Arkhanist

Check out the Darcy and Ninjon videos from the previous page - Stupid name black 5 matches the best white on the market for opacity and flow off the brush, and ninjon shows it seems to work nicely for conventional layer highlighting with feathering given the viscosity from the pot, with the performance consistency between colours being a particular plus point. Pentads/flexible triads are a love-em hate-em thing - some of the paints are likely skippable since you could potentially mix from two of the pentad or just add white, and the darker colours are less interesting simply because strong coverage dark colours pretty much everyone does gud now, so the novelty is the self-levelling there. Though being able to paint a consistent dark-to-light layered scheme without needing a wash for shading (then re-doing the base coat selectively) or a glaze to resaturate pastel edging, could be interesting for hordes.

GW have explicitly said the new paints are not replacing any of the normal citadel range; given the age restriction of tone pro, and the lack of shades and metallics it's not a replacement anyway. They might drop a few unpopular citadel colours here or there maybe, as it is absolutely huge. Seraphim & reikland & agrax are absolutely core paints to the range, they're safe. The paint range has evolved since 2012, new metallics, new shade formula, new colours etc, but they very rarely kill old paints since the 2012 full reboot. The only ones I can think of are glazes which effectively got replaced by Contrast and some of the primers - most just got merged into similar lines, like edge->layer, or the technical paints rejigger. Take Contrast - several of the wave 2 paints effectively made some of the wave 1 ones obsolete, but they're still making the originals, same for some metallics which really need to be taken out back and shot. Citadel is already going through a rebrand to Warhammer, and I'm sure their paint factory has been mixing Tone Pro stock for months for launch, plus no doubt a bit of panic buying from people thinking the old range is disappearing, plus not unusual GW stock constraints (there's only so much space to build up supply) - I'm certain the shades are staying, for now anyway. And even if I'm wrong, there's multiple good options for alternatives; new vallejo, ak gen 3, pro acryl etc that do very similar or near identical washes with similar performance. Now, what could be interesting is if they reboot the base paints off the tone pro formula, maybe even fold them into the layer line. Same colours (unlike tone pro), but better coverage, saturation and less chalkiness, maybe dropping e.g. self-levelling to keep it kid friendly. Or pre-mixed tone pro washes based on the new shading medium. I doubt they're going to stop, they rested on their laurels a long time after the 2012 reboot (their competition was army painter warpaints, old vallejo game paints etc at the time) and the competition caught up and surpassed them with better paints. Though the thought did cross my mind if the whole thing started from a joke about stitching up Duncan Rhodes by making a One Thin Coat paint that went too far... One thing I've seen pointed out is since the saturation is better at the top end, you can just highlight in the colour you want, you don't necessarily need to go up whiter/yellower than you want and blend it back in with a glaze, particularly noticeable in the reds. Though doing so to filter the whole colour is of course still legit. I'm eyeing up bloodtoof for highlighting/repairing slips on my ink airbrushed blood angels reboot, as my current paints aren't great (I have way too many reds, but most of them are very old). A good green triad for highlighting ork skin is also highly tempting given Armageddon eyeing my from my backlog and my few greens trend foresty.

I'm genuinely quite intrigued by tone pro, because the scuttlebutt is they've based them on liquid pigments, which could potentially be something different than Yet Another Paint Range. First; liquid pigments are not new - but I think the way they're being used might be. Generally, the modelling paint we use has much the same things in it: - Pigment: insoluble coloured particles. - Binder: a transparent acrylic polymer that dries into a film as the water evaporates. - Water & dispersants: these keep the pigment particles in suspension. - Fillers: talc, silica, etc. These add body and matte down the glossy binder. - Thickeners: sets the creaminess/body of the paint - Retarders: extend working time. There's a bunch you can do with playing with that chemistry, the amount of dry pigment (weathering powder is basically just this part), self-levelling, flow, satin vs matt finish, how much the different pigments that are combined to make up a colour can separate with water etc etc, and that's largely where you get the differences between e.g. citadel, AK gen 3, vallejo's reboot, fanatic, pro acryl, scale 75 etc etc. One problem is that many vibrant pigments are organic, and their refractive index is similar to the binder, so they are also quite translucent. So you need something to provide opacity (coverage) - and that's TiO2, titanium dioxide e.g. white, which is honking large, or more filler; either way you're pushing the paint towards physical chalkiness, and white scatters all light, so you reduce saturation - it makes it pastel. You can still fiddle plenty with the chemistry, and that's what we've seen over the last couple of decades. Hence the usual trade off - acrylic inks are basically acrylic paint without the fillers, thickeners and modest pigment load - they're quite vibrant, very liquid, and translucent. Great for airbrushing intense colours over white, but their coverage and control is pants with a brush. Then think of a typical light colour, like yellow - to get that coverage, it's likely chock full of filler and TiO2, runs the risk of going chalky if diluted for e.g. edge highlighting, and is either weak coverage or pastel. Liquid pigments are very finely milled, and dispersed in water with dispersants - usually a very high pigment load. This stuff is what they use in high-grade artists acrylics for example - or if you've ever seen them mix custom colour paint at the DIY store by squirting a little liquid colour into a white base then shake it to mix, well that was liquid pigment. One advantage of liquid pigment is because it's very well dispersed and not clumpy, you get more tinting per gram. And you can buy organic pigments with better opacity if they come in this format. It's strongly suspected that the mono-colour contrast paints (the 2nd wave ones, like baal red, imperial fist etc) are liquid pigment based. The clever bit is if they've managed to turn that approach into a an opaque brush-ready paint. For starters, by starting from fixed liquid pigment concentrates, you squirt that in the rest of the brew, and you get the same mix of binder, thickeners and additives, rather than customising them based on the specific performance of the pigment combo (rubbish coverage, add moar filler). which gives you very similar behaviour across the range - something several of the pre-reviewers have called out. This is often used for this exact reason in industrial tinting. Instead of relying on so much white and filler to give you opacity, you've got your liquid-only organic pigments, and a higher pigment load to do it - so you don't have to sacrifice saturation for your lighter colours (which are still likely the midtone + white at the heart). There's several ways to do self-levelling; maybe flow aid. Where this setup will breakdown is glazing. With such a finely dispersed high pigment load giving strong tinting, you need to add a LOT of water to get down to the translucency you'd expect from a traditional acrylic modelling paint. Dilute your binder too much, it's going to be hard to control, and it'll dry patchy, tide-marks, lift easily etc. Hence the shading medium, as you have to put more acrylic binder in, not just water when you're thinning it right down. This approach is not new. Golden, Liquitex, Daler-Rowney etc use liquid pigments already, but their target market is people with a 6 foot canvas, not a 30mm hard plastic figurine so a) they sell it in like 200ml bottles or tubes, b) even liquid versions tend to be pretty thick so it intentionally holds brushstrokes, and usually stays open for a long period so c) getting it to an appropriate consistency/flow/finish for use with models and a size 0 brush can involve quite a bit of mediums and becoming a bit of a chemist. (pro-tip those mediums though, way cheaper per ml). d) when you're mixing tints to cover big areas, you tend to stick to single pigments. No pre-mixed subtle pentad graduations for you, you mix them yourself. e) artists are prepared to pay top-dollar for the best pigments, and toxicity is tolerated for saturation. This is not true for stuff intentional sold to children next to the plastic toys, with a much higher chance of ingestion. Closest example of the artist approach in the hobby space would probably be Kimera Pure Pigments. Single hue high load pigments. With a range of 39, you need to mix them yourself. Coverage depends upon the underlying coverage of the pigment itself, so traditional weak coverage for certain hues (yellow etc). Satin finish. Mixing needs to be very careful, as strong pigments will overwhelm weak ones. £5 a pot. All absolutely great for pros who love mixing their own graduations, are blending and glazing individual miniatures to an incredible standard. Not so great for slapping down your army base coat and wanting repeatable highlights in identical shades over and over again. Biggest downside of course is the cost - high intensity liquid pigments plus the rest is not going to be cheap, plus it's not going to be as low-toxicity with the extra stuff (self-levelling, consistent flow etc), plus GW tax. But Two thin paints is £4.50 a pot, and lots of people love those. So I don't think the price alone is a breaker. The pots are, well, GW sees them as a highly recognisable brand that nobody else uses, and you can paint direct from them, so that's not going to change. And really try to break the habit of licking your brush with them I suspect, i.e. the 16/18+ label - if bacteria laden dirty rinse water isn't enough. So not for everyone, absolutely. But a liquid, high flow paint, that's consistent between colours, isn't chalky or spidery off the brush, with strong coverage and decent saturation? Sounds like everything I've ever wanted for an edge paint. I already have good coverage base paints (airbrush, pro acryl etc), contrast type paints are great for speed and organic texture, but I've been looking for better edge paints, in a decent pre-mixed range. Reaper MSP is hard to get in the UK, and my existing pots are really showing their age, and coverage is so-so. Fanatic paints are nice, but edge painting with them seems harder than it should, Gen 3 is all over the place range wise (though I'm trying out some). I find myself keep going back to citadel layers, simply because I can get them to behave even if it is pastel city. If the top ends of Tone pro aren't it, then I'll probably give TTC another go now the range has widened.

For those unfamiliar, powerwash simulator is a game where you use a water pressure washer to wash dirt off various filthy things in sections; buildings, a wide variety of vehicles, fairground rides etc with different nozzles (power vs spray width), one scene at a time. It's not exactly AAA graphics, but it's relaxing and meditative - much more fun than real cleaning! My moderate gaming PC happily runs it at 100+ FPS. They've done various themed DLC (some paid, some free) addons to the main game, and this is now the 40K one, if you fancy cleaning the mud and blood off a land raider etc.

Just another thumbs up for a vortex mixer here; getting old and creaky sucks, but mixing paint is trivial with a mixer. I've GW metallics that have *never* been fully mixed until I vortex'd em. Adding a paint-safe mixer ball of some sort will speed things up for tricky (contrast) or thick paints. I posted these over 2 years ago, and it's working just as well as it was then. before: after ~15 seconds on mixer: The four E's mixer is one a lot of people have as it was almost the only option in that size for a good while, but it's basically science lab equipment hence the price. The much cheaper alternative ones should be fine too, as long as they're similar e.g. about 5000 RPM; the build quality may be lower, but the 4E is built like a tank which is probably overkill given we're not using the thing for hours a day. As always, if your paint has dried out a bit and is too thick to easily mix, adding in a few drops of medium, e.g. contrast medium or lahmian medium (plus a mixer ball) will help it to liquify and mix much more easily, without affecting coverage as thinning the pot with just water can. I tend to do it from the get go with base paint thickness equivalents.

With the very high humidity lately due to the rain, I'm not surprised the army painter spray went badly - one of the main reasons I switched to airbrushing myself! Matt or satin varnish over frosting will do basically nothing as you've discovered. Frosting is caused by an excessively rough surface; usually the matting agent clumps up due to not being shaken enough, sprayed from too far away and it dries mid-air (with AP sprays you do want to be pretty close and fast, light coat passes), or, most likely in this case, high humidity caused it to clump mid-air. The goal is to fill in around the excessively rough surface to get a smooth, glossy one again, so you can then start-over to get the final finish you want. This is the idea behind olive oil, it acts as a gloss oil finish, though obviously not the durability of varnish! I find gloss varnish more effective. I'd double down on the vallejo gloss by hairy stick you've already done. 'ardcoat is okish, but it's not a very glossy varnish, so not ideal for this and you'd need a bunch of layers. Apply the vallejo gloss in thin layers and let fully dry each time (several hours min), on each area that is still frosted - may take several if the frosting is particularly bad. Once the frosting is all gone (or as much as you can) and you've got a full glossy dried mini, you can then do a thin layer or two of matt or satin to get the final look, hopefully without frosting this time! For this final finish coat, either get the airbrush out and do it properly :) or a thin coat of the same vallejo matt by hairy stick will also work, just slower. I'd avoid the rattlecans until the weather improves, and humidity in particular is much lower.

Whatever nice organisation scheme I ever end up arranging my paints into, it usually descends into near madness in short order... I've one rack of Contrast, one rack of pro-acryl (they've effectively replaced citadel base paints for me), one rack of citadel layers, one rack of air paints in droppers, and one rack of miscellanous in droppers. I then have a toolbox which holds my non-standard bottles; vallejo metal color, inks, flory clay weathering washes etc. Certain key paints like white, black and mediums never leave my painting tray. I also have a big box of rarely used paints stored elsewhere; I find it *really* hard to throw old paints away. I need to purge some more from my miscellaneous rack (like my army painter paints that I hardly ever use) into there so I can decant a bunch of layer paints into droppers! Organising by colour kinda works, but I don't get too picky about it as I tend to accumulate paints from my current project in a huddle on my desk. Organising alphabetically breaks as soon as you buy a new paint and realise you have to shuffle half a rack over to accomodate it.

Most previous versions of epic included xenos because they weren't set in the Heresy. Even the 1st version which was, included orks and eldar via WD. There was no immutable law that forced GW to make the new epic set in the Heresy era, rather than 40k - AI wasn't. On the other hand, we'd probably be getting all the complaints about Primaris in epic instead...

And personally I'd very much like to see xenos armies come in quickly, just like the original Codex Titanicus and space marine 2nd edition did, rather than GW just release the exact same marine units over and over in 4 different tiny armour marks in yet another marine sausage fest. But I suspect I'm going to be even more disappointed; but for the same reason, the high cost of the creation of plastic sprue moulds, for a niche game, when the opportunity cost is churning out some more 40k minis that print money.

When they made Adeptus Titanicus, the very first epic scale game in 1988, they needed to cut down on the types of sprue in the box. So they needed a reason for identical imperial titans to be fighting each other. And thus they created a little blurb about something they dubbed the Horus Heresy in M30 to explain it... They did release some rules for tanks and space marine infantry to use in this original AT in White Dwarf, and little epic scale metal minis to represent them. This was soon followed by Space Marine 1st edition (1989) "Epic Battles in the Age of Heresy", a boxed game of the same design of marines and tanks, but now in mass-produced plastic, which could also include titans from Adeptus Titanicus. Those marines were in mark VI, same as the metal ones, because that was the armour for space marines back then. (thanks to RTB01), and thus the game of epic battles was born... These little fellas with their cute little beakie helmets. So mark VI was canonically the official mark of the Heresy, from the very beginning. Obviously they added older marks to the lore over time, and people of course have their favourite ones they'd like to see. Like the others, making Mark V the mishmash 'heresy' armour for armies when supply lines were shattered, and pre-heresy supplies had run short, and before mark VI had become widespread is a later addition.

Imperial Fist is one of the new 'contrast' paints that's not actually contrast-like at all. There's several that are single-tone colours, that don't darken in the recesses or go on blotchy on flat surfaces. They're more like an intense, easy to apply base coat (when used over white). They really should have called them something different in my opinion, as they're something else. Bad Moon Yellow, Magmadroth Flame, Baal Red, Doomfire Magenta and Imperial Fist especially, and Ironjawz Yellow, Leviathan Purple and Black Legion are also somewhat in that vein. The older Iyanden yellow is in the bottom left, and you can see the coffee staining that makes it less suitable for larger plates e.g. tanks. Plain bad moon yellow and imperial fist at the top, on the other hand... It's the closest to doing an airbrush coat I've found via brush - I don't know what chemistry they're using, but it's goddamn clever.

I had a quick look at Carrefour and Intermarché (french hypermarkets) and could only see metric tape measures. But they're trivial to find on amazon.fr, and dual metric-inch (le pouce) tape measures certainly exist generally, as there's one at the house of my French mother-in-law for imperial sewing patterns, from a craft store. I'm sure they'd be easy to find at a big hardware or craft store. And France is about as metric-centric as they come - given they invented it! - but they still have to deal with US (and to some extent, the UK) imports still using imperial measurements, even though their own have long since passed into obscurity.

This has already been somewhat developed - 40k is not the only target market for 3d printing by any means. Generally you get patreons who do exactly as you describe; they design new models each month along a theme. Some are for D&D expansions, some for armies compatible with existing games like 40k/fantasy/onepagerules, or a whole team for say bloodbowl, while some just for making very intricate standalone minis that people mostly get cos they're cool. The cost of subscription varies, but is often around £10 a month; early subscribers get it cheaper. For those who miss out on a given month, the models/units within it then usually go up on one or more of the STL marketplaces; C&G, MMF, cults3d etc. The individual units/models tend to be significantly more expensive depending upon artist and complexity; £10 - £20 is about as much as a single unit goes for, but combo releases for the whole month can be £40-£50. Heroes infinite go for the very high ~£150 per month you miss! So you're heavily encouraged to subscribe to the patreon of designers you like, because the price is FAR cheaper. But of course, you only tend to know what's in the preview for the month ahead. But recurring revenue is considerably more useful than one-off purchases. The other big method for 'one off' projects tend to be kickstarter; e.g. a whole bunch of terrain or base designs, with buy-in later being higher than at the time. If you're a commercial printer who wants to sell the models, as opposed to for personal use, then usually you need to sign up for a merchant licence on that patreon/kickstarter, which is considerably higher; anything from £50 to £100 a month for patreon. But then, apart from marking where you got them from, you can generally print and sell as many as you like on your own store. Printing costs vary; once you've bought a resin printer (around £200-£400 unless you're going REALLY big or fancy), it's about 10 to 20p a figure for electricity & resin & wastage. So if you're wanting to print a fair bit, and have the space and time to learn, then it's cheaper to buy your own printer and subscribe to a patreon or two, and you will have a steady supply of new minis to fit your interests. If you want to pay someone else to print your specific STLs, then you're still generally buying those STLs yourself, on a mostly indvidual basis (obviously sharing between friends is generally fine). If you're buying off-the-shelf prints from e.g. etsy, then that printer paid the merchant price, or is otherwise licenced by the designer. So the designer is getting compensated, printing yourself is fairly cheap (past the initial investment), but you can also get a wide range of one-off bits from specialist sellers if you're not too invested. Overall, it seems to work quite well! Obviously there's a HUGE amount of free STLs made by people who just like to share; these can vary in quality, but there's plenty there if you're on a tight budget and are primarily after bits. But the best quality 3rd party full model designs do tend to be charged for, one way or another.

IIRC, Mars' did have an artifically generated oxygen-rich atmosphere and surface water during the Dark Age of Technology, but it was destroyed during the warfare of the Age of Strife, and the planet reverted to its very thin, dry primordial state - plus a bunch of radiation and chemical weapon pollution. With a very thin (and dangerous) atmosphere, large powered aircraft become quite difficult as you get very little lift - you're more building spacecraft instead, which requires a higher tech base. So during the latter age of strife (which did last ~5000 years!), when Titans were created by the Cult Mechanicum to retake control of the planet, aircraft likely *wouldn't* have been much of a factor. They could still potentially have faced small drones ala Mars Ingenuity, or big, slow dirigibles, but neither would be much of a threat to titans. The only native aircraft I can think of that the Mechanicum 'always had' is the Archaeopter, which was used for the explorator fleets, but we don't know when they got the STC, and it's not much of a strike aircraft anyway. They mainly just went straight to spaceships, and lifters to get to and from orbit for the Explorator Fleets. And of course, once they unified with Terra, they saw the various Navy and Marine aircraft as part of the Great Crusade, but the titan designs by then were long since set without considering aircraft a threat, and we know how resistant the Mechanicus are to tinkering with their holy designs! They probably just had some type of Secutarii-manned AA platform to support the titans, or maybe some kind of ordinatus - perhaps the old ordinatus golgotha could be retconned to the heresy era and used as an AA platform!

Not those ones specifically, but you basically use them to mark out the edges of deployment zones on the table - the GW ones come in two colours, so you can use 1 colour per side. Just measure the deployment zone distances (from the centre line, from each other etc), and place markers periodically at that distance to indicate where you can and can't deploy. Then you don't have to measure for individual units, just stick em inside the marked zone. Whether you use the inside or outside edge of the marker as the limiter is up to you; just do the same for both sides. (I prefer inside edge, i.e. no model can deploy standing on a marker) There's also things like the Behind Enemy Lines Secondary mission, i.e. getting VP for models into the enemy deployment zone, so they can be left in place beyond initial deployment as a visual aid. (This set also has objective markers)