Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne discusses Games Workshop’s Tone Pro paint line announcement and what it means for miniatures paint stockists.
Games Workshop recently announced a new line of paint, Tone Pro, scheduled to arrive in stores in late October 2026 or early November 2026. I assume the company has looked at the success of The Army Painter’s line of Fanatics paints, with three different shades of each color in the range and someone there said, “Hold my beer.” The Tone Pro line of paints consists of 30 different paints with not three but five varying shades for each hue, meaning stores carrying the line will have to rack another 150 different SKUs of paint, plus accessories.
Now, just where are stores going to put all these pots of paint? Well, GW has that figured out too as it has produced a new rack and signage for the Tone Pro line. The only problem is that GW did not both to contact stores and ask if they wanted to carry its new line of paint. Instead, the company looked at its list of P3 stockists, the stores already carrying its complete line of paints and sent them both signage for the new line and the rack for it as well. Without asking. Stores selected, which apparently were all those already stocking the full line of Warhammer Colour and accessories, suddenly started receiving paint racks and, if you have ever seen a GW paint rack, you know these are metal and fairly heavy and stand about 18-inches wide and a bit over 6-feet tall. Not a fixture most stores can put into place without doing some rearranging of floor space and other displays.
Stores received about three days notice the racks were arriving. Instead of the weekly preorder, which typically arrives Saturday or Sunday and requires submission by 5:30 on Tuesday, stores received an email talking about the Tone Pro line, telling us our sales representatives would be contacting us to discuss it and that the racks were already on the way.
From what I understand, the company’s reasoning is that the stores getting the racks are already full line Warhammer Colour paint stockists and they will want this new line of paints, so they might as well go ahead and ship them the racks for it so they have them set up for the release of the paints in late October or early November. GW figured the demand for the new paint line would be so strong that, if stores did not get a jump on purchasing Tone Pro when it first released, it would be months before the company would have adequate stock to adequately fulfil orders, as hundreds of P3 stores were already ordering the paints with orders going in mid-October.
Do I expect these to sell? Yes, I already have customers asking about them. From what I have read, they will be better at covering dark primer than the current line of Warhammer Colour paints, will have superior leveling qualities and thicker pigments with better adhering to primer than the current P3 line. I just would have liked to be included a bit more in the decision.
Comments? Has your store already gotten the rack and found a place for it? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
Disclosure: Scott Thorne currently is a shareholder of Games Workshop stock.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
