Today I’m reviewing a set of paints from Vallejo with a difference – this is the extra opaque set, part number 72.290.
It has sixteen 17ml bottles in it – the colours and individual part numbers are:
72.140 Heavy Skin Tone
72.141 Heavy Red
72.142 Heavy Violet
72.143 Heavy Blue
72.144 Heavy Blue Grey
72.145 Heavy Grey
72.146 Heavy Green
72.147 Heavy Black Green
72.148 Heavy Warm Grey
72.149 Heavy Khaki
72.150 Heavy Ochre
72.151 Heavy Gold Brown
72.152 Heavy Salmon Orange
72.153 Heavy Brown
72.154 Heavy Sienna
72.155 Heavy Charcoal
First up – they’re thick. If you haven’t got agitator beads chuck a couple in each bottle before you start shaking them as it’ll really help. As an example, the heavy grey looks like this out of the box:
The green component of it has well and truly separated and requires a fair bit of solid shaking to blend it all back together. I use a Four E’s vortex mixer (can be found on eBay) to help shake them and it certainly does help with these paints. The exception so far seems to be the Heavy Blue Grey which is a lot thinner than the other paints in the set, though still not exactly thin by normal standards.
So what are the colours like?
Overall they’re flat, muted tones with a matte finish when on the model. The big appeal, however, is that with one coat – even slightly watered down – you should get full coverage as a base coat. The colour range is reasonable – though there’s no yellow in this range at the time of writing – but otherwise there’s a pretty good spread for base colours.
The Extra Opaque Charcoal is a shade darker than the Vallejo Model Colour Black Grey, which I usually paint Raven Guard with. The charcoal combines nicely with Army Painter Matt Black for adding shadows/depth and your choice of lighter grey for edge highlighting.
The most impressive coverage has so far come from the blue, which is good because it’s also a very nice blue! The charcoal would be a close second. In contrast to those two a couple of the colours have been disappointing as far as outright coverage over black undercoat goes, even after an extended shaking session – the ochre/tan colours take about three coats to achieve the same coverage as just one of the blue. Still better than your average non-heavy paint of an equivalent colour, though.
At the end of the day, would I recommend the set? I think it’s a good set overall and for those who don’t like putting on multiple coats to get even coverage some of the colours will be exactly what you’re after. They definitely require a LOT of shaking – in the same vein as Scale75 paints do to get the best out of them – but if you can manage that and are looking for paints with very good coverage to use as base paints I think it’s worth a look. Paying for the set is much more cost effective than buying them individually – the set retails for about $60AUD (eBay AU, eBay UK, eBay US, affiliate links) where individual paints are about $6ea, so to buy this set individually would set you back $96.
This won’t be the only paint set you’ll ever need but it definitely has a place for those who like a good, fast base coat!
Update: Colours I would buy again due to having excellent coverage:
Heavy Blue 72.143
Heavy Sienna 72.154
Heavy Charcoal 72.155