Army Painter Speedpaint 2.0 Explained

What it is

Transparent, pigmented paint suspended in a resin medium with low surface tension. Over a light primer, the medium flows off raised surfaces and pools in recesses, so one pass gives you a basecoat on the high points and a shade in the low ones.

Mechanically this is the same idea as Citadel Contrast. The differences are in the specifics: a resin rather than acrylic medium, lower pigment load, dropper bottles, a much wider color range including metallics, and a lower price per milliliter.

What the 2.0 reformulation fixed

The original Speedpaint range had a real and well-documented problem: it could reactivate. Applying a varnish — or in some cases just another water-based layer — over cured Speedpaint could re-dissolve it, smearing or lifting the color on a finished model. For a product whose entire purpose is to get armies finished quickly, having the final sealing step ruin them was a serious flaw.

2.0 was reformulated to address that. It is the version currently sold, so if you are buying new you are buying 2.0, and the reactivation problem is not something you need to plan around. It is worth knowing about only because older tutorials and forum threads discuss it at length and can make the range sound riskier than it now is.

The practical takeaway: still let it cure fully before varnishing, as you would with any paint, and still test your varnish on a scrap model first. That is ordinary caution, not a Speedpaint-specific warning.

Blotching: the real issue, and the fix

Speedpaint’s lower pigment load makes it more transparent than Contrast, which makes uneven application more visible. The result is the complaint that defines the range: patches where pigment pooled somewhere flat instead of flowing to a recess.

It has one cause — too much paint on the brush — and the fixes are all variations on that:

• Load, then blot. Touch the loaded brush to a paper towel before the model. You want it carrying paint, not holding a bead of it.
• One pass, then stop. The second pass over a drying surface is what creates the hard edge.
• Work whole areas while wet. A full cloak in one go, not half now and half in a minute.
• Use Speedpaint Medium to dial it back. Mixing medium in reduces the intensity without reducing the flow, which is the correct way to make a color subtler. Water is not — it thins the pigment and the resin unevenly.
• Wick excess with a clean damp brush. If a pool forms while still wet, touch a clean damp brush to it and it draws straight out.

Where Speedpaint beats Contrast

Cost per milliliter. Meaningfully cheaper, in the same 18 ml volume. Across the twenty-plus colors an army wants, that adds up.

Primer tolerance. Works over any white or bone primer rather than requiring two specific products. That means a cheap large aerosol can, which is itself a real saving — see the spray primer picks.

Range size. Substantially more colors, and it includes Speedpaint metallics, which have no direct Contrast equivalent. Those are genuinely hard to substitute — a one-coat metallic is a specific and useful thing.

Dropper bottles. Measurable, do not skin over, and let you mix a repeatable medium ratio. For a range where mixing medium in is a core technique, that matters more than usual.

Buying the whole thing at once. The Mega Set exists and the per-bottle cost is the lowest in the range. There is no comparable Contrast bundle.

Where it loses

Single-pass reliability. Contrast carries more pigment and simply covers more dependably. For a painter who wants to do one pass and stop, Contrast is the safer product.

Tutorial support. Official painting guides name Citadel colors. If following a published scheme step by step matters to you, that is a real advantage for the other range.

The full side-by-side is in Speedpaint vs Contrast.

Who should use it

Yes: anyone painting a large army on a budget who does not mind learning the brush-loading discipline. Anyone who wants one-coat metallics. Anyone already invested in Army Painter primers.

Probably not: absolute beginners who want the most forgiving possible product — Contrast is more predictable. Anyone painting a display piece, where neither range is the right tool.

Either way, the fastest-army strategy is the same: prime light, one-coat the bulk, and layer only the models you care about. That is the core of painting faster.