Army Painter vs Citadel Paints

The two ranges, as they are actually sold

Citadel Colour is split by job rather than by color family. Base paints are the opaque foundation and Layer paints the semi-opaque highlights, both in 12 ml pots. Shade (wash) and Contrast come in 18 ml pots. Technical paints covering texture, blood, rust and crackle run from 12 ml up to 24 ml depending on the product. The ranges are designed to be used in a sequence, and Games Workshop’s own tutorials assume you own that sequence.

Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic is the company’s current line, replacing the original Warpaints. The range runs to 216 paints organized into 27 color triads, alongside wash, metallic and effects lines, all in 18 ml dropper bottles.

Those two sentences contain the real difference. Citadel organizes paint by what stage of the model you are at. Army Painter organizes it by color, in sets of three that are already a shadow, a midtone and a highlight.

Dropper bottle versus flip-top pot

This sounds like a detail and it is the thing you will notice every single session.

Dropper bottles dispense a measured drop onto the palette. You can count drops, which makes a thinning ratio repeatable, and the paint inside is sealed from air until it leaves the nozzle. They also carry an agitator in most cases, so a shake actually remixes the pigment.

Flip-top pots open to a wide reservoir you dip a brush into. That is faster for a quick touch-up and it is the format every Citadel tutorial demonstrates. It is also the format that dries out: paint collects on the rim, the lid stops sealing, and a pot left open through a session loses water fast. If that has already happened to you, how to revive dried out paint covers the rescue.

Dropper bottles have their own failure: left on their side they seize at the cap, and a clogged nozzle needs a pin. But on balance the bottle is the better container, and the fact that Citadel has stayed with pots is a brand decision rather than a technical one.

Cost per milliliter

Army Painter wins this clearly and it is not close. An 18 ml dropper bottle of Warpaints Fanatic typically costs about the same as, or less than, a 12 ml Citadel pot — so you are getting half as much paint again for the same outlay.

Scale that across a starting palette of a dozen colors and the difference is real money, which matters most for exactly the person asking this question: someone buying their first paints and uncertain how far the hobby will go. We do not print live prices on this page, because a stale number is worse than none — check both at the time you buy and the ratio above is what you will see.

Two things soften the gap. Citadel Base paints cover in fewer coats, so a pot goes further per model than the raw volume suggests. And Citadel’s Shade and Contrast pots are 18 ml, so the worst of the premium applies to the 12 ml Base and Layer tiers rather than the whole range.

Coverage and pigment

Citadel Base paints are the most reliably opaque mainstream miniature paint you can buy. One coat over a primed surface, properly thinned, genuinely covers — which is why they stay in this site’s picks despite the price per milliliter.

Warpaints Fanatic is marketed on a pigment-dense formulation and performs well, but opacity across a 216-paint range is less uniform than across Citadel’s much smaller, more tightly specified Base tier. Bright yellows, oranges and reds need a second coat in both ranges; that is a pigment-chemistry problem, not a brand failing.

In practice, both ranges want the same handling: thin them, build two coats, and judge after the second. The method is in how to thin miniature paint, and if either range is going through an airbrush, the additive question is covered in airbrush thinner vs flow improver.

The tutorial problem, which is the real hidden cost

Search for how to paint almost any Warhammer model and the guide will name Citadel colors. Not because they are better, but because Games Workshop makes the models, the paints and the tutorials, and the hobby’s written culture grew up inside that ecosystem.

For a beginner that is worth paying for. Following a guide step by step without having to stop and work out which of your bottles is the nearest match to Macragge Blue removes a real source of frustration at exactly the point where people quit.

The counter-argument is that the translation is a solved problem. Army Painter publishes conversion information, third-party charts are everywhere, and this site keeps a conversion chart for that reason. Once you have painted a few models, you stop following recipes literally and the advantage quietly evaporates.

Triads versus tiers: how each brand expects you to highlight

This is the most interesting difference and the one nobody mentions.

Army Painter sells you a highlight ramp in the box. A color triad is three bottles that are already a shade, a base and a highlight of the same hue, mixed by the manufacturer to sit at even steps. You do not have to judge whether your highlight is too big a jump — that judgment has been made for you.

Citadel expects you to assemble the ramp yourself from the Base and Layer tiers, usually with a Shade over the top. That is more flexible and it teaches you more, and it is also the step where beginners most often produce a highlight that is far too bright.

If you want to learn color theory, Citadel’s way is better practice. If you want twenty models finished to a consistent tabletop standard this month, the triads do the thinking for you. The techniques themselves are the same either way — see basic painting techniques.

Washes, where the brands swap places

Citadel Shades are the single strongest argument for the brand. Agrax Earthshade in particular is so widely used that painters who own no other Citadel product still own that pot, and plenty of Army Painter users cross-buy it without embarrassment.

Army Painter’s Warpaints washes are good, cheaper per milliliter, and the Quickshade dip-style products have no Citadel equivalent at all. They behave differently — generally stronger and more staining — so swapping one for the other mid-model is not a like-for-like substitution. The ranked comparison is in the washes roundup.

Side by side

The starter sets are not equivalent

Both brands sell a first box and they solve different problems. The Army Painter starter puts eleven 18 ml bottles, a primer, a brush and a practice miniature in one package — you can open it and paint without ordering anything else. The Citadel 40,000 Paints + Tools set hands you thirteen 12 ml pots across five paint types plus clippers and a moldline scraper, which is the assembly half of the problem solved instead.

If you already own clippers, the Army Painter box is the better buy. If you are opening a Warhammer box with nothing else on the desk, the Citadel set gets you from sprue to painted model with no gaps. Either way, how many colors you actually need first is covered in how many paints to start with.

The verdict

Buy Citadel if you are new, you are painting Games Workshop models, and you intend to follow tutorials. The premium buys you a range that every guide names and the most forgiving single-coat coverage available. Expand into Vallejo or Army Painter later, once recipes stop being instructions and start being suggestions.

Buy Army Painter if you are painting an army rather than a character, you are cost-sensitive, or you want a highlight ramp you do not have to mix. The dropper bottle is the better container, the triads are a genuine shortcut, and 216 paints is more range than most painters will ever exhaust.

Realistically, you will end up with both. Nearly every painted shelf in this hobby contains Citadel Shades, Army Painter bottles and a few things from elsewhere, because nobody is loyal to a brand once they know what each one is good at. For the third corner of this decision, see Citadel vs Army Painter vs Vallejo, and for the wider field including the boutique ranges, miniature paint brands compared.