Spanish company Scale75 have a box set called the Color Forge, which combines a number of their other paint sets into one product. Is it worth it? Let’s take a look at what’s inside.
The box is a lot smaller than you would expect for the cost! The contents are listed on the back:
As you can see, the following sets are included along with an aluminium holder:
SSE-009 Steel Series Metal ‘n Alchemy
SSE-010 Gold Series Metal ‘n Alchemy
SSE-021 Copper Series Metal ‘n Alchemy
SSE-011 Inktensity Acrylic Ink Set
SSE-062 Inktensity2 Acrylic Ink Set
SSE-052 FX Fluor Experience
Forty-eight paints all up.
The side:
The Color Forge set itself is part number SSE-063. Once you take the glossy cover off there’s a plain white cardboard box on the inside:
Pull out a paint on either side and lift the tray out and you can see the paint set and stand:
The tray is very functional – watch out, though, as the folded down sides (where the rivets go through) have a sharp edge at the bottom on mine – it may scratch a table if put down and slid. The holder works well in a drawer – and doesn’t add much to the height of the paint bottles. I find it helps to put a drop of the paint on the top of each cap so locating individual colours from above is easier.
I’ll discuss the qualities of the Scale75 paints as compared to other ranges separately – for now, how does this set focus to buying the individual components one at a time? The price of this one at the local hobby shop is $439AUD, and the individual sets are $70AUD – so buying them separately would put you at $420, which means you’re paying $19 for the aluminium stand and the convenience of getting the paints all in the one box.
Domestic online prices are a bit different – $319-334 on eBay AU (ebay links are affiliate links) at the time of writing, where the individual sets are closer to $60 per unit – putting the Color Forge set as being a cheaper option by about $30-40.
If the holder is something you can use with your setup I think $19 is not a bad price for it, as you probably won’t find a half decent MDF or 3D printed equivalent holder for much less.
The spread of colour options is not enough to paint most forces in their entirety – you don’t get a lot of run of the mill colours outside of the inks, but you do get some gorgeous metallics and vibrant fluorescents to go along with the broader range of ink colours. If you haven’t used inks before, don’t expect them to behave like your regular acrylic GW/Army Painter/etc. paints, so this set is more complimentary to an existing paint set (if you want to stay within Scale 75 for that, the Artist set compliments it nicely).
Overall I think that you have to weigh up how much the individual items are going to cost you either locally or online to see whether this set is good value for you. For me it worked out cheaper than buying the sets individually as I had intended on buying the lot of them. If you don’t ever have any intention of using a sub-portion of the set – e.g. fluorescents or inks – then it makes much more sense to buy the individual sets.