Video script: Speedpaint 2.0 review

Hey guys, I'm still working on my Speedpaint 2.0 video (this will be one of my most laborious videos ever!) so I can't give you a sneak peek yet, but I thought it would be nice to put my video script on Patreon early, for those that are toying with the thought of preordering. Here are my thoughts:

Speedpaints are loved by some for their unique blending properties, while others hate that the paints reactivate and bleed through subsequent layers of paint. The Army Painter were faced with the difficult task of satisfying both camps and sought the help of three of YouTube's most popular hobby channels. Is the new 2.0 formula a solid improvement or the worst of both worlds, and are the metallic Speedpaints as underwhelming as some of the promo shots make them to be? I’m Stahly from Tale of Painters, and I’ll find out in this hands-on review.

I played around with the new Speedpaint Mega Set 2.0 for quite a while now, which The Army Painter sent me free of charge. I’m proud of making honest and unbiased reviews, and I’m not on the payroll of The Army Painter or any hobby company, nor am I any of the content creators that contributed to the design of these new paints.

Speedpaint 1.0 - the recap

So before I share my honest thoughts on the new Speedpaint formula, I would like to start with a brief recap why Speedpaint divided the hobby community. The original formula Speedpaint was released in February 22, and they were hotly anticipated as they were the first real alternative to Games Workshop's popular Contrast paints. The Army Painter's marketing fuelled the hype as they boldly claimed the paints to be even better than the other one-coat paints on the market. And indeed, Speedpaint had a more homogeneous consistency and pigmentation, the flow properties were slightly better than many of their Contrast counterparts, and perhaps most importantly, they were more affordable. However, after the initial YouTube hype died off, painters like Juan Hidalgo and I pointed out that dried Speedpaints reactivate and dissolve when you paint over them with a wet brush or paint.

Shortly after Juan and I published our videos, The Army Painter reacted with a video of their own, providing some advice on how to reduce or avoid reactivation, for example by applying varnish before painting over. To me, it’s obvious that The Army Painter didn't have the reactivation on their radar, maybe they didn't notice it during development, time pressure played its part, or they just didn’t think it would bother people.

For me personally, the reactivation was and is a big drawback still, because I use Contrast paints mainly as a basecoat, and layer and highlight over it, like with the skin of my Spiteclaw’s Swarm. Or I use diluted Contrast for glazing. The gradients on the blue power armour of this second edition Ultramarine were achieved by multiple thin coats of Talassar Blue. But I feel even if you use Speedpaints as a pure “one coat painting solution” as intended, as soon as you need to touch up mistakes with your primer colour, Speedpaint 1.0 kept bleeding through no matter how many layers of paint you applied or how long you let the paint cure, unless you added a coat of varnish first, which can be a frustrating experience, especially for beginners. This is why I rarely used the original formula Speedpaint and stuck to Contrast and Xpress Color instead, which don’t reactivate once dry. Again, this is just my painting style, so your mileage may vary.

Despite all this buzz, Speedpaint was a great success, according to The Army Painter it was their most successful product launch ever, and I see why. Unlike Games Workshop, The Army Painter offered a fantastic bundle package with their original Mega Paint Set that contained all of the original 24 Speedpaints. With this “all in one” product, Speedpaint was able to reach new target groups outside the tabletop community, like board gamers who never painted a mini before but wanted to splash some colours on their board game minis. Also, people started to use the reactivation in creative ways that I honestly did not predict, like for blending effects similar to wet blending. Dana Howl, who was also involved in the development of Speedpaints 2.0, made a very inspiring tutorial about this.

And yet, the community has divided into those who welcomed reactivation as yet another tool in their painting arsenal and those who prefer their one coat paints to be stable and not reactivating. Let me know in the comments which camp YOU are. But, please be kind to your fellow painters, remember there is hardly any wrong or right in miniature painting, just different approaches. The Army Painter now had the difficult task of responding to the criticism and reconciling both camps.

The new formula

To come up with the 2.0 formula, The Army Painter collaborated with some well-known painters from the YouTube community, which I think is a brilliant approach to designing products. Goobertown Hobbies, Dana Howl, and “Watch it paint it” were asked to provide their input, and even come up with a bunch of new colours themselves. Speedpaint 2.0 contains a more stable acrylic resin which forms a stronger bond and is promised to no longer reactivate after a curing time of about 2 hours depending on the environment, which means there should be a time window of at least 2 hours for blending and reactivation. Or shouldn’t it?

So let's compare the original Speedpaint with Speedpaint 2.0. Here you can see me applying Slaughter Red in both the old and new formula. The shade of red is identical, the flow properties of the new Speedpaints are also just as good as their old versions, which I can confirm after some more testing off camera. But what about reactivation?

And the answer to that is a bit tricky. The new formula is indeed more stable, after 20 to 30 minutes, I already have a hard time dissolving the paints with a wet brush. Which is good, but this also means that the new resin pretty much removes the ability to reactivate the paint for blending. Here you can see how I painted Brainmatter Beige over the old Slaughter Red and go over it with a damp brush. By reactivating the red pigments and the bleed through effect, this creates a quite soft transition. The new Slaughter Red is completely different. I only let the paint dry for about 20 minutes, but as you can see, the red pigments hardly dissolve at all, and the bleed-through is almost non-existant.

Here you can see a few more samples from the Speedpaint 2.0 range. I tried to reactivate the paints after 30 minutes, 2 and 24 hours. For this, I rubbed the upper half of the bases with a wet cotton swab to take away the paint from the edges, aiming for an easy highlight effect. As you can see, after 30 minutes, yet despite rubbing hard, I could barely get any paint off the edges of the details, though a slight discolouration was visible on the cotton swabs. In some areas I was able to scrape off the paint, but that was more due to the mechanical stress. After 2 hours curing time, there is even less discolouration going on, except for a few colours like Tyrion Navy. After 24 hours, reactivation is almost a non-issue, though I can still detect minor discolouration for some of the colours.

Due to the higher stability, I was also able to glaze several layers of Speedpaint thinned with Speedpaint Medium, without previous layers of paint dissolving and smearing.

With the resin more stable now, I’m happy to say that the bleed through effect is all but gone. On the lower half of the bases, I painted over with light grey acrylic paint, again after 30 minutes, 2 and 24 hours. Around the 30 minute mark, some of the new Speedpaints still bleed through light layers of paint, like Dragon Carmaine, Maize Yellow and Forest Spite here. It’s much more faint than with the original formula, but it is still present, at least on some of the more vibrant colours such as the red, yellow, purple, and green. However, after a longer curing time of about 2 hours, the bleeding stopped.

Speedpaint 2.0 in practical use

Now these little experiments are all well and good, but what does that mean for practical use? I have to say that unless you paint over with a very light colour, you will hardly notice any reactivation with Speedpaint 2.0, and even then, unlike the old Speedpaints, there is no varnishing needed as one or two additional layers of paint will pretty much remove the bleeding completely. Here I layered and highlighted over Speedpaint that cured for about 20 minutes, and as you can see, as the highlight colours are quite similar, bleeding is not an issue at all.

This is good news for those who were unsatisfied with the stability of the original Speedpaints, but no matter what The Army Painter says about a 2 hour working window, I’d say that the reactivation-caused blending capabilities that the old Speedpaints had are pretty much gone.

Now, what you CAN do to increase reactivation is to use Speedpaint Medium instead of water. Here I soaked a cotton swab in Speedpaint Medium and rubbed it over the edges to remove the paint and enhance the highlights. This works better than just using water, but I feel it’s still a bit more difficult and tedious to pull off than with the old formula. Maybe some other painter or YouTuber can find a better way to make the blending work, please let me know in the comments about your experiences.

The expanded palette

Apart from the changes to the formula, the Speedpaint range has been expanded from 24 to a whopping 90 colours. That's 29 more colours than Contrast has to offer, and they also feature metallic one coat paints, which are an industry-first! I’ll share my thoughts on the metallic Speedpaints in a moment, but first, let's take a look at the colour palette.

As you can see, there is more of everything, plus 6 brand-new pastel and 10 metallic Speedpaints. I really like all the new greys, browns, and the expanded selection of skintones. I made a hand-painted colour swatch of the 50 colours from the Mega Set 2.0 on white primer, professionally photographed under neutral 5500K light. On taleofpainters.com you can find this and more charts for Citadel Contrast, Vallejo Xpress Color, and Dipping Inks from Green Stuff World, so you can compare colours across brands. You can find the link in the comments below.

The new Speedpaints are initially available in the Mega Paint Set 2.0, which contains 50 paints, out on April 22 in 2023, with a complete set and metallic paint set following soon thereafter. In Summer there will also be a new starter set, and a Most Wanted set, which will have all of the original 24 Speedpaints but with the new formula. Speedpaints 2.0 can be recognised by their label, but keep in mind that most paints in the first production run still have the old design. Further production runs are set to receive the new labels, which also feature more practical naming conventions.

Metallic Speedpaint review

Now, the moment you waited for: metallic Speedpaints. These are… something. I was able to test the three colours from the Mega Set, but there’ll be 10 in total. I have to admit, I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw the promo shots, so I was eager to give them a try.

Consistency-wise, they are quite thin, similar to pre-thinned airbrush metallic paints. Hoplite Gold is my favourite, it’s more opaque than the other two, but still darkens in the recesses. As the paint pulls from the edges, the white primer shines through which creates a subtle highlight effect. It is a quite muted gold tone though, but the complete range has a few other gold tones I’m very eager to try. Broadsword Silver is a dark cool silver, it has less of a tint than the gold, I think it’s okay but not as good as the gold. Talos Bronze is more like a reddish copper tone and even more transparent, so I recommend adding a second coat. Unfortunately this paint has a really weird sparkle effect, it looks okayish in real life, but under my bright studio lights the silver flakes stand out as if the pigments haven't been blended properly.

And what about reactivation? I would say it’s similar to the regular Speedpaints. After 30 minutes the paint is very stable and can hardly be dissolved with water or wet paint, but Speedpaint Medium allows you to carefully remove the paint.

So what are my thoughts on the metallic Speedpaints? I think, for what they are, within their limitations, they have potential. Would I personally use them? No. Maybe the gold, but not for the intended use. Do you get a better result with a regular metallic paint and a wash and/or drybrush? Yes, definitely. But for the target group of “non-painters” who just want to quickly colour up some minis, they are… decent. They are quick and easy to apply and if you don't have super high expectations, they’ll do the job. Even if you don't think you're the best painter in the world, a painted miniature always makes for more immersive gameplay than an unpainted one, and is something to be proud of. And if you think metallic one coat paints can help you achieve that, then by all means, go for it. And with an additional quick drybrush, you can add some extra depth if you feel like it.

Verdict

And this brings us to a summary of Speedpaint’s pros & cons.

On the plus side, I like Speedpaint 2.0’s wide range of colours, and I think that the selection of brown, grey and skin tone colours is more comprehensive than what Contrast has to offer. Speedpaints are very vibrant and as richly pigmented as Contrast, and slightly more pigmented than most Vallejo Xpress Colors and Dipping Inks from Green Stuff World. The consistency is more homogeneous than Contrast, they dry rather matt, and they also settle slightly more evenly than a lot of Contrast colours while still darkening the recesses as intended. They’re also more affordable than Contrast and come in 18ml dropper bottles with pre-installed agitators.

More ambivalent I am about the new formula. The reactivation is reduced to such an extent that it no longer causes any major issues, but it must be noted it The Army Painter did not remove it completely. And yet, with the new more stable resin, reactivation-based blending is very limited, if possible at all. So if you liked this aspect of the original Speedpaints, you will be having a hard time with Speedpaints 2.0. I’m also neutral about the new metallic Speedpaints, which certainly have their place, but probably not for me.

Personally, as I’m one of the people who prefer their inks and one coat paints to be stable, I can see using Speedpaint 2.0 more often from now on, at least some of the more unique colours to fill the gaps in my “one coat” paint collection. Nevertheless, I still have the feeling that Speedpaint 2.0 is sitting between two stools and does not know to whom it wants to cater to – those that hated the reactivation or those who appreciated it. In my original review I gave Speedpaints a 7.5, which in retrospect probably should have been more like a 7. For Speedpaints 2.0, I'm sticking with the 7.5, perhaps with a slight tendency towards 8.

Now if you’re looking for other alternatives for Contrast or Speedpaint then the new Xpress Colors from Vallejo might be worth a look. You can find my detailed review here on the right, so go and watch it right now. Happy hobbying, and please be nice in the comments.