Scale75’s Instant Colors came to my attention as an alternative to Citadel’s Contrast colour range or Army Painter’s Speedpaint range. How does it review?
The set I got was the wooden Mimic Chest which contained the full range:
It’s not terribly space or weight efficient but it does look fancy.
One removable tray with half of the paints, and below that:
A second tray with the other half of the paints, along with three primers (which I have yet to use) and one bottle of acrylic medium. Also inside:
A colour wheel – which I have used far more often than I would have expected. Also included is a palette:
It’s little plastic palette – not much to say there – works as you’d expect. There’s also two synthetic brushes:
I haven’t used the brushes a great deal yet – I have been more focused on the paints.
So, the paints. There’s 48 17ml dropper bottles, not including the 60ml primers or medium:
SIN00 Shadow Black
SIN01 Werewolf Brown
SIN02 Dragon Blood
SIN03 Health Red
SIN04 Love Affair (Carmin Red)
SIN05 Life Red
SIN06 Ragweed Orange
SIN07 Drain Life (Pale Orange)
SIN08 Full Healing (Strong Yellow)
SIN09 Estus Yellow
SIN10 Zucchini Skin (Bluish Green)
SIN11 Dead Flesh (Grayish Brown)
SIN12 Fairy Blood (Dark Grayish Blue)
SIN13 Zombie Skin
SIN14 Phoenix Feather (Brownish Orange)
SIN15 Human Flesh
SIN16 Undead Dragon (Pale Blue)
SIN17 Phoenix Egg (Brownish Ivory)
SIN18 Paralyze Blue
SIN19 Evil Root (Pinky Orange)
SIN20 Toad Green
SIN21 Sulfur Yellow
SIN22 Belladonna Green
SIN23 Corrupted Stamina (Green)
SIN24 Rotten Pus (Mixture of Yellow and Orange)
SIN25 Acid Green
SIN26 Remove Mana (Dark Blue)
SIN27 Arcane Purple
SIN28 Elixir Green
SIN29 Replenish Blue
SIN30 Mana Regeneration (Blue)
SIN31 Magic Blue
SIN32 Grey Spell
SIN33 Ancestral Blue
SIN34 Grizzly Brown
SIN35 Endurance Brown
SIN36 Rage Brown
SIN37 Frenzy Orange
SIN38 Ogre Brown
SIN39 Salmon Fury
SIN40 Wild Beast (Desaturated Orange)
SIN41 Savage Beige
SIN42 Golem Grey
SIN43 Basilisk Green
SIN44 Demon Brown
SIN45 Dark Kraken (Dark Turquoise)
SIN46 Leviathan Blue
SIN47 Spectral Wolf (Reddish Gray)
It’s honestly a pretty good spread of colours, and each of them is individual – you will get a clearly different result between any of the browns or reds, for example. Each comes in a sealed 17ml dropper bottle which you will have to pierce the end of with a small drill bit or similar before use, and they have agitators inside them.
I attempted to use them in a similar way to Citadel’s Contrast range at first – undercoating in a grey with a zenithal highlight of white, then applying Instant paint over the top. The results weren’t really pleasing – getting the Instant paints to look smooth escaped me on the first few attempts, so I changed tact and started using them as pre-made glazes and was convinced of their worth in the first painting session. When combined with the provided acrylic medium to dilute them they’re very controllable and it’s very easy to build up shades – this Stormcast had the gold shaded with diluted Arcane Purple, with several coats in the most shadowed areas which progressively reduced when moving towards the light:
The yellow on this retro Space Marine Flamer was Full Healing to knock back the brightness a little with a couple more diluted layers at the bottom, working towards none at the top. The right kneepad was also done in white and shaded with diluted Paralyze Blue, and Arcane Purple was used to shade the recesses of the eye lens:
Overall I am a huge fan of them when used as pre-made glazes and have been incorporating them into every miniature I paint. I still use Contrast paints when I want punchier colours – the Instant paints I have used so far have tended to be more muted which I like for most applications. I don’t view the Instant range as being an alternative to Contrast, but something good on it’s own.
In terms of value, the Mimic Chest is $430AUD on eBay AU currently which equates to $8.95 per paint, not taking into account the medium or primers. I think that’s good value, considering that Citadel’s Contrast range is $11.50 per 18ml pot, and that’s even when you buy the whole set at once.
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.
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:
BrokenToad are a UK based company who make (amongst other things) a variety of styles of paintbrushes aimed at miniature painters. Their synthetic line is called Fugazi, and today I’m reviewing the full set of brushes from that line.
The box I have is the Mark III, as you can see from the picture. The brushes were packed well and had protective plastic sheaths to prevent the tips being damaged:
There are four brushes in the set – 2, 1, 0 and 000 (aka 3/0).
There is a brush care slip with the brushes:
In the listings online there’s also a statement about the tip curling after some use, and how to fix it by dipping it in hot water and straightening it. I’ve only been using these for a week so it’s probably early days for that to be happening, but I’ve seen no sign of it. Update: A month later, still no issues.
The brush handles have a distinct patterning which makes them easily identifiable amongst your other brushes.
So, what are they like in use?
I’m impressed by how sharp the tip is on the brushes and how well they retain that tip throughout use. Compared to the Citadel STC range I was trying out last month these brushes are night and day different – the Layer brushes don’t hold their points for nearly as long without cleaning.
I was practicing working on eye lenses and tried doing the lenses of this Questoris Knight with the #1 Fugazi and was pleased with how easy it was – I’d normally reach for my 2/0 Raphael or Winsor Newton to do so but it was no harder using the #1.
I wanted some good synthetic brushes to complement my sable brushes, which I’m not keen on using with metallic paints in an effort to extend their life and keep them pointy. So far the BrokenToad Fugazi brushes have exceeded my expectations substantially, and are very good brushes in their own right.
You should be able to grab your own set of Fugazi brushes from eBay US, eBay AU or eBay UK (affiliate links) or check out the official stockist list.
2 week update: I find that I am primarily using the 2, 1 and to some extent the 0 size – the first two especailly are nice and springy and have a consistent paint flow. The 3/0 after a few sessions has proven to be a little long and less stiff than I would prefer so it’s fallen out of favour, but the other brushes are solid and are currently my primary brushes for metallics.
1 month update: I have come to favour the 2 and 1 strongly – the 3/0 bends too easily for my liking and the 0 is much the same. The 2 and 1 are definitely my favourite synthetic brushes in those sizes and are still holding a point very nicely – they’re my go-to for metallics.
So Citadel released their STC line of synthetic paint brushes – including detail brushes, glaze brushes, dry brushes and more – here’s my review of them.
The full range consists of:
Layer Small, Medium
Base Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
Shade Medium, Large
Dry Small, Medium, Large
Glaze – one size
Citadel claims that they have noticeable springiness and a different level of stiffness and snap-back compared to their regular brushes. This is definitely the case in practice – they don’t feel much like the normal range of Citadel brushes in use.
So far I have tried the Small Layer brush, Medium Layer brush, Small Dry brush and Medium Shade brush. The Medium Layer brush splayed after the first use, unfortunately, where the Small Layer brush has proved to be excellent for use with metallics – which I am not keen on using with the sable brushes so it’s a good fit to use with those.
The dry brush works well and it’s quite distinctly different to the standard Citadel dry brush – the springiness is noticeable and I find it works quite well, being predictable and easy to manipulate.
The Shade brush works well and deposits washes at a controlled rate, so that’s a winner for me as well.
I’ll pick some more up and see how the rest go. The Medium Layer brush I made the mistake of using a watered down paint with which raced up the bristles into the ferrule as soon as the tip contacted it – and no matter how I rinsed it or used brush soap on it afterwards I couldn’t get it to hold a point. I suspect if I had stuck to thicker paints with it it would have been fine.
2 month update:
I don’t much use the Small Layer Brush after acquiring the Brokentoad Fugazi brush set – the latter holds a much better point for longer. The STC Glaze brush is squarely my favourite from the STC range – followed by the Medium Shade brush, both of which I use daily.
