Citadel Colour Contrast paints - Reviewed!

This weekend I went to my first Ever Warhammer Fest. It was quite the event. I got whooped in Underworlds Grand Clash, and entered Golden Demon for the first time (more in my next post!). But the big news of the weekend for us hobbyists was of course the new Games Workshop wonder paints - Citadel Colour Contrast! Well between all the other things, I also got a chance to put some paint to plastic and try this new hotness:

Sadly those are not my work.
The full line is some 34 paints of which 10 were available for us mere mortals to test. I did some quick work on a Poxwalker to make sure I could try a little of each paint:

About the paints:

These paints are really what GW is pitching - a way to get a contrasted, coloured and shaded model with a single coat.

It seems GW have designed a couple of new primers (grey and ivory corresponding to warm and cool colours). It seems these are a smooth finish primer (still on the matt side of what I'd call satin). This is meant to help the paint flow over the model.

You slap the paint on pretty thickly (maybe slightly more heavily than a traditional 'Duncan' shade application) and the paint both colours the model and shades it. The photos show a single layer on each section of the model.

My Thoughts:

Games Workshop have done something really quite remarkable with these paints. They are going to allow new hobbyists and those less interested in the painting side of it to get much better looking armies painted with a lot less effort, hassle and frustration.

As someone more focused on painting - I can say that these aren't really to me. Nor should they be. I will still get a few for sure. I want to try them for airbrushing, see how they work over different surfaces and with different techniques.

There are some things to be aware of - they have many of the same issues as shades when painting over large flat areas - you can get pooling and tide marks if you are too slow. They are also pretty slow drying which should be a good thing (I was able to fairly effectively wet blend the red and yellow on the pants.) but with the amount you are laying onto the model - it can result in further tide marks as you end up pushing paint around that's half way through drying.

Overall - if you want a quick way to paint a lot of textured models - one layer of this followed by a single drybrush will produce stunning results.

- Raggy, signing out

EDIT - 13/5/19

Hey Folks,

Slight update here.

I added descriptors to the images for metadata / seo reasons.

Also in my rush to post I missed a couple of things I wanted to call out:

The GW dude that guided me through the paint session mentioned that thinning with water can have an adverse effect on the flow properties (not unreasonable to expect but I didn't test).

The paint can be built up in layers and this is something for further investigation another time.

In the Space Marine photos - the models left of a pot are the warm, ivory primer (I don't recall the name); the models right of a pot are the cool, 'Grey Seer' primer.

The colours are pretty vibrant in some cases and that is really quite astonishing given the typically muted nature of washes.

According to one pamphlet I saw - these paints should hit store shelves in June. Based on a conversation I had with one of the GW folks - they have the paints in the warehouse already, it sounded as if they are waiting for the correct release slot (he said June or July).