For my sins, I buy Citadel paints. As a matter of both principle and practicality I’ve branched out into a lot of Vallejo and Army Painter (and the occasional AK because all the matte black paints are sold out at every local store except the one that deliberately over-orders) but Citadel has an obnoxiously effective combination of market saturation and utility that mandates I cover my hobby space in a dizzying array of the worst-shaped paint pots ever made.
Because GW has discovered how to make both solid and liquid plastic more expensive pound-for-pound than gold, I’ve looked up and ignored a vast quantity of resources regarding which paints are worth buying. Most online painting tips don’t quite mesh with my workflow, on account of the fact that I’m a lazy airbrushless peon who spray-primes on her apartment balcony and rarely bothers to put more than two layers of paint on any particular area of a model.
Despite this, I’ve painted a lot of stuff I’m proud of. Thousands of points of Tyranids, a few Necromunda gangs, some kitbashes of a kill team for a Rogue Trader tabletop campaign. Throughout this odyssey, I developed some medium-strong takes about the Citadel paints I enjoy using and the ones that I don’t. Some of these takes will be wrong for you and the way you paint! But I’ve got a system, and even if the system sucks, it’s mine.
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| Hive Fleet Cyanax, about to feed itself into a meat grinder with style |
First, some blanket advice:
- GW pots suck for higher-viscosity paints. I’ve gotten so many pots stuck open with dried paint, and then they just end up gross and unusable. Their design is good for low-viscosity washes and contrasts, though and I actually prefer them to ones in dropper bottles.
- I don’t like their non-metallic base or layer ranges, and I recommend Vallejo as a replacement both because they’re cheaper and because they have genuinely better paints.
- GW dry paints are a racket. They don’t all dry up instantly, but enough do that you shouldn’t bother. Because you can drybrush with any regular paint, the best investments for drybrushing are actually dollar-store makeup brushes and a rough non-absorbent surface like a scrap of wood or some basing material.
- Speaking of basing materials, this isn’t a painting tip, make yourself a container of basing mix if you haven’t already. It’s a lifesaver and it makes bases look good basically for free.
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| Or you can just use Necromunda bases. I love these little guys -- House Delaque is way more fun to paint than I expected! |
Noncomprehensive tier list to follow. I sure haven’t used every single Citadel paint and I don’t intend to (unless I get them all for free, in which case I’ll feel obligated to reprise this post with a comprehensive 300-paint-long review).
S Tier
I recommend these paints wholeheartedly, and personally prefer them to other brands and formulations. You can pry my stockpile of Black Legion contrast out of my cold, dead, paint-stained hands. If you don’t have any paints yet, or you need to restock, it’s hard to go wrong with these.
Black Legion. It’s a black contrast paint that goes on fast and gets great coverage. If I haven’t primed a model black, a layer or two of this gets a beautiful and smooth base coat. I stock up on this regularly, because it’s always sold out.
Seraphim Sepia. I slather this shit on everything that needs to be a warm brown. Skin, gold, claws, you name it. Love the stuff, would drink it in my morning coffee.
Agrax Earthshade. It’s like Seraphim Sepia, but for things that need to be slightly darker and muted. Works great on skin, bases, metals, etc. I keep running into tutorials that want me to use it, and I keep being annoyed that it works as well as they say it does.
Ratling Grime. My new favourite. Water it down for a beautiful shade to throw over metallics, or just put it anywhere you need to look grody. The shade of every catwalk and wheel-well in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.
Leadbelcher. I’ve tried a lot of metallics and I just keep coming back to this classic. If I could get Army Painter Fanatic metallics reliably I’d probably go for those instead, but this is my go-to gunmetal.
Retributor Armor. I don’t paint gold often, but when I do I accept no substitutes. The one thing I’ll thank Age of Sigmar for — GW made a beautiful goddamn gold paint.
Frostheart, Karandras Green. I paint a lot of bright colours, especially with my Tyranids and my penchant for plasma guns, and I love throwing contrast paint over some drybrushed highlights. I think my analysts were calling this something called “Slap Chop” but I had them thrown into a Haruspex for confusing me with strange words they dredged from the horrid realm of “On-Line”.
Rhinox Hide. It just works. I can’t explain why. Trust me on this one; if you need a generic earth-tone brown for basing just use it.
Blood for the Blood God. I need more excuses to put blood on my models so I can use this paint more. Maybe I should redo my Hormagaunts like they’ve spent the last few hours neck-deep in a grox carcass. Maybe I should get neck-deep in a grox carcass; my Hormagaunts seem like they’re having fun.
A Tier
I like using these, but I have a very niche use case or specific minor gripes. Probably not going to switch away from them, because I’ve tried alternatives and found them wanting.
Doomfire Magenta. It’s really fun to make things pink, okay? My one note is that it’s not quite as bright pink as I want it to be, but I just throw a quick highlight of a real woman’s pink (something from Vallejo, I think?) along the raised bits and it looks great.
Wraithbone. My problematic fave, mostly because I keep having to throw out pots that get crusty and dry. I use this for claws, I use it for fangs, I use it for purity seals. An excellent base coat for a shade like Seraphim Sepia. I tried Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone as an alternative and it just didn’t have the same warmth.
Soulblight Grey. I don’t use this for actual base coats, but I’ve found that it works really well as an undercoat/guide coat on models that I’ve primed white. I use a lot more of it than I think, especially given my penchant for doing bright colors with contrast paints.
Nuln Oil. I swear it used to be better. Actually, everyone does, and everyone’s right. The new formula just doesn’t have the same oomph, and I’ve pivoted to watered-down Ratling Grime instead. Still, I’ve been slathering this motherfucker on metallics for years and I don’t intend to stop now.
Drakenhof Nightshade. Gives Frostheart a nice depth, and I want to try it in other places too. Haven’t quite found where, but I’ll keep looking.
B Tier
I’m looking for alternatives for these, but haven’t found any that strike my fancy yet. If you have suggestions I’d love to hear them.
Cygor Brown. I need a brown base color that looks good for leather. Cygor Brown is just a little too dark to make out the details, and the pouches and straps I use it on are a motherfucker to edge highlight or drybrush without getting more paint around it than on it. No, I will not “git gud”.
Gryph-Hound Orange, Dark Angels Green. Some contrast paints are meh. I like painting orange, but these just don’t have the vibrance I get out of favourites like Frostheart.
Mechanicus Standard Grey. Sometimes I need to put grey on plastic, and it sure is right there on my desk. No complaints, but there are cheaper options for a perfectly serviceable grey.
White Scar. I use this to drybrush white and it works just okay.
C Tier
Tried it, don’t like it, but I keep using it because the pot’s there on my desk and I’ll be damned if I don’t get my ~$6.00CAD worth.
Thondia Brown, Catachan Flesh. Not quite what I’m looking for as a replacement for Cygor Brown. Works okay as a base skin color, but I prefer to use contrasts for faces and hands to get a little more depth and shading before I highlight.
Luxion Purple. Some contrast paints kinda suck, in my experience. This one clumps and ends up way too murky for my tastes, even though it’s really pretty in theory. Maybe I’ll try watering it down, but I’d prefer to have a purple that just looks the way I imagine it in my head. Truly I am put-upon.
Runelord Brass. I do like a dirty brass as a metal accent, but it doesn’t differentiate itself enough from the gunmetal that I use to really pop.
Averland Sunset. We all know that yellow paints suck, but I love to paint hazard stripes, so I’m in an abusive relationship with my pot of Averland until the sun grows cold. Perturabo, call me, I understand your pain.
Iron Warriors. Speaking of Perturabo! I want to like this paint more because it’s named after my favorite legion, but this is decidedly more Iron Without than Iron Within. It’s fine, but if this is the energy the IVth Legion was bringing to the Great Crusade I understand why they got sent off to fight the Hrud in the ass-end of the galaxy.
Bugman Glow. I keep finding weird places where I need to use this, but it’s never good, only ever good enough. Don’t bother.
Corax White. Too grey for me in practice. I know it’s a base and I’m supposed to drybrush or edge highlight it up, but I’m lazy and painting white is hard.
Ironbreaker. It works okay, but I managed to score a vial of Army Painter Fanatic Plate Mail Metal. Probably gonna swap back to Ironbreaker if I can’t re-up once that runs out, because I’m blowing through it like there’s no tomorrow.
D Tier
Languishing in my paint array, abandoned for better colors, but I can’t bring myself to throw them out. Maybe I’ll find a better use case for them. Someday.
Abaddon Black. Now that I’ve found Black Legion, I don’t bother with the base formulation. I just prime black if I need it and touch up with a better paint. Sorry Abaddon, some of us still remember the days where you had nothing but 12 Ls to your name.
Genestealer Purple, Xereus Purple, Macragge Blue, Ahriman Blue, Runefang Steel, Trollslayer Orange. What do these all have in common? They’re base and layer paints that I abandoned for other brands. Don’t make Citadel your go-to for regular acrylics, they’ll just let you down.
Dawnstone, Necron Compound, Terminatus Stone, Praxeti White. I don’t see a reason to use Citadel Dry paints when I can just make my regular paints pull double-duty.
Tessaract Glow. Maybe I’m using it wrong, but it just doesn’t
show up properly on surfaces. I’ve switched over to yellow-greens from
other brands and those work much better.
I have plenty of other paints from other brands that I enjoy, but this is a Citadel review about Citadel paints. One thing I do legitimately enjoy from Citadel is this infographic, which takes a lot of the stress of experimenting with various color combinations off of me and lets me work from a known baseline, even if some of the colors are ones I’d go to other brands to look for.
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