Red and yellow and pink and green...
As many of you will know by now, the new Citadel Paint range went on advance order on Saturday and it looks to be one of our most popular releases ever. Thousands of you ran into Games Workshop Hobby Centres all over the world to try them out, myself included, and a great time was had by all. Whilst in Games Workshop Nottingham I heard several phrases come up such as: 'They're magic in a pot' and 'Is this witchcraft?' alongside the rather hilarious 'It's like painting in HD'. Truly the painting bug has caught on. Once I've sorted out all the pictures I'll post them up on the blog to show you how everyone got on.
If you weren't able to get into a Hobby Centre this weekend then make sure you visit one as soon as possible for a free demonstration with one of the store staff. They're all massively excited by the new paints (some of them even cried a little bit when they first saw them) so they will be more than willing to show you how to use them too.
Those of you that went to your local store will have seen 14 of the new Paints, but there are actually 145 of them, and they come in many, many different colours. To help you get to grips with them all, we're going to take a look at a few features of the new range. We sent Smiler the Servo Skull off to the warehouse to procure a full set of the new paints so that we could investigate them in more detail. Sadly his little arms weren't strong enough, so we had to give him a hand carrying them all.
The first thing we noticed was the magnitude of the whole range - it looks pretty spectacular when they're all laid out together. However, what we really wanted to look at was the breadth of colour. We got all the green paints together to see just how many of them there were and we were astounded to find that there are now 24 green paints in the Citadel Paint range, including 6 Base paints, 3 Shades, 1 Dry Compound, 12 Layers, 1 Glaze and 1 Texture. Now you have to admit, that's a lot of green.
But the new range doesn't stop at primary colours and shades of grey; far from it in fact. For the first time in many years, the colour pink has returned to the Citadel Paint range. But there's not just one pink, it's brought its mates along too - there's now three of them. We've also got six purple paints to work with and six oranges. There are even three different types of white, all with different roles to play when it comes to painting your miniatures. Ceramite White, for example, is a Base paint, which you use to basecoat your miniatures ready for your next layer of paint. Praxeti White, however, is a Dry Compound used for drybrushing, and White Scar is a Layer, which is used for layering, blending and highlighting.
But what about all my old paints?
One question that we've heard a lot from both customers and staff is: 'What about my paint scheme - It uses all the old colours, how am I possibly going to cope with all these new different ones?'
Okay, so I might have over-dramatised it a bit, but you get the point. All 145 paints in the new range are brand new paints made with new formulas, a new consistency depending on their role within the range, new pigmentation and so on. This means that the new colours are not the same as their predecessors.
Do not fear though, because while they are very different paints, there are still similarities between some colours. Abaddon Black, for example, is pretty close in colour to Chaos Black, while Blazing Orange and Troll Slayer Orange are also pretty similar in tone. To help you figure out what colours are comparable, we've created a conversion chart from old to new paints. This can be downloaded as a PDF from the Paint Guide section of the website, though it can also be found on the last page of April's issue of White Dwarf when it comes out on Saturday.
