How did the speedpainted goblins turn out? For tabletop play, these are good. Three-foot Rule wins out here. On the table, in the game, these are good. No one would object to these in a game as poorly painted. They really did paint up quickly, as well. If you are trying to get miniatures on the table and in a game quickly, then I would recommend Speedpaints.
To the specific goblins, they are too Crayola. The primary colors, straight out of the bottle, are really intense. I did a little mixing of colors for some of the minis, which helped a bit. But there is nothing that unifies the color scheme. I find that my usual method of painting, applying a wash over the block painted areas and then highlighting, helps to bring a consistency to the miniature. All of the colors get the same shadow color. Speedpaints don’t do that.
My goblin leader, the wizard of this warband, has a few places where the transparent nature of the paints and my poor job at layering dark on light really shows through. The back of the sword is obvious. Most of the colors I used didn’t give amazing results on this model. The green shows a bit of depth, but not much. The red also shows less depth than I expected. What surprised me was how well the brown worked.
The wizards apprentice has similar issues. The face turned out better and that may be due to the sculpt more than anything else. Remember, Speedpaints and Contrast Paints need contours and crevices to really do their thing. More layering issues, but learning that order of operations is going to help. The top of the staff looks a bit better with the red, but the highlight is too pink and too little for me. I would rather the red be darker in the depths and more true red on the high points.
For the archers, I tried to mix some colors. The red bothered me and decided to mix in some of the dark grey paint to see the effect. It works very well on the helmet and chain-mail with much darker depths. Though here we see again the effect of my priming method. Note that the underlying metal shows through a bit. This is true for both miniatures. It’s especially bad on the bows.
The purple had some good effect. These two goblins have cloaks painted with purple straight out of the bottle. I can see a bit of advantage in mixing the purple with the dark grey or brown.
Both the brown and grey were surprisingly good. Note the fancy footwear. The grey worked very well on the wrappings for the goblin on the right. Also for the spearheads. This is where my priming problems became a benefit. The little sheen of metal showing through on the weapons looks pretty good.
The yellow and orange are both very bright. I wouldn’t count the effect in the depths as shadows for those paints. I have seen a suggestion to do a wash before painting to add better shadow. I’ll have to try that in the future.
The bagpiper is an especially bad example of layering. The green on the bag would not cover or mix with the lighter tannish paint. Here’s where I’m confused by the effect of the resin paints. Some of them reactivate and mix on the mini to make an odd new color. Others don’t reactivate the same way.
I have more tests and examples to go with speed paints. Next up I will show the effect on some historical minis for Blood & Plunder in preparation for painting up many, many more historical miniatures.
Initial lessons learned:
- Prime more completely as the paints are transparent
- Start with lighter colors as you can potentially cover mistakes with darker paints
- Pick minis with lots of texture and contour
- Shows are going to be deeper version of the base color, not the dark grey or brown of a wash/ink
I would like to take a moment to brag on my bases. They turned out great. The brick or stone bases worked well for the HeroQuest minis last year and I think I will continue to do this for fantasy minis. I could just paint them grey like I do for most of the 7TV minis, but that gets boring. I could try to do dirt and flocking, but there isn’t much room for that. The brick work looks good and allows me use that feature to unify a unit.
2022 Count:
152 figures painted
19 figures printed
90 figures purchased
4 terrain painted
the immortal frequentist 
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