Contrasting Goblins

Everyone in the hobby is bound to atleast have heard about the contrast paints by now, and those who have been inclined to test them have also likely noticed that at the beginning both black and white were not really well available (the situation has improved in regards to the white, but not the black). For some reason GW has had trouble with the supply of these two colours. I don't know if they're simply the ones with by far the highest demand, or if they've had some sort of trouble in manufacturing or what, but the fact remains that the available supply hasn't been able to keep up with the demand. As luck would have it though, I managed to get a bottle of both the new black and the white, so I also bought a few other colours and both of the primers (a grey and a creamy white) with the intention of testing them out and breaking my mtg induced painting slumber.

The results of that test lead me to the conclusion that many others have come to: the contrast paints aren't going to make regular paints obsolete, but they are fairly impressive. The painting itself is much faster than with paints (provided you're able to leave them as is after the fact or at most do some light highlighting of course), altough it's harder to be neat than with the thicker regular paint. The contrasts in general behave a lot more like shade than paint, except with much better coverage. I tested the colours with two Night Goblin archers because I've been previously using several coats (four to five on average) of nuln oil to paint the robes of my Night Goblins and wanted to see how the contrast equivivalent (called "Black Templar" - it's in the name really) fared in comparison. Goblins are also the sort of minis you'd want to churn out quickly, as you need a pile of them for them to have any use (such as it is) at all.

Left one is on white primer and right is on grey.

I also tested the primers, which I suspect will affect different colours differently, with the fairly dark goblins the difference is negligible though. If I had to choose one for these I'd pick the white, but the differences are miniscule. If you didn't know these were painted on different primers I'm not sure you'd be able to tell even holding them, and certainly not from a distance.

The Gobbos themselves though. As you can see they're not going to win any prizes (much like my other minis), but considering those two took me a bit over an hour combined - basing included - I'm pretty happy with the results. Especially considering that that's less time than it takes to wait for the nuln oil to dry between coats let alone painting the rest of the minis.I'm definitely going to use contrasts for my gobbos, the result is perfectly playable and fast enough to actually be able to get fieldable units out in a reasonable time. You'd have to be some sort of super efficient painting god or at the very least a masochist to paint a full goblin army to display standard anyway.