Reaper Paints in Squidmar's paint showdown

[DocPiske]

YouTuber Squidmar Miniatures is doing a multi-episode paint brand show down, and is including Reaper MSP.

 

Spoilers, RMSP won it's first round. Looking forward to how the rest of the brackets go.

 

https://youtu.be/KpZ7lFR1QPQ

 

[WhiteWulfe]

Surprised its only MSP.  Did they say why Bones was excluded? 

[DocPiske]

I don't think they differentiated between MSP and Bones paint lines; it looked like they acquired samples of each line of paints and starting head-to-head comparisons.

[Vakhir]

Look at the actual scoring too - all 8+ except for price/availability, and he's not in the US. Ignorable for the US population, as it's very easy to find in the US in stores, let alone order online with free shipping, as well as (understandably) a lot cheaper here than I'd assume it is for him. Some retailers have MSP for <$3 a pot for singles, and crazy savings if ordering the bundles, like <$2 per bottle.

 

I'm not that surprised by the findings. Reaper, Pro Acryl, Vallejo, Scale75, Citadel, and AK Interactive all got similar totals for hobby paints, as well as similar scores with a giant personal asterisk for Khimera and Golden (I'd be astonished to see any mini painters starting with these, but they are obviously a different beast - something like mixability to someone that knows what they're doing is *not* the same as how these perform off the shelf to a novice). The only one that stood out to me was AK Interactive in that I had no idea that was a strong paint line. I'm glad Reaper's standing with those others, because I feel like there's been a general perception that it was in between craft paints or Army Painter and Vallejo/Citadel. Not mine, of course, as I chose Vallejo over Citadel when I was younger and ultimately switched to Reaper as my sole source of paint besides metallics.

 

I would be very curious to see a "do nothing but use the paint out of the pot" challenge as well. Obviously this is super unfair to something like Khimera, which could be excluded, but it would emulate the "I'm just starting and diving in" experience that a lot of hobby paints get subjected to. Somewhat, anyway. I imagine the guys in this video would be able to control for that far better than a novice (who would get the 'somebody help me' caked-on paintjob that's so common). If they did that sort of experiment, MSP would floor almost everybody. If you add in "don't use a vortex mixer for Scale75", even more so, what with MSP having its own agitators already in the pot and Scale75 requiring lab equipment to get to behave properly.

[ManvsMini]

Interesting video, a one or two brands that I hadn't heard of before. But I feel this testing is lacking in a few ways. My thoughts in no particular order:

• I was under the impression that Secret Weapon had gone out of business last year, so how well their paints do is a moot point if you can't obtain them (the SW site is still up, but very few products are still available according to it, and none of those are paints). The P3 line should have remained.
• I'd rather have seen the Golden replaced with the Foundry Paint line from Wargames Foundry. Try to keep it as hobby paint vs hobby paint as much as possible.
• Similarly, I get why the Apple Barrel was thrown in, but in sticking with hobby vs hobby paint, I might have gone with throwing in Vallejo Game Color in its place. The Model Color line was shown in all the shots, and having painted with both they are different enough that I would not score them the same. I much prefer the Model Color over the Game Color, color palette is different as is the gloss.

Other random thoughts:

• The Badger Minitaire line could have been substituted for any of the craft or artist paints used, or the Secret Weapon.
• Would have liked more info on what techniques they were using with each paint brand, as some are formulated to work better for different blending styles.

-MvM

[Cygnwulf]

On 4/7/2022 at 4:07 PM, Vakhir said:

The only one that stood out to me was AK Interactive in that I had no idea that was a strong paint line.

AK traditionally focused on historically accurate colors targeting militaria modelers.  They've in recent years branched out and started adding more saturated and intense colors but there is still a perception that it's more a scale modeler paint brand than a fantasy/sci-fi figure paint brand. Which is not to say that they're not excellent figure paints.

[DocPiske]

So the final results are in and Reaper came in 2nd, just behind Vallejo. I do wonder if the result was influenced by the painters having used Vallejo for years and being more comfortable with them. I use both lines, and I do have to say Vallejo metallic paints are superior, but Reaper does have the awesome clear brights.

[Inarah]

They talked about this briefly on the twitch stream today, and said the link had been passed around the office. Reaper is ok with being #2, as availability was one of the deciding factors and MSP isn't too available in the EU.  Ed said the company had contacted Squidmar and sent a paint set and some other goodies.  Maybe there will be a follow up? 

 

 

[WhiteWulfe]

On 4/13/2022 at 6:19 AM, Cygnwulf said:

AK traditionally focused on historically accurate colors targeting militaria modelers.  They've in recent years branched out and started adding more saturated and intense colors but there is still a perception that it's more a scale modeler paint brand than a fantasy/sci-fi figure paint brand. Which is not to say that they're not excellent figure paints.

Not to mention that weren't they known more for their enamels than their acrylics up until they released their 3rd Gen line? 

[Hibou]

The ended up with the two paint lines I have heavily invested in and I more or less agree with their assessments of each.

I understand why allot of YouTubers default to using gw paints as they are trying to appeal to beginners in the hobby a great many of whom are coming in from the GW side of things and who might be turned off by seeing non GW based color recipes.

 It’s good to see some representation for Reaper on one of the larger miniature hobby channels.   

[vegascat]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Reaper do so well during the showdown as I fully expected the European paints to slam dunk due to Squidmar's folks being over there.  I'd like to see more European painters give Reaper paints a try and find out how nice they really are.

[Miguel L]

I've always felt that I liked the paints of my Learn to Paint kit more than Vallejo ones but didn't get them since every professional recommended Vallejo. Now that I'm more comfortable with my painting I decided to just buy the best of the Triad paints and all of the Bones painting sets. I kinda wish Squidmar would've checked those out though. But even if he didn't like them, I do.

 

The Bones/Triads still need more muted colors IMO and with the release of the Pathfinder line (which I haven't tried) I think Reaper dropped the ball in having 3 great but competing lines of paints.  For Reaper to really to offer an alternative to Vallejo IMO they needed to offer a modeling color line. More darker greens and browns with more differences in saturation.

 

But it still is impressive that they beat the premium European paints.

[Cygnwulf]

I guess I'm on the opposite side of that, I like when paint lines have bright, saturated colors because it's relatively easy to desaturate a color to get a more muted tone by mixing in a tiny bit of it's compliment, but it's impossible to mix paint in any way to get a brighter color.

 

Reaper primarily still focuses on Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming miniatures, where bright saturated colors are popular.  Vallejo still has their strong roots in scale militaria, where demands for colors that are exactly so to match their historical counterparts is a requirement for a lot of painters.  There's a fair amount of overlap but both also still have their, for lack of a better term, primary audience.  Reaper also has the self imposed restriction that they are trying to keep their number of in production SKUs in the paint line small enough to fit on a given paint rack, Vallejo has something like twice the SKUs as Reaper in regular production

[Gadgetman!]

No. Reaper isn't trying to 'keep it within a decent paint rack'.   

(there's been no mention of restrictions in the number of SKUs for paint)

 

They're just getting rid of paints that doesn't sell because each batch they make of a single colour is thousands of bottles that will end up taking up shelf space and slowly degrading. 

Sure, it sucks when your favorite non-common paint is cancelled while you're halfway through painting an army, but that's life.   

They're gamers, sculptors, painters and collectors like us, but they're also businesspeople, and at the end of the day, they really need to show a profit. 

It also means that when you buy paint from them(directly, not from a reseller), you can be certain that the paint hasn't been left on a shelf to age and degrade for years. 

 

Availability for Europeans?

Well...    

I have several 15L plastic totes full of little paint bottles, and a majority of those are from Reaper...   

(I also have a a stack of still unopened 'pistol cases' with old HD paint... the first bottles I bought aren't empty, yet... and the box with 'extras' wich include 3 or 4 BCP bottles)   

As long as something is available online, availability is a nonsense factor.    

 

I have a few Golden bottles that I bought in a physical store, everything else was bought online.   

(The nearest hobby store I can expect to find miniature paints is 200Km away... )    

 

I must admit that I'm switching over to Scale75 for most of my metallics, though... 

 

[Cygnwulf]

12 hours ago, Gadgetman! said:

No. Reaper isn't trying to 'keep it within a decent paint rack'.   

(there's been no mention of restrictions in the number of SKUs for paint)

I could have sworn I heard Ed multiple times on reaper live say this was a contributing factor in the retiring of colors.  

Edited July 6, 2022 by Cygnwulf