On a recent trip to my LHS for a few bottles of MM paints, I was confronted with a gigantic display of Citadel Paints. Having never seen them before, I Asked the owner about them and got “They’re for Gaming figures”. That was all I could get out of him. He was too busy stocking the MM shelves. Good thing I knew what bottles of MM I needed.
My question is “has anyone used them for aircraft or ship models and were the results worthwhile”? Are they as good as the other paints we use? The prices seemed to be about the norm for hobby paints.
I’ve used only Citadel primers and didn’t like them. They are much coarser than Tamiya and Vallejo primers. The Citadel black primer has an annoying violet hue.
I’ve used Citadel paints to paint details on aircraft and to paint the entire aircraft themselves. The are absolutely fantastic. In fact, I’m using Citadel to paint details on my current build. I’ll be posting some pics of some ejection seats painted with Citadel soon in my 1/48 Revell F-15E progress thread.
They lay on with very nice coverage and solid color whether hand brushed or airbrushed.
The main problem is that you have to eyeball the colors. They aren’t based off of any FS formulas and their names reflect a more medieval genre…like Chainmail Silver or Skull White…that sort of thing.
Thanks for the info Chrisk-k, Fly-n-hi, and JayF. I mostly use MM and basic Craft paints but recently added Vallejo paints to my workbench. When I need a color fast, I leaned towards MM as the LHS has a good supply but sometimes often used colors are missing from the shelf. Sounds like I’ll have to do a little research in order to use the Citadel paints. I only checked out a couple of sites to see if I could find a color chart. Didn’t find one so I’ll check out more sites.
Fly-n-hi and JayF - I use Vallejo because the Model Air line is great when airbrushed and also looks good when brushed. It sounds like the Citadel paints will fit right in. I’ll have to take another trip to the LHS and take a real hard look at the colors. I’ll pick up a couple bottles of basic colors and give them a try.
Chrisk-k - I appreciate your opinion on the primers. I usually use Dupli-Color Sandable primer on everything and it seems to work fine for me. Haven’t had any interaction problems with any model paints with this primer.
I only have a few bottles of Citadel paints so have no opinion of how good/bad they are.
The store owner was right. These are used mainly by fantasy gaming fan boys who swear by the stuff. i.e. Your figure isn’t cool if it was painted with something other than Citadel paints.
Also part of the attraction is they come in some very bright colors and with very descriptive names, snot green, scab red, rotting flesh, etc. I’ve not seen much from them in military colors.
Citadel, if I remember right, is owned by Games Workshop. I’m actually surprised to hear of them being sold in stores as I thought they were mostly mail order (at least to the U.S. - they are probably more available in stores in the U.K.)
I loved the paints when I was playing and painting Games Workshop miniatures. I only brush painted, I never air brushed them, so I can’t compare. But the above answers are right…the colors are more geared towards the games.
When I came back to fine scale modeling, I asked an old gamer friend what would be a good paint equivalent, and he gave me Vallejo.
Most of the fantasy gaming figures are in the 24-30 mm range. Something this size lends itself more to hand brushing as opposed to air brushing. Any use of an air brush with this paint might be confined to priming or a protective final coat.
