Warhammer Tone Pro Paints + Drybrushes

[LostTemplar]

Armageddon kinda suffers because the box contents are ok-ish at best. I don't understand why GW made exclusive intercessors for that box, seems a bit of a waste given that they could've just gone the 3rd ed route and used the same kit. The Land Speeder was the only worthwhile thing to get if you were a Marine Player.

 

The orks were alright.

[Mazer Rackham]

24 minutes ago, appiah4 said:

You see, GW's target market was always accepted to be grown up manbabies with enough expendable income to be quite price inelastic, ie. infinitely milkable.

 

I beg your pardon! 

 

I find the term pejorative in the extreme!

 

I identify as Macro-adolescent, I'll have you know!

[Rusted Boltgun]

Ninja'd

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 12:53 PM by Rusted Boltgun
Ninja'd

[Mogger351]

36 minutes ago, appiah4 said:

Eh? No.  Definitely not in 1999; if anything with the release of 40K 3rd Ed and FB 6th Ed the hobby's market was expanding at its fastest since its inception.

 

You see, GW's target market was always accepted to be grown up manbabies with enough expendable income to be quite price inelastic, ie. infinitely milkable.  If you read any analyst review or follow any of their annual calls, you will realize that their entire valuation reflects the assumption that they can continue to squeeze more margin out of their market while growing it.  This is an assumption, or maybe a delusion, that was largely helped by the weird spending habbits during the covid period.  There is simply no other way of explaining why a plastic toy company could become 2 billion dollars worth.

 

Fast forward to today, the investors are realizing that, no, this is no longer the case, even middle age crisis manbabies have budgets and breaking points.  In case you want to step outside the bubble and read what the real money sees when they look at Games Workshop:  Is Warhammer still winning?

Maybe don't call everyone manbabies?

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, appiah4 said:

You see, GW's target market was always accepted to be grown up manbabies with enough expendable income to be quite price inelastic, ie. infinitely milkable.

 

Not at all, GW's target audience are teenagers who are starting from scratch and thus need to buy everything new. The expected retention period is 2-3 years. Veteran hobbyists who frequent boards like this are vocal but are a minority when it comes to sales because we already have armies (often more than one). Sure we will buy shiny new units from time to time but we are less likely to splash out on a whole new army than newcomers are.

[Casual Heresy]

Can we maybe all focus on the topic at hand and keep the finance/doom and gloom to the appropriate threads so this one dosen't get locked?

 

 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

It does seem like the share value loss should have been its own thread. 

[Robbienw]

3 hours ago, appiah4 said:

Eh? No.  Definitely not in 1999; if anything with the release of 40K 3rd Ed and FB 6th Ed the hobby's market was expanding at its fastest since its inception.

 

You see, GW's target market was always accepted to be grown up manbabies with enough expendable income to be quite price inelastic, ie. infinitely milkable.  If you read any analyst review or follow any of their annual calls, you will realize that their entire valuation reflects the assumption that they can continue to squeeze more margin out of their market while growing it.  This is an assumption, or maybe a delusion, that was largely helped by the weird spending habbits during the covid period.  There is simply no other way of explaining why a plastic toy company could become 2 billion dollars worth.

 

Fast forward to today, the investors are realizing that, no, this is no longer the case, even middle age crisis manbabies have budgets and breaking points.  In case you want to step outside the bubble and read what the real money sees when they look at Games Workshop:  Is Warhammer still winning?

 

EH YES.

 

Same thing over and over since the days of RGMW and Portent.  Constant predictions of demise, warhammer is dying, GW is dying, Hasbro is going to buy GW, GW won't survive the LOTR bubble bursting, this price rise is it where people stop buying x 27, GW is going to crash out because Kirby won't leave the company, GW is going to crash out becuase Kevin Rountree will be worse than Kirby, COVID restrictions will end GW etc etc.

 

Now its people not understanding how shares work.

 

Its quite funny watching the same sentiment repeated over and over again over the years 

 

Edited Thursday at 03:26 PM by Robbienw

[Evil Eye]

To be absolutely fair, GW has definitely come close to crashing. 6th edition and AOS 1.0 were both massive blows to GW, and even after the launch of 8th, it was Contrast and the pandemic boom that saved GW from going bankrupt (at least, according to Chris Peach). A lot of their "success" comes from the miraculous ability of any competitor to shoot themselves in the foot and brand name recognition, and that can only keep you going so long. And when you have as many former customers hoping you go belly up as GW, things clearly aren't entirely rosy in the garden.

 

I'm not saying GW is doomed to fail for real this time guys, but personally I don't believe in "too big to fail" and I do think GW could be in for a bit of a nasty shock. And honestly I think they need it; generally, companies like this only innovate and improve when the squeeze is put on them. I don't want GW to fail, but I do want them to treat their customers better and I think they need to be humbled in order for that to happen.

[Robbienw]

I don't think its so much that competitors have shot themselves in the foot, more no one else has a strong enough all round offering to become a true competitor.

[Karhedron]

23 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

I don't think its so much that competitors have shot themselves in the foot, more no one else has a strong enough all round offering to become a true competitor.

 

X-Wing briefly overtook 40K during 7th edition IIRC but did indeed shoot themselves in the foot with 2nd edition.

[01RTB01]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

X-Wing briefly overtook 40K during 7th edition IIRC but did indeed shoot themselves in the foot with 2nd edition.

 

Xwing and armada died because they were sold to amg and that killed the games. Sad really as armada was class.

 

Xwing was terrible in 1.0 due to the lack of missions, flying unkillable bricks that had turrets. It had potential but they had a mare unfortunately.

[Robbienw]

5 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

X-Wing briefly overtook 40K during 7th edition IIRC but did indeed shoot themselves in the foot with 2nd edition.

Not exactly.

 

it outsold 40k in one year, in independent game shops in North America.  Not taking into account GW direct sales and not worldwide.
 

It wasn’t sustainable though.

 

Plus X-wing was solely about the game, there was no assembling and painting miniatures aspect.

[Lord Marshal]

 

[MoriyaSchism]

I also posted in the wrong thread so I'll just repeat what I asked. Does GW sell that sample set? Is it the only way to get their colour chart? 

[Lord Marshal]

1 hour ago, MoriyaSchism said:

I also posted in the wrong thread so I'll just repeat what I asked. Does GW sell that sample set? Is it the only way to get their colour chart? 

 

They do not, at least not at the moment. Mostly seems to be for influencers and stores to show them off.

[MoriyaSchism]

41 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

 

They do not, at least not at the moment. Mostly seems to be for influencers and stores to show them off.

That's a shame. Seemed like a nice bundle. I think these paints are perfect for a sort of package deal in a nice box and at a discount. Not as a one off thing but as a permanent thing you could get, it could even be a plain generic box. I wouldn't mind that. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 10/13/2026 at 11:35 AM, Rusted Boltgun said:

 

As you can't tell who has bought the Armageddon boxes that have sold, you can't say there are no new entrants.

New entrants may bought it in a WH store but the old lags may have gone 'nah, not for me, the Orks are nice but the marines are bobbins this time' as we have seen in this forum.  

 

Without my involvement, two of my son's friends have independently got into Warhammer recently - one introduced via Scouts, the other met someone on holiday who got them into it. But that is just my experience, YMMV.

I think you’re taking things too literally.

 

in the past, particularly the recent past edition launch boxes flew off shelves. This indicates there’s likely new people getting into the game as well as veterans buying the box.

 

if the boxes aren’t selling well, even if new people are buying them and getting into the hobby, it seems either not very many, but definitely not enough to make up for veterans falling out of the hobby.

 

i myself have very little interest in this version of the game and as such have very little reason to buy anything despite really liking some of the newer models.

 

 

[Arkhanist]

17 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

(stahly video)

 

Stahly is probably my most trusted reviewer of paints, so it was great to see his take. Glad to see he likes the consistent consistency, use for drybrushing and edge highlighting, high pigmentation, and the reasonable coverage (though definitely not up to the hype). And highlights the negatives - pentads could cover a broader range, you only really need the intermediate tones for convenience, and of course price per ml, wet blending/feathering needs some practise given its difference to other paints, and you definitely need a medium to thin to glazes given thinning with water alone causes the binder to be too dilute given the pigmentation strength. Useful to know the new shade medium is not radically different to e.g. contrast medium. Also, despite the name, it's better suited to army painters than actual pros. So no major surprises.

 

I've been doing some experimentation with some AK gen 3 medium and I have to say it's helped a lot with getting my chalky edge paints into a much smoother consistency on my ork project, and even getting base paints plus some water into a smooth, semi levelling paint for layers (it's quite thick, so thins/levels coverage without reducing viscosity). And liquitex pro airbrush medium (which I have a old giant bottle of) continues to works well for just thinning the consistency of pots that are kinda ketchup like without otherwise changing it. Doesn't solve the coverage/pastelly issues, but makes them much nicer to use, particularly the lighter tones like balor or krieg khaki.

 

I think I may have maligned fanatic a little too much - the rosy flesh paints are just not for me, which I mainly bought them for, but having tried some of the turquoise sextad they were much easier to use for feathering/edges, though coverage dips a bit unsurprisingly. But they're still perfectly fine as a base-type paint. 

 

So i think my approach of using my existing paints - pro acryl, supplemented with fanatic for darker tones and basecoats plays to their strengths, and using the upper end of the tone pro pentads to get easy highlights in a less pastel, one pass, no fiddling should work - or using tone pro for less dusty drybrushing for a contrast/speedpaint undercoat, which I definitely need after e.g. fighting with super chalky dorn yellow, trying light use of AK ice yellow as a replacement and finding it entirely shifting the contrast overlayer colour (couple of orks ended up in biostrip due to that mistake). And I can continue to use my citadel layers for now with some extra effort/AK medium. I only have a couple of two thin coats triads which will continue to be nice paints bar the lids, but also not cheap so they'll be my fallback if tone pro doesn't cut it or I need a closer equivalent to a specific layer paint.

 

15 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

I also posted in the wrong thread so I'll just repeat what I asked. Does GW sell that sample set? Is it the only way to get their colour chart? 

 

Fauxhammer have a paint chart shown with hsl & rgb values, which I've found very useful for selecting which tone pros to start with to replace some weak areas of my collection.

[Evil Eye]

5 minutes ago, Arkhanist said:

I think I may have maligned fanatic a little too much

I bought a fair few Fanatic paints and I have to say I like them on the whole, their "behaviour" is very good and the coverage is nice. The saturation leaves a bit to be desired so I like to mix in Golden single-pigment paints to enrich the colour. My biggest issue is that they MUST be varnished if you want to use oils or enamels, as even gentle use of those will reactivate the paint. I know varnishing before oils is good practice anyway, but it is annoying. 

[Arkhanist]

14 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I bought a fair few Fanatic paints and I have to say I like them on the whole, their "behaviour" is very good and the coverage is nice. The saturation leaves a bit to be desired so I like to mix in Golden single-pigment paints to enrich the colour. My biggest issue is that they MUST be varnished if you want to use oils or enamels, as even gentle use of those will reactivate the paint. I know varnishing before oils is good practice anyway, but it is annoying. 

 

Yeah, it's the weaker saturation/pastel in the lighter tones, and the annoying habit of drying a somewhat different colour to the wet paint in some, plus the risk of chalkiness when heavily thinned frustrating - though switching mediums definitely helped a lot with the latter. Mixing it with single pigment colours would definitely help too! It's miles better than the old warpaints though, the flex triads are useful (if a little narrow), and the coverage/behaviour is very good at base paint consistency. I'm getting old though, so paint that looks much as it comes out of the pot with strong saturation, is very predictable (and isn't chalky) in lighter tones is my biggest weak area of my current grab bag of different ranges. I'm hoping to really trim down just how many ranges I use given how much they vary in behaviour, and replace a whole swath of citadel layer&edge/reaper/old vallejo/p3/scalecolor with just two or three modern ranges. Pro acryl has replaced 95% of my citadel base paints and several layers, back before fanatic/ak gen 3 launched, but mixing tones by hand is just so tedious when you want the next batch to come out the same as the previous batch. 

[Redcomet]

Stahly Tale of painters produced yet another fantastic in depth and unbiased review. His paint reviews are the only ones i trust

[Kurgan the Lurker]