Warhammer Tone Pro is the latest paint range from Games Workshop, unveiled at their recent reveal show. You’ve probably seen people drowning models with it online, and you’ve maybe even had the chance to have a play with it yourself as Games Workshop have been sending these out to stores to let people get to grips with them!

We were also lucky enough to be sent one of the Sample Paint Sets from Games Workshop, so wanted to share my thoughts after using them and who I think they are aimed at along with what I think the best way of using them is.

So first up a bit of a disclaimer – this review is based just on the paints in the Sample Set. I’ve not been sent the entire range and so this is based on how those colours work together and how they handle over a primer. I’ll probably be picking up a couple of pentads when they come out, so will update my thoughts on them once I’ve tried more colours.

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Warhammer Tone Pro Review

So this is going to be a little different and a tad more chaotic than most reviews, as this is my thoughts about these paints when having a play with them distilled into an article.

First up, what paints are in the Sample Set? Well it’s a bit of an odd mix to be honest. One entire Pentad is included – Blue Gorkashroom. I’d have liked to have seen another full set in order to get a better feel for how the transitions are between them. We did get a couple of partial sets in the box too though. Heirotek Green 1, 3 and 5 are in the set as are Bloodtoof Red 2, 3 and 4. The set also included Blackstone Void 1, 3 and 5 giving us access to the new black, grey and white to have a play with. The rest of the colours are a bit of a random mix with Chotec Orange 4, Khemri Sands 4, Eye of Terror 4 and Plague Toad Venom 5.

I suspect that Games Workshop wanted to show off the coverage of these lighter colours – but the lack of a brown makes it a little harder to paint up a single model using all these, and so a plucky Ork Meganob put his life on the line to try out the kaleidoscope of colours!

Meet Waaagh Rainbow ready to test out the range!

There’s been a lot of chatter online about what these paints and what they are not and I’ve seen a lot of people taking a video out of context and taking away the “fact” that these are designed to be one think coat.

First up, please don’t drown your models in Warhammer Tone Pro – like with all other paints you’ll end up clogging detail. Yes, they do flow well and move to contours, but so do other paints and they certainly are not designed to drown models with thick globs of paint!

There’s also been a lot of noise about pots – I do a lot of painting for this site, and its very rare that a pot dries out or spills, you just need to be careful with them. I’ve actually had more wastage from dropper bottles – either having to dispense a little before shaking so it mixes properly, or having a clog and making an absolute best. There’s pros and cons to both, but being in a pot isn’t the crime a lot of people claim it is.

The selling point of these paints are the very vivid liquid pigments found within, this allows the colours to stay vivid even when heavily thinned, which in theory makes them really good for coverage too, even over dark colours. If you are as old as me you might remember the Foundation Paints range, and in a way these paints are very similar. Foundation had some great colours and decent coverage designed to get your base colours down on your models. Warhammer Tone Pro does this, but also flows really well to make them useful for highlighting and blending too.

And this brings us to the other selling point of the new paints, the Pentad system. Each colour in the range has 5 different tones that move up sequentially from 1 (the darkest colour) through to 5 (the brightest colour) this makes highlighting and shading super easy as you could base with 2, then shade with 1 (using the new Shade medium) then work your way up from 2 through to 5 in order to get a really nice transition up to the highlights. Of course, you could also have some more stark jumps and simply paint 1 then 3 and then 5 to have less of a gradient. The number of times I’ve had to look up which current paints act as highlights to other paints has led me to actually having a sheet with common colours I use in my paint drawer! With Warhammer Tone Pro it’ll be easier to see which paints highlight which.

So onto the testing.

Waaagh Rainbow was primed black and the first test I wanted to do was see how the paints covered over black and how they looked with and without thinning.

We started things off with Bloodtoof Red 2. The first image is the paint straight out of the pot. As you can see coverage over black is really good, but went on a tad thick for my liking. I’d heard some horror stories about them drying too fast on a palette, but for me I felt they needed a drop of water to get the right consistency.

And so on the other shoulder pad we have a single coat of Bloodtoof Red 2 thinned on the palette. Much, much smoother but still had excellent coverage. I will say that the paint did dry very quicky on the palette, so you gotta go fast if you want to use it this way (Games Workshop do have an extender medium coming out with these paints, but I’ve not had a chance to play with this as it wasn’t in the sample set). I suspect using a Wet Palette will be the way to go with these, and if you look at the footage from the creator event you can see they had a wet palette set up at each station, which should extend the work-ability of these paints.

The other colours all got popped on the model and I have to say generally the coverage is very good, but some of the lighter colouts (such as Chotec Orange and Plague Road Venom did struggle a little over blackas you can see from the above images. Heirotek Green went on really nicely as did the blue, but again these are the only “1” numbered paints we had to try other than the black, so I suspect the coverage of the low numbers will be good across the board, I just can’t confirm that until we’ve had a play with the bigger range.

What was excellent with one coat however are Blackstone Void 3 and 5 – on the checks in the above picture this is done with a single coat straight out of the pot – 3 on the bottom three and 5 on the top two. These go on super smooth and are infinitely better than any other GW white I’ve used. I’d still give them a second coat, but this Blackstone Void set is going to be 5 Warhammer Tone Pro colours I’d recommend everyone pick up and add to their collection.

In order to get some more solid coverage I hit each colour with another thinned coat, and this had them all looking excellent even over the black basecoat. Orange needed a third one to get to a level I would be happy with, but Warhammer Tone Pro certainly covers well and I could see myself picking up an assortment of “1” numbered paints on tougher colours to work with. The pinks in particular are going to make painting Emperor’s Children over a black base coat much easier!

I also had a play with a light drybrush, and they drybrush really well – but it’s going to take some practice to get them just right. As the paints are so pigmented a little goes a long way – so you’ll want to test this for yourself until you get the “feel” right for drybrushing. If you like to use contrasts over a black to white transition then these will be great for doing the drybrushing stages of them!

One thing to mention about these paints is that I made sure to give them enough time to dry properly between each coat -with them going tacky pretty quickly on the palette you dont want to accidently tear the paint by adding another coat too quickly – so these are deffo paints you want to be patient with!

With the base colours down I wanted to have a play with the Shade Medium and this worked really well. You don’t need much paint to get these going, and I used a ratio of around 15 parts Medium to 1 part Tone Pro to get some decent shades. For the blue areas I used Blue Gorkshroom 1, while for the green skin I used Blackstone Void 1. Blackstone Void 1 an Shade Medium gives you something very close to classic Nuln Oil or Badab Black. I’ll need to get my hands on more paints to have a proper play, but first impressions of the Shade Medium are very good!

With the washes dried I think worked up through the blue, red and green steps in the pentads. Red was a lot more subtle but looks really nice, I’d be interested in having a go with Bloodtoof 5 to see if that makes it pop. The blue is excellent and I think it’ll be the go to Ultramarine colour for a lot of people. Use the lower numbers and you can get a decent Crimson Fists colour too. The highlights are bold and vivid and really make the model pop, but might be a little too bright for people who want something a bit more muted (but again, that might be down to the combination of colours in this sample set)

For the green the steps are 1,3,5 and these gives you some more dramatic highlights if you want something a bit more cartoon like.

I used the black to pop a black stripe on the shoulder pad and it covered perfectly – it’s also excellent for base rims too, handling much better than Abaddon black with a stronger colour even when thinned.

I also had another play with the white – with a second coat over the checks they look fantastic, and edge highlights over the black look ace too.

The skull at the top of the totem was a single thinned coat of white, and you’re going to want to use a couple of coats if you are thinning it – the checks are all done neat out of the pot and didn’t look chalky at all, so I think this will be best way of using it.

I also tried out some edge highlights with Plague Toad 5, and I think it’s going to look a lot better as a highlight over the lower number compared to it being painted over a panel for example.

So what did I think of Warhammer Tone Pro. Well, they are very vivid and they cover amazingly even over black. Some colours will still need a couple of coats, but even these colours I was really impressed with too. If you have tried painting orange, yellow or pink you’ll know how much of a pain they are to work with, so even a solution that takes 2 coats rather than 4 or 5 is going to make things a lot easier.

Some of the gradient changes are subtle across the colours, but this gives you the option of picking or choosing which you use – If you’re looking to do nice gradual transitions then you can make full use of the entire pentad and blend them together for a gorgeous finish – but there is nothing stopping you using Warhammer Tone Pro 1,3,5 in a colour set to get some more striking highlights.

I think the point that might not gel with some people is how quickly try dry on the palette – you’re going to want to take a little paint at a time and thin it as you go rather than popping a lot of paint on the palette, as otherwise it’ll dry before you get to use it all. You can of course paint straight from the pot, and it does flow really well, but for me adding a drop of water helped for a smoother finish – this is very much going to be a personal thing and you mileage may vary – I’m going to try using them on a wet palette as I feel this will give you the best of both worlds.

I kind of wish we had a couple of more muted colours too in the sample pack, as our test Ork is looking very bright and colourful, which works great for brighter schemes and solid areas such as power armour. I do worry that they might be a bit much for something like a Chaos Warrior, but again the sample pack was more geared towards those eye popping colours, so this is something I’ll be able to have more of a play with once the entire wave is out.

The paints do feel very nice and are up there with things such as Two Thin Coats, and it’ll be interesting to see how people take to these. Picking up the entire set is going to cost in the region of £500-£600, so I think a lot of people (myself included) will be picking up pentads as and when they have new projects – thankfully Games Workshop have contained the buy 10 get one free deal will be valid on these in Warhammer Stores which gives you 2 full pentads for around £40 which is a nice way of trying out some colours.

The Warhammer Tone Pro range is up for pre order 10th October and will be released Saturday 24th October.

Games Workshop provided a 19 pot sample set for review purposes.