Product Review: Stynlrez primer

I recently picked up a bottle of this at my local hobby shop after a recent meeting of my IPMS club.

The product in question

I had only ever heard of it in passing and never seen it in stores.  The Des Moines metro area is blessed with a good sized gaming community and several (3) stores the promote the hobby.  They carry a pretty good range of war gaming related hobby products, mostly the mainstream big name stuff.  40K  (and some 30K ), AOS and Warmachine are the big games around here. Accordingly, the big lines of paint are GeeDubs and P3.  The traditional hobby shoplease in town also carries Vallejo Model Air and Game Color. At the same time, DSM is also something of a desert for hobby paints that aren't the big names.  But I'll get into that later.  

First impression: I didn't think I was going to like this Stynlrez primer.  It claims on the bottle that there is no need to thin it before airbrushing.  So I loaded up my airbrush and went to work on anew AOL Chaos Blood Warrior.  It seemed so think coming out of the airbrush.  It felt like it was having trouble getting through the nozzle.  It looked like it was clumping on the mini but the bottle said it was self leveling so I pressed on.  By the time I was finished I still wasn't sure.  It covered pretty well but felt as though it was straining to get through the brush.  I was using a .4 mm needle in case you were wondering.

So I left it to dry for a short while.  What I found when I came back changed my opinion entirely.  It was gorgeous.  It covered perfectly and dried smooth and flat.  The picture might be a little hard to see but you can get an idea.

Chaos Blood Warrior primed with Stynlrez black primer.

My go to primer lately has been Vallejo black primer.  Here's a side-by-side of models primed with each:

Stynlrez on the left, Vallejo on the right

You can see how the Vallejo leaves a little bit more glossy finish and just doesn't quick cover as well.  My first impressions were proved wrong and I'm very glad I picked up this primer.  I just found a new go-to.

Now for a list of what model and hobby paints are available in the DSM:

Testors  Model Master (enamel & acrylic)

Testors square bottle enamels

Tamiya acrylics

Alclad II lacquers

Floquil railroad enamels

Citadel acrylics

P3 acrylics

Vallejo Model Air

Vallejo Game Color

Vallejo Model Color (very limited selection only at Hobby Lobby)

Model and hobby paints not available in the DSM:

Citadel Air

Tamiya Lacquers

The Army Painter

Vallejo Panzer Aces 

Life Color

Humbrol 

Revell 

White Ensign  (if even sold in stores)

Badger Minitaire 

Vallejo Game Air 

Anything Guide

Reaper

So yeah, we've got some of this and some of that. We don't have everything but we've got what we need to get us by.  

Miniwargaming.com

Recently I received en e-mail from Miniwargaming.com offering me a whole series of Horus Heresy painting tutorials if I signed up for a free trial of their Vault subscription service.  I've been a fan of them for about a year now after discovering them on YouTube.  I watched as many of their batreps as I could and they are about 95% of why I got back into the war gaming hobby.  At some point in everyone of their videos they always offer up a free 7-day trial membership and Matthew will always guarantee that you'll keep it.  I just scoffed at it every time I'd hear their pitch but this email offer made me pause for a minute.  Free? Downloadable?  Painting tutorials?  Ok Glanfield, I'll give it a try.  So I signed up.  SO MUCH EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!  I've had to explain to Mrs. Mediocre Modeler that knowledge and information are gold to me.  That's why I'm always on my phone or tablet watching videos or reading about all kinds of things.  With this membership I was able to watch the second half of so many narrative batreps, countless daily quick tips from Kris and I'll even admit that the behind the scenes bits hosted by Quirk have been entertaining. I've scoured YouTube for all the 40K and 30K batreps I could find and the production quality and general view ability of MWGs content is far and away the best out there.  Now that they're doing 30K, it's even better. I suppose $10 a month isn't too much to ask for the amount of content that they offer.  You'll pay a hell of a lot more for your favorite adult-themed website.  If you aren't aware of Miniwargaming.com I'd strongly suggest looking them up on YouTube and if you're on the fence about a Vault membership, try out the free 7-day offer and see for yourself.  Shut up and take my money Matthew!