Nicpro Miniature Paint Set Review

What this set actually is

The confusion worth clearing up first: Nicpro sells several things that look similar and are not. There is a craft acrylic line in 60 ml squeeze bottles aimed at rock painting and canvas, a range of detail brush sets, and a genuine model paint line in 20 ml dropper bottles. This review is about the last one — the 18 Colors Model Paint Set, which ships as eighteen ready-to-use modeling acrylics with one bottle of thinner, and which the manufacturer describes as both brush and airbrush compatible.

If you bought the 60 ml craft set expecting miniature paint, that is a different product and a worse fit: the bottles are too large to handle at the desk and the formulation is not aimed at scale work. Check the bottle size on what you are buying before anything else on this page matters.

Nicpro also sells a 30-color version of the model line, a 12-color gloss set, a metallic set and a WWII US armor set. The reasoning below applies across the line; the 18-color set is the one worth assessing because it is the one positioned as a starter.

The part that is genuinely good: cost per milliliter

A 20 ml dropper bottle holds roughly 1.7 times what a 12 ml Citadel flip-top pot does. Eighteen of them is about 360 ml of paint. To put that in perspective, that is more paint by volume than most painters get through in a year of weekend painting, at a price that sits well below what a premium range charges for a third of it.

This is not a small advantage and it is the honest reason to consider the set. If you are painting terrain, a 28 mm board, vehicle hulls, or priming and basecoating a horde army, paint volume is the constraint and premium pigment density is not. Drybrushing a ruined building does not need Citadel Base paint. It needs a lot of brown.

The dropper bottles are a second real advantage, and one that premium ranges are slowly conceding. A dropper lets you count drops, which means you can mix a repeatable ratio of paint to water or thinner and hit the same consistency next session. Flip-top pots make that guesswork. If you are learning how to thin miniature paint, droppers shorten the learning curve on their own.

Where it falls short, specifically

The color names match nothing. This is the biggest practical problem and it has nothing to do with paint quality. Every Warhammer painting guide, every Gunpla build log and every YouTube tutorial names colors from Citadel, Vallejo or The Army Painter. None of them will ever say “Nicpro mid-blue.” Following a tutorial with this set means eyeballing a match for every single step, which is a genuine skill and a miserable thing to ask of someone on their first model. Our Citadel paint conversion chart exists precisely because this problem is common, and it helps, but it does not disappear.

Pigment density is lower. Expect two coats where Citadel Base or Vallejo Game Color covers in one, particularly in reds and yellows, which are the hardest pigments to make opaque at any price. Two thin coats is correct technique anyway, so this matters less than it sounds — but it does mean the volume advantage is smaller in practice than the bottle sizes suggest, because you are using more paint per model.

There are no washes and no contrast-style paints. This is the set’s real structural gap. A model painted in eighteen opaque basecoats and nothing else looks flat, because what makes a miniature read as three-dimensional at arm’s length is shadow in the recesses. That comes from a wash. The set does not include one, so a beginner buying this as their only purchase cannot finish a model to a standard they will be happy with. You will be buying a wash separately, and that is a cost the headline price hides.

No technical or texture paints either. No basing textures, no metallics in the base 18, nothing for effects. Metallics are a separate Nicpro set; in practice most painters end up with a dedicated metallic from a specialist range regardless of brand, because metallic pigment quality varies more than color pigment does.

The airbrush case is the strongest one

The set ships with a thinner and is sold as airbrush compatible, and this is where the value argument is most convincing. Airbrushing consumes paint at a rate that makes 12 ml pots painful, and it is also the application where pigment density matters least, because you are building color in multiple translucent passes by design.

Two honest caveats. First, “airbrush compatible” is not the same as “airbrush ready” — you will still be thinning to roughly milk consistency and probably adding a flow improver for anything fine. Second, we have not verified the pigment grind against a dedicated airbrush range such as Vallejo Model Air, and grind size is what decides whether a paint tip-dries in the nozzle. If you airbrush seriously, read how to thin paint for an airbrush and treat the first bottle as a test rather than a commitment.

Who should buy it

Buy it if you are painting terrain, scenery, vehicles or a large number of models where volume is the constraint; if you airbrush and want cheap paint for priming and basecoats; if you already own a premium range and want bulk color to extend it; or if you are painting scale models rather than tabletop figures, where color accuracy to a real subject matters more than matching a studio scheme.

Do not buy it as your first and only set for a Warhammer army or a Gunpla kit. Not because the paint is bad, but because the two things a beginner most needs are a wash and colors that tutorials name, and this set has neither. The sets that do are in the best miniature paint sets for beginners, and the brand comparison is in Citadel versus The Army Painter versus Vallejo.

The verdict

This is a competent budget bulk paint, sold with marketing that implies it is a beginner starter kit. Those are two different products. Judged as bulk model acrylic in dropper bottles at a low price per milliliter, it is good value and a reasonable thing to own. Judged as the one set a new painter buys before their first miniature, it sets them up to produce a flat model while guessing at every color a tutorial names.

The cheapest genuinely complete route for a beginner is still a starter set that includes a shade, and the cheapest way to make this set complete is to buy it alongside one wash and accept that you are converting colors by eye. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whether you are painting an army or a battlefield. For the full picture of what else you need, see miniature painting supplies.

We have not tested every color in this set against a measured opacity standard, and we do not claim to have. The assessment above is based on the manufacturer’s published specifications for the range and on the structural gaps in the set’s contents, which are a matter of what is in the box rather than a matter of opinion. Our standard is in our review policy.