 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we've got something special Army painter was nice enough to send me this which is the 50 paint fanatic mega set and So this has 50 of the new war paint fanatic set in it and in this video We're gonna go through we're gonna put it through its paces and we're gonna see exactly what this stuff is capable of It's the new paint. It's supposed to be completely reimagined So my question is does it live up to the height? Is it any good? We're gonna find out Let's strict techno man sir. That is Vincy V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vincy V style Alright, so some basics first out of the way for this particular set. I there's other sets out there I'm just talking about this one of the 50 paints you get in this basically you've got Four different washes two different sort of effects three different Like blood and rust and guts and then you've got three metal paints and then everything else I didn't say that's all matte paints. So that's what you're looking at. It's a pretty good spread of colors It really heavily lives leans into the green and blue tones I'll say that as per usual It's not as heavy on the oranges and purples as I would like but I guess suppose that there's a lot more call for that That being said there is some nice tones in here that I did really like Now the important part to understand about these paints right out of the gate is that they did completely Reformulate from their original line The original line of paints of army painter paints, which so the version of these that was before How do we say this nicely? It was bad. It was very bad They just weren't good paints. They were thin. They were transparent. They were often highly inconsistent and so What I was first Considering when I looked at these was is that changed is that improved? Do we actually have? You know Consistency in the paint and how it's applied and it's finished and its opacity and I'm happy to say that on all of those accounts I'm actually really happy with this Without getting into the the details which we will over the rest of the video. I found these to be Quite a bit better in performing now From everything I've heard the pigment density was vastly vastly increased something like a 3x Pigment density increased they changed their suspension in their medium So it's a lot more stable. I found it could be thinned a lot easier The finish was much more matte and consistent across the line There are still some minor variations, but that's always going to happen in paint And and it should Different pigments have different finishes and that's how it should be if they're if they're all Exactly the same then you kind of often have to add too many additives and it messes up the paint so on the question of opacity smoothness of application finish it is already leaps and bounds ahead of its former the form of the previous generation It's not even close So let's put these things through some paces. All right first up We're going to do the basic stuff here and now I'm going to be putting these out on a wet palette to use them and An important thing to note here is that I found they performed very well on the wet palette over time They weren't particularly hydrophobic nor hydrophilic They for the most part did what I was looking to do on the wet palette They absorbed an appropriate amount of liquid and stayed workable for a lengthy amount of time So that's not nothing. It is something that I noticed some paints will sometimes have struggles with And The other interesting thing to note before we get into the actual painting is that these paints exist in I well I almost want to call it a triad system because that was what this is classically known as but it's not that means three and this Is six so it's a say say says add six hex add system hex add system. There we go It's a decimal. I like to reboot to that was a great cartoon. So at any rate There's generally these six paints so when you look at the bottle you'll see that the paints exist in this range of six colors and It will show you exactly where this paint falls So you can understand what would be a reasonable shadow color and what would be a reasonable highlight color now I will say that of course as you progress on in your painting journey you need this kind of guidance less and Moreover it becomes more inaccurate because you actually want to use other environmental colors as your shadows as opposed to just More blue for a highlight and less and darker like lighter blue for a highlight and darker blue for a shadow That becomes sort of inaccurate if you're actually trying to paint credibly to the real world But for beginner painters I think this is an excellent addition as it really gives beginner painters an easy map to say yes Here's my mid-tone. Here's my highlight. Here's my shadow and approach that with confidence So I very much applaud them putting this on all right So now to begin there is only one model We could possibly test our new paint set with and that is a space marine Specifically not just any space marine. We're gonna paint this awesome terminator. This guy is from The Leviathan box set. This is the you know redone terminators. I really love these dudes I think they're probably my favorite space Marines. They've ever made So our first test here is just gonna be about layering and in fact most of what I'm gonna show you here Is just layering up the colors And we're gonna just get a nice ultramarine sort of color scheme going the blue boys are boring and basic but they are emblematic of space brains and a good test for paints because blues one there's a lot of blues in this set and To their blue is often quite challenging to get correct to make it have the appropriate amount of saturation and richness And to have it have the correct finish. So I thought that would be actually a nice test So I went along and basically just layered this space marine up starting from a dark blue Which I applied with the base coat just a big brush and base coating the whole thing And then just layered my way up 50 50 mixes up into a highlight color on the highest parts Going for more of the spotlight effect on this guy one because I'm lazy to because I didn't need to paint the whole space marine for the video And to like I'm not going for Golden Demon here. I'm trying to test paints And three because it just looks kind of cool And so as I layer and highlight my way up what I found was the paints working in layer consistency Responded well and smoothly So they took to thinning well all layers you're seeing here are thinned basically Consistently one-to-one with water. I found that across the different paints. I tended to thin them mostly the same So in most of the paints I've tested so far, which is about 35 out of these in here. I put a lot of these through the paces The the consistency is quite similar. They're all very creamy They are a little thicker than you might expect and I saw that in the layering So you do want to thin these at least one-to-one So one drop of water to one drop of paint or one brushful of water I should say to one drop of paint To really get them flowing and smooth and what you'd expect. That's true. Even if you're working on a wet palette So and I think that's because these are so pigment dense and because they Reformulated they're actually really nice. They start quite thick Which can be a bit shocking when you first start with the paint especially if you're new but It's great for the long term because it means you really it's very easy to make a paint thinner You can just add water or medium. It's very hard to make a paint thicker So starting at this much heavier creamier thickness is actually really nice Because we can control our layering up from very thick paint if we're doing heavy wet blending Which these do excel at quite well all the way down to very thin glazes So having layered our space marine all the way up that brings us then to The next and most important challenge of any paint where oftentimes paints will fall apart the next challenge is of course glazing and As I said, we're starting really thick It actually surprised me how much I could work these down and still have them retain Their intensity and effect so you do have to thin them quite a bit So here with my glazing. I'm working about Three sometimes four brushfuls of water to one drop of paint So it is quite thin But I had to get a lot of water in there to actually get them down into a glaze again not a bad thing I rate that as a positive It means you have lots of control Throughout that process of exactly how thick you want your paint to be The glazes held up just fine the colors went on smooth I didn't see any coffee staining the paint didn't break up anything like that So their pigment density again the sort of statement that it was higher This gets proved out when it maintains its consistency across there as well as the suspension was working just fine. So Past the glazing test with flying colors had no issue With that at all. I wanted to do a test of some skin tones I think skin tones are a really important part of any range This box comes with several different colors. You can use as skin tones both for light and dark colored skin tones So I just I only have a little tiny face on this marine, but it's still something So I just gave it a quick test and I actually really like how this came out This is no more than three simple colors of paint quickly applied You can only see sort of this much of his face up, but I thought it came out really well It was nice. It was smooth I've actually been very impressed by their flesh tones thus far even in this set It is one of the things I'd like to experiment with more Anyone who watches this channel knows that I have an obsession with painting models with a lot of skin showing and I'm Fascinated by painting skin. So I am going to experiment with this a lot more I already use speed paint 2.0 in my high-end flesh display painting as filters and finishes I made a video on that sometime back and I Hope that these could you know also become integrated into into my process So that's gonna take some more experimentation, but for this brief test on our marine I think his face came out just fine very impressive This was you know, maybe all told I don't know four minutes of layering paint And I think he looks you know pretty great for that amount of time pretty pretty easy Our next test is metallics. So as I said, there's only three metallics in this box Which is a bronze a steel and a gold. So I'm going to test the steel and the gold on this particular little terminator boy and You know recently I had tested the Speed paint 2.0 metals and I found those to be a real pleasure to work with These are a little gummier a little thicker more like traditional miniature paints I found their opacity quite nice. So I put both of these over straight black No challenge with the opacity there. I actually saw good coverage in one layer So that is a a strike in their favor or I don't know something in their favor for sure But they had good solid coverage good smooth application again. I actually did thin this paint now here it was maybe One brushful of water to two drops of metallic paint the metallics didn't require as much thinning as the matte paint But it did Still require some amount of thinning and Overall, I thought this was Pretty good on the application my honest answer is I think I like the speed paint 2.0 metals better than these But these are legitimately fine Which I know sounds like not that great of a review, but keep in mind I think that basically every metal paint on the market except for Vallejo metal color and Speed paint 2.0 metallics are garbage that should be thrown in the trash and forgotten about So if I say it's fine, that's actually a pretty good rating. I would give these metals the steel Came out. I'd say a solid B. The golds and bronze are probably a B minus I I think I said I think the speed paint metal 2.0 are better But these are certainly serviceable and if you're doing tabletop stuff They are way better than most other metals you're gonna get on the market in finish in opacity And in final shine and effect now the one bright spot in army painter's original line Was actually their washes so light tone strong tone dark tone all of those things Were legitimately my favorite thing from old army painter now These were meant to our are meant to obviously be I don't know competitive with the traditional GW citadel washes so agrax seraphim sepia nolan oil and so on and What I found using the ones from the past is that they were probably better I liked them more honestly than the citadel equivalents and So this was already a good product I think and so I was eager to test how these worked here I'm happy to say that in my testing of the strong tones and you'll see them applied here Both strong tone and dark tone. So that's the agrax equivalent and the nolan oil equivalent They came out really nicely. I found they actually worked pretty decently over the metals They flowed really well. They still had a strong impact, but didn't seem to coffee stain much It was an improvement over the previous version in the end These are still washes and have limited application Like a wash is a wash. It does what a wash does You're not going to use it to try to win golden demon But you are definitely going to need it if you're going to get that whole army churned out by this weekend So washes are super valuable And all in all I thought this came out pretty well. I thought the wash is past It wasn't improving over the old one which was already good. So these are, you know, great No complaints about them whatsoever Next up will they airbrush? The biggest question when you get a new paint set is is it going to go through the airbrush without issue? So let's give a test of that. I've already painted the space marine. So the space marine people, they're happy You're good to go if you're a space marine person I hope I showed you that you can do a really high quality nice space marine here But of course we can't do a paint review video without our old friend Larry the ogre And so I wanted to give this a test of the airbrush I just used again the same simple skin progression that I used now You can see Larry skin is an absolute mess right now from previous videos. I've used him in and But we you know, I just airbrushed over it from the darker pink brown tone up into the pale flesh tone and The progression of that was again pretty straightforward pretty simple just three quick layers up and All in all, I think it came out really well I thinned these basically Three to one for the airbrush of three drops of airbrush thinner my standard airbrush thinner is an 80 20 mix of thinner and flow improver and I so I put three drops of that to one drop of paint and I found that worked really well no issues everything flowed through the airbrush really really nicely as you can see here I get nice smooth effective transitions. I like to work a little thin and build it up The advantage to the airbrush is it works fast and you can build it up easy I found these worked really well for that I was able to thin them down more as well and go for things like filters or doing other color changes when you Want to just create these very very subtle changes and blends with the airbrush and they performed in that regard No problem. So all in all they passed the airbrush test and came out really well now my last point here is more of a Personal one. I I think that oftentimes you might wonder okay Vince, you know, you have this paint You did basically a quick marine. I mean this guy took you know 45 minutes or something like that and You know your airbrushed Larry in five minutes, but are you ever going to use these in your actual display painting? So this model which again was featured in a recent video I didn't mention it at the time given the timing of everything, but this was one of my test models for these Fanatics war paints. I actually painted used a bunch of these on that model So basically the entire model I mean it probably 90% ish of that model was painted using these fanatic paints and only the colors that came in this box The only time I deviated was to get like some fluorescent orange and stuff like that because if you're gonna do fire effects you got to have a good fluorescent and I found them they performed really well They let me do display quality work the finish was really matte like it was just excellent It was everything I'd want out of a display quality paint job And it is great display quality paint. So I think no matter what level you're at from beginner to Master or whatever that means. I don't know advanced display painter competitive painter who knows what we're all called here I have no idea Whatever level of hobbyist you consider yourself to be I do think these can work just fine for you And we'll perform accordingly and meet you where you are without issue. So in summary, I really like the fanatic paints Honestly, I think they came out pretty great. I liked putting them through the paces. They will become a part of my Sort of paint process. So all in all they're they're good paints for me I would put them basically on the level of the best paints in the industry right now Which I consider to be pro acryl At sort of number one and ak interactive basically right there on the same level the ak interactive third gen These army painter have risen to that standard. There's nothing incredibly unique and magical. They're doing but there are things about them I really like I like that. They're Thicker that they that you can really control the blend they work really really really great for wet blending and stuff like that Expect a future video where we kind of deep dive into different blending methods, you know, and I'll you'll see some of these paints being featured but Overall they actually performed really well So for things like weathering or fat blur sorry feather feathering wet blending to brush blending all of those things they These actually have excelled in and I thought performed really really Admirably so I like the consistency. I like the creaminess. I like the finish. I like the opacity And and all in all they're going to become part of my regular paint rotation Which as I suppose the best review I can I can give them so I take check them out If you're interested in new range of paints, you can't go wrong as I said, there's nothing magical There's nothing special if you already have a whole paint range and you're happy with it These aren't going to change your life. They're not going to suddenly reinvent the way you paint They're not going to suddenly, you know, win you a golden demon. That's not what's in this box What's in this box is a solid set of paints that is easily Is easily on the level of the market leading best performing paints that are out there today And I think that that is to be applauded from Army painter because they they produced a really quality product here So if you are looking for a new paint range, this could certainly be one you could look at so with that I'll say thank you very much if you liked this give it a like Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. We have new videos here every Saturday If you've got any questions, feel free to drop those down below I'll answer every question you have about the new army painter paints That at least I can in my experimentation. I always read every comment and answer every question If you want to support the channel to help us keep doing videos like this, there's lots of ways you can do so You can share this that's obviously free But also you can go down below. There's hobby supply links for amazon You can buy that stuff if you need maybe some new brushes for your new paints And anytime you click that it doesn't cost you anything extra, but it gives a nice kick back to the channel There's a merch store down there. And of course, there's our patreon Which I really can't thank all of my patrons enough But they are who keep the lights on around here and who keep me doing this And our patreon is focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey We'd love to have you as part of the community As always though, I thank you so much for watching this one And we'll see you next time Bye