The Army Painter Speedpaint Starter Set - 10 x 18ml Speed Model Paint Kit Pre Loaded with Mixing Balls and 1 Brush- Base, Shadow and Highlight in One Miniature and Model Paint Set for Plastic Models

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But we all know Contrast isn’t perfect. Some colours do exactly what they are supposed to, like Blood Angels Red and Iyanden Yellow – base colour, shading and highlights with one coat. Other colours are quite thin and feel more like washes, like Aethermatic Blue and Gryph-Charger Grey. And many of the darker colours are rather flat and hardly create any highlights, like Dark Angels Green and Cygor Brown. I decided to start with two identical miniatures, but with two different primers. Using a Games Workshop Ork Warrior model, I primed one with Citadel Wraithbone spray primer, and the other with The Army Painter Matte White Colour spray primer. Wraithbone on the left, matte white on the right. Image by Paul Benson. I also tried to apply a second coat of Speedpaint, here you can see Hardened Leather and Slaughter Red over Blood Red Speedpaint, as well as a wash of Purple Tone, and this turned out fine, as long as you don’t scrub over the dried Speedpaint with too much force. So, you have to think about how you are planning to use Speedpaints and decide if it might be an issue for you or not. Hardened Leather, Slaughter Red, and Puple Tone Wash over Blood Red Speedpaint

Shortly after we published our review, The Army Painter reacted with a video of their own. Providing some advice on how to reduce or avoid reactivation, for example by applying varnish before painting over. To me, it’s obvious that The Army Painter didn’t have the reactivation on their radar. Maybe they didn’t notice it during development, time pressure played its part, or they just didn’t think it would bother people (just my speculation, not facts). The Army Painter promises that Speedpaint is a real “one coat paint” and provide a consistent feel across the range. You can see it in the paint swatch below – the results of Speedpaints are more homogenous, whereas there is a broader distribution between light and dark in Contrast paints. Features

Speedpaint VS Contrast Paint

So before I start this Speedpaint 2.0 review with my honest thoughts on the new Speedpaint formula, I would like to start with a brief recap of why Speedpaint divided the hobby community. The original formula Speedpaint was released on February 22. They were hotly anticipated as they were the first real alternative to Games Workshop’s popular Contrast paints. The Army Painter’s marketing fuelled the hype as they boldly claimed the paints to be even better than the other one-coat paints on the market. And indeed, Speedpaint had a more homogeneous consistency and pigmentation. The flow properties were slightly better than many of their Contrast counterparts. Perhaps most importantly, they were more affordable. However, after the initial YouTube hype died off, painters like Juan Hidalgo and I pointed out that dried Speedpaints reactivate and dissolve when you paint over them with a wet brush or paint.

Zealot Yellow is a little more orange than Iyanden Yellow, Fire Giant Orange a little more tomato red. Blood Red and Blood Angels Red are almost identical. Slaughter Red is a bit more crimson and produces slightly more prominent highlights, whereas Flesh Tearers Red is a little darker. Purple Alchemy is clearly darker than Volupus Pink and should perhaps be thinned with a little bit of Speedpaint Medium. Hive Dweller Purple is also slightly darker than Shyish Purple, but dries much less patchy. To come up with the 2.0 formula, The Army Painter collaborated with some well-known painters from the YouTube community. A brilliant approach to designing products in my opinion. Goobertown Hobbies, Dana Howl, and “Watch it paint it” were asked to provide their input, and even come up with a bunch of new colours themselves. Speedpaint 2.0 contains a more stable acrylic resin which forms a stronger bond. It is promised to no longer reactivate after a curing time of about 2 hours depending on the environment. Which means there should be a time window of at least 2 hours for blending and reactivation. Or shouldn’t it? Spoiler: yes but no.The first thing to understand is that the latter two paint ranges have a very different formula than Contrast or Speedpaint. They are not based on dye, but on thinned acrylic pigments. Think of Citadel Nihiliakh Oxide or regular acrylic paints thinned with a lot of Contrast Medium.

Even with the less than ideal result of painting over the paint-on primer, you can still see how Speedpaints provide shading, base color, and highlight, just from the single coat. Primed Legion of Nagash models. Image by Paul Benson. Let’s proceed with some more tests and see how Speedpaints apply on a metallic basecoat. I sprayed an Intercessor with Plate Mail Metal from the Warpaints Air range, though you could also use Plate Mail Metal Colour Primer or Leadbelcher Spray. The new Speedpaints are initially available in the Mega Paint Set 2.0, which contains 50 paints, out on April 22 in 2023. A complete set and metallic paint set are following soon thereafter. In Summer there will also be a new starter set, and a Most Wanted set, which will have all of the original 24 Speedpaints but with the new formula. I wanted to do my best to paint both models identically, using the same colors for both to compare tones. As this is only a starter set of 10 paints, I didn’t fully paint the models, as I was missing some key colors that I would want to use to finish them. Still, I figured this would give a good example of how a model looks when painted with Speedpaints. Here are the two Orks, with the colors I used showing behind them. Following Army Painter’s guidelines, I only used one generous coat of each color on the model. The Wraithbone and Matte White-primed painted models. Image by Paul Benson.

Magic Blue is a little darker and more intense than Talassar Blue, but with a little thinning it would be very similar. Highlord Blue is a little lighter and more of a prussian blue than Ultramarines Blue, while Cloudburst Blue is very similar to Leviathan Blue. In terms of turquoise, The Army Painter only has a single colour, Plasmatic Bolt, which is similar to Aethermatic Blue, but much deeper and darker. I decided to try one additional Ork painting test, this time using a paint-on primer, the Pro Acryl White primer. This was the end result: The results of using brush-on primer. Image by Paul Benson.