The Best Miniature Paint Sets for Beginners

How we picked

A starter paint set has one job: get a beginner from bare plastic to a model that looks finished. Almost every set on the market is judged on pot count, which is the wrong measure — twenty basecoats with no wash will not finish anything. So these are the four criteria, in order of weight:

• Can it finish a model? That means opaque basecoats, at least one shade or wash, a metallic, and something lighter for highlights. A set missing the wash is a set that leaves every model at eighty percent.
• Cost per milliliter. Published volumes, divided. No estimates. A 12 ml pot and an 18 ml dropper are not the same purchase even at the same price.
• Does it match the tutorials you will watch? A beginner following a video is translating color names in real time if the set is not Citadel. That is a genuine cost, and it is temporary.
• What else do you still have to buy? A set with a brush and a primer in it is a different proposition from one with neither.

We do not claim to have tested every set side by side on the same model. These pages are built from the manufacturers’ own published specifications and current retail listings, and the reasoning is in the open so you can disagree with it. That standard is set out in our review policy.

The decision, in one paragraph

If you are painting Space Marines or Tyranids, buy the Citadel 40,000 set and stop reading. If you are painting anything else, buy the Vallejo Introduction Set or the Army Painter Fanatic Starter, add one brown wash and one black wash, and keep a conversion chart open while you watch tutorials. If what you want is a painted army on the table by next month rather than a painting hobby, buy the Speedpaint Starter Set and a light primer.

What no set includes, and you still need

Every set on this page leaves you needing at least one of these, so budget for them rather than discovering them:

• Primer. Only the Army Painter Fanatic Starter includes one. Paint without primer rubs off at every contact point — this is not optional.
• A brush you can do detail with. The brushes in starter sets are basecoating brushes. One inexpensive sable transforms what you can paint; see the beginner brush picks.
• Somewhere to put the paint. Thinned paint dries on a dry palette in about ninety seconds. A wet palette is the fix, and you can improvise one for nothing.

Pots versus droppers

This divides painters more than brand does. A Citadel flip-top pot is faster to work from — open it, dip, close it — and holds 12 ml. A dropper bottle holds 17 or 18 ml, gives you exact control over how much paint lands on the palette, and never skins over at the lid. The trade is that droppers need shaking before every use and the nozzle occasionally clogs.

For anyone intending to thin paint properly — which is everyone, eventually — droppers are the better format, because “two drops of paint, one of water” is a repeatable instruction and “a brushful from the pot” is not.

The faction trap

The single most expensive mistake in this category is buying a faction-themed starter set for a faction you are not painting. The Citadel 40,000 set is thirteen colors chosen specifically for Ultramarines blue and Tyranid flesh. It is excellent at that and it means an Ork or Death Guard painter buys most of a palette twice.

Generic sets — Vallejo Introduction, Army Painter Fanatic Starter — span the color wheel instead, which is less immediately useful and much harder to waste. If you know your army, buy themed. If you do not, buy generic. See the Warhammer 40,000-specific picks if you have already chosen a faction.

How many pots is enough

Twelve to sixteen. Below twelve you are missing either the wash or the metallic. Above about twenty, the extra colors are ones you will choose individually later anyway, based on what a model actually needs. The arithmetic is laid out in how many paints you need to start.