Review: Citadel Colours Orruk Flesh, Thondia Brown & Hobgrot Hide

It has become a habit to support major miniature releases with a few complimentary Citadel Colours. For the new Kruleboyz faction introduced with the Age of Sigmar Dominion box set, Games Workshop came up with three new base paints: Orruk Flesh for painting light green skin, Thondia Brown for ragged leather hides, and Hobgrot Hide for sulphoric yellow skin. In this post, we take a look at each of the new paints and compare them to similar Citadel paints in a handy hand painted chart.

Features

Orruk Flesh, Thondia Brown, and Hobgrot Hide are all part of the Citadel Base line. Base paints are paints with a higher pigmentation and often a slightly lower viscosity, designed to create a fully opaque basecoat with just a few coats. As usual for Citadel paints, they come in 12 ml flip-top pots.

Let’s take a look at each paint, including this handy reference chart with similar existing Citadel Colours, all hand-painted over grey primed plasticard and photographed under a neutral 5500K light source:

Orruk Hide
This colour is a medium to light green with a warm olive hue, it’s quite similar to Elysian Green or old Camo Green, but a nuance more greenish, though not as green as Skarsnik Green. For shading, I’d use Orruk Flesh contrast paint thinned with Contrast Medium, or Military Shader Wash from The Army Painter. For highlights, I’d probably use Nurgling Green or add successive amounts of Ionrach Skin. Ogryn Camo might work, but would make the highlights quite yellowish. The opacity is on average for a base paint, I needed about two to three slightly thinned coats for solid coverage.

Thondia Brown
A warm chocolate brown that is lighter than Rhinox Hide, and quite similar to Catachan Flesh, though a nuance less reddish. Thondia Brown works well with washes like Wyldwood Contrast thinned with Contrast Medium, Nuln Oil, or Dark or Strong Tone Wash from The Army Painter. For highlighting, I recommend Mournfang Brown. The coverage is pretty good, with only one to two thinned coats needed for a perfect result.

Hobgrot Hide
This is a mustard yellow paint that is more yellowish than Zandri Dust, but not as yellow as Averland Sunset. Compared to Balor Brown it’s more muted and less orange. From what I’ve seen it’s actually quite close to Tallarn Sand. I recommend a wash of Seraphim Sepia or Flesh Wash from The Army Painter’s Warpaints range, then highlights with Morghast Bone and Screaming Skull. Coverage is on average with about two to three slightly thin coats needed for a perfectly opaque result.

All in all these are useful additions to the Citadel paint range. The most useful would probably be Orruk Flesh, which makes an excellent basecoat for achieving the light warm green skintone the ‘Eavy Metal team uses on most of the box art Ork and Orruk models. Thondia Brown is a nice dark brown that closes the gap between Rhinox Hide and Mournfang Brown. Hobgrot Hide is probably the colour I see the least use as it is quite similar to paints like of Balor Brown, Zandri Dust or Tallarn Sand, but then, most of those are Layer paints with weaker pigmenation and the more colours to choose from, the merrier.

Value

Citadel Colours are by far the most expensive miniature paints on the market, both per ml and per paint pot. If you like Base paints with their high pigmentation but are looking for a cheaper option, most colours from The Army Painter’s Warpaints range have a high opacity and come at a cheaper price point, plus their paints come in 18 ml dropper bottles, which is 50% more for less if you do the math. Another alternative would be Vallejo Model Color. Model Color is more opaque than most other miniature paint lines (and also more matte and therefore more prone to chipping), and they have a huge range of muted colours for your Kruleboyz.