Product Review and Unboxing: Army Painter Speedpaints (Starter Set)

Dear Readers, they finally came in! I am so very excited, you cannot imagine.

So I picked up a random mini, an elven cleric, and I began painting. The results were… slightly disappointing.

First, let’s talk about what came in the box:

As you can see, you get 10 different colors. I was a little disappointed that white wasn’t one of the colors, as I was looking forward to using that for some my battletech miniatures (my ComStar boys). C’est la vie!

That said, what I got was a nice selection otherwise. I was also surprised at seeing the included brush, which was nice.

Afterwards, I painted up my elven cleric. Here’s how he turned out:

As you can see, I tried a variety of the colors to get a feel for how they would look.

I used the brown for the leathery parts, black for the armor, green for the clothes, yellow for the hair, the Crusader Skin for the, well, skin, and blue for the cloak. The only reason the shield is red is because my 4-year old demanded that it be so. I thought, well, why not.

As a result, I was able to use 7 out of the 10 colors, leaving the purple, bone, and orange untested. I feel that they will turn out fine for their purposes.

As for the results, I realized what these paints are really good for: painting large numbers of miniatures quickly, getting a good shade/highlight as well. The results are not nuanced or detailed, but, again, I think that’s the point.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine was able to paint a good-sized Ork army (Warhammer 40k) in about an hour and was happy with the results.

I got mine painted in about 30-45 minutes. If I needed a quick paint job on a mini, I would go with this paint for sure.

Overall, I think the paints work well, but they lack the nuance of detail work (as expected). Of course I can get the paint job done and do more detailed work afterwards, which is likely what I will be doing.

I highly recommend these paints!