Asset Drop - Mystery hobby box... unboxed!

Hello and thank you for viewing this post in which I will be un-boxing and discussing November’s Asset Drop mystery paint box. My name is Steve, this is the SDFnet 40k blog, and let us begin. 

In my post at the start of the month I mentioned that I had subscribed to a monthly mystery box service named Asset Drop which can be found here: https://www.assetdrop.co/. Asset Drop is a service that will deliver 6-8 curated paints to your doorstep together with a guide on the products and how to use them. The paints selected will be from lesser known (at least to mainstream UK e.g. not GW/Vallejo/Army Painter) suppliers so you can experiment with ranges outside of your established hobby eco system. It might also include advanced effects such as pigments or special washes etc. All the products will be selected by the founder of the company, Andy, and will tend to come in sub-sets within the box, for example October’s box (info from the website, I missed Octobers box myself) there was a fleshtone triad from Reaper paints (which I know are mainstream in the US but not so here in the UK) rather than a random assortment of incoherent colours. The monthly subscription costs £20 and you’re always guaranteed to get a higher value box contents than the individual RRP of the items combined. With this service description now complete and before I get into the actual review, I feel it’s best to mention that I am not affiliated with Asset Drop in any way, any praise or promotion I give them is entirely of my own volition. I’ve been vocally supportive of them to this point as the level of customer service I’ve received from the company when I had questions about the service has been exemplary and I feel that kind of thing should be recognised. On a final and important note regarding the company 5% of the profit of every box is donated to charity, right now the charity of choice is Blue Marine Foundation who do work protecting the oceans. This donation mechanic is a really nice touch to further validate the ethos of the company, especially as a new start-up where you would think they need every penny they can get, it gives confidence in the company itself and as a purchaser if you’re buying something anyway gives an extra warm fuzzy feeling to also know you’re contributing to do a good thing.

With that out the way, onto the box itself. My box was despatched on November 23^rd by Royal Mail and arrived on Monday 27^th. Talking presentation and 1^st impressions, the box was protected by a plastic shipping bag meaning the carboard box itself wont risk getting damaged during shipping. 1^st impressions on opening the box are impressively presented. You are 1^st greeted with all the paperwork, the product guide and a discount code for Wargames Online (who I believe are a YouTube channel who have championed the Asset drop service). After that the paints bundle is wrapped in black tissue paper which helps keep the paints from moving in transport, and also looks nice! You then have a layer of bubble wrap and the paints themselves are cushioned and surrounded by artificial hay? It looks really nice anyway and gives the aesthetic of a premium product. It’s obvious that time and effort has gone into preparing these boxes, they haven’t just been thrown together and sent out into the wild. In cases where paints are intended to come as a set, they have been held together by elastic bands to save confusion. Another small point but one I was pleased to see while on the topic of packaging, certain of the paints, jars with screw top lids that may be open to leaking in transit have either been put in a plastic zip bag, or the screw/cap area wrapped with protective cling film to prevent/contain leakage. This small touch was really impressive as I’ve had packages come from online retailers where bottles of stuff have leaked all over the contents of an order, or just broken because the paints just put in a bigger box as part of a bigger order and left loose to roll around in transit – a situation just begging to go wrong! In summary of 1^st impressions, I’m really pleased! The packaging and presentation is the area of the box that reflects the company itself, they may choose the paints, but they do not make them. The company’s premise is to bring together paints for the adventurous hobbiest and they do that in a way that makes you feel you’re buying a quality product, which in turn has the psychological effect of giving you confidence in the rest of the service. First impressions are lasting impressions people! Remember that!

As it came out the box 1^st, let’s talk about the monthly product guide which consists of a 13 pay A6 sized glossy print booklet (which will be handy for protecting the print if you’re working from it and getting paint everywhere!). The inside cover of the book is a message from Andy (the Drop-Boss), I won’t transcribe it but it’s a nice little message to subscribers. Pages 2-3 give a box contents breakdown detailing the item, its RRP, and a little about the manufacturer of the product and why it was selected for inclusion in the Asset Drop box.

Pages 5-13 then go into, in impressive detail, how to use each product in the box including different application techniques and how to achieve certain effects. It’s obvious that this information wasn’t simply lifted from the manufacturer’s website, the knowledge that went into this book was real and will be useful when you’re trying the new products for the 1^st time.

The final page of the book is a brand focus on Coat d’arms, a brand I am aware of as being the company who made the super old-school Games Workshop paints, for those who don’t know GW don’t make their own paints, they outsource them, that’s why they change bottle shapes every few years and certain colours become unavailable any more as they change suppliers. It was for this reason that I chose Vallejo as my default brand when I returned to the hobby as they make their own product meaning Dark (Angels) Green now will be the same tone and consistency as in 10yrs time which hasn’t been the case with GW. Anyway… I digress. If you did want any of the colours from back in the day, personally I like Emerald Green from them, they are still available! Also Coat d’arms offer an excellent metallic purple colour (which since buying I’ve not been able to find a use for.. but am 100% on board with the idea of!) as well as a sky-blue and mint green metallic. I highlight these 3 in addition to the standard range of metallic you get from everywhere as they are unusual colours, but the paints themselves flow and cover well.

On the topic of Coat d’arms I will cover their contributions to the box first which come in the form of a size 3 brush and Muddy Green texture paint/basing material. As we’re now getting into the products themselves, it seems a good time to mention that I will not be going into detail/illustrating they results in this post as doing so would delay this unboxing to the point of its irrelevance, but I will try to get back to covering the actual use of the products in a subsequent blog post. The Muddy Green basing paint is, I would gauge somewhere around Death Guard Green (GW) or Clayman Green (Vallejo) in colour, not exact matches but to give you an idea of the approximate colour. It’s basically paint with sand in it, but you do get a good amount in the bottle compared to what you get from (I don’t know exact quantity as there is a label over that section of the bottle, I’m going to take a flyer and say 60ml!), for example GW who are really into their texture paints too. As the box companion guide points out, texture paints can be tough on your brushes which is why a good sided brush (using these paints is easiest with a more substantial brush size due to the paints being that much thicker than normal paint) which is a nice touch. In honesty I’ve got knackered brushes everywhere (I don’t seem to be very good at keeping brushes alive for very long!) so this new brush will probably end up in my “to kill” pot rather than brush graveyard! I’ll have a paint with it however for the purpose of review and let you know what I think.

The other product in this month’s box that was intended to work with the Coat d’arms texture paint is Grimy Dirt pigment from Broken Toad. Now full disclosure, I don’t know how to use pigments or weathering powers, I watch people on YouTube produce offensively impressive results with this type of product as part of the technique, but I also hear that they can be a nightmare to work with and a pain to “seal” onto a model. Its stories such as people’s difficulties in using this type of product combined with my already meagre painting skills that have always put me off investing money and buying a product to experiment with as if it turns out to be something I struggle with I will simply be out of pocket on the purchase. It is for my self-acknowledged trepidation that I am quite pleased to have this product included so I can try it and if I don’t like it, well it’s a mystery box! The idea is to get random stuff! If I do like it, combined with the “how to use” section in the companion guide – then the Asset Drop service will has scored it’s first victory in getting me past my own mental barrier of trying new things! As for the manufacturer, I’m aware of them by name, again from the YouTube videos or podcasts where people have discussed them. Even once I’ve used the product I can’t honestly tell you if this pigment is good/bad as I’ve no frame of reference, but I will compare it to other brand pigments if I get any in the future! Oh, and just to say, the pot included was 30ml, I’ve no idea how much you need to know if that’s a lot or sample size!

The next items I will be talking about today are Brass and Old Brass from the Ammo range produced by Mig Jimenez. I haven’t heard of this brand before, but they come supplied in 17ml dropper bottles (as all paint should come in dropper bottles!). The companion guide explains these paints were selected as they form a nice intermediate step between standard metallic paints which are typically quite thick making them difficult to layer while preserving detail (and thinning metallic can be problematic), and an airbush paint which at times can be too thin to successfully brush paint. The booklet doesn’t give much info on the supplier in this case, I guess I will wait for this supplier’s turn in the brand focus section. I am keen to give these paints a go as I’m really curious as to what is different about them, the companion guide has a big note saying that Ammo Metalics can take up to 24hours to dry which is really curious! Most metallic paints from other brands will be drying on your brush before you finish your project, I wonder what is different about these paints to give them such a long drying time? I know other types of paints such as oil based or ones like Vallejo True metallics (that require alcohol to cut them) will dry at different times, but my experiences will all brands of miniature acrylics have a fairly standard drying time. In honesty, once I’ve tried the paints, unless the results are head and shoulders above standard paints, I don’t know if these will get my recommendation as I don’t want to stop working on a project for 24hours per layer of paint! I just don’t paint to a level where that would be required (I know Golden Daemon painters spend months on a single model! I like to do a job as best I can but I also try to finish a job (I did say TRY to finish a job! Not my fault I have hobby A.D.D.!)).

Finally we have a triad of colours from Secret Weapon Miniatures consisting of Tyre Black, Rubber and Rubber Highlight. Obviously, the purpose of this is for painting black rubber in the form of tyres, armour, tubes etc. The companion guide is really good and goes in depth on this triad explaining how to use them for different techniques and projects. I could see me making use of these colours for painting all the wheels on my Dark Angel Ravenwing/Ork stuff or on the armour on my Deadzone Rebs. Each of the paints is supplied in 20ml dropper bottles. Secret Weapon Miniatures is a company based out of California and I have been aware of them by name for a while, but I’d not seen their paints making massive inroads into the UK market, I could be wrong/just speaking from my personal perception. I believe these paints have been included as introduction to alternate brands rather than the paints being unique/special. As the products from this box that I have the most specific ideas of what to use them on, expect to see them in use in the near future!

So that’s the contents of the box, in summary I’m pretty pleased with my first month subscription! I have failed to mention however one very important addition, a vital supply for all hobbiest… something to munch on while you paint, and a lolly? Well that’s genius as it would prevent me (at least for the duration of its consumption) from putting my paint brush in my mouth to re-point the tip and ending up with the taste of paint! … not that I’ve ever done that because that would be really dumb… but you know… in case that happened. I’ve got paints I know will be useful with the rubber triad, I’ve got new techniques to try with the texture paint and pigment, and metallic… time will tell if they’re worth their drying time! I will close out this unboxing with a quick word on value, now it’s hard to say if the box is “worth it” as it would be subjective. As the service is a mystery box, you may end up with duplicates to stuff you already own, or you may get a product you simply will never use (for example if you played Tyranids, metallic brass would be a stretch to include on your models) do in terms of value no I can say I probably would never have chosen to purchase any of these products on spec as unless it’s something funky like the metallic purple paint I mentioned earlier I tend to stick to what I know. But that’s the point of this box for me, to expand my experience and knowledge base and you know, just because it’s a big brand or the one you’ve always used, doesn’t mean it’s good/the best. I know from personal experience just using GW/Vallejo/Coat d’arms/P3/Army Painter there is variation in even the basic colours between these brands. As I can’t speak subjectively as to the value of the box, instead I will simply focus on factually, according to the companion guide the RRP value of the box contents is £28.57, now in fairness, who the hell ever pays full RRP, all online shops sell as a % discount so I did some shopping around from all my regular hobby haunts including Element Games, Wargames and Wayland Games and I was unable to source some/any/all of the products from the different suppliers to compare values. The prices I did get, as expected the Secret Weapon paints RRP was £4.99 and they were on sale for £4.50, in another case texture paint was available for £4.50 from the £5 RRP, but the rest of the products simply weren’t available anywhere I looked. Assuming you were able to source all the items from a single online retailer, most retailers offer 10% off RRP on paints mean the contents would still cost £25.71 meaning you’re very much still better off, on a financial value at least compared to personal perceived value, by getting the paints via the Asset Drop box.

I am happy with my purchase for now and look forward to getting some “hands on” time with these paints and seeing what’s in next month’s box! I’m predicting lots of reds and greens for the festive season!

That’s me done for now, I appreciate your taking the time to listen to me ramble on. I hope you enjoyed the content and welcome your constructive feedback and discussion. If you liked this post share it, if you like my content follow me, both help me in knowing what is working. I have been Steve, this has been the SDFnet40k blog, and I will see you next time. The Emperor Protects.