Pocket Money Hobby - Part 2: Paints

Welcome to part two of Pocket Money Hobby. Rather than concentrating on a system this time round we’ll be looking at how to get yourself painting your models up for cheap. Rather than working with a £40 budget for this we’ll be looking at the cheapest way to get an effective range of paints.

We’ll begin by looking at the paints we need to paint up our Deadzone faction starter. Luckily Mantic games themselves offer us a few options.

On their web store Mantic have 4 paint sets for £15 that all come with a brush, 6 paints and a few models to practise on. The Mantic paint set is my top pic of the three if you’re going Enforcers or Rebs, with two brushes, 6 paints and 4 models to practise on you’ll be well on your way.
The Goblin paint set is great for Marauders as you might imagine, the Undead set will give a great finish to plague and enforcers, and the skeletons will be great for basing.

Of course Mantic aren’t your only option.

For those starting 40k Games Workshop’s 40k paint set is a solid start. With all the paints you need to do a great Dark Angels colour scheme and a brush to boot. To bolster your Space Marine force (or to practice on) you also get 5 tactical marines. This a great set if you’ve got the Dark Vengeance box or are starting Marine force. For £23.50 it’s a little steep but a great for Dark Angels player.

For Warmachine or Hordes P3 do some great sets of 6 paints for £12. There’s one for every faction and also a generic “colours of the Iron Kingdoms” which gives you a great set of base colours. Unfortunately these don’t come with a brush but for £2 you can get an Army Painter brush, that’s a great choice.  This paint set comes with every paint you’ll need for your faction and the P3 paints are some of the best quality paints around. 

A great generic option for all systems (so Malifaux, Batman, and any other system we may not mention and all those we have as well) is the Army painter War Paints Starter set. This set comes with 9 core colours and a quick shade to give your models great definition, and also a starter brush which is great for large areas and detail. Another solid generic choice especially for those more advanced painter is the Vallejo starter set. This comes with nine core paints, a pallet and a brush. It’ll need a little more patience and mixing but will give a great result.  Both these sets are £20 and I’d recommend the Army Painter set for the novice and the Vallejo for the more advanced painter.
Army Painter
Vallejo

Well those are our suggestions to get you going for £20 or less for each set (GW not withstanding). Of course for our monthly budget a couple of these will give you a very solid base to begin. Don't forget as well that you'll need to prime your models before painting. I recommend Army painter Matt Black for £7.50 a can as your best choice.

Next time we'll be taking a look at Warmachine/ Hordes for a pocket money budget.