Painting miniatures is a fun and relaxing way to spend time away from your screens, and with the surge of interest in tabletop role-play like Dungeons & Dragons and miniatures wargames like Warhammer 40,000, the hobby is more popular than ever. As a result, many new lines of paint are making their way into your local hobby stores in 2025. After nearly a full year spent testing out the leading brands, one manufacturer has jumped to the top of my list of recommendations for new and returning painters: Duncan Rhodes’ Two Thin Coats from Trans Atlantis Games.
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Rhodes got his start in the hobby at Games Workshop’s retail storefronts before becoming the company’s primary video presenter for painting tutorials throughout the 2000s and 2010s. His admonition to always use “two thin coats” of the multi-billion-dollar company’s Citadel paints became the rallying cry for his first crowdfunding campaign in 2021, which raised more than $1.1 million for the initial line of Trans Atlantis hobby paints. While that first wave of product was a touch slow to reach consumers, manufacturing and fulfillment have firmed up considerably. Trans Atlantis paints are now being distributed here in the United States by none other than Asmodee North America, and after calling stores from coast to coast, it’s clear that they’re in good supply just about everywhere that they’re sold.
But the main reason for my recommendation isn’t because of their availability at your FLGS. It’s because of the consistency I find from pot to pot.
With other manufacturers, some paints in a given line can be different from the rest. Maybe they dry a different color than you see in the bottle, or they’re too watery to cover a project quickly and easily. Sometimes they simply don’t have enough pigment to even hold together on a wet palette, let alone go into an airbrush. That hasn’t been the case for me with Two Thin Coats paint. Every one that I crack open, regardless of the color, has the same general viscosity out of the bottle and the same behavior on the palette and in the brush. Yes, you’ll pay a bit more for these than some other brands, but when you’re simply learning how paint works or trying to redevelop the skills needed to shade or highlight a model quickly and efficiently, it’s nice not to find yourself wasting time. You can open a bottle of Two Thin Coats — any bottle — and know that you’re getting the best possible painting experience for your money.
Another reason I’m fond of Two Thin Coats is because the paints are packaged inside a dropper bottle rather than an open-topped pot. Citadel paints, which fans of the biggest hobby games on the market will likely already be familiar with, have a wide-mouthed lid with a little spoon built onto the back side of it. That spoon is intended to serve as a reservoir for paint, allowing you to shake it up, crack it open, and get right to work dipping your brush directly into the pot. Not only is that paint too thick to effectively work with right out of the bottle, but the spoon itself gets gummed up with dried paint over time. That leads to more spills, more spoiled paint, and more mostly full pots heading into the garbage before their time. For my money, the dropper bottles are where it’s at. Throw in a stainless steel mixing bead — which is included in every bottle — and you’ve got everything you need to be successful.
One caveat, however, is that Trans Atlantis’ pots could use a bit more of a friction fit on those stoppers. It’s possible to get that mixing ball stuck up in the dropper tip, meaning that when you try to squeeze out paint you pop the cap off and spill a ton of product instead. Get in the habit of making sure your mixing ball is free and rattling around in there before putting paint on your palette.
Duncan Rhodes’ Two Thin Coats is available now at dozens of independent retail stores all over the U.S. and, occasionally, via crowdfunding campaigns where you can pick up an entire set at a deeply discounted price. You can find more on the Trans Atlantis website.
Duncan Rhodes’ Two Thin Coats is available at local game shops. Paints were reviewed using retail product provided by Trans Atlantis Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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