Vallejo Xpress Paints Three Goblin Trial (77445)

Long time readers may know that I've tried Citadel's Contrast paints and Army Painter's Speed Paints with varying results. I struggled to get the Contrast paints to really behave as I wanted, but the Speed paints were much better.  There was the issue of reactivation, but I used this property to help blend colours.

When I heard Vallejo were doing their own equivalent I had to try them.

Since I used Speedpaints to try and reduce my unpainted Reaper Bones mountain, it seems a fair test to try Xpress paints on more Bones.

For this test I'm painting some of the more recent Bones goblins, and I'm trying three slightly different methods with a limited number of paints.  All the goblins had the metalwork painted first with Vallejo Game Color Chainmail Silver and then washed with thinned  Vallejo Xpress Color Black Lotus.

Goblin 1

The first goblin is painted using mostly colours straight from the bottle straight onto the white Bonesium.  The flesh is VXS Imperial Yellow, the loincloth is VXS Plasma Red and the various leather bits are VXS Wasteland Brown.  The shield was a roughly 50:50 mix of the black and VXS Templar White.

I also dabbed a bit of the thinned brown on the face to see if it helped define the features.

Goblin 2

For the second goblin, I mixed colours a bit more, especially for the skin tone.  This was a mix of three parts yellow and one part brown.  to take the brightness out of the red for the cap I added a bit of the skin mix to the red.  On the photos the cap and the loincloth on goblin 1 look very similar, but the cap is darker in real life.  The skirt is VXS Dwarf Flesh, which gives a surprisingly good faded buff colour.

the bracer and fletchings are black and the leatherwork is the brown.  I went over the rope with a thinned black to give it more definition.

Goblin 3

The final goblin has an all over base coat or wash of Wasteland Brown thinned in a 1:5 mix with Xpress Color Medium. My hope here is that this helps accentuate the shadows, rather like Reaper's own brown liner. 

I then used pretty much the same colours as I used on the first goblin. 

Results

I'm a huge fan of Vallejo paints, but I feel the results are mixed.  I'll admit to sometimes not shaking the paint well enough (Army Painter put mixing pellets in the bottles to help, I'll have to add something to these).  Also, the goblins are lovely minis, but the detail is fairly shallow.  I like the last goblin best; the initial wash helps define the shadows, and darkens the colours slightly.  If I could get a thinner wash that collected more in the shadows it would be better.  A final drybrush of Vallejo Model Color Ivory would also emphasis detail, and of course I haven't done anything for the eyes or teeth, both things that would improve them.

Based properly (this is just one coat of VXS Orc Skin) and they would do for hordes of goblins in a roleplaying game, and they are certainly better than unpainted minis.  

Final Thoughts

Some of these paints are really nice, Wasteland Brown is a favourite at the moment.  All go on Bonesium very well, with no difficult patches.  I want these to give a reasonable result for as little effort as possible, so I'm prepared to sacrifice quality to a degree.  I'm not sure the above test minis quite work yet, but I'll give them a drybrush, paint in the facial detail and base them to match the rest of my D&D mini collection.  They were very fast to paint though, so they certainly meet that requirement.  

I suppose I should try another goblin with Speedpaints for a fair comparison as well.

What do you think?  Are they disappointing or acceptable for what I'm looking for (i.e. a fast way to get the Mini mountain reduced?  Please leave a comment, especially if you've tried them.