Vallejo Game Color Advanced Acrylic Paint Set - Assorted Colours (Pack of 16)

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Vallejo metallics – their golds in particular – are leaps and bounds ahead of Citadel metallics when it comes to layering. Whilst I’d recommend Citadel’s Base metallics to anyone, I’d try to avoid their metallic Layer paints as far as I could. I remember spending fruitless hours battling with Auric Armour Gold and Liberator Gold to almost no avail. Vallejo’s Polished Gold, on the other hand, is excellent and goes on wonderfully. Because the consistency of the paint is that much more aqueous, it can be quite difficult to get a decent amount of paint onto the brush for drybrushing. The paint tends towards being too wet and prone to splodging on textures as opposed to leaving a good, crisp highlight. I am very new to airbrushing (I started using one about a week ago and it made me very cross) and, I will confess, I’m also extremely bad at it. But yes, in the majority of instances, the colours were great and went onto my miniatures without any trouble whatsoever. You’ve got the consistency of the Vallejo Game Color paints right and they go on beautifully – but that can sometimes be a little more of a battle than you may first assume it will be. Vallejo Game Color Paints Review- Price and Availability I’m not saying this is the fault of the paint – it’s probably as much my own inexperience – but it’s worth bearing in mind. I think the lesson here is that if you’re tempted to try some new techniques, do so with paints you’re more familiar with.

You wouldn’t know the difference between those paints on his armour and robes and their Citadel counterparts. Again, the blues – Imperial Blue, Magic Blue and Electric Blue – were excellent, and could go toe-to-toe with their Citadel equivalents. You have to be careful with the new Game Color varnishes, because they are not water-based, unlike the old ones, but polyurethane-based. Polyurethane varnishes are more durable, but more aggressive and can reactivate Inks, Contrast and Xpress Colors as well as washes and Shade paints and also damage decals. Polyurethane varnishes are useful for preparing models for oil paints and enamel washes, but what’s the reason to put them into an acrylic paint range I don’t know. I don’t think polyurethane varnishes are suitable for the average painter, so maybe that’s a question for Angel. Value & verdict There are also quite a few new colours that close some of the gaps of the old range, 44 colours in total. Nevertheless, the Game Color range is quite small compared to Citadel or Reaper, and what I’m still missing are petrol colours, more grey tones, dark skin tones, and more muted and natural light skin tones, as all of the light skin tones in the Game Color range are quite pink and peach. New Game Colors’ features & properties In spite of knowing this, in a moment of madness, I decided to have a go at some OSL on one of the figures I was testing with – I couldn’t look at the fireball in her hand and not feel as if there should be some light on her. I seriously struggled to do this, not only due to my inexperience with OSL (this was the first time I’d ever attempted it) but also because I really struggled to get the paints to do what I wanted to on the figure.

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The silver paints are okay, but rather thin, their consistency is more like airbrush paint and much thinner than the old Game Color metallics. You can work with them, but they are not as good as Steel from the Vallejo Model Air series and Steel and Dark Steel from the Mecha Color series. Those are also airbrush paints, but their opacity is higher and they apply more nicely with a brush. Moreover, those three colours correspond very closely to the classic three silver paints from Games Workshop: Mithril Silver, Chainmail, and Boltgun Metal (or Stormhost Silver, Iron Hands Steel, and Leadbelcher for those that aren’t a grizzly Grey Hunter like me), whereas the new Game Color Gun Metal is significantly darker than Leadbelcher, and even darker than Iron Warriors. There are some really lovely browns in the range too, as you can see on the boats, gloves, chest armour and hat on the figure above. The browns seem to have the best consistencies: not only are they good and smooth, but they also react very well to being thinned with water and maintain a good spread of colour when applied to a figure. Layering Layering is when the Vallejo Game Color paints really come into their own. They are spectacular layer paints and are ideal for blending. Just make sure you shake them like crazy before trying to use them, and be ready to thin things down with a little water, as you would a normal paint.

Still, those few paints aside, some of the paints are superb – the greens, the browns, the blues and the greys in particular – but others require a bit of patience. Again, this applies double to the reds, oranges and yellows.In general, I have moved on to Contrast-like paints. In fact, Game Color Inks and the new Xpress Colors are very similar in terms of consistency and pigmentation. The only difference is in their behaviour. As you can see, the Game Color Inks create harsher transitions as the pigments tend to collect in the recesses more, whereas Xpress Colors create a more even tint with softer transitions.

Note you will need only an extremely small amount of Vallejo’s own airbrush thinner to get the regular paints to pass through an airbrush with very little trouble. The good thing about Vallejo’s Game Color range is that they work fairly well with airbrushes – so much so that even a complete airbrushing novice like me can appreciate them. I noted above that, on the whole, paints in the Game Color range are quite thin. Whilst this makes certain techniques more difficult, a thinner consistency to a paint does make the non-metallic paints ideal for airbrushing. Vallejo Game Color paints come in a range of colors, including shades for various types of terrain and armies, such as greens for orcs and browns for earthy terrain. They have a fine consistency, which allows for a smooth and even application and provides excellent coverage. They are also highly pigmented, which means that they produce vibrant and opaque colors. No matter how much I blended the shades on my palette, or tried to wet blend them on the surface of the figure, I just couldn’t quite get them to do what I wanted to. As such, the end result was a bit of a mess.The Washes and Inks, developed with a new resin, are used for shadows and for the application of colors in layers. When applied over a basecoat, they enter into the folds and grooves of the figure, and instantly brings forth the features. They can also be mixed with the regular colors, or with the Mediums. On the base of the figure above, you can see where the paint has smeared on the base, as opposed to applying properly. As you may suspect, though, there are certain paints within the range that are better at being drybrushed than others.