New Citadel Paint Review

Hi guys, been a couple of weeks since my last post as it's been a little hectic at the batcave recently. However, I have had a little bit of time to try out some of the new Citadel paint range and thought I'd post a few comments.

Starting with the base paints, I picked up Ceramite White, Averland Sunset and Mephiston Red, primarily for chapter iconography on my Kill Team, that is slowly coming along. The test piece was actually a couple of 1:148 scale military Landrover Ambulance kits. 

Prior to the new paints being released, I painted white by using a Dhened Stone base and working up with several thin layers of Skull White. However, I thought I'd take the plunge and use the Ceramite White straight out of the pot. The first coat ended up quite cloddy, so I had to go over it with four watered down coats. I think going forwards, I'll revert to the normal approach and build up lighter colours in thinner layers. So no groundbreaking results there it seems....

I used Fenrisian Grey to paint several Wings of War aircraft for my Dad. This is a reasonable colour match for the old Space Wolves Grey. I've read a lot on the tubes about the new colour equivalents being noticeably different from their old -range counterparts, but this one isn't too bad. Plus, it flows through the airbrush pretty nice, when watered down approximately 3:2 paint to water.

Not impressed with my first experience of the new dry paints... you can get the same effect by revisiting a pot that hasn't been used for a while and dried out. I was a little sceptical, but thought it was worth the crack in case it was absolutely revolutionary, but I'll probably go back to the regular layer paints. Thing is, because they are SO dry, you only get it on the tips of the bristles unless you dig into the paint. I normally make sure 3/4 of the bristles are loaded with paint, wipe off the excess and then use the drybrush technique in strokes across the workpiece. For me, this just didn't seem very user friendly. Maybe some experimentation needed?

The technical paints seem very good. Liquid Green Stuff is very useful and I've used it a couple of times for some minor gap-filling jobs. It's so much easier than trying to mix minute amounts of putty and is fairly easy to work around with brush. Still worth having some water handy to keep it all moving.

Lahmian Medium is the normal paint base without the pigment, so is thinner than the layer or base paints. Because of this, the pots appear to have shorter measures than the rest of the range, but I'm sure that's not the case... Up until now I've used Vallejo matt varnish for sealing decals; it's better than a lot of the equivalent products out there but can still get a little cloudy if over-used. Lahmian Medium is definitely a good alternative.

I've not yet used any of the glazes or textured paints, but will add some comments as and when I do. Oh, one minor point too, it's good to see the return of the little catches that hold the pot lids open as the recent versions without were a pain in the neck.

That's it for now; I'll try and get my next post on a bit sooner than this one. Laters

Imperial Strongpoint; (sadly) not Forgeworld's Strongpoint

Hey all,

Thought I'd post some feedback about the Imperial Strongpoint game board tile I recently received from Forgeworld. Having already received and basecoated the plastic Realm of Battle board (which I'm really pleased with), I had high expectations of the expansion piece. Unfortunately, despite the great pics on the website, the finished article that arrived was really disappointing. I've not bought anything from Forgeworld for a while, due to previous let-downs, but really hoped they were on their game with this one. The first thing that struck me about this was that the construction, whilst more detailed than the rest of the RoB boards, was nowhere near as robust as the plastic sections. There is no reinforcement underneath and the board was a little warped (but not massively so...).

After cleaning it up with hot water and dish washing detergent, I let the whole thing dry off thoroughly for 36 hours. Before undercoating, I had to add a lot of extra basing material to better define surface edges, where things like walls and the tank defences in the picture joined the ground.

Another grumble was the quality of the cast around areas like these barrels that form part of the defence positions. When I spoke with the guy at Forgeworld yesterday, I said that they look as though they were hit by a Meltagun, as they're pretty saggy and have a lot of holes in. The surface of the board is quite different to the plastic sections, and once it was undercoated brown, resembled an Aero chocolate bar. Now I understand why the demo pieces shown on the FW site are covered in snow flock. Although the winter scheme looks good, it didn't really fit the 'Summertime-on-Ultramar' theme of the rest of the sections.

I crudely filled this ~70mm gap along the top of the blast doors with green stuff, with the intention of sanding it down with the multi-tool once it had set. It seems as though the resin along here was so thin that basically there just wasn't enough. Although I was aware of it when I first checked it over, I didn't appreciate the extent of it until I had primed the board.

However, even after all of that (which I would have tolerated to a point), the real killer was the fact that, even though I'd cleaned the thing before starting, the paint would not adhere to it. Just taking it in and out of the box caused it to flake. I'd used Army Painter Leather Brown, which I'd used without issue on the rest of the board.

I relayed all this to forgeworld and they reckoned that using non-GW/Citadel products may be the problem. However, after advising that I'd been in touch with Consumer Direct to check where I stood before calling FW, they quickly retracted that and then stated that they prep all of their stuff by using a high-strength kitchen cleaner and then undercoat with Halfords car body primer......

When I first got into the hobby, I had a conversation about painting with Jim in the Brighton GW store, during which I suggested using coloured car primers. With some scorn, he explained about the formulation of the different paints and suggested that using car paint would just clog up all the detail on the model. Fair comment. So I was amazed to hear that this is how FW prep their stuff.

However, at the end of it all it's going back for a full refund.

Now to chase up my Fortress of Redemption that's been on order for five weeks......

White Dwarf 388

Hey folks,

Hadn't realised it had been quite so long since my last post. Been pretty busy lately, but getting in a bit of hobby goodness where I can.

Looking forward to getting my hands on some of the new Citadel paints. I can recommend the April issue of White Dwarf 388 for anyone wanting to find out more about the new paint range. It's one of those issues that may not be totally accessible for newcomers or occasional readers, but for me, this months issue is right on the money. There's some great looking stuff coming out for the Empire, plus official deathworld updates for the Battle Missions book.

Outside of this, I was lucky enough to get some new paint spraying kit and the Imperial Strongpoint Realm of Battle extension tile for my birthday recently. The RoB tile is pretty good; it needs the usual soap and water treatment before I do much else with it as there's quite a bit of dust and mould soap still left on the casting. There are a couple of places where the moulding is a little rough, and some green stuff is needed to fill a gap over the top of the blast doors where the resin was too thin. I'm going to add some extra rubble here and there where details aren't too clear, but it should scrub up well I think.

I've also finished the assembly stage of my Deathwatch Kill Team and am really pleased how they've turned out. More on those to come.

Until next time, laters folks.