Reaper Miniatures

Master Series Acrylic Paints

Reviewed By  Jack Kennedy, IPMS# 12511

MSRP: $2.99 for 1/2oz bottle Website: www.reapermini.com Reaper products are a new name to me and when I was asked to try their paints and review them, I jumped at the chance, especially since they were acrylic. I happen to love acrylic paint, especially for miniature figures. I love the quick drying and easy cleanup. Reaper has a series of paints called their Master Series. They come in a squeeze bottle like many of the newer paints. The cost is in keeping with others on the market today at $2.99 per bottle. I went to their website, www.reapermini.com and read the specs on them. I was really impressed with their huge selection of colors. They have 216 colors and a big selection of "Triads". The "Triads" are sets of three colors to make a base coat, a highlight and a shadow. This is a really neat idea, especially for a beginning figure painter. It takes the guesswork out of mixing the shadows and highlights. They also offer a sealer to use on figures that will be handled a lot such as those used by wargamers. In addition, these paints are thin enough to be airbrushed. I didn't try to airbrush them but I did hand brush them on a couple of horses that I am making. I was impressed with the consistency of the paint as it brushed on smoothly without brush strokes showing. Reaper recommends using two or more thin coats as it comes out to the bottle. I didn't feel that this was necessary as one coat covered nicely with a semi matt finish. I also found that if they were to be airbrushed they would probably need a bit of thinning with water. Overall I was very impressed with Reaper paints in the master Series. I will probably buy more of them when I need more acrylics for my figures. I will highly recommend them and also recommend going to their website to see some of their many other products. I wish to thank Reaper and John Noack for giving me several of the paints to review. I wish they had given me more.