Unboxing – The Army Painter Hobby Starter Paint Set

Got my hands on some paints from The Army Painter for the first time, so I decided to write up some thoughts of unpacking it. I also took the chance to (ab)use some of my newly arrived Reaper Bones goodies (advertised as “ready-for-paint” without primer) as test-dummies.

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#1 – Army Painter Starter Price & Savings

The Army Painter Hobby Starter Set’s recommended retail price (RRP) is £18.99. I got mine for £17.09 from Wayland Games. Overall, this paint starter set offers some moderate exciting savings over The Army Painter’s individual paints and the competition.

Going by RRP, the 9 Warpaints in the Starter cost £2.00 each, as would the Highlighting Brush. The “free” Dark Tone Ink advertised on the box normally is priced £2.25 on its own.

Buying everything individually would thus cost £22.25, making the Starter Set ~14% cheaper as a package (including the free Ink). Not bad, if you’re literally starting your painting collection or truly plan to use all the paints in the set.

The Vallejo Model Colour Set – RRP £19.99 – is a quid more expensive and only has 8 paints inside, though it does have a second (drybrushing) brush and a mixing palette.

Games Workshop’s Citadel Paints Starter Sets are £23.50 and have only 8 paints. On the other hand, they do have 5 clip-together GW minis. I’ll let you decide if that’s a better deal or not.

Of course, there’s lots of other paints out there (some a lot cheaper). From these three prominent brands in the hobby, Army Painter’s Starter Set just wins out in “amount-of-paints-for-money”.

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#2 – The Army Painter’s Starter Paints

Colours are what you would expect from a Hobby Paints Starter Set: Black and White. Green, Red, Blue, Yellow. A skin-tone. A leather and a metallic tone, and the aforementioned Dark Tone Ink.

The drip feeders – obviously – are light-years ahead of the Citadel caps, even the new ones. It’s worth remembering to shake The Army Painter paints well before using (as they say on the bottle).

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#3 – The Army Painter & Reaper Bones

To get a feel for the paints, I simply splashed a few of the paints on a few Reaper Bones miniatures. No thinning paints (heresy!). No primer (Reaper says it works, right?). No brush except the one provided in the Army Starter Set.

Specifically the pics below show:

• Daemonic Yellow
• Plate Mail Metal
• Dark Tone Ink

I was most impressed with the yellow (and the other “basic” colours). Even without thinning, they flow well and give a good sold cover. Above is just a single coat of yellow (I did start to paint both legs, but stopped for the photo to keep the contrast).

The Plate Mail Metal went on as easily, though the metal pigments were forming little gobs, leaving a very uneven finish. They likely work better with thinner layers on top of each other?

The oddest one was the Dark Tone Ink, which literally refused to flow into any recesses. Instead it kept re-forming into round gobs of paint. This may well be specific to the Bones material. The “no primer” claim definitely doesn’t work for Ink directly onto the “naked” miniature.

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#4 – Thoughts?

Overall, I think the Army Painter Hobby Starter is a decent enough set of paints. The basic colours look great, even if I wasn’t impressed with the Ink (from a one-off test). Taking the Ink out, the savings of this set over the individual Army Painter paints is small. It still is a better deal than the other two brands and – compared to citadel – the drip-bottles still win for me.

Have you used The Army Painter paints before?

What paints do you use usually to paint your miniatures?

Let me know your thoughts and leave a comment!

Z.