Updated One Force paint-scheme & new paints review

Here's my first guess at how to achieve my One Force look with the new paint range.  As I haven't really started the force, and had only bought 2 pots of paints for them, I'm just going to accept the loss of the old scheme, and start from scratch.  As the local GW didn't have a full selection of the new paints to trial, I just had to spend a long time comparing the actual new paints through their pots to try and work out the combinations I needed.  I've also changed my style slightly, shading a lighter basecoat rather than layering a lighter colour over a dark base to try and speed up the process.  Comments on the paints at the bottom.

Castellan Green - basecoat, this is a perfect colour for the overall colour-scheme, very glad for this release

Mechanicus Standard Grey - about halfway between the old grey basecoats, also an improvement as far as I'm concerned

I think at this point, I'll give a basic drybrush over the grey items to give some more definition.  You'll see in the comparison image lower how it helps to define the greys.

Tallarn Sand - spot colour for decorations/markings

Agrax Earthshade - rather than washing all over like I used to, I'm trying to apply this only into the  recesses, it seems to work nicely and as its over a base, easy to tidy up when I make mistakes or am a little generous with the wash (sorry! shade).

Nuln Oil - darkens the grey down and provides good shading as well, it'll probably need a second/third coat to get it dark enough, otherwise very good.

Loren Forest - edge highlighting on the armour, a perfect step up from the base colour allows lovely neat highlighting.  Its a bit messy higher up the model as the paint was starting to dry on my palette.

Comparison to my terminator using the older scheme, pretty similar but subtly different, and a lot easier now.  Here is where you can see how a slight drybrush on the grey can really help definition in the grey areas.

Markings and damage applied - I'm finally starting to be happy with the damage I'm painting, its much smaller, subtler and doesn't stand out so much which makes it work better.

I'm really pretty happy with how these are looking now.  As ever, the photo's aren't very flattering and help to reveal all the mistakes I've made.  The actual highlighting looks a lot more subtle in person.  I'm also pretty settled on how the paint-scheme is settling down and its really relatively easy to paint too.  This one figure took less than an hour to paint from scratch including letting things dry and taking photos so all in all, really pretty quick (at least for me).  I'm also finally getting the damage effect right so I'm pretty much ready to go with these.  I'm going to paint the unit of terminators next to see how it works for a full squad, and with the added details, can't wait to see how they look.


The New Paints

If you are really interested in an in-depth review of the paints, check out this post by Stahly.  Otherwise:

Base - I like.  They're thinner than the old foundations, and so you can apply them happily straight out of the pot.  You'll still need a couple of layers to get perfect coverage, but you did with the foundations if you watered them down so that they didn't clog up all the details.  These new ones you can go straight from the pot quite happily.

Layers - Also good.  You don't really need to water them down, but I still like to paint from a palette in order to control the amount of paint on my brush.  I wasn't using my wet palette today, so the paint dried pretty quickly, so some watering is needed if you do it this was.  The closer matching of colours is brilliant, no longer do you need to blend to get nice graduated highlights.

Shades - Different to the washes, but good.  They cover more than the older washes, spreading a little more evenly over the whole surface, and don't concentrate so much to the lower levels of any surface.  This means that they change the colour of whatever you are washing more, and don't shade as strongly, but the shading they do give is more graduated than the old washes.  The side-by-side in Stahly's review (linked above) give a great visual demonstration of this.
Something I've seen in GW, but not experienced myself, is the new Shades seem to dry glossy when used over the old paints, apparently there is some kind of compatibility issue, so something to be wary of.

Glazes - Definitely an advanced product, but if you paint any of the primary colours, I can see them being extremely useful.  I'll probably not be getting any as my painting really doesn't call for them.

Dry's - I like these, but I'm not going to go out of my way to use them..  For the times you are dry-brushing, these will be very useful.  No more brush streaks because you didn't quite wipe enough off, and a lot less wastage.  Good if you are planning a lot of dry-brushing as part of a paint scheme.

Textures - Not good.  I've tried them in store, and they just don't cover very well without at least 3-4 coats.  You'll also damage your brushes pretty quickly using them.  I'm happier to stick with texturing bases myself.  The only plus point I can see, is the texture is finer than GW sand, so more in keeping with the scale of 40K.

As for the new pots, about 3/4 of my new paints came in the new pots and generally I like the new tab that holds the lid open.  You get good access to the paint, with little spillage down the back of the pot like the old pots were prone to do.  The lids are a little more difficult to seal, and the lid is made of a slightly more rubbery material so you do have to be careful that it seals all the way around as they are also prone to deforming as you seal them.  They aren't screw tops so you can't take the tops off easily, but with the rubbery material you may be able to prise the tops off if you want.


Well this post has turned into a bit of an epic, so I'll sign off here.
Cheers - Andy