Warhammer Colour Base Paints: The Layer That Makes or Breaks a Miniature

Ask ten painters what the most important pot on their desk is and you’ll get ten answers. Ask them which pot they reach for first on a bare grey Space Marine, and almost all of them will point at the same thing: a Warhammer Colour Base paint (the range you’ll still know as Citadel).

Base paints don’t get the glory. Nobody posts a close-up of a flat coat of Macragge Blue and racks up the likes. But that flat coat is the reason the highlights, washes and edge work you do post later actually look good. Get the base right and everything after it is easy. Get it wrong — patchy, chalky, too thick — and no amount of clever layering will save the model.

Here’s what these paints actually do, which ones earn a permanent spot in your kit, and how to get clean coverage every time.

What makes a “Base” paint different from the rest of the range

Warhammer Colour (formerly Citadel) splits its paints into families — Base, Layer, Shade, Contrast, Dry, Technical, Air and Spray — and each one is mixed for a specific job. Base paints are the workhorses. They’re packed with a high pigment count, which is a fancy way of saying they carry a lot of colour per drop. That’s exactly what you want for the first coat: strong, opaque, even colour over a black or white undercoat, usually in a single pass.

Every pot is a 12ml serving of non-toxic, water-based acrylic that plays nicely with plastic, metal and resin miniatures, and dries to a smooth matte finish. Matte matters — a flat surface grips washes and layer paints far better than a glossy one, so your Base coat is quietly doing half the work for the stages that follow.

Compare that to a Layer paint, which has less pigment and flows thinner so you can build up highlights, or a Shade, which is deliberately runny so it pools in the recesses. Base paints sit at the bottom of that pyramid and hold everything up. Browse the full Games Workshop range at R&R Hobbies to see how the families sit alongside each other.

The base coats worth keeping within arm’s reach

There are well over 50 colours in the Base line, but a handful do the heavy lifting for the vast majority of armies. If you’re starting a collection, these are the pots that never really leave the desk:

• Abaddon Black — the definitive black. Boots, blades, cabling, undercoat touch-ups. You will empty this pot faster than any other.
• Corax White — a genuinely opaque white, which is rarer and more useful than it sounds.
• Macragge Blue — the Ultramarines blue, and a brilliant base for any deep, cool blue scheme.
• Mephiston Red — a rich, warm red that covers in one coat where cheaper reds need three.
• Leadbelcher — your go-to gunmetal for weapons, armour trim and anything mechanical.
• Retributor Armour — a warm gold that turns a fiddly job (metallics) into a one-coat win.
• Wraithbone and Grey Seer — the two pale bases Games Workshop designed to sit under Contrast paints, if you’re chasing speed.

If you already know the scheme you’re chasing, it’s usually quicker to search the exact colour name on the R&R Hobbies Base paints collection than to scroll the whole wall of pots.

Getting clean coverage: the two rules that matter

Most “my base coat looks terrible” problems come down to the same two mistakes.

Thin your paints. Straight from the pot, Base paints are formulated to be opaque, but that also makes them thick. Load the brush, then bring a touch of water (or a wet palette) into the mix until the paint flows off the bristles without clumping. Two thin coats will always beat one thick one — the first might look a little streaky, the second evens it out, and crucially you haven’t drowned the crisp detail Games Workshop sculpts into the model. A gloopy single coat fills in panel lines and rivets you’ll want back later.

Undercoat first. Base paints are built to go over a primer, not bare plastic. A black undercoat gives you instant shadows and makes darker schemes fast; a white or bone undercoat makes bright colours pop and is essential if you’re going down the Contrast route. Either way, prime before you touch a Base pot.

Stock up on the sprays and primers to go with them.

“Should I just use Contrast paints instead?”

Fair question, and the honest answer is it depends on the model. Contrast paints base, shade and highlight in one hit over a light undercoat, which is fantastic for rank-and-file troops and horde armies where you want tabletop-ready minis fast.

But Base paints still win when you want control and a bold, solid colour — characters, vehicles, anything you’re going to layer and highlight properly, or any scheme with a strong flat colour that Contrast tends to make blotchy. Plenty of painters use both: Contrast to blast through the infantry, Base paints for the hero of the unit. You don’t have to pick a side.

Where base paints fit in the bigger picture

Think of a finished miniature as a stack. Base goes down first for solid colour. Shade paints flow into the recesses to create instant depth. Layer paints build the highlights back up on the raised areas. Technical paints add the finishing effects — textured bases, rust, blood, glowing energy.

Skip the base and the whole stack wobbles. That’s why it’s the least glamorous and most important pot you own.

Shop Warhammer Colour Base Paints at R&R Hobbies

R&R Hobbies is a gamer-run hobby store in South Windsor, NSW, stocking the full Warhammer Colour range (formerly Citadel) alongside everything else you need to build, paint and play. Grab your base coats and the brushes, primers and shades to go with them from the full Base paints collection, or drop into the shop and let the crew point you at the right pots for your army.

Whatever you’re painting — your first five Space Marines or the two-hundredth model in a horde — it all starts with a good base. Get that layer right and the rest is the fun part.