I love board games. I love miniatures. I really love board games with miniatures. I’m sure it’s no shock that I love Cthulhu Wars; it’s a well-designed board game with some of the most amazing miniatures I’ve ever seen. I love Cthulhu Wars so much I’ve gone a bit overboard and purchased every faction expansion and lots of other stuff, too.

I love painting miniatures, but it is a very time-consuming process. I had long intended to paint my Cthulhu Wars minis, but it was a daunting task, as there are dozens and dozens of them. I kept putting off the project, as I knew it would take lots of time.

Enter Citadel’s new contrast paints. The hype for these paints in the miniatures community was very high. Supposedly, with one coat, you could get a good base coat, with built-in shades and highlighting. I figured this would be ideal for Cthulhu Wars, as the somewhat monochromatic scheme would play well on the table but also bring out the detail in the wonderful minis.

I thought that others might be interested in doing the same thing. Here are the sample Cultists I painted up, along with an unpainted mini as well as the bottle of contrast paint I used.

Overall I am very pleased with how the minis turned out. Most of the colors are very close to the base plastic. There are two exceptions. The pink of the Tcho-Tcho, which is a bit more purple than I’d like (was actually intended as the color for Opener, but ended up too light for that). Opener is also troublesome. Contrast Shyish Purple ended up very dark, while Shade Druchii Violet is too light, and too close to the pink of the painted Tcho-Tcho. I may end up spray coating Opener in a bright purple and using the Druchii Violet after; I’ll be sure to post later with an update.

I’ll have another post up soon with my first faction painted using Contrast Paints: Crawling Chaos! Please let me know what you think.