Warhammer Tone Pro paints look like GW’s answer to Army Painter Fanatic and Pro Acryl, right down to the features and premium branding.
How does the saying go: okay, copy my homework, but just change it a little so no one notices?
Army Painter Fanatic Paints gives you six colors from dark to light, and now GW gives you five. Peel off the premium labels and dramatic product shots from the Big Autumn Preview, and that’s basically Tone Pro, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Tone Pro backlash got so loud so fast.
Sure, the paint itself could be great. GW says Warhammer Tone Pro covers from the first coat, even on yellow and white, with intense pigment, good flow, and enough range to glaze, highlight, and drybrush. The problem is when the headline feature of a premium range is “our acrylic paint covers well and behaves nicely,” it’s hard not to glance over at the 300-plus pots of Warhammer Color already hanging on the rack and wonder what that says about them.
Honestly, that’s what stuck with us since following Tone Pro through the early leaks. GW didn’t just show us a new paint line. It showed us, pretty clearly, where the old paints fell short.
- The take: Tone Pro looks like GW catching up to Army Painter and Monument Hobbies, not leapfrogging them.
- The evidence: 30 colors with five numbered tones each (150 paints) next to Fanatic’s six-step families, sold on coverage, flow, and one paint for every technique like Pro Acryl, and still in the same Citadel pots.
- If we’re right: Warhammer Color either swells toward nearly 500 products for stores to stock, or old paints get cut and years of painting recipes break.
GW’s Premium Marketing is Just a Paint That Covers and Behaves?
GW rolled Tone Pro out like a flagship release from Apple touting the latest iPhone. New branding, “Pro” on the label, numbered colors, dedicated tools, and a lot of talk about getting your “best results.”
The actual idea is pretty simple: pick a color and give painters a clear run from dark to light. It’s useful, but it isn’t new, and most of the best paint brands for miniatures out there have already been doing some version of it.
Their coverage claim also cuts both ways too. If yellow and white covering in one coat are worth putting front and center, hobbyists are going to compare that with the Warhammer color yellows and whites they already own.
And anyone who’s fought through several coats of yellow (or white) over a dark primer with a Citadel paint chart nearby already knows that pain.
Fanatic Did the Color Tones First, and Pro Acryl Owns the Branding Already
The funny thing is, Warpaint Fanatic already sorts its range into six-color Flexible Triads that run from dark to light around one root color, and Army Painter says more than 200 colors use that system.
On the other hand, Tone Pro just took 30 colors, gave each five numbered tones, and landed at 150 paints. That’s right, Fanatic gives you six steps, and GW gives you five, lol.
Monument Hobbies has also spent years selling their Pro Acryl paints on strong coverage, flow, vibrancy, easy mixing, and paint that works across different techniques. They even took a swing at Contrast with Pro Acryl 1-Step.
And now, Tone Pro is being sold on strong coverage, flow, vibrancy, and one paint working across multiple techniques.
Sure, that doesn’t mean GW copied anybody. It’s just that with Army Painter already having the color-family setup, Pro Acryl already having the “Pro” paint pitch, Tone Pro was always going to get compared to both.
Hobbyists already made those comparisons immediately in the GW stream, and they didn’t need much help getting there.
Nobody Complained About Pigment, Everybody Complained About the Pots
The loudest complaint in the reaction threads wasn’t the paint. It was the pots. People brought up lids that don’t seal right, paint drying around the rim, no easy way to dispense the same amount twice, and hobbyists moving Citadel paint into dropper bottles themselves.
Some painters like pots, sure, but this argument has been around for years. We’ve also been following GW dropper bottle rumors long enough to know the complaints aren’t new.
Either way, with Warhammer Tone Pro, GW changed the paint, numbered the tones, and put PRO on the label, but the container stayed the same.
In the live stream, people also joked about the numbers looking like food hygiene ratings, mocked “Pro” as marketing, asked whether professional painters really needed five pre-picked highlight steps, and went right back to complaining about dried-out and spilled pots.
There was real excitement too, especially around the yellows, pinks, and better coverage. It just wasn’t universal applause.
One reaction summed it up pretty well: “So you’ve invented good acrylic paint?”, and honestly, they are not wrong.
Painters already have Fanatic, Pro Acryl, Vallejo, Two Thin Coats, and plenty of other modern ranges fighting for the same hobby money. Good coverage and predictable highlight steps aren’t unusual anymore.
GW Already Sold Us One-Coat Paint in 2007
Citadel Foundation paints launched in 2007 with 18 highly opaque colors built around one-coat base coverage, and White Dwarf ads at the time literally called them “new, one-coat paints.”
Foundation wasn’t some forgotten sideline, either. Plenty of painters still remember Iyanden Darksun and Mechrite Red because they covered tough primers much better than the standard paints of the time. We even cracked open a 20-year-old Citadel set to see if it still worked.
The 2012 overhaul replaced Foundation with a 145-paint range built around Base, Layer, and Shade, with Base taking over the Foundation job. GW said that launch pulled in £2.75 million in paint sales in April 2012 alone.
There’s also an old hobby rumor that GW killed Foundation because it covered so well that people bought fewer paints. We’ve never seen anything solid backing that up, but either way, first-coat coverage isn’t a new Citadel sales pitch.
Nearly 500 Paints Turns This Into a Game Store Problem
GW already markets Warhammer Color as more than 300 paints, and Tone Pro adds another 150. And if our math is right there are around 348 Warhammer Color products before Tone Pro. So, depending on what stays in the range and how sprays, technicals, and duplicate formats get counted, there are nearly 500 different paints in the GW product range now.
Stores have to stock all of that somewhere. Hundreds of paint slots mean rack space, restocking, and shades that may sit for a long time before somebody buys them.
GW’s own history shows how big a paint reset can get. When the 145-paint system launched in 2012, GW said independent stores bought through an initial 1,600 display racks, so it ordered another 600.
Then there are the recipes. Nobody buys generic “red” because a tutorial told them to. They buy Mephiston Red, Evil Sunz Scarlet, and Wild Rider Red because that’s what the recipe says. If Tone Pro eventually pushes older paints out, years of published guides stop matching the rack, and painters go back to paint conversion charts looking for replacements.
So either Warhammer Color keeps growing toward 500 products and stores deal with the inventory, or something gets cut, and hobbyists deal with broken recipes.
The range probably isn’t being built only around US and UK shelves, either. GW calls Asia one of its fastest-growing markets, and its FY2026 numbers showed Asian retail stores going from 20 to 30 in one year.
Keep in mind the idea of a steady three-year paint cycle, too: Contrast arrived in 2019 and got its big refresh in 2022. Now, industry rumors suggest Tone Pro was delayed from a 2025 rollout so GW could rework it for Asian markets, but GW hasn’t confirmed that connection.
Tone Pro Shows Where Warhammer Color Was Weak
GW still splits Warhammer Color into Base, Layer, Shade, Dry, Contrast, Technical, and Spray. But now, Tone Pro is being sold as one paint that can basecoat, layer, highlight, glaze, and drybrush, with mediums covering the rest.
If one modern acrylic can handle most of those jobs, it’s fair to ask why painters needed so many specialized paints in the first place.
On the other hand, Monument has sold Pro Acryl that way for years. It’s paint you thin, mix, and use however you need. Army Painter tackled the other headache by sorting Fanatic into six-paint families so you don’t have to guess which highlight comes next.
Now Tone Pro just heads toward both ideas at once.
Final Thoughts on Warhammer Color Tone Pro Paint
Honestly, Tone Pro could still end up being some of the best paint GW has ever sold. If the yellows and whites cover the way GW’s demos suggest, we’ll happily put them on a palette and find out.
But other paint companies have already changed what hobbyists expect while Citadel was still selling separate Base and Layer pots. Tone Pro may be a better Games Workshop paint, but they had to add another 150 colors to get there, and remarket something they already sold 20 years ago with their Foundations paints.
The big thing hobbyists are waiting to see is probably the price, which will determine a lot more of how accepted it becomes in a paint market that’s already incredibly crowded.
See the Warhammer Tone Pro full lineup, release date, pricing, and more in our coverage article.
🔗 Related Reads:
- The Army Painter Reveals Their Exciting 216 Paint Fanatic Line
- New Redesigned Pro Acryl Paints From Monument Hobbies
- Transfer Your Citadel Paints to Dropper Bottles: Decant
- New $1K GW Paints & Rack Coming to Stores Soon
- Complete List of Contrast, New & Discontinued Citadel Paints
Would you grab Tone Pro paint over Army Painter Fanatic or Pro Acryl, or are the Citadel pots still a dealbreaker?
If the paints are everything they promise to be GW now gives you the option to buy product you’re already unsing for years (from other manufacturers who’ve been making consistent well behaving mini-paints since forever..) but!!
Butbutt!! You can now get the same stuff in the incredible retarded worst ever containers on the market.
No thanks.
As much as i like picking up new hobby products and giving them a try, i will stay well clear of this 😅
The only reason i’m not entirely citadel/gw/warhammer(whatever brand they slap on it nowadays)-free is about 4-5 contrast paints, and lahmian medium. I like those enough to overcome my disdain for pots.
This whole thing is basically a massive marketing scam, which is what happened when every centimeter of your company is controlled by the marketing department. These paints do nothing the existing two-step paints dont do, except attempt to dupe you into buying 5 paints instead of just a couple. GW’s existing layer system was already dubious. Contrast at least had the balls to actually do something different.