These days you can get color primers of various colors. Blues, reds, tans etc. I haven't found anything conclusive about the benefits using them however and most people seem to prime their figures either with white, black or gray. I understand using for example a red primer if you're painting a whole squad of mainly red figures as it saves time basecoating. But what about for other reasons? For example if you're painting a figure that's mostly in shadow, could a blueish (not pure blue but like Citadel's The Fang color which is bluish-gray) primer be good?

So, do you use color primers at all or just the white-gray-black spectrum? In general, do you see any situation where some color primer might be useful in the context of painting Imperial Assault? And maybe other board game figurines.

The reason I'm asking is that my gray primer is almost run out and I have to buy a new one. I was thinking about buying some other primer too if there's a good argument for it.

I mainly use black, white or grey to prime my miniatures. I have seen in the zombicide videos from sorastro that he used army painter colored spray primers to help with the base coating of the zombies. Which would speed things up a bit. I just got the complete vallejo game air paint line that came with some colored primers. I will be trying them out in the future to see how well they will work. If so that will change the way I prime my miniatures.

I plan on picking some up. I have a ton of Zombicide, missing 2 expansions, and the colors will help speed up painting of 300+ zombies.

Yeah I might do that for Green Horde. We kickstarted that game and I have way to many zombies to paint in that one. It might be worth the money to get that primer for them.

No. Unless you have a very good reason and know what you're doing. it might seem like a good idea, for example, to prime a medieval jester miniature in red. But then when all the other colors on your jester turn out brownish because of that red undercoat, he won't look so jolly and festive. People used to prime their Catachan Jungle Fighters in dark green for 40k. When I saw that, I knew I was looking at someone who had no intention of painting their army. Anyone who painted a much before would know, a dark green undercoat would be good for their pants and the flak vest that 50% of them wear... but turn their large areas of bare skin into a disaster. A colored primer might well work for certain application but I doubt it would be economical for Imperial Assault. I would not invest in a red primer to prime a mere 4 Emperor's guards, or what have you. About the only thing I might use a colored primer for is a weird science fiction tank or the like. Or, I might use one for models I did not care about in the least. For example: I knew a fellow who had a short deadline to paint a few dozen lizardmen to run demo games with at an upcoming convention. He had no intention of actually collecting a lizardman army. So, he spray painted them with Wal-Mart green spray paint, picked out their weapons and loincloths and such in earthtones, and that was that. Individually they looked like flat commercial toy paintjobs but ranked up on the battlefield they looked nice.

I only prime white or black, depending on the miniature I need to paint. Even consider gray a color and I've only used it for vehicles like the at-st.

Thanks for the replies.

I was sort of expecting that kind of answers since it's what I've been thinking. I can't think of a color that would work for all figures while as black and white are rather universal. I suppose a tan spray could work for Tusken Raiders but there's 4 of them. 5 counting the Bantha so not really worth it.

So, I ended up buying just the gray primer.

Though from personal experience, I've noted that gray can be an annoying color to paint over too. I used it to prime few figures when I had problems with a can of Army Painter White primer and I didn't want to wait painting until I got a new can so I just primed them gray. I used the gray for some Runebound figures too. And I remember getting good layers over the gray was a nightmare as the gray seemed to get through the basecoat and make a red for example very dull looking. Of course that is a desired effect sometimes but not for fantasy characters.

In the future I see myself priming figures black and then maybe white from the top as a primitive zenithal highlighting.

I always stick with black, even for things like stormtrooper. I'd rather layer my way to white then try to darken a white prime. I took way to long to learn that and have lots of crappy looking models.

However, I've seen some amazing and quick armies painted with citadel gold spray primer, but other than C3PO, it's not going to be useful for SW.

8 hours ago, Wired4War said:

I always stick with black, even for things like stormtrooper. I'd rather layer my way to white then try to darken a white prime. I took way to long to learn that and have lots of crappy looking models.

However, I've seen some amazing and quick armies painted with citadel gold spray primer, but other than C3PO, it's not going to be useful for SW.

Gold as a basetone...I suppose that can work for some colors. But for IA, I can't see it working either.

I've always used white for Stormtroopers. When I did the Heart of the Empire Riot Troopers I used white as an undercoat, dark gray as the color for the black parts of the figure, bluish gray (Vallejo Ghost Grey) for the shield and then a black-blue wash mixed in with some glaze medium. I just had to apply the shade twice to shadowed areas. It looked tabletop good and most of all, it was fast.

Black as primer I think is excellent for those figures where you don't want bright colors (Everything in Mansions of Madness in my opinion) and metallic paints look good on it. For whatever reason, I'm not happy when I paint skin on top of white. Even if I start with a relatively dark tone like Bugman's Glow. It just doesn't look right.

17 hours ago, Wired4War said:

I always stick with black, even for things like stormtrooper. I'd rather layer my way to white then try to darken a white prime. I took way to long to learn that and have lots of crappy looking models.

However, I've seen some amazing and quick armies painted with citadel gold spray primer, but other than C3PO, it's not going to be useful for SW.

I went through a phase of priming everything black, when I was in college. I got tired of it sucking the vibrancy out of everything though. I think I'd use it if I painted another fantasy orc or maybe undead army but that's about it. I prime stormtroopers white and then paint black or light grey over assorted areas afterwards. There's simply not much benefit to me trying to paint big smooth areas like the top of the helmet or the cuisses up from a black undercoat. I also use a lot of black ink on my stormtroopers for a round of touch up's on recessed areas. Compared to 25mm stormtroopers, these 35mm ones take forever.

37 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

I went through a phase of priming everything black, when I was in college. I got tired of it sucking the vibrancy out of everything though. I think I'd use it if I painted another fantasy orc or maybe undead army but that's about it. I prime stormtroopers white and then paint black or light grey over assorted areas afterwards. There's simply not much benefit to me trying to paint big smooth areas like the top of the helmet or the cuisses up from a black undercoat. I also use a lot of black ink on my stormtroopers for a round of touch up's on recessed areas. Compared to 25mm stormtroopers, these 35mm ones take forever.

Good points. Truthfully, I've tried stormtroopers both ways and don't like the results for either. For IA, I want to keep with the standard white though. If I get into legion though, my personal stormtroopers will definitely not be white.

Yeah I always thought about painting some post-ROTJ non-white stormtroopers too! Presumably these would be the minions of some ex-moff who turned into a "strongman" dictator in some system or other. The men wearing this heraldic armor would presumably not be true stormtroopers with the fanatical loyalty thereof, but regular army using re-purposed equipment. I can't seem to get enough time to properly plan such projects lately though. Maybe green or red armor, with some kind of overarching dragon theme.

As I said, back in 25mm days (once I discovered such arcane things as wash and drybrush) white stormtroopers were easy. Now they are a really unfavorable effort-to-fun ratio. So I might revisit a private stormtrooper army.