Angry Griffin's Oldhammer

Tag: Paint Review

  • Scale75 Color Forge Paint Set SSE-063 Review

    Spanish company Scale75 have a box set called the Color Forge, which combines a number of their other paint sets into one product. Is it worth it? Let’s take a look at what’s inside.

    The box is a lot smaller than you would expect for the cost! The contents are listed on the back:

    As you can see, the following sets are included along with an aluminium holder:

    SSE-009 Steel Series Metal ‘n Alchemy

    SSE-010 Gold Series Metal ‘n Alchemy

    SSE-021 Copper Series Metal ‘n Alchemy

    SSE-011 Inktensity Acrylic Ink Set

    SSE-062 Inktensity2 Acrylic Ink Set

    SSE-052 FX Fluor Experience

    Forty-eight paints all up.

    The side:

    The Color Forge set itself is part number SSE-063. Once you take the glossy cover off there’s a plain white cardboard box on the inside:

    Pull out a paint on either side and lift the tray out and you can see the paint set and stand:

    The tray is very functional – watch out, though, as the folded down sides (where the rivets go through) have a sharp edge at the bottom on mine – it may scratch a table if put down and slid. The holder works well in a drawer – and doesn’t add much to the height of the paint bottles. I find it helps to put a drop of the paint on the top of each cap so locating individual colours from above is easier.

    I’ll discuss the qualities of the Scale75 paints as compared to other ranges separately – for now, how does this set focus to buying the individual components one at a time? The price of this one at the local hobby shop is $439AUD, and the individual sets are $70AUD – so buying them separately would put you at $420, which means you’re paying $19 for the aluminium stand and the convenience of getting the paints all in the one box.

    Domestic online prices are a bit different – $319-334 on eBay AU (ebay links are affiliate links) at the time of writing, where the individual sets are closer to $60 per unit – putting the Color Forge set as being a cheaper option by about $30-40.

    If the holder is something you can use with your setup I think $19 is not a bad price for it, as you probably won’t find a half decent MDF or 3D printed equivalent holder for much less.

    The spread of colour options is not enough to paint most forces in their entirety – you don’t get a lot of run of the mill colours outside of the inks, but you do get some gorgeous metallics and vibrant fluorescents to go along with the broader range of ink colours. If you haven’t used inks before, don’t expect them to behave like your regular acrylic GW/Army Painter/etc. paints, so this set is more complimentary to an existing paint set (if you want to stay within Scale 75 for that, the Artist set compliments it nicely).

    Overall I think that you have to weigh up how much the individual items are going to cost you either locally or online to see whether this set is good value for you. For me it worked out cheaper than buying the sets individually as I had intended on buying the lot of them. If you don’t ever have any intention of using a sub-portion of the set – e.g. fluorescents or inks – then it makes much more sense to buy the individual sets.

  • Vallejo Game Extra Opaque Set Review – 72.290

    Today I’m reviewing a set of paints from Vallejo with a difference – this is the extra opaque set, part number 72.290.

    It has sixteen 17ml bottles in it – the colours and individual part numbers are:

    72.140 Heavy Skin Tone
    72.141 Heavy Red
    72.142 Heavy Violet
    72.143 Heavy Blue
    72.144 Heavy Blue Grey
    72.145 Heavy Grey
    72.146 Heavy Green
    72.147 Heavy Black Green
    72.148 Heavy Warm Grey
    72.149 Heavy Khaki
    72.150 Heavy Ochre
    72.151 Heavy Gold Brown
    72.152 Heavy Salmon Orange
    72.153 Heavy Brown
    72.154 Heavy Sienna
    72.155 Heavy Charcoal

    First up – they’re thick. If you haven’t got agitator beads chuck a couple in each bottle before you start shaking them as it’ll really help. As an example, the heavy grey looks like this out of the box:

    The green component of it has well and truly separated and requires a fair bit of solid shaking to blend it all back together. I use a Four E’s vortex mixer (can be found on eBay) to help shake them and it certainly does help with these paints. The exception so far seems to be the Heavy Blue Grey which is a lot thinner than the other paints in the set, though still not exactly thin by normal standards.

    So what are the colours like?

    Overall they’re flat, muted tones with a matte finish when on the model. The big appeal, however, is that with one coat – even slightly watered down – you should get full coverage as a base coat. The colour range is reasonable – though there’s no yellow in this range at the time of writing – but otherwise there’s a pretty good spread for base colours.

    The Extra Opaque Charcoal is a shade darker than the Vallejo Model Colour Black Grey, which I usually paint Raven Guard with. The charcoal combines nicely with Army Painter Matt Black for adding shadows/depth and your choice of lighter grey for edge highlighting.

    The most impressive coverage has so far come from the blue, which is good because it’s also a very nice blue! The charcoal would be a close second. In contrast to those two a couple of the colours have been disappointing as far as outright coverage over black undercoat goes, even after an extended shaking session – the ochre/tan colours take about three coats to achieve the same coverage as just one of the blue. Still better than your average non-heavy paint of an equivalent colour, though.

    At the end of the day, would I recommend the set? I think it’s a good set overall and for those who don’t like putting on multiple coats to get even coverage some of the colours will be exactly what you’re after. They definitely require a LOT of shaking – in the same vein as Scale75 paints do to get the best out of them – but if you can manage that and are looking for paints with very good coverage to use as base paints I think it’s worth a look. Paying for the set is much more cost effective than buying them individually – the set retails for about $60AUD (eBay AU, eBay UK, eBay US, affiliate links) where individual paints are about $6ea, so to buy this set individually would set you back $96.

    This won’t be the only paint set you’ll ever need but it definitely has a place for those who like a good, fast base coat!

    Update: Colours I would buy again due to having excellent coverage:

    Heavy Blue 72.143

    Heavy Sienna 72.154

    Heavy Charcoal 72.155