Goonhammer Historicals: Reviewing The Army Painter Historicals German Paint Set

[Disclaimer: All three Historical paint sets were sent to me by The Army Painter]

World War 2 era paints are nothing new for The Army Painter, having previously collaborated with Warlord Games on their Rapid Deployment range of paints (which has been slowly sunset over the past year); now they have taken their new Fanatic type paints and put together three paint sets which come with paints useful for painting World War 2 era miniatures, specifically Germans, British and Americans. Undoubtedly you have already read those words from our Review of the American paint set found here.

Credit: The Army Painter

Without too much preamble then, this article will look at the German paint set and its contents, how to paint with it, and my gripes with it.

Credit: The Army Painter

The set comes with 20 paints like the other two sets. Just like them it shares the following paints:

Steel (Matches Gunmetal)
Rust
Black
White
Warm Skin Tone (Matches Warm Skin Shade)
Black Tone (Matches Dark Tone)
Brown Tone (Matches Strong Tone)
Military Shader (Matches Military Shader)
Rifle Brown

Beyond those directly shared among the sets, you will also find the following paints, which are not exactly in each set, but are the same tone of colour:

Weathered Skin (Matches Agate Skin)
Command Red (Matches Pure Red

The rest of the paints are dedicated paints for German uniforms and equipment. Out of those nine paints there is one full triad of Dark, Mid and Light Feldgrau similar to the other two sets. These are as follows:

Light Feldgrau
Mid Feldgrau
Dark Feldgrau
Tanker Grey
Leather Brown(Matches Leather Brown)
Camo Sand
German Camo Green
Strap Grey
Camo Brown

Out of these, the Feldgrau triad is a given as you could simply not paint World War 2 era Germans without it; the Tanker Grey and Strap Grey also make perfect sense both for painting black-grey uniforms for say tank crewmen. The three camouflage paints seem to be meant for painting Splittertarn, but each are just a little too saturated to quite fit.

Painting Germans

The next obvious step is put these paints to the test by painting some Germans. I decided to paint up one mini just how I would personally approach it and the other following the ">painting guide on The Army Painter's Youtube Channel. I should note that I generally do not use shades all that much when painting and prefer to set my shadows by brush, rather than rely on the somewhat unpredictable nature of shade paints.

My Own Style

Credit: MommaNegan

I originally tried painting without shades, but quickly found that the green filter of the military shader is kind of required for the tones to come together in a convincing Feldgrau. Even still I was expecting a more washed out kind of look which I did not get. This feels a lot more mint green than typical Feldgrau, but could work as an early war uniform. The Strap Grey and Tanker Grey are fantastic paints for painting both black leather and the Stahlhelm. I don't know where I picked it up from, but I always paint my helmets in a type of blueish grey as opposed to the more drab greenish black you see on a lot of studio paintjobs; The Strap Grey is a pretty great approximation of my usual go to paints German Grey and French Mirage Blue from Vallejo. While not necessary here, painting wood is pretty doable with the Rifle brown in this set, shading it with brown tone and then highlighting it by mixing in more and more of the Camo Sand paint. The same Camo Sand can be brightened to a bone color with some white to paint bread bags and Panzerfäuste and Panzerschrecken. The Leather Brown with some Brown Tone can be used to paint the canteens. And in a smaller way, the Camo Green can be darkened with Dark Feldgrau or Strap Grey and then re-highlighted to paint camo nets such as on this guy's helmet:

Credit: MommaNegan

All in all, a perfectly serviceable paintjob, if you were just starting an army and used this paint set, this would be perfect; but since I have a German army already, I much prefer the more desaturated drab Feldgrau.

Credit: MommaNegan

I also did attempt to paint some Splittertarn using the three camo paints, but I never got past the first test. I will not make a definitive judgement, but the Camo Green and Brown feel much too bright and saturated on their own, while the Camo Sand feels much too brown.

Following the Guide

I will not re-tread all the steps from the painting guide as you can watch that yourself, but safe to say this approach does lead to some striking results; it applies the Feldgrau triad in a different way than I do, using the Dark Feldgrau as the mid tone rather than as the shadow tone like I did. The resulting paintjob is still a bit minty, but a lot more believable as a German uniform. The guide also makes use of Strap Grey and Tanker Grey for the dark leather parts, although it starts out from Strap Grey, rather than black the way I did, leading to a bit less contrast and softer shadows.

Credit: MommaNegan

Overall this is a pretty solid painting guide to go with this set, though it does not utilise all of the paints within, specifically leaving out the Camo Green and Camo Sand.

An Alternative?

While I was putting the set to the test, I joked multiple times that the whole paint set would actually be a much better paint set for WW2 Italians than Germans; the Feldgrau triad was close in tone to the desaturated cool greens which I had praised as the perfect paints for my Italians as seen in this little artist feature by Army Painter here, and also was then subsequently used in my updated Italian painting guide here on Goonhammer. I also felt that the three camo paints in this set could easily be mixed to make for some of the more saturated examples of Italian M1929 Telo Mimetico. I originally wanted to do some tests after publishing this article, but thanks to some extra time, I sat down and knocked out one of my Italian officers using just the paints from this set, here is the result:

Credit: MommaNegan

The result is pretty damn good and very close to the darker iterations of Grigio Verde uniform. I was kind of expecting this to work, but I am surprised how much darker and colder my uniform ended up, being closer to my earlier iterations of Italian uniforms as opposed to my newer recipe with the Army Painter paints. This will fit in nicely with my eastern front Italians and make for a nice secondary paint scheme to mix in for some variety. The other paints also found uses; again, I got a lot out of the Strap Grey and Tanker Grey to paint up the belt, boots and gloves. You can also see how well a rifle stock will look with my previously mentioned method of highlighting the shaded Rifle Brown by mixing in Camo Sand. The reddish Leather is accomplished by shading the Rifle Brown with Brown Tone twice and then highlighting it by mixing in some Weathered Skin to create the worn out edges.

Final Thoughts

So what do I think of this set? I think there are a handful of issues with it, but beyond those, I am quite happy with what you are getting out of this and what it means for the hobby. First let us get the bad out of the way; I found that some of the paints, namely the Feldgrau ones, have this issue where they sometimes become weirdly grainy, leaving white-ish grains across the surface when glazing. I have had this issue with the Fanatic paints before, especially the greens. My next issue is somewhat trivial, but I do not understand why the rust effect colour was included in this or any of the other sets. I can understand including rust if the set was also meant for vehicles, but generally speaking I have not seen anyone use a rust effect paint on their infantry outside of games like 40k or grimdark games. I feel if they wanted to include any one of their effect paints, the brush-on primer would have been the smarter choice here. Alternatively they could have used that slot and created another special paint for each set. My last issue is one of personal preference, but I do not quite like the Feldgrau triad in this set, I think it is a little misleading to have the darkest colour be the mid tone to begin with and at that, the whole hue of the paint is simply too minty for my taste. I will admit, that this is my personal bias showing and I have seen people express their liking for the shade of Feldgrau included in this set.

On a positive note, I do really appreciate the effort by Army Painter to make some paints specifically for historical usage. In my personal opinion they have cemented their role as the beginner's paint maker with their release of the new fanatic paint line and so it would seem obvious that new historical hobbyists will look to Army Painter to get started. Now I know that World War 2 only encompasses one fraction of the historical hobby community, but, hey, it is a start. That said I do hope, that they will not leave it at these three sets, and especially not at just one German set. Given the multitude of camo schemes in the German military as well as the many shades of Feldgrau it would feel fitting to release a second set with a new Feldgrau triad and camo colours for stuff like oak leaf, pea dot and plane tree. To circle back to my original point, this is a great beginner set I would argue, at the least to get you started on the standard German Heer. Another reason why this set is worth considering is the dual usage which I feel I have reasonably proven. If instead of Germans you want to paint Italians, then this has all you need for any infantry in temperate uniforms.

I hope you found this review somewhat helpful in giving you an idea what to expect from this set. In the time it took me to write this Army Painter has also released all of these paints on their own, so should you not be interested in the whole package(or have some of the non-special paints from this set), you can simply pick and choose; The set does not come with a meaningful discount, so if you are not a new painter and already have a handful of paints in this set, it would be probably smarter to just order the specific paints you are interested in.

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Tags: historicals | the army painter | world war 2 | german | the paint review