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Supply Depot - The Quartermaster's Vault
A curated guide to miniature painting supplies — what each category is for, how to choose within it, and which products are worth buying. Every section covers the practical basics before the product recommendations, so you know what you're buying and why.
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Miniatures
In the beginning, there is the model. Grey plastic pulled from a sprue, resin cast in the likeness of a warrior, metal poured into a mould a decade before you held it. Before any paint is mixed, before any brush is raised, the miniature must exist — and it must call to you. The hobby is not sustained by efficiency or practicality. It is sustained by the compulsion to do justice to the subject on the table. Plastic, resin, metal — the material matters less than the model. Choose what makes you want to paint. Everything else in the Quartermaster's Supply Depot exists to help you do exactly that.
Plastic is the most beginner-friendly material: lightweight, inexpensive, and forgiving to cut and glue. Resin captures finer surface detail but requires washing in soapy water before priming (mould-release residue prevents paint adhesion) and a respirator when cutting. Metal is heavy, holds detail well, and bends rather than shatters on a bad drop. For a first purchase, a box of plastic infantry beats a single centrepiece model — repetition across ten identical figures builds brush control faster than one difficult showpiece. The standard tabletop scale is 28–32 mm heroic scale; larger scale means more surface to work with and forgiving brush strokes. Stick to one range until you can paint it confidently before expanding.
Acrylic Paints
Much like the bolter of an Ultramarine — wielded with equal conviction by a fresh recruit and a Chapter Master — acrylics are the weapon of choice at every tier of the hobby. Award-winning competition painters work in the same medium as the first-timer on their kitchen table. They dry swiftly, forgive the trembling initiate's brush, and yield to water when the purging hour comes. The great Codex of painting begins here, with a single entry: acrylic. Begin with a starter set from one of the great houses — Army Painter, Citadel, or Vallejo. The colours your legions truly need will reveal themselves through battle. The ceiling is not the paint — it is the hand that holds the brush.
Paint ranges differ in consistency and ecosystem. Some have the largest tutorial libraries with well-organised systems — base coats, layers, shades, and one-coat paints — making it easy to follow step-by-step guides. Others are thinner out of the bottle, which suits airbrushing and wet-blending. Budget alternatives exist that match the coverage of more established ranges at a lower price per pot. A practical starter kit needs around 8–12 colours: three or four base colours for your army's main scheme, a skin tone, a bone/off-white, a silver metallic, a gold metallic, and one or two washes. Don't buy 50 paints before you've finished a single model — you'll never use most of them until you know what you actually need. Use the Colour Matcher on this site to find equivalents if a tutorial calls for a range you don't own.
Speed Paints / One-Coat Paints
The grey tide is the true enemy — not Chaos, not the Xenos, but the endless unpainted regiment on the shelf. Speed paints were forged as the answer. One coat over a light primer and the paint does the work: pooling in the recesses to shade, thinning on the raised surfaces to highlight. Speed paints are a weapon optimised for volume — hordes, infantry regiments, bulk production. On a centrepiece model where every highlight is hand-blended, their advantage is less clear. Know which campaign you are fighting before you commit your palette. The great houses have answered. Their formulations differ; the outcome does not. Choose your allegiance and march.
Speed paints work by being highly transparent: they pool into recesses as a shade while leaving raised surfaces lighter, giving a shaded result in a single coat. The key rule is to prime in light grey or white — over black primer the effect is almost invisible. Avoid going back over a drying coat mid-stroke; most speed paint ranges reactivate when wet and will lift if disturbed. All major paint ranges now produce their own version of speed paint; formulations vary slightly but the technique is the same across all of them. Speed paints excel on organic textures — fur, cloth, leather, skin — and large infantry armies where painting time per model matters. They are less effective on large flat armour panels, where the pooling effect can look patchy without an additional highlight pass.
Washes & Shades
There is a rite known to every painter who has served the Forge: the wash. A single pass of thinned, dark pigment across a basecoated surface, and the recesses claim their shadows by right. No steady hand required. No years of training. The paint obeys gravity like a loyal battle-brother. Apply it. Walk away. Return to a model transformed. The sacred minimum: a brown wash and a black wash. Together they serve Khorne's red, Nurgle's rot, the cold grey of Imperial armour, and the dark steel of a Space Marine's boltgun. Between these two pigments lies the shadow of almost every surface a painter will face. The great houses each field their versions. All serve the Omnissiah.
A wash is a heavily thinned, low-surface-tension paint that flows into recesses and dries there as a shadow, while leaving basecoated raised surfaces largely intact. The two washes that cover the widest range of subjects are a black wash (for metallics, grey armour, and dark schemes) and a brown wash (for skin, leather, bone, wood, and earth tones). A dedicated skin-tone wash is also worth adding early. Apply washes over a fully dried basecoat; if the basecoat is still wet, the wash won't flow into recesses correctly. On large flat surfaces, thin the wash with a little glazing medium or water to prevent a tide-mark ring forming at the edge of the wet area as it dries. Avoid pooling excessively in the centre of smooth panels — on those, a targeted wash applied only to the recesses gives a cleaner result than an all-over coat.
Metallic Paints
The gold of the Emperor's chosen does not come from a single pot. Metallics demand respect — and in recent years, the great forges have answered that demand with true metallic mediums that behave like regular paint yet dry with genuine reflectivity. The old approach — coarse metallic flake suspended in pigment — has been largely deposed. The new mediums blend wet-on-wet, layer cleanly, and catch light the way the armour of the Adeptus Custodes was always meant to. Your foundational requisition: a silver, a gold, and a copper. These three serve every Chapter's iconography, every daemon's blade, every Imperial eagle, and every corroded fitting in the underhive. The rest of the metallic range is expansion territory — useful, but not required until the campaign demands it.
The core metallic loadout for most miniature painters is a silver, a gold, and a dark metal (gunmetal or dark iron). A neutral silver covers the vast majority of armour and weapon applications; a warm gold handles iconography, trim, and fantasy heraldry. Both are available across all major paint ranges and are reliable starting points. Metallic paints separate in the pot — the metal particles settle to the bottom quickly. Shake thoroughly for 30 seconds before opening and again before each use. Finer-particle metallic ranges are popular among more experienced painters for smoother layering and a shinier, more convincing result on centrepiece models. True Metallic Metal (TMM) technique uses these finer metallics in a light-to-dark layering approach to simulate directional lighting realistically — more work than a single basecoat but significantly more impressive on display-quality models.
Primers
The first commandment of the Forge: thou shalt not skip primer. It is not a recommendation. It is the sacred covenant between paint and plastic — the mechanical bond that keeps every layer above it from peeling, chipping, and failing under the first touch of a finger. A model painted without primer is a model that will humiliate its owner within a week. Prime everything. No exceptions. No heresy. Grey is the universal rite — it forgives mistakes, accepts any colour above it, and reveals surface imperfections before the campaign begins. Black primer serves dark armies and shadow-heavy schemes. White primer serves the bright colours — yellows, whites, and the blazing oranges of flame and glory — that struggle to achieve their true hue over a darker foundation. Know your army before you choose your primer. The Quartermaster will supply the rest.
Primer chemically bonds to the miniature's surface and provides a slightly rough tooth that subsequent paint layers grip onto. Without it, acrylics will rub off bare plastic or resin within days regardless of how many layers you apply. Always prime. Grey primer is the most versatile starting point: bright colours pop without needing as many coats as they do over black, and dark colours read clearly without the muddiness that white primer can cause. Black primer works well for dark armies where shadow is already built in. White primer is the correct choice for yellows, whites, and bright oranges, which require too many coats to appear vibrant over a dark base. Spray cans are the fastest method but are sensitive to conditions: apply between 15–25°C, avoid high humidity, and keep the can 25–30 cm from the model. Below 10°C the propellant fails and the primer will produce a rough, sandy texture. Brush-on primers are useful for indoor painters or touching up missed areas after spray priming.
Brushes
No piece of war gear in the painter's arsenal is more personal than the brush. It is the instrument through which every decision of colour, shadow, and highlight is transmitted to the model. A brush with a dead point transmits nothing useful. The point is the measure of all things — a fine tip that springs back to centre when wet is a weapon in service. One that splays and forks is fit only for drybrushing and basing. The foundational loadout: one medium brush for coverage, one fine brush for detail, one dedicated brush for drybrushing. The drybrush is a martyr — the technique strips bristles by design. Assign a worn brush to this duty and protect your sharp ones. Wash with brush soap after every session. The Emperor's finest did not paint their armour with blunt instruments.
The most important quality in a brush is the tip: a good brush forms a fine point when wet and springs back to centre immediately. Kolinsky sable holds more paint, keeps its point longer, and has more spring than synthetic alternatives. Synthetics have improved significantly and are a reasonable starting point before investing in natural hair brushes. A practical three-brush set: a medium size for base coating and blocking in large areas, a standard size for general layering and blending, and a fine size for detail work such as eyes, gems, and lettering. Keep a fourth dedicated drybrush — the technique destroys bristles by design, so never use a good detail brush for it. Clean brushes after every session with brush soap and store them tip-up or horizontal, never resting on the bristles.
Inks
Not all dark pigments serve the same master. The wash is a servant of shadow — it finds the recesses and dwells there. The ink serves colour itself. Transparent and saturated beyond what opaque paint can achieve, inks alter the hue of everything beneath them without obscuring a single detail. A glaze of yellow ink over bone becomes aged ivory. A pass of red over silver becomes the reflected light of a furnace. The ink does not cover. It consecrates. Inks are the advanced requisition — tools for painters who understand that what lies beneath the pigment is as important as the pigment itself. They dry with a sheen that betrays their presence on a matte model. Varnish seals the evidence. The effect remains.
Inks and washes are related but distinct tools. Washes shade by flowing into recesses; inks are more saturated and transparent, and they tint the entire surface they cover rather than just pooling in low areas. This makes inks useful for glazing — thinning them further with water or medium and applying in thin, transparent passes to gradually shift the hue of a surface without obscuring highlight or shadow work beneath. Common glazing applications: a yellow ink over a bone or white base for aged ivory, a red or orange ink over a yellow highlight to push it toward fire-orange, or a blue ink over a highlight to cool and deepen it. High-pigment-density inks designed for fine art use are popular among miniature painters for their transparency and intensity. Inks dry with a slight sheen — seal with matte varnish after use to eliminate the shine on areas where it would be unwanted.
Basing & Special Effects
The 41st Millennium is not clean. Its warriors carry the evidence of every world they have fought on — rust blooming on neglected armour, blood dried into the joints of a chainsword, dust from a desert campaign still caked in the treads of a boot. Replicating this truth on the painting table is the domain of special effects: a range of compounds, pigments, and texture materials forged to simulate the physical reality of endless war. Basing grounds the model in a place. Effects ground it in a story. Together they are the final argument between a miniature that looks painted and one that looks like it belongs in the world it was designed for. Apply them last. Apply them with restraint. The difference between weathering and ruining is the hand that stops in time.
Basing is completed after the model is fully painted and varnished, to avoid getting basing material on finished paintwork. The simplest effective approach: apply a texture paste directly from the pot with an old brush, let it dry overnight, drybrush the raised texture with a pale colour, then add a static grass tuft and paint the rim black. This takes under 10 minutes and reads well on the tabletop from arm's length. Texture pastes come in many varieties — cracked earth, stone, mud, sand — choose one that suits your army's setting. For weathering effects, work from large to small: streaks first (brown oil paint thinned with white spirit), then rust pigments stippled on, then chipping on the final highlights using a torn sponge. Apply varnish between stages so mistakes can be wiped off without lifting earlier work. Start with one weathering technique per model until each one is controlled before combining them.
Airbrush Setup
The airbrush is the greatest force multiplier available to the miniature painter. An entire regiment primed and zenithal-shaded in the time it takes to base coat a single model by brush. Power armour gradients that would take an expert hours by hand resolved in minutes. The tool is not a shortcut — it is a different weapon entirely, with different capabilities and different demands. Those who have crossed into airbrush territory do not return to brush-only as their primary method. The entry tithe is threefold: the airbrush, the compressor, and a spray booth for any indoor deployment. Cans are not an adequate substitute for a compressor — they cannot sustain consistent pressure and fail without warning. The fumes of airbrush-thinned paint require ventilation that a cracked window cannot provide alone. Invest in the full setup. The machine spirit rewards those who equip themselves properly.
A dual-action, gravity-feed airbrush gives you independent control over air pressure (trigger down) and paint flow (trigger back), which is necessary for smooth blending and fine lines. Single-action airbrushes save money but sacrifice control; they are not recommended as a first purchase. Look for a needle size of 0.3–0.4 mm for general miniature work — finer needles clog more easily with hobby-weight paints. The compressor is as important as the airbrush. A tank compressor (with a reservoir) produces steady pressure without pulsing; tankless compressors are cheaper but create an uneven spray that is difficult to control. A working pressure of 15–25 PSI suits most miniature painting work; higher pressure for primers and base coating, lower for fine blending. Thin your paints to a skimmed-milk consistency using airbrush thinner or water — unthinned paint clogs the needle within seconds. Clean the airbrush immediately after each colour change by spraying thinner through until it runs clear.
Auxiliaries
The 41st Millennium runs not on courage alone but on the supply chains that support it. At the painting table, auxiliaries are that supply chain. They do not paint the model. They ensure that everything else used to paint the model performs at its highest capacity — and that the result, once achieved, survives contact with the real world. Varnish is the final covenant. Mediums are the alchemical keys that unlock techniques the paint alone cannot perform. Thinners are the discipline of the airbrush stage. Flow improvers are the invisible hand that guides pigment where the brush cannot. Requisition them alongside the paint range. The campaign cannot be sustained without them.
A matte varnish is not optional — it protects the paint job from handling and chipping and eliminates the shine that washes and glazes leave behind. Apply as a final coat once all painting and weathering is complete. Never varnish in high humidity (above 70%) or below 10°C; the moisture in the air causes the varnish to cloud white, a defect called frosting that is difficult to reverse. Both spray and brush-on varnishes are available; brush-on diluted with a little water suits airbrushing and gives an even, controllable coat. Beyond varnish, two auxiliaries are worth adding early: a glazing medium thins paint without reducing pigment density and is the correct way to make glazes, replacing excessive water which can cause paint to bead or break up on a surface. A flow improver added to a wash reduces surface tension and improves how it flows into recesses.
Tools & Equipment
Every campaign requires equipment that defies easy categorisation — the tools that support the work without belonging to any single stage of it. This is that section. What the other requisitions did not claim, the Quartermaster has gathered here. The wet palette is the first requisition of the serious painter — it keeps acrylics workable and eliminates waste. The painting handle frees your grip and your angle of attack. Lamps and magnifiers reveal the detail the naked eye misses. Side cutters, knives, and drills serve the assembly stage before a single drop of colour is mixed. Each of these tools is a force multiplier. None of them is optional once you have painted without one.
The wet palette is the single most impactful quality-of-life upgrade for brush painters. It keeps acrylic paints workable for hours (or days with the lid closed) instead of drying on a dry palette within minutes, which means less waste and more time to blend. Both purpose-made and DIY versions work equally well — replace the paper insert when colours start bleeding through. A painting handle lets you hold the model without touching the paintwork, giving you a steady grip from any angle and preventing fingerprint smudges. Any cork, wooden dowel, or purpose-made handle works — attach the model with adhesive putty for a non-permanent hold. Good side cutters produce an almost invisible gate mark on sprues, which matters when a mould line runs near a fine detail. A daylight lamp (5000–6500 K colour temperature) shows colours accurately and reveals fine detail that standard room lighting misses.
Storage & Display
The miniature that survives the campaign deserves to survive the transport too. A painted model is hours of work — a carrying case is the armour that keeps it intact between battles. Foam-lined trays, magnetic bases, aluminium frames: the standard of protection should match the standard of the paint job. Display is the final act. A cabinet or a case that shows the collection at its best is not vanity — it is the reason the work was done. The Forge recommends acquiring storage before the collection outgrows the shelf.
Foam trays are the standard for transporting painted miniatures to games. The foam must be specifically cut or pluck-foam for miniatures — generic packing foam is too coarse and can damage fine details and raised parts. The main limitation of foam is that spears, antennae, banners, and thin weapon blades will bend or snap from pressure — use individual bags or magnetic systems for models with vulnerable parts. Magnetic basing (a metal sheet in the case, small magnets or steel washers glued to the base) is faster to pack and unpack than foam and eliminates the snapping risk, at the cost of a larger upfront setup. For display at home, a glass-fronted cabinet with an LED strip inside is a popular solution — glass doors keep dust off, and backlighting shows the collection clearly. Acquire storage before the painted pile outgrows the shelf; retroactively fitting foam to an existing collection is tedious.
Books
The blade is forged before it is used. Before the brush is raised and the campaign begins, the Forge recommends a different kind of requisition — the kind printed on pages. Painting guides, lore compendiums, and art books from the great studios are the fastest path from competent to inspired. They teach not just technique but vision: how a master sees colour, light, and shadow before a single drop of paint is mixed. The painter who studies the work of those who came before does not repeat their mistakes. They inherit their discoveries.
Painting guides differ from online tutorials in that they are reference material you can return to at any stage of the hobby. A well-photographed step-by-step book shows brush angle, paint consistency, and coverage in a way that a compressed video sometimes cannot. Look for guides that cover the techniques you are currently working on — foundation books for beginners, and more specialist titles on blending, weathering, or non-metallic metal as your skills develop. Art books from professional studio painters are valuable for understanding colour composition and how experts plan a scheme before starting. For colour theory specifically, the guides on this site cover the miniature-relevant fundamentals: how to choose a highlight and shadow colour for a given base, how colour temperature affects perceived lighting, and how complementary colours create visual impact on the tabletop.
