There are days when I ask myself, whether there is anything really new among the number of new products being brought to the market by the ever increasing number of suppliers. New kits, yes, no question about that. But when it comes to the modelling supplies, I have bit lost track of all the newcomer over the recent years. Paints, enamels, oils, washes, filters, you name it.

And there are days (like this Saturday) when you ran into your old friend (Ying) at the local model show (Torcan) and he just throws it to your face – “You should try this, great stuff…” The product in question was a small bottle of paint by a new company Mission models, of which I have heard before, but didn’t pay much attention to. To my detriment…

I decided to give the paint a try and got few bottles of different colors and thinner from my favorite supplier Hornet Hobbies, whose owner and friend Dave, gave me quick instructions on how to use it.

Now here I have to stop and say that since that start of my modelling years I was an ardent fan of Tamiya paints. In those years, number of new paint brands came to the market, but none of them seemed to work for me. Namely Vallejo/Mig/Ammo brands are offering series of paint products, which are widely used, but not by me. I had two issues with them. First, I never found a good product to thin them, so they always ended up clogging my airbrush. Second, somehow I was not able to replicate the ability to create thin transparent layers of paint that I could airbrush with the Tamiya paints. So I have quite a few of these paints, but they mostly sit unused on my shelf.

Here comes Mission models (MM). To keep it short – I love their paint! Here is why:

1. Airbrushing quality – I gave the paint a quick try, namely the Dark yellow one and I found out it flows flawlessly. Thinned about 20-25% (3 drops of thinner for 12 drops of paint or 2 for 10), it airbrushes smoothly and without any issues whatsoever. Having added a drop of MM’s own polyurethane mix additive, which acts like a paint retarder and increases the drying time, I have achieved super smooth finish. This was one of my grievances with Tamiya paints – it is very easy to end up with sand-paper like finish, because the paint dries too fast. It can be fixed, but it is a hassle to deal with. Not with MM paint. I have put on a base coat of paint on my Panther and it was joy to work with the paint. I felt the paint was still bit more on the thin side, so perhaps could be thinned less, but I was able to achieve that opacity gradation and build up the final effect with multiple transparent paint layers.
2. Packaging – here MM paints are on par with other new brands. Paints are conveniently sold in small plastic bottles with a small metal ball inside to mix the sediments if needed. Counting drops of paint straight into the airbrush paint holder is sooo much easier then mixing everything in small plastic cups beforehand.
3. Selection of colors. My other grievance with Tamiya is that you always had to mix the shade of paint to use. I never got to use their paints straight from the jars, so it was always quite a bit of experimenting to get it right (or what I thought right). MM series of paints offer specific paints for German, Russian, Allied WWI subjects with the colors clearly identified in a way that makes it easy to pick the one I need – such as Dunkelgelb RAL 7028 late for my Panther.
4. Now this one is more important than I would have thought – it does NOT smell. I have spent about an hour of airbrushing in my mancave and still could not smell anything. With the Tamiya paints, using lacquer thinner as I have been over the past years, was always difficult over prolonged period of time and required quite good ventilation.
5. It cleans easily. Just use the thinner, once done painting, run the clear thinner few times through the airbrush and it’s fine.

So that’s it, I still have to try other colors from their range, but I will be heading over to the hobby store in the next days to get all the MM paint colors I need. And it seems that I will have to find some storage space for my quite large collection of Tamiya paints…