It’s a well documented rant of mine by this point, but I do NOT get along with satin paints, typically. I have gassed off numerous times about how irritating I find them to work with, to the point where I think seeing my miniatures with anything other than a super flat finish has gotten to feel abhorrent.

With this taken to heart, I want to now pull you along a little journey with me, because not only has a satin paint range finally won my heart, but along the way I think I also learned a valuable lesson. A lesson that could probably benefit a lot of us. A lesson that is starting to create a total paradigm shift in how I think about the tools I work with.

What’s especially shocking is that these revelations are entirely unscientific in their feel, and are entirely vibes based… they’re not something I can argue with, or rationalise around too much… it’s just something I have to accept;

I’m in love with P3 paints… and I’m really mad about it.

So this story begins with an ooooold relationship I’ve had for a long time with Steamforged Games, the company who now owns and makes P3. See, back in the days when I still regularly uploaded to my YouTube channel, Steamforged and I would fairly regularly make bits of content together. They’re an Indie games company, who likes to revive struggling games, and that’s a thing I really support, so it’s always been a natural pairing.

However as I’ve drifted away from YouTube as a platform, due to my job at Tesseract the business needing my focus more, that relationship naturally faded a little over the years. There was never any ill-will - quite the opposite in fact. SFG would still contact me now and then to quote on painting commissions, and I’d still mention them and support their work wherever it made sense… we were just both seeing other people. However, something pretty cool happened a few months back when they decided to rekindle the relationship and see if I wanted to make some content with P3 paints.

Initially I was hesitant. For starters I’d used P3 on a BIG commission I’d only just finished up at the end of 2025 and I was a bit sick of the sight of it still… but also, I REALLY don’t like painting with satin paints, so I kinda had a prejudice going in, that they were a product that wasn’t really for me. With all that said though… P3 is the paint line that is made specifically for Warmachine miniatures, and I HAD not so long ago had a little tickle of those, because I really like the aesthetics of the models.

At the time I painted the model above, I did grab out some of those old P3 paints and use them, and I smacked some matte varnish over the top and found I actually REALLY like the result.

Remembering back to that, I thought to myself “Ya know, giving these paints a chance could actually be ideal… I don’t currently have a range locked in for army painting/tabletop painting work, so it’s worth a look.” So in that moment, the agreement was made, that I’d take some P3 paints and make some content.

Now it’s important to talk at this point, about what making content means for me in 2026. I’m LONG past the point where I consider a £300 set of paints to be an equal trade for the time, effort and energy it takes to paint models and make a video about both them and the paints… that’s literally a week’s work and my day rate is £125 minimum. £625 is a lot more than £300 if you weren’t aware… so I don’t enter into these things anymore treating them like a transaction. Doing so is net negative for both parties, since I’m not incentivised to work fully, or thoroughly, when I’m essentially making a 2.5 day loss on the “job”.

My reason for putting my time and effort in to promoting a product needs to come from a place other than money. This is doubly so in a world where I now MAKE products and don’t want to create conflicts of interest, so I have to be blunt, brutally honest and passionate about anything that I take in exchange for “influencing”. All of this is to say that I went in to this not only half expecting to dislike the product, but also determined to give it a really hard time and only talk about it if it survived the deepest of scrutiny. This should have been, at least in my head, a pretty scathing review.

Well bugger me backwards and call me Barbara, because boy-oh-boy was I not ready for how P3 would alter my perspective.

See, I knew these paints would look like shit to my eye during the process, and I’d have to trust that the matt varnish at the end was gonna bring them back for me. Hell here’s a WIP of a model (which I bought with my own money) that I’ve been working on using exclusively the new formula P3.

I’m a painter who’s all about trusting the process, but this is NOT how I like my models to look when I’m this far in to painting them… I wasn’t happy with the finish at all. However, I’d predicted that… I expected that… so I wasn’t going to pass judgment based on that. Instead what I wanted to focus on was the actual working process, and fortunately for SFG and P3, this is exactly where they shine.

Also as a brief aside - I lied to you, I don’t know if P3 don’t have washes, or if I just wasn’t sent them, but the washes I’m using are AK on this. The actual paints are all P3 though.

So… that working process. A bit of Google Fu claims that these new formula P3s are made using liquid pigments… I think that’s possibly bollocks (?), because they still leave tiny little grains in my brush when I’m glazing and dab out the water from my bristles, BUT, the pigment is VERY fine… and boy do they flow. Flow for me is probably the most important characteristic of paint. If the paint prefers to be on my brush than on my mini, I’m going to find the work frustrating. Considering that work is usually my job, being frustrated isn’t something I really want. I want relaxing, I want easy, and I want to feel like my materials are doing what I want them to do.

That’s the P3 experience. The paint just jumps off the bristles, lands exactly where I told it to go, doesn’t bubble or streak or in any way upset me, it just does the thing I asked it to do. I shit you not… I actually realised about 90 mins in to painting this model, when I was starting to work in the secondary colour, that I was actually making fewer mis-strokes than usual and spending less time correcting… because the paint just goes on.

This is the same model, after I’d worked in that secondary colour and whilst yes there ARE still slips here and there… this is nowhere near as messy as my models usually are, before I have done a dedicated tidying up phase. I was starting to realise at this point that the finish… the thing I usually covet and base so many of my decisions around… might actually be a really minor part of why we (or at least I) choose paints, and indeed I may have been thinking about my whole process in a really silly way, that doesn’t actually consider… well… the process.

Even the metallics… again, y’all know by now that I don’t like metallics. I don’t like how they look, I don’t like how they feel to work with, I don’t like how fast they dry, I don’t like how they separate when left on the palette. Even the P3 metallics are (whilst not something I’m willing to say I love) so much less shit than almost any others I can think of. Like… if I had time to paint this piece entirely in non-metallic paints, I absolutely would… but I’m not actually hating the metallic steps, which is a marked improvement over almost all other similar experiences I’ve had.

I should also mention the coverage - which like most satin ranges, does seem pretty highly variable… however like every other modern range, they do have good, solid coverage shadow tones and some whites that cover really well too. This is always a concern of mine, since it’s something that could be overlooked really easily when a brand is formulating their paint range. I didn’t say Scale 75. You did.

Now then, I need to be real here…I didn’t really expect to come out of this being so impressed by the workability of the paint, that I would forgive the finish, but I was actually so happy with it that I even found myself forgiving other little things that annoy me.

For example (and feel free to call me a grumpy fuck for this), I find it really cringe when brands name their paints with in-universe names from their games, rather than names that accurately describe the colour. I get why they do it, from a marketing perspective… but it feels kinda… I dunno… childish? Normally I would slam P3 for this, just like I would any other brand that does it, but I’m just in such a good mood about these paints that I really don’t care. Plus they have one called Meaty Ochre, which when you pronounce it with an English accent isn’t funny, but when you say it with an American accent, it becomes a pun. That’s clever and I’m here for it. I love puns.

When I’m working on a piece using a paint I “shouldn’t” like. When even the metallics are going in in a way I find pleasing…and everything about the experience is pleasant, enjoyable, stress free… Well, that tells me there’s something deeper that’s going right, that I need to zoom in on and think about.

In the case of P3 it’s about the process, it’s about the realisation that my prejudice against a product shouldn’t influence me from not even giving it a go and seeing if there’s anything there for me. In this case, the thing that was there for me was something I’ve been desperately craving lately - a painting session or two where I could just get my head down, go full auto and enjoy doing the work, rather than working the paint into submission.

All too often I think we take a pass on trying something because we expect it to not be our thing, but without even having any experience of what the thing is like in the flesh. This doesn’t have to be a greenlight to irresponsible spending either. Stores have tester sets of paints that they sell (at least they do if they’re any good). Models can be handled and examined during demo games… really it’s just a reminder to get out there and form our own opinions on things based on contact with them.

I’m aware that there’s an irony to this article in that I’m trying to influence you to de-influence yourselves… that isn’t lost on me. Influencers are a REALLY important part of the culture of our hobby, because they expose us to stuff that we might miss, and that stuff often really deserves to be seen. However, there needs (at least in my opinion) to be another step in the process, where once we’ve been influenced, we make actual human contact with the product and get a read on how it makes us feel. There needs to be a little more tactility behind how we make our decisions.

In a world where fuel prices are at an all time high, wars are waging in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Iran and many other places, cost of living has skyrocketed, wages aren’t keeping up with inflation and small businesses are living on a knife’s edge… I think there’s a little space in our lives to re-evaluate what we get from this hobby and how we obtain it. Focus on the peace and tranquillity, and source it responsibly.

Sadly the bar of “I saw it and it looks cool” just isn’t high enough for me any more…and even if the world wasn’t a shitbox right now, I think I’m still glad to have that perspective, because the byproduct of that is that I’m exposing myself to stuff that I don’t even think I’ll like and having some lovely surprises along the way. There’s a really easy litmus test I apply to things when I’m sent them for review nowadays - “Would I buy this at full RRP, now that I’ve used it?” It’s not something I usually discuss with you, my audience, because of course it’s all too easy to torpedo one’s credibility by saying “You should buy this thing I got for free.” But that’s exactly the point… I’m not asking you the question… I’m asking ME.

Would I spend over £300 on a full set of P3 paints? No, don’t be silly. Of course I wouldn’t… and neither should you, unless you already know you love them and will use them extensively. What I would do is cherry pick all my favourite colours and curate a collection, have them in my daily rotation, sing their praises and give any spare bottles to my friends to try. I wouldn’t buy the set because I don’t buy sets of ANY paints… I mix a LOT in my normal painting, my working method is built around mixing…a full, exhaustive set of colours is practically useless to me and just consumes space. Once I’ve done my little run of content with P3, the first thing I’ll do is pare down the colours I don’t use and give them to a mate, leaving myself with a curated set of all the ones I’ll use all the time. That’s what exposing yourself to the product does… it puts you in a real life situation, not an idyllic and hypothetical one that might not represent reality.

I fucking LOVE these paints. They’re a stone cold banger. If P3 release a matte line, or a matte medium that flattens the paints right down when mixed in, I will be on it like a Scotch bonnet. Do you feel influenced by that? I hope so… I like it when other people get a buzz off of the things I like, community is one of the coolest feelings that make up the human condition.

As we start to pull this article to it’s close, I want to show you the finished model too. It would be silly, after all, to try to deny that the sculpt didn’t play a role in making these painting sessions pleasurable. I want you to notice some stuff here… I want you to notice that I’m painting Warmachine my own way - I’ve used the box art for reference, but this is MY toolboox of tastes and techniques, applied to their colour scheme. This experience was lead by me and what I want when I am doing the hobby as an actual hobby, not my job.

So without further ado… the first piece of actual, real, pure hobby that I’ve done in months. Meet Deuce, the Warjack from the Cygnar Hellslingers. Hope you like him!

You’ll notice I took some ultra matte varnish to the mini, to still keep the finished look in the range of flatness that I like, but you’ll also spot that stylistically, nothing here is outside of what you typically see me do on army stuff. Loads of texture, as a shortcut in place of blending. Plenty of wear and tear. Volumetric lighting. The kinda stuff you’d expect from me. Plus as a nice little bonus was that because those paints were behaving so well, I finished this in about 4 or 5 hours total… which I think for a Warjack is nice and fast.

Look folks, I’m not your dad. I can’t tell you what to do. All I can report on in this blog are the things I see, do and experience, and hope that for some of you, there’s something to relate to. In this little adventure, I learned that things you don’t think you like could actually be things you really love. Next week I might learn how to stop swearing in my articles. Don’t hold your breath.

Are you familiar with Warmachine, P3 and Steamforged Games? What are your favourite things from them? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section. There’s no algorithm to please over here, but I read every single one of your comments, and reply to any I can think of something remotely useful to say in response to.

Until next time my friends, take care, stay safe and have fun. Life’s too short to turn down new experiences.

Lots of love,

Stu

Loving what you hate…

Where?

Hours

Contact

Loving what you hate…

Competitive Painting, and you.

Where?

Hours

Contact