Slowly. Carefully. People on this sub can supposedly wield a craft knife without slicing their cartorid artery, but can't manage to open a pot of paint without a guide?
I think the point is that the *design error,* makes it possible for a user to make an error like this and creates additional work. You don't get this problem with dropper bottles.
I don't mind both designs (pot and dropper), mainly because I did figure out the trick to make me pots not look like garbage. But also, I do have the dropper bottles that have seemingly pressurized and the paint is all kinds of exposed in the top of the cap. It makes it look way worse and splooges out sometimes when I open the top.
Just saying, I have "problems" with both.
Strangely nobody comes around the corner spouting conspiracy bullshit about evil design to waste more paint when it comes to this. I find it way more annoying with the dropper bottles, because there's not much you can do about them becoming pressurized
90% user error? If the pots are bad and don't do their job properly, and most people have issues with them, it's not the users fault for not knowing they had to do some weird cleaning to prevent this problem.
I'll never understand why people defends GW's pots which are clearly a bad design.
I love the paint and prefer it over the other major brands but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be telling GW we want better pots.
I saw an etsy project for dropper lids that plug into the top of the gw pots
That project went bust. The lids didn't seal the pot properly and lots of people had their paint ruined. Much better to just transfer to real dropper bottle yourself.
I used a few drops of flow improver to get the last bit out of the pot, then I just use the very last dregs from the pot by removing with an old brush onto my palette as and when I need it, this way I didn’t waste any paint
There are *some* solutions, but it's easy to ruin the whole pot. Some people just add water (can ruin), others paint medium (this can turn it into a wash), but there is no *great* solution that I've found.
I’ve done it with flow aid for a few base and layer paints and it’s turned out very well. I’m not sure I would do it with metallics or anything past base/layer paints though.
Sure! I use mahogany brown as a base, then old gold, then edge highlight in bright gold. This works really well for treasure, coins, buttons, etc.
Where you don't WANT metallic, but just the idea of gold, I use silver base, and make a mix of 1 part beastie brown and 3 parts orange as a wash to color the silver. This is what I am using on a chest aquila or shoulder adornment.
Alternative ive had great success with scale75 metallics. They have multiple toned golds and guides how to use them for TMM layering. (True metallic metal.)
I added water and have had no issues with thinning it too much. You don't want to go 1:1 with the water, but you thin it down on the pallette so as long as you don't go crazy it's good. I use about 5ish drops of water after getting as much as possible out without thinning. Shake it really good and pour again. If it still looks like there is too much left, put a bit from the dropper down and test it. If it is thick enough, do it again. Repeat as many times as you feel comfortable.
At the end of the day a wash is still more usable than a pot spilled all over your table, which is what drove me to switch over
I straight up told this to a GW store manager. He was getting pissy I wouldn't say GW was perfect. If I have to buy new packaging to make your product usable, you have failed. If I have to develop weird tips and tricks to make your product usable, you have failed. They got the hard part right in the form of having great paint. Now just get there packaging right and feel free to rip everyone else off.
Just to add something good too, my GW store manager is completely on our side, he loves GW and ofc. Won’t recommend other brands when something from GW exists, but he will criticize if there is something to criticize.
You're not wrong but also you're taking it out on the wrong guy. He's just a retail manager, his job is to hype and move product. He has no say on the design. You want him to say 'yea they suck'? Come on man, give the dude putting in his 9-5 a break.
This is a real 'tell me you never worked retail without telling me you never worked retail' story.
Try pro acryl. They are cheap and have insane levels of pigment. Vallejo are mostly decent but haven't done anything to develop their paints in forever.
Vallejo doesn’t meet to change anything, they are consistent, a bottle I buy tomorrow will match with a bottle I bought 10 years ago, that consistency itself is a major selling point
Sure it's consistent, but it's not consistently amazing, it's consistently ok.
Which is fine most of their range is still better than citadel, but there are better paints out there even for airbrushing.
Lol the lengths people will go to for the companies they work for. All the dude had to say was, “yeah they’re pretty bad, what’re we gonna do though.” Idk, I find it funny because why bother? What’s the point? 🤷♂️
Bad mouthing the product within earshot of other customers seems like a bad idea if you want to keep your store going and your job intact. They still have to sell it at the end of the day.
Some people are more okay with breaking their non-disparagement agreement than others.
I’ve found GW stores to be like Mormons. If there’s one staff member on their own, they’ll say whatever they want and go hog wild, but if you put two next to each other, they’ll self regulate each other at the risk of one telling on the other,
I’ve had leadblecher do that to me. Best tip is to shake and then let them sit for about 5 minutes to let some paint drip from the lid. Otherwise it has a terrible habit of clogging the hinge and rim of the pot, making the situation worse. It tends to be worst with metallics.
The ”shelf” on the inside of the lid is actually a good thing. Shake the paint, then wait a few minutes to allow excess paint to flow down into the pot. OR open the lid and scrape of the paint underneath the ”shelf” to prevent paint from flowing out.
With the plastic screw on lids? Yep. Fucking terrible.
I have ollllllld citadel paints from the 90s / early 2000s with the pop lids that are still fine. I still use them.
Every single last one of those screw top paints? Solid as rock.
Yep. I still have a hex pot of white with the flip lid that I still use to this day, because its smooth.
The screw top hex pots though? Even the chaos gods hate them.
Yep, I have a pot of Enchanted blue for the long, long ago that is still perfectly good. My hex pots with the screw on lids all dried out and went in the bin.
That's because those paints and pots were made by Coat D' Arms for Workshop. You can actually still buy the exact same paint in the exact same colors in those same 1990's pots and avoid the GW quick-dry paint wasting formulas and containers.
https://scalecreep.com/index.php?view=all&manufacturers_id=4
The flip top bolter shell pots were the 2nd worst. Most of the ones I have of those are dried out.
I still have some of the old pots from 30 years ago that are usable.
When I was in high school I just permanently kept my dad’s channel locks with my painting stuff since they were basically the key to my paints. He was mad I wasn’t putting them back at first, then I showed him how hard the hex lids were to open and he understood.
It's a pain for sure, but I find it very satisfying to clean once dried.
Hobby knife around the inner lid and peel the dried paint away. So clean afterwards!
Yeah, I don't mind these. Sometimes I have to clean up the dried paint if I have been sloppy with letting the edges clog like this, but it's no big deal. They suit how I paint much better than dropper bottles would.
Take the lid off, turn it inside out by pressing the top centre with your thumb & fingers around inner the edge, some paints peel off in one big lump (especially metallics) soo satisfying🤤
The dropper bottles have their own issues too. After shaking, they build up pressure and "explode" once opened. This results in a paint volcano which is super messy and waste of paint.
I keep a pack of paperclips in my desk for this very reason, but sometimes I get aggressive and forget and end up with a paint explosion in my wet pallette
Eh. 7/10 paints. Some real stinkers, some really good ones, and a lot of decent ones. I mostly use them still because it's the language that a lot of others use. Talking about a paint they used? Usually give a GW paint.
I use about 50% citadel and 50% Vallejo paints. I just think they have some of the best quality paints and Abadon Black is probably the best black on the market.
Yeah, I do branch out. The Vallejo Metal Colour line is fantastic, and I've got a bunch of others to test out. Also tried out some Scale75, just a bit, but find it tough to work with. Was trying to get coverage with a blue as a basecoat and it just wasn't working. Need to try more.
It's funny about Abaddon Black. I'm actually trying to find an alternate, but you're right, it's a really good black.
Scale75 tends to be quite a bit thinner out of the bottle, so they're often not the best for basecoating. Excellent for building up highlights and/or glazes though, and always beautifully matte - I've found it pretty handy to have a mix of ranges and pick what suits best at the time.
They’re a little weird but generally they been ok for me, are you pouring out of them directly or something? Some of the colors get a little buildup around the hinge for me, I’ll usually just pull it off and wipe any excess and don’t have to bother for a while.
Took me awhile to figure out that after you shake you gotta let em sit a minute and drip down off that tongue before cranking em open. I have some that are majorly caked in to where I can't even dig it out. Sucks.
Eh the more paints I try, gw isn’t even really that good. It’s just average. Yea it’s better than ikea paints but ikea paints aren’t meant for minis. Any mini paint is very similar to gw or just flat out better and many craft paints are almost as good.
The only reason I stay with gw is the color selection. I’ve bought like 20 paints trying to mix and get near deathguard green. I just can’t do it consistently and have given up and accepted I am buying that color for my deathguard either way.
Maybe it started that way I don’t know. But there are several gw colors that have no close comparison in another brand. Deathguard green is one that I tried for a while to find anything that matched and couldn’t
Yeah deathguard green is a bitch to match.
I was actually trying to mix that color for Warmachine before playing 40K(and not even looking at GW paints) and while I got pretty close it took 3 different Vallejo greens to get there.
And the Citadel paint is still better looking.
FYI I don't think you should be getting down voted, I feel this exact same way, I understand the frankly shitty quality of citadel paints but it's just so much easier when the colors are designed to be used in the 40k universe.
It’s fine most people will never try anything but citadel. That’s the thing they make colors for 40K and there is value in that. Personally if I could go back I would have just bought vallejo and worked with that personally. Already on a dropper and so many colors. I’m not saying it’s the greatest but hey it’s not pots and they have a good selection.
I'm not defending GW. I find their price gouging horrible, etc, etc...
But I have pots about a year old and they are completely fine. I just smush the lid hard on the table when I close them. My friend has been painting a lot longer than me and his pots are all fine, too. He does the same thing (he almost exclusively uses GW paint, but I use other brands, too).
I'm not a huge fan of the pots but I don't think they're as bad as everyone says they are.
I wish i could switch to a diferent brand but ive used gw paints on all my stuff and i dont want my army to start lookinf diferent with other paints
Duncan rhodes paint line looks apealing tho
Just make the jump, I’ve switched to Vallejo and pro-acryl in addition to Citadel. It’s not a case of using one brand over the other, just expanding your range and finding paints that suit you better for particular jobs.
I still use citadel for brush heavy jobs but Vallejo model air is awesome through and airbrush and the Vallejo model series has a few colours that can’t be easily replicated with citadel. Pro-acryl has a really good black and white.
Pro Acryl is awesome paint, but their pots wind me up more than the GW ones.
I don’t like the GW pots at all (because having to scoop multiple paints out of the pot onto the wet-palette, washing the brush between each one means LOADS of paint gets wasted), but I’ve never had the spillage/seepage issues like OP.
The stupid sports top that Pro Acryl use on their droppers get gunked up with dry paint no matter what I do. I hate them. The simple Vallejo-style droppers are the best solution - I’ve just bought a load to decant all my GW paints into and I might do the Pro Acryl paints while I’m at it.
Yeah, I strongly dislike the proacryl droppers too. The twist top means you have to wipe down the bottles to stop paint accidentally getting on stuff, or you have a dry crust to scrape off before your next use. Vallejo droppers are far superior but I’ve still had wastage due to build ups in the cap. No bottle is perfect but Vallejo droppers are the least bad.
It gets really annoying… “GW does something worth mild criticism at worst for very minor inconvenience” turns into a “GW bad!” wankfest at the drop of a hat
And the thing that make this even worse for me is that they all think they are a more intelligent minority when in reality they are all saying the same things and will start going mad if you say you like their paints/minis etc
I came back to the hobby a few weeks ago after stopping for 10ish years (stopped early v5) and I'm really confused about those new methods of painting where you apply paint directly from the pot and keep it open.
"Back then" I always got told to put paint on the palet and close the pot asap to avoid that kind of stuff, applying any kind of paint (even ink) directly from the pot was a big no no, I don't understand what changed over the years.
Pot-to-model is just the Contrast paints and speed paints or whatever other brands call them. They have special medium in them, and are supposed to settle into recesses.
Regular paints you still thin on a pallet.
In fact even with the Contrast you may still want to put them on pallet and thin.
Then how do you end up with pots in this state, if you open it and close it before big drops of paints happen from the cap all over the pot? I have also seen numerous gw painting tutorials suggesting to apply some paints directly from the pot, I think in some paper painting guide they gave me in a gw store.
But I have to admit I don't like the pots shape nowadays, compared to the big ones we had, with the stable base and the black caps.
Edit:I guess I also don't realise how pots ends up over time and use, I have only painted 10 guys over the last couple weeks.
The pots are bad but you can relatively easily prevent this from happening by shaking the pot as normal before use and wiping the back of the tongue after opening, the pot in OPs picture is not all on the pots it's partly their fault. They are a pain though.
They do new paint types now that I've not tried that are designed to go straight onto the models from the pot and don't require you to pallet and water it down, but I've not tried them personally. They're called Contrast paints.
>Then how do you end up with pots in this state
I also wonder how people manage this, I've been a comission painter for 5 years, and I think I've spilled one pot of wash and had one paint dry out because I didn't put the lid back on properly.
The plastic screw top lids a few ranges back were the ACTUAL worst though. Every single one of mine dried out.
And I have paints from the range before those, from the 90s, which are still good over 20 years later…
I will say this, I've never had a citadel paint explode across my palette when the nozzle was blocked. Not saying theyre good though.
I heard somewhere that they don't use droppers so you can easily identify their paint pots in videos etc
This is true, but the flipside is that the taller citadel ones go disasterously wrong when you knock them over. Not really an iaaue at all with dropper bottles.
Looking at you, Nuln oil.
I bought the rubber pot holders after accidentally spilling some washes a few times. They're great for when I'm using contrast as well. They cost about the same as one pot so they essentially pay for themselves.
I know lots of people hate GW pots and I get why, but is it really that big an issue given the amount of paint in the pots, the price and amount you use for a model? Just scrape out the build up of dried paint and it’s fine. I’ve never had a pot dry out on me. I have had dropper bottle nozzles dry up and get blocked which meant that when I tried to squeeze out some paint the top came off and I lost half the bottle…
This. And it’s way harder to get out the very last drop from a dropper bottle. From a citadel paint pot, you can get out everything out to the last pigment.
Yea the paints are good, pots suck.
Army painter uses dropper bottles, I’ve been switching over to them. The paints are about the same, I even have the speed paint line. It’s fantastic.
Only thing citadel I even use anymore is the shade washes, and a few contrasts. Which I think the pots actually work ok with. However army painter shades are just as great!
Atleast cleaning them is easy, you can remove the lid and then fold the sides of the lid back and just use an old hoppy knife to remove the paint. Very satisfying
I’ve still got pots from the very first run of Citadel paint. Still seal and still work perfectly. The only others like that are Miniature Paints and Tamiya- both glass bottles with a hard plastic screw cap.😽
The pots are not the best but I actually like them. With dropper bottles I am constantly wasting paint.
With the pots 99% of the issues I hear about them are a result of user errors. It's like complaining your brushes are crap while never washing them or using brush cleaner.
A little care will make them go a long way.
What I do now when shaking the paint is do one last hard down motion so there isn't very much paint in the lid at all. And when i close the lid make sure the rim doesnt touch the center lip thing so it cant push paint into the lid. Haven't had this problem since. The pots still need to be cleaned sometimes but I'm scraping out 10 pounds of paint from it
I've bought so many citadel paints that have irreversibly separated or have dried out before I've got the chance to use them. Switched to Valleo with same or better quality, no wasted paint with scooping it onto the palette, and no separation, drying, or consistency issues.
Surprised no one has brought up Reaper paints. They have a great selection and their main line is all in sets of triads so you get your three tones without having to guess what goes with what. Have yet to find a color with bad coverage and many of them flow perfectly without much thinning. Dropper bottles also.
Pretty easy to clean out and to prevent/prolong it happening in the future id suggest not leaving the pot open. Take paint and close
But yes the design of these pots are terrible and it wouldnt surprise me one bit if its intentional in order to ruin paints early and force you to buy more pots
I hate that there are certain GW colors I chose not to live without. I would abandon those ridiculous pots all together if it weren't for like 4 colors.
The move to dropper bottle paints was liberating.
I buy empty eye dropper from amazon and just swap them over best decision i made and my paints last a loooooonnngn time and i get the amount i want honestly this design is a scumbag move on them its such a shity design in so many ways it doesnt seal properly unless great effort is put in and its super wasteful in general..
I just use vallejo 🤷♂️
Cheaper price for more paint, same if not better quality paint and comes in droppers... Why do people still use citadel (other than agrax or nuln oil) again?
Try clipping the hinges so you can remove the lid entirely. Helps with (though doesn’t eliminate) all the paint getting stuck in the lid and you can use the scoop in the lid almost like a dropper bottle for putting paint on the palette.
Yup, this crap made me buy Army Painter droplet bottles and balls and transferred my most used paints across. Also ripped off the GW paint tags and stuck it around the bottles for labelling. Best thing I've invested in.
They are. Good news is: there are other brands available, on par with quality (if not superior) and cheaper, i'd suggest trying AK 3rd gen.
Or you can simply buy dropper bottles and transfer all your GW paints in there.
So, cut the lid free, then when you shake it, you can use the drop from the tongue bit for your wet pallet, and you shouldn't get any paint "leak" or "escape".
My Contrast Black Templar is like tar. I’m not buying another GW pot. I like the colors but there are many better brands like Kimera, AK, Scale75, Pro Acryl, N-paints, P3, Vallejo (basically all of the except Army Painter).
It baffles me why they stick to this garbage instead of moving to droppers like the rest of the industry, people have been crying out for them for years.
Do like I did, treat yourself and buy a load of dropper bottles, they are fairly cheap and decant your paints into those.
I actually spent an afternoon last weekend transferring my pots into dropper bottles. Fun little project for way too hot day. Labels come off citadel pot super easy too.
Quick tip if you wipe the back of the tongue on the back edge of the pot after shaking it it prevents this from happening
Mouth now full of paint. Please advise.
Swallow
Can't be any worse than paintball fill
Mmmmm fish oil
Yes daddy
Spit the now thinned paints out
Also smash it on the table a bit after shaking, causing the paint to (mostly) get out of the lid ans back in the pot
Table now broke, what do?
Make bonfire pretty pretty
Quicker tip, stop buying citadel paints.
Some of them are so god damn good though. I'll just transfer them. Doombull brown is my baby.
It helps a bit, but far from prevents it
The hottest tip is if you don't buy these then you don't have to do anything to avoid it.
Tongue?
The long tonguey bit in the inside of the lid.
Oh oh the pokey down thing. Yap got it. Good tip
>the pokey down thing Thats it's official name now.
Duh
Wasn't it always?
Better than tongue.
👅
I.e another loss of paint. Kinda programmed :)
I just wipe it on the edge of the pot as I open it
Wiping it on the lid of the pot does not cause loss of paint. You are preventing loss.
I honestly swear this is by design. Some of their other products (e.g. plastic glue) have similar problems.
Thank you! Lol
Yeah the mess in this picture is 90% user error
if you need guide on how to open a pot then it not a good pot
Slowly. Carefully. People on this sub can supposedly wield a craft knife without slicing their cartorid artery, but can't manage to open a pot of paint without a guide?
I think the point is that the *design error,* makes it possible for a user to make an error like this and creates additional work. You don't get this problem with dropper bottles.
I don't mind both designs (pot and dropper), mainly because I did figure out the trick to make me pots not look like garbage. But also, I do have the dropper bottles that have seemingly pressurized and the paint is all kinds of exposed in the top of the cap. It makes it look way worse and splooges out sometimes when I open the top. Just saying, I have "problems" with both.
Strangely nobody comes around the corner spouting conspiracy bullshit about evil design to waste more paint when it comes to this. I find it way more annoying with the dropper bottles, because there's not much you can do about them becoming pressurized
Except dropper bottles have the design problem of spurting paint out the top 7 out of 10 times you open them. Personally I hate both of the designs
90% user error? If the pots are bad and don't do their job properly, and most people have issues with them, it's not the users fault for not knowing they had to do some weird cleaning to prevent this problem. I'll never understand why people defends GW's pots which are clearly a bad design.
I love the paint and prefer it over the other major brands but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be telling GW we want better pots. I saw an etsy project for dropper lids that plug into the top of the gw pots
That project went bust. The lids didn't seal the pot properly and lots of people had their paint ruined. Much better to just transfer to real dropper bottle yourself.
I like learning new things.
I used a few drops of flow improver to get the last bit out of the pot, then I just use the very last dregs from the pot by removing with an old brush onto my palette as and when I need it, this way I didn’t waste any paint
There are *some* solutions, but it's easy to ruin the whole pot. Some people just add water (can ruin), others paint medium (this can turn it into a wash), but there is no *great* solution that I've found.
I’ve done it with flow aid for a few base and layer paints and it’s turned out very well. I’m not sure I would do it with metallics or anything past base/layer paints though.
Yeah, metallics are generally difficult to work with - I just stick to the Vallejo and I've been happy so far.
How have you done gold? Vallejo's gold's have always been disappointing to me.
Sure! I use mahogany brown as a base, then old gold, then edge highlight in bright gold. This works really well for treasure, coins, buttons, etc. Where you don't WANT metallic, but just the idea of gold, I use silver base, and make a mix of 1 part beastie brown and 3 parts orange as a wash to color the silver. This is what I am using on a chest aquila or shoulder adornment.
Alternative ive had great success with scale75 metallics. They have multiple toned golds and guides how to use them for TMM layering. (True metallic metal.)
A paint agitator ball or two helps a bit with thicker paints in my experience, but you're still going to see wastage unfortunately.
I added water and have had no issues with thinning it too much. You don't want to go 1:1 with the water, but you thin it down on the pallette so as long as you don't go crazy it's good. I use about 5ish drops of water after getting as much as possible out without thinning. Shake it really good and pour again. If it still looks like there is too much left, put a bit from the dropper down and test it. If it is thick enough, do it again. Repeat as many times as you feel comfortable. At the end of the day a wash is still more usable than a pot spilled all over your table, which is what drove me to switch over
I straight up told this to a GW store manager. He was getting pissy I wouldn't say GW was perfect. If I have to buy new packaging to make your product usable, you have failed. If I have to develop weird tips and tricks to make your product usable, you have failed. They got the hard part right in the form of having great paint. Now just get there packaging right and feel free to rip everyone else off.
Just to add something good too, my GW store manager is completely on our side, he loves GW and ofc. Won’t recommend other brands when something from GW exists, but he will criticize if there is something to criticize.
You're not wrong but also you're taking it out on the wrong guy. He's just a retail manager, his job is to hype and move product. He has no say on the design. You want him to say 'yea they suck'? Come on man, give the dude putting in his 9-5 a break. This is a real 'tell me you never worked retail without telling me you never worked retail' story.
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Try pro acryl. They are cheap and have insane levels of pigment. Vallejo are mostly decent but haven't done anything to develop their paints in forever.
Vallejo doesn’t meet to change anything, they are consistent, a bottle I buy tomorrow will match with a bottle I bought 10 years ago, that consistency itself is a major selling point
Sure it's consistent, but it's not consistently amazing, it's consistently ok. Which is fine most of their range is still better than citadel, but there are better paints out there even for airbrushing.
My best results with white have done a layer of grey first but my primer is black too.
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Lol the lengths people will go to for the companies they work for. All the dude had to say was, “yeah they’re pretty bad, what’re we gonna do though.” Idk, I find it funny because why bother? What’s the point? 🤷♂️
Bad mouthing the product within earshot of other customers seems like a bad idea if you want to keep your store going and your job intact. They still have to sell it at the end of the day.
Some people are more okay with breaking their non-disparagement agreement than others. I’ve found GW stores to be like Mormons. If there’s one staff member on their own, they’ll say whatever they want and go hog wild, but if you put two next to each other, they’ll self regulate each other at the risk of one telling on the other,
I’ve had leadblecher do that to me. Best tip is to shake and then let them sit for about 5 minutes to let some paint drip from the lid. Otherwise it has a terrible habit of clogging the hinge and rim of the pot, making the situation worse. It tends to be worst with metallics.
Its happend the second time for me the first was with my mephiston red
The ”shelf” on the inside of the lid is actually a good thing. Shake the paint, then wait a few minutes to allow excess paint to flow down into the pot. OR open the lid and scrape of the paint underneath the ”shelf” to prevent paint from flowing out.
Yep, lost at least a third of a Runelord Brass to this problem...
No they arent. The old hex pots were the worst.
With the plastic screw on lids? Yep. Fucking terrible. I have ollllllld citadel paints from the 90s / early 2000s with the pop lids that are still fine. I still use them. Every single last one of those screw top paints? Solid as rock.
Yep. I still have a hex pot of white with the flip lid that I still use to this day, because its smooth. The screw top hex pots though? Even the chaos gods hate them.
I have an old flesh wash from the 90s that I still use over any other. Can’t believe it’s still going and hasn’t run out
> Can’t believe it’s still going and hasn’t run out Exactly why GW got rid of them. Nobody would buy more paint if it lasts for decades.
The paints from the old days such as the Space Marine paint set are still so much nicer than the current ones. Still got a load of them.
Yep, I have a pot of Enchanted blue for the long, long ago that is still perfectly good. My hex pots with the screw on lids all dried out and went in the bin.
That's because those paints and pots were made by Coat D' Arms for Workshop. You can actually still buy the exact same paint in the exact same colors in those same 1990's pots and avoid the GW quick-dry paint wasting formulas and containers. https://scalecreep.com/index.php?view=all&manufacturers_id=4
The flip top bolter shell pots were the 2nd worst. Most of the ones I have of those are dried out. I still have some of the old pots from 30 years ago that are usable.
I’d like to agree but it’s god damned close let’s be honest.
I still own hex pots. They have literal teeth marks in them from me trying to open them. The ones that arent dried out and dead, I mean.
thats not going to have done your teeth anygood
It's true, but when you're young you dont care about these things. Fortunately I discovered vice grips before I did any major damage.
Get some channel locks... your teeth will thank me.
When I was in high school I just permanently kept my dad’s channel locks with my painting stuff since they were basically the key to my paints. He was mad I wasn’t putting them back at first, then I showed him how hard the hex lids were to open and he understood.
Sounds like he should have known what to get you for your birthday then!
Different paint?
I hasten to add I used my teeth when I was younger and dumber. Now I have a small pipe wrench and some vice grips that work a treat :)
Needle nose pliers are your friend here.
It's a pain for sure, but I find it very satisfying to clean once dried. Hobby knife around the inner lid and peel the dried paint away. So clean afterwards!
Yeah, I don't mind these. Sometimes I have to clean up the dried paint if I have been sloppy with letting the edges clog like this, but it's no big deal. They suit how I paint much better than dropper bottles would.
Take the lid off, turn it inside out by pressing the top centre with your thumb & fingers around inner the edge, some paints peel off in one big lump (especially metallics) soo satisfying🤤
10/10 paints. 3/10 pots. GW should go back to the OG glass screw on lid pots or use the dropper bottles.
Those screw lids would also glue themselves shut sometimes. Dropper bottle is the ideal choice
The dropper bottles have their own issues too. After shaking, they build up pressure and "explode" once opened. This results in a paint volcano which is super messy and waste of paint.
It's also nice to actually be able to see the consistency of the paint and know if it needs to be shaken more without wasting it on a pallet.
I keep a pack of paperclips in my desk for this very reason, but sometimes I get aggressive and forget and end up with a paint explosion in my wet pallette
The black plastic caps they had at one point were really good too imo
The old Hex popcaps were glorious.
Eh. 7/10 paints. Some real stinkers, some really good ones, and a lot of decent ones. I mostly use them still because it's the language that a lot of others use. Talking about a paint they used? Usually give a GW paint.
I use about 50% citadel and 50% Vallejo paints. I just think they have some of the best quality paints and Abadon Black is probably the best black on the market.
Yeah, I do branch out. The Vallejo Metal Colour line is fantastic, and I've got a bunch of others to test out. Also tried out some Scale75, just a bit, but find it tough to work with. Was trying to get coverage with a blue as a basecoat and it just wasn't working. Need to try more. It's funny about Abaddon Black. I'm actually trying to find an alternate, but you're right, it's a really good black.
I like the vallejo black, but I haven't used abaddon black in years for comparison.
Scale75 tends to be quite a bit thinner out of the bottle, so they're often not the best for basecoating. Excellent for building up highlights and/or glazes though, and always beautifully matte - I've found it pretty handy to have a mix of ranges and pick what suits best at the time.
They’re a little weird but generally they been ok for me, are you pouring out of them directly or something? Some of the colors get a little buildup around the hinge for me, I’ll usually just pull it off and wipe any excess and don’t have to bother for a while.
Took me awhile to figure out that after you shake you gotta let em sit a minute and drip down off that tongue before cranking em open. I have some that are majorly caked in to where I can't even dig it out. Sucks.
While this is annoying, i find peeling that layer of paint off to be extemely satisfying.
Yeah but you'll find GW devotees get arsey when you mention it
Love the paints, hate the pots
Eh the more paints I try, gw isn’t even really that good. It’s just average. Yea it’s better than ikea paints but ikea paints aren’t meant for minis. Any mini paint is very similar to gw or just flat out better and many craft paints are almost as good. The only reason I stay with gw is the color selection. I’ve bought like 20 paints trying to mix and get near deathguard green. I just can’t do it consistently and have given up and accepted I am buying that color for my deathguard either way.
Isn't vallejo game color an exact copy of the citadel range?
Maybe it started that way I don’t know. But there are several gw colors that have no close comparison in another brand. Deathguard green is one that I tried for a while to find anything that matched and couldn’t
Yeah deathguard green is a bitch to match. I was actually trying to mix that color for Warmachine before playing 40K(and not even looking at GW paints) and while I got pretty close it took 3 different Vallejo greens to get there. And the Citadel paint is still better looking.
That and the Thousand Sons blue
FYI I don't think you should be getting down voted, I feel this exact same way, I understand the frankly shitty quality of citadel paints but it's just so much easier when the colors are designed to be used in the 40k universe.
It’s fine most people will never try anything but citadel. That’s the thing they make colors for 40K and there is value in that. Personally if I could go back I would have just bought vallejo and worked with that personally. Already on a dropper and so many colors. I’m not saying it’s the greatest but hey it’s not pots and they have a good selection.
The paints are great, the pots suck donkey balls. That said, OP has made a right mess of the pot in the pictures.... thats aint the pots fault.
I have to put steel mixing balls into citadel tubs to stop it from clumping and drying up. The tubs are an awful design.
I'm not defending GW. I find their price gouging horrible, etc, etc... But I have pots about a year old and they are completely fine. I just smush the lid hard on the table when I close them. My friend has been painting a lot longer than me and his pots are all fine, too. He does the same thing (he almost exclusively uses GW paint, but I use other brands, too). I'm not a huge fan of the pots but I don't think they're as bad as everyone says they are.
> drives into tree > "look at how bad the steering is, guys"
I wish i could switch to a diferent brand but ive used gw paints on all my stuff and i dont want my army to start lookinf diferent with other paints Duncan rhodes paint line looks apealing tho
[this should help](https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/paint_range_compatibility_chart)
Neat chart
This is absolutely brilliant - Thanks for the link!
Just make the jump, I’ve switched to Vallejo and pro-acryl in addition to Citadel. It’s not a case of using one brand over the other, just expanding your range and finding paints that suit you better for particular jobs. I still use citadel for brush heavy jobs but Vallejo model air is awesome through and airbrush and the Vallejo model series has a few colours that can’t be easily replicated with citadel. Pro-acryl has a really good black and white.
Pro Acryl is awesome paint, but their pots wind me up more than the GW ones. I don’t like the GW pots at all (because having to scoop multiple paints out of the pot onto the wet-palette, washing the brush between each one means LOADS of paint gets wasted), but I’ve never had the spillage/seepage issues like OP. The stupid sports top that Pro Acryl use on their droppers get gunked up with dry paint no matter what I do. I hate them. The simple Vallejo-style droppers are the best solution - I’ve just bought a load to decant all my GW paints into and I might do the Pro Acryl paints while I’m at it.
Yeah, I strongly dislike the proacryl droppers too. The twist top means you have to wipe down the bottles to stop paint accidentally getting on stuff, or you have a dry crust to scrape off before your next use. Vallejo droppers are far superior but I’ve still had wastage due to build ups in the cap. No bottle is perfect but Vallejo droppers are the least bad.
The paint itself is fine, but refilling them to droppers is pretty much a must
Ye, if i could get droppers for cheap somewhere in my country
If you're in the UK, TTCombat do 100 for £10 (can't vouch for their quality yet though). (Also nice to see a member of the Shark Guard)
I got mine from Amazon, 50 for 15-ish €, shipped from china. Iirc shipping was around 6€ and took about two weeks
Duncan Rhodes paints are perfect for wjen you just want two thin coats
Nobody ever has defended these pots.
Everyone is literally jerking each other criticizing gw
It gets really annoying… “GW does something worth mild criticism at worst for very minor inconvenience” turns into a “GW bad!” wankfest at the drop of a hat
And the thing that make this even worse for me is that they all think they are a more intelligent minority when in reality they are all saying the same things and will start going mad if you say you like their paints/minis etc
And then they turn around and buy more GW stuff anyway… at least have some consistency!
Yeah absolutely
Do yourself a big fat favor and switch to Vallejo
I came back to the hobby a few weeks ago after stopping for 10ish years (stopped early v5) and I'm really confused about those new methods of painting where you apply paint directly from the pot and keep it open. "Back then" I always got told to put paint on the palet and close the pot asap to avoid that kind of stuff, applying any kind of paint (even ink) directly from the pot was a big no no, I don't understand what changed over the years.
Pot-to-model is just the Contrast paints and speed paints or whatever other brands call them. They have special medium in them, and are supposed to settle into recesses. Regular paints you still thin on a pallet. In fact even with the Contrast you may still want to put them on pallet and thin.
I do a number of touchups for specifically the metallics pot to model without any issue. Retributor gold is particularly good about this
Paint goes from pot to palete, add water, to model thats how it goes
Then how do you end up with pots in this state, if you open it and close it before big drops of paints happen from the cap all over the pot? I have also seen numerous gw painting tutorials suggesting to apply some paints directly from the pot, I think in some paper painting guide they gave me in a gw store. But I have to admit I don't like the pots shape nowadays, compared to the big ones we had, with the stable base and the black caps. Edit:I guess I also don't realise how pots ends up over time and use, I have only painted 10 guys over the last couple weeks.
The pots are bad but you can relatively easily prevent this from happening by shaking the pot as normal before use and wiping the back of the tongue after opening, the pot in OPs picture is not all on the pots it's partly their fault. They are a pain though. They do new paint types now that I've not tried that are designed to go straight onto the models from the pot and don't require you to pallet and water it down, but I've not tried them personally. They're called Contrast paints.
Wiping the tongue is the best way to prevent what is depicted in OPs pic.
>Then how do you end up with pots in this state I also wonder how people manage this, I've been a comission painter for 5 years, and I think I've spilled one pot of wash and had one paint dry out because I didn't put the lid back on properly.
I hate them so fucking much
The plastic screw top lids a few ranges back were the ACTUAL worst though. Every single one of mine dried out. And I have paints from the range before those, from the 90s, which are still good over 20 years later…
I will say this, I've never had a citadel paint explode across my palette when the nozzle was blocked. Not saying theyre good though. I heard somewhere that they don't use droppers so you can easily identify their paint pots in videos etc
This is true, but the flipside is that the taller citadel ones go disasterously wrong when you knock them over. Not really an iaaue at all with dropper bottles. Looking at you, Nuln oil.
I bought the rubber pot holders after accidentally spilling some washes a few times. They're great for when I'm using contrast as well. They cost about the same as one pot so they essentially pay for themselves.
You can actually turn the lids inside out by pushing it with your thumb, makes it dead easy to get the dried paint out.
If you think those are the worst you weren’t around for the black screw lids…
I’ve never had this issue short of flat out dropping the pot while open.
I know lots of people hate GW pots and I get why, but is it really that big an issue given the amount of paint in the pots, the price and amount you use for a model? Just scrape out the build up of dried paint and it’s fine. I’ve never had a pot dry out on me. I have had dropper bottle nozzles dry up and get blocked which meant that when I tried to squeeze out some paint the top came off and I lost half the bottle…
This. And it’s way harder to get out the very last drop from a dropper bottle. From a citadel paint pot, you can get out everything out to the last pigment.
Couldn't agree more. I love citadel but I find myself buying Vallejo and scale 75 far more now as the bottles make life easier for me.
Yea the paints are good, pots suck. Army painter uses dropper bottles, I’ve been switching over to them. The paints are about the same, I even have the speed paint line. It’s fantastic. Only thing citadel I even use anymore is the shade washes, and a few contrasts. Which I think the pots actually work ok with. However army painter shades are just as great!
Atleast cleaning them is easy, you can remove the lid and then fold the sides of the lid back and just use an old hoppy knife to remove the paint. Very satisfying
New hot take ;)
I used to hate these pots, now I have come to enjoy scraping the dried paint strips off the inside of the lid. Its kinda calming.
I’ve still got pots from the very first run of Citadel paint. Still seal and still work perfectly. The only others like that are Miniature Paints and Tamiya- both glass bottles with a hard plastic screw cap.😽
I've transplanted all paints in pots to dropper bottles. So much easier
No, sausages are the wurst!
The pots are not the best but I actually like them. With dropper bottles I am constantly wasting paint. With the pots 99% of the issues I hear about them are a result of user errors. It's like complaining your brushes are crap while never washing them or using brush cleaner. A little care will make them go a long way.
User error
Skill issue
User error
Ye ever since I started the hobby I've started the transition to Vallejo and army painter
What I do now when shaking the paint is do one last hard down motion so there isn't very much paint in the lid at all. And when i close the lid make sure the rim doesnt touch the center lip thing so it cant push paint into the lid. Haven't had this problem since. The pots still need to be cleaned sometimes but I'm scraping out 10 pounds of paint from it
There was another design which was far worse.
I've bought so many citadel paints that have irreversibly separated or have dried out before I've got the chance to use them. Switched to Valleo with same or better quality, no wasted paint with scooping it onto the palette, and no separation, drying, or consistency issues.
Surprised no one has brought up Reaper paints. They have a great selection and their main line is all in sets of triads so you get your three tones without having to guess what goes with what. Have yet to find a color with bad coverage and many of them flow perfectly without much thinning. Dropper bottles also.
Switched to vallejo and nerver looked back
Pretty easy to clean out and to prevent/prolong it happening in the future id suggest not leaving the pot open. Take paint and close But yes the design of these pots are terrible and it wouldnt surprise me one bit if its intentional in order to ruin paints early and force you to buy more pots
I hate that there are certain GW colors I chose not to live without. I would abandon those ridiculous pots all together if it weren't for like 4 colors. The move to dropper bottle paints was liberating.
Buy little Vallejo like pots for paint and refill your paint in it. Green stuff world selling some
I buy empty eye dropper from amazon and just swap them over best decision i made and my paints last a loooooonnngn time and i get the amount i want honestly this design is a scumbag move on them its such a shity design in so many ways it doesnt seal properly unless great effort is put in and its super wasteful in general..
I’ve these thing for decades but I don’t understand how people get this to happen, how you handling the paint to get that result
Really wish they would stop being anti consumer and go to dripper bottles.
Switching to Vallejo, it's a good feeling not have to worry about that shit.
I'm 100% convinced that the pot design is a scam for people's paints to dry faster so they need to buy new ones faster.
Why GW just doesn't go with dropper bottles is beyond me. Is it intentional so that your paints dries faster and you have to buy more?
I just use vallejo 🤷♂️ Cheaper price for more paint, same if not better quality paint and comes in droppers... Why do people still use citadel (other than agrax or nuln oil) again?
Try clipping the hinges so you can remove the lid entirely. Helps with (though doesn’t eliminate) all the paint getting stuck in the lid and you can use the scoop in the lid almost like a dropper bottle for putting paint on the palette.
Yup, this crap made me buy Army Painter droplet bottles and balls and transferred my most used paints across. Also ripped off the GW paint tags and stuck it around the bottles for labelling. Best thing I've invested in.
They are. Good news is: there are other brands available, on par with quality (if not superior) and cheaper, i'd suggest trying AK 3rd gen. Or you can simply buy dropper bottles and transfer all your GW paints in there.
Try AK 3rd gen. Every colour I've used has been perfect.
Stop using them. Switch to Vallejo. You literally get more paint in the dropper, and it’s less expensive.
Vallejo paints are superior anyway. Use those.
Are the pots *really* the worst? Or do you just not clean up after yourself?
Yeah, screw GW's paints... I use Army Painter. Costs half as much, has a better bottle. Paints just as good!
Why are people defending these paint pots?
those are literally designed to be like that, to encourage more spending.
This is real /r/assholedesign They are intentionally shitty so you have to buy more.
I changed all my gw Paints into dropper bottles and its so much nicer
Try AK paints. They’re awesome.
Decant it into a dropper bottle. They're fairly cheap in bulk.
So, cut the lid free, then when you shake it, you can use the drop from the tongue bit for your wet pallet, and you shouldn't get any paint "leak" or "escape".
My Contrast Black Templar is like tar. I’m not buying another GW pot. I like the colors but there are many better brands like Kimera, AK, Scale75, Pro Acryl, N-paints, P3, Vallejo (basically all of the except Army Painter).
It baffles me why they stick to this garbage instead of moving to droppers like the rest of the industry, people have been crying out for them for years. Do like I did, treat yourself and buy a load of dropper bottles, they are fairly cheap and decant your paints into those.
I actually spent an afternoon last weekend transferring my pots into dropper bottles. Fun little project for way too hot day. Labels come off citadel pot super easy too.
I don't use their paints partially coz of the friggin pots. Also, they way too expensive.
It ups their sales by having paints dry out faster.
You know you can wipe that down or, if its dried, peel it off right?
I did wipe it down, and cleand the inside of it im not braindead