What Happens When Normal Painters Try Games Workshop's Tone Pro Paints?

When Games Workshop let normal people try Tone Pro in stores, the results were good but not magic: thick coats mostly leveled out, the new white still needed three coats over black for one tester, and a painter who calls themselves average wasn't actually sold on it. I'm not a pro painter. I'm stripping and repainting a secondhand Blood Angels army one squad at a time, and I own a handful and a bit of slightly different reds, so I've gone through what those testers found.

By the end of this, I'm hoping you'll know whether a beginner actually needs these, and the one question I'd probably ask before spending a penny on paint. Somewhere in the middle, I'll also get to what I'm most suspicious of in all of this. Spoiler: it's me.

Tone Pro swaps names like Evil Sunz Scarlet for numbers like red two and red three

So what even are these paints? The way they're numbered might be the most sensible thing Games Workshop has done in years, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. It's 150 paints: 30 colors with five tones of each. One is dark, five is light.

Normally, painting red goes like this. You paint it red, and apparently you now need multiple different reds. Before, that would have looked like Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red and something else random, and at some point you kind of have to wonder why your red is named like a small, angry mushroom. With Tone Pro, it's just red two, red three, red four. You don't need to know that Moot Green is lighter than Warpstone Glow. You just need to know that four is more than three, which most of us covered at primary school. I hope.

Games Workshop also promised "Superb coverage from the first application, even from white and yellow, which usually have the covering power of semi-skimmed milk." All very sensible, but none of that explains why we've spent the last week staring at blobs of paint like it's the moon landing. For that, you need somebody putting on a very thick coat.

Robert Jones of Tabletop Battles put Tone Pro on goopy, and it still leveled out

Robert Jones, who writes over at Tabletop Battles, tested it on his Emperor's Children by putting it on, in his words, goopy. For years we've been told two thin coats, and then he turns up and puts enough on to redecorate a small downstairs toilet. Somehow it levels out and, to quote him, "resolved nicely into something that didn't lose detail." It was dry in about 15 minutes, which isn't perfect, but it's far better than it has any right to be.

Clips like this have been absolutely everywhere. One Reddit comment summed up the mood: "The age of two thin coats is over. The time of one thick coat has come." And I get it. I've seen these clips an embarrassing number of times. I know exactly what's going to happen, and I'm still sat there going, go on then, level. After a while, though, I did start wondering: it's a brilliant demo, but is any of it going to happen when I try?

The launch painters are unbelievably good, which tells me less about my own results

Games Workshop put a lot into this launch. They gave the paints to a load of ridiculously good painters first, and then put out a week of content with them. Before anyone thinks I'm about to do the whole "you can't trust influencers" thing, I'm absolutely not. I've learned plenty from these painters on my own painting journey. And if Games Workshop invited any of us to play with unreleased Warhammer stuff, anyone, me, you, someone random at the bus stop, would be halfway up the M1 before they finished writing the email.

One of those painters called the new white the best miniature paint white he'd ever used. I see him paint and I think, that's lovely, mate. Honestly, it really is. But would a Tipp-Ex do the same thing? These people are unbelievably good, and that's great for showing off the paint. It tells me a lot less about what would happen if I did it.

I'm not the only one. Somebody shared an article about the paints from Games Workshop's site on Reddit, and one comment underneath got more than 500 upvotes: "I want to see how they go on when used without skill." I want to see Dave. Dave's got three Space Marines painted, one brush that should have gone in the bin in February, and no idea how much paint is on it right now. What happens when Dave uses it? Because with the greatest respect to the pros, I'm a lot closer to Dave.

In store testers found there's still such a thing as too much paint, and the white still isn't one coat

Then Games Workshop let normal people try Tone Pro in stores. By normal, I mean us: people who mess about with a belt buckle and decide that buckle now lives in the shadows. One of the biggest posts tried one ridiculously thick coat straight over black. It did level itself out really well, but where too much gathered, they still got bulging, cracking and bubbles in the recesses. So there is still such a thing as too much paint. Duncan Rhodes can sleep peacefully tonight.

The new white was better than White Scar, but still not solid in one coat. Someone else needed three coats of it over black. And the most useful review for me came from someone who calls themselves an average painter. Their verdict: not the dark magic that social media is showing us, but very good for base coating, batch painting and wet blending. They thought the white was overhyped. It's starting to sound like an actual paint review, rather than something recovered from Hogwarts of incredible wizard students painting.

Plenty of normal painters love them, too. One tester's son painted a demo model as his first ever miniature, which is probably a better beginner test than seeing somebody with 12 Slayer Swords paint a cheekbone. So where is the community on this? Most people are somewhere around: these seem really cool, just not quite as supernatural as Instagram has made them look.

What I'm suspicious of isn't the paint, it's me

I understand why people want them. Warhammer is already a hobby where you walk in wanting one little plastic man and walk out with a giant box, three brushes, clippers, glue, a primer, and a receipt you're going to hide from your partner. So when everyone you follow starts using a new paint, a little part of your brain goes, ah, that's what I'm missing.

That's what I'm suspicious of. Not the paints, me. The other week I didn't know Tone Pro existed, and this week I've spent about four hours looking at paint drying, wondering whether my perfectly okay paints are holding back my artistic career. I do not have an artistic career.

And most of us can't even buy these yet. As I write this, I can't seem to find a UK price from Games Workshop, and one retailer is listing preorders from the 10th of October. So we're kind of already feeling buyer's remorse for something we haven't bought, at a price we don't even know. That is peak Warhammer. It looks like a really good product with a very effective launch wrapped around it, but "these paints look really good" and "I need these paints" are quite different sentences. The first one's a review. The second one is how I ended up owning 17 slightly different reds.

Does a beginner need Tone Pro? I'm inclined to say no, but it might fix two annoyances

I've not used them, so I can't say for sure, but I'm inclined to say no. Your paint hasn't gone off like a yogurt just because a new range came out. If you've just spent a bunch of money on standard Citadel pots like me, they're still going to work. Even that slightly crusty pot of white you've been fighting with for six months still technically works. It's just chosen violence. But I do think Tone Pro might fix two things that are really annoying when you're starting out.

The first is getting your paint the right thickness. Everyone tells you to thin your paints. Lovely, but how much? Roughly the consistency of milk is what people say, which is helpful right up until you realize you've bought paint, not enrolled at dairy college. Too thick and you lose the detail. Too thin and your Space Marine looks like he's been painted with Ribena. If Tone Pro is more forgiving when you put a bit too much on, that's handy. Boring, don't get me wrong, but handy.

The second is picking colors. You know you need to highlight your reds, but with what? Is Evil Sunz Scarlet lighter than Mephiston Red? Tone Pro Red 3, then Tone Pro Red 4, makes life easier. Will it make you a better painter? No. They still haven't released paint five, which is hand eye coordination. Tone Pro might well be easier for a beginner. That still doesn't mean a beginner needs it, and miniature painting has always been quite good at making useful and necessary look suspiciously similar.

My plan: one pot of white, and one question before buying more

If I was buying them, I wouldn't replace everything. I'm not putting my old paints in a box, thanking them for their service and sending them off to live on a farm. I'd pick one color I probably struggle with, probably white, because white miniature paint has always acted like it's personally offended that you've opened the lid. I'd buy one pot, use it properly, and if it makes my life easier, I'd probably try another color.

The only question I'm going to ask about Tone Pro is: does it fix something that's annoying me right now? If it does, brilliant. If it doesn't, you've already got paint. And if I'm honest, I'll probably say I'm not bothered and then buy one pot of white three weeks later.

If a beginner walked into Warhammer tomorrow, would you point them at Tone Pro?