A while back I got interested in a Gothic horror miniatures skirmish game called Chaos in Carpathia, which I think is still out there for sale somewhere. It has vampires, werewolves, treasure hunters, the whole thing. The vampires have Cossacks for henchmen, and I picked up a few Wargames Foundry miniatures somewhere on the cheap.

Shoot ahead about a decade and these guys are still kicking around unpainted, so I decided that since Cossacks didn’t have regular uniforms and tended towards bright colors they would make great test miniatures for the new Army Painter Speed Paints. And the test didn’t necessarily go well. Things started okay as I was blocking out the main sections, but when I started adding details the problems started.

The best example is the guy in the middle with the gray coat and red sash. When I painted the sash, the red paint reactivated the dry gray paint, and the red then bled into the area above and below the sash with this capillary-like action. So I waited and when the pink/gray was dry I tried to cover the mess with regular white paint, and it activated the pink paint again so that it bled through the white. I ended up having to use multiple coats of white before the bleeding stopped but in the end I used GW contrast paint to repaint the red sash.

So now I am trying to figure out the best way to use these paints in the future. On one hand, I could use them but be careful about overlap, etc. Or I could use them in scenarios where a little blending makes sense. I am disappointed, but not surprised given that here’s a lot of chatter about this out there. I just hoped it wouldn’t be this bad.

Anyways, comments welcome!