Unlike a lot of the paints I've worked with over the years (like the junk at the craft store for $0.75 a fluid ounce), I've found Army Painter responds to additives very well. This might not be worth it for a lot of folks to mess with their paints this way. But the price point, the availability, the color matched acrylic sprays (very convenient when I don't zenithal with the airbrush) and the pigment density makes it worth it for me.