Hello hobbie fans!
Sorry for the hiatus. It's 2020 (a lame excuse but one that cannot be argued against). Also, part of the reason for the delay is that I promised that the next post would be a review on the Wizkid's Paint Night Manticore model. Wow...so it was months ago that I picked it up and was at the time, really impressed with the kit. A nice model, 12 paints...all for $20. Well, since that time I also picked up the Ogre Zombie paint night model. So lets review.
Let us talk about the contents. One decent plastic manticore model appropriately sized and based for D&D. It also comes with a round plastic base to put it on. Then there are 12 small paint pots with themed colors of vallejo paints, two brushes, a water pot (with lid!) and even mixing areas in the plastic holder.
Wow...very impressed with this. Honestly, the two brushes are decent, the closable water pot is nice, and they even put mixing areas on the plastic frame. All of this for $20? wow..color me impressed. Since I now owned two kits, my wife and I sat down for a date night paint night.
The above photo was taken probably around 30min to an hour in to the painting. My wife was actually watching a video on how to do the manticore, while I just dove in on the zombie. We both stuck with the paints in the kit, although she did grab some extra brushes.
Lets talk paints. For the most part, they work well. Good coverage. If anything, you need to water them down a little. Besides the paints, they also come with washes as well. The zombie kit comes with three washes and nine paints. I think the maticore had two washes and ten paints. Not 100% sure on that...
If there is a complaint to fit in here, I'd say it was the limited pallet. Some of the colors were very close to each other which I think they could have just had the darker ones and then let us lighten then up as needed with the white. However, the pallet was good enough to paint the whole model and keep mixing to a minimum if desired, which is not a bad way to go with a paint kit.
In the end though, really happy with how they turned out and my wife was really thrilled to spend time together that did not involve a TV screen.
My wife was not a fan of the wings. She let me play around with it a bit and I did some light shading with a water downed dark wash to add just a bit more depth. But again, I think had they included a different color for the wings, that might have helped. The manticore really did seem to be all neutral tones.
I liked the way the zombie came out. Same kind of thing, I had to go back with a few extra dark washes to really bring some depth to the model, but all in all, very pleased. Total paint time was probably about three hours with dry time added in at various stages. I would have loved a nice grey color to use for the bandages and such, as the light tones really blend together. I suppose I could have used the same fur brown color again, but wanted to try to use as many of the colors as I could.
I would actually suggest grabbing some other models to paint at the same time as these. Most of the time, I was able to close the lid on the paints and get a good seal, but a few times the paints got on the edge of the lid or pot and I know will cause them to dry out sooner. There was lots of paint left over. So really, no reason not to bang out several models to get the most out of these colors.
All I know is that I'll be picking up the next paint night model when it is released. These are fun, don't require a whole lot of planning, and produce some nice results.
These are also perfect for teaching someone about model painting too. One kit has everything they need. Good job Wizkids.
Hopefully this has inspired my wife and I to do more painting during this crappy pandemic and you might see more work done on my chaos marines. Until next time...
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