New Citadel Paints!

Mar 24, 2012 by Tartan Paint Studios

Well unless you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks you will have heard the rumours about the brand new paint range Games Workshop were creating.

Finally they have released the entire range of 145 new Citadel paints for Advanced Order and they went live in the hobby centres today all around the world.  The paints are priced at £2.30 each and also in some starter sets priced at £22.50 which include some models. There is also the full range available for a limited time priced at £333.

The paints themselves are now wholly made in-house by GW which I think is the way forward for quality control as their previous range had some quality control problems with colours and pigmentation.  Seemingly this was a pet project by Darren Latham so the paints should become some of the best on the market.

We were lucky enough to get someone down reviewing the paints and new washes first hand and have included a short review of the new range including the shades, glazes and dry paints.

The citadel BASE range

First up are the base colours which are not as thick as the old foundation paints but your best still thinning them down with water to get the right results.  Some of the best of these are the new gold paints which  are brighter and go on better than the old range.  We have also been told that some of the new metallic’s are very reflective which gets a big thumbs up from us.

The citadel SHADES range

The new shades don’t smell or taste as bad as the old washes so I think they have changed the recipe.  We tried a few washes over some test models and laid down a thick coating with the shades and they don’t pool badly or leave nasty tide marks.  From early reports from forums it turns out they are much better than the old washes and shade smoothly with soft edges.  There are equivalents for Devlun Mud, Badab Black and Gryphonne Sepia too.

The citadel LAYERS range

The layer paints are designed to be used in stages from the basecoat to highlights and hopefully will make it easier for beginners and quick army painters.  They have various levels of transparency and we really like them.  MartinW from Platoon Britannica said “Some really good highlight colours that didn’t go yellowy orange or Pink. Big thumbs up for wild rider red!!!!”  The metallics again are really good with MartinW again saying “One of the golds was so shiny that we could see an actual reflection of a window in a space marines helmet. ”

The citadel GLAZE range

The new glazes are up next and are like the old inks of GW but dry completely matte.  The yellow and orange glazes were tried and the finishes were perfect, soft edges with no tide marks.  not to strong to cover your previous layers and made for glazing slight nuances of colours.  Mark Lifton from Platoon Britannica said this about the new glazes “The yellow (orange!!!) glaze that I tried was excellent. I also overdosed an entire model with it and again there were no tide marks – impressive. It gave a lovely yellow colour when used over white which deepened to an orange in the deeper recesses – it looked like I’d spent hours shading – THIS IS CHEATING.”

The citadel DRY range

The dry paints are the strangest ting I have seen as a paint.  They have the consistency of Angel Delight and will be perfect for beginners and army painters for quick drybrushing.  I don’t think they will factor in any professional painters toolkit but only time will tell.

The citadel TEXTURE range

The texture paints are a paint grit mix and come in some nice colours for quick basing of figures which can only be a good thing.  They cover quite well and I think will be useful for adding different textures to more intricate bases without having to go digging mud out of your garden.

Below we have a conversion chart to help you convert from the old paints.  The paints are not an exact match but it should help you when buying new paints.

Before the GW website crashed under the pressure I selected about 35 of the new citadel paint range I wanted including the shades, glazes, bases and some of the new layers.