A little while ago i seem to recall stumbling across a REALLY good alty website with plenty of suggestion for alternatives to GW (painting and modelling) products (not  a fan of their capitalist tendencies...); can anyone give me any clues as to what it may have been? It was kind of a painting guide and alternative suggestions site rolled into one with lots of tongue in cheek "but you don't HAVE to use GW paints..." kind of comments.
Alternatively i also found a range that specifically had a colour chart telling you which GW colours thier brand corresponded too; any ideas on that one?
About to start a few projects for the year and £2.25 a pot is ludicrous!

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I use coat d arms - the original citadel paints!

Others swear by the paints with the little 'eyedropper' lids (someone give me the name, my mind has gone blank!).

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Vallejo and Reaper both use the "eyedropper" style bottles... and both are good paint lines.

I've used plaints from both, and quite like them.

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I dont know what website that might have been, but A few notes on paints from 4 years painting full time -

Vallejo paints are very nice to work with. For me they have two down sides. One is that they come in eyedropper bottles & as someone who mixes all my colours in pots, that just means I have to buy mixing pots for them all. Also, they are not as hard wearing as other brands, meaning paint easily rubs off whilst you're working on the figure, so you must be especially careful when using techniques such as drybrushing, and spray varnish once finished is a must. That said, I use a lot of the Model colour range in my painting as they have a great selection of muted tones available. I've not used the game colour range, but they were developed specifically to provide the brighter colours required by those switching from the citadel range.

Coat D'arms are also very good. As Chris says, they're effectively the original Citadel paint range, with an expanded variety of colours available. Very nice paint for the price. I use their armour wash almost exclusively for basic metals.

The Foundry Paint system is basically an expansion of the Coat D'arms range, providing all colours with a shade and highlight as well, so no mixing is required. An excellant starting point if you're looking to learn highlighting skills & practice pigment placement rather than paint mixing, but otherwise they're more expensive than other options for no great advantage.

Rackham paints provide some interesting colours - their turquoise shades are particularly unique among figure paints, but I've had problems with them seperating & thus being a pain in the butt to mix, so I rarely use them.

Formula P3 paints from privateer press were among the first "one coat" figure paints. They have a very high pigment density and cover very well. The fine pigments also mean they take thinning well & can be used neat for very effective drybrushing. They are pretty much the direct predecessor to the Citadel Foundation paint range.

All that said, Citadel have got things VERY right with their latest paints. Both the Foundation paints and the latest range of washes are among the best paints I've worked with, so even if you go with another manufacturer for your basic colours, I'd advise these as a worthy addition. If you drybrush figures, the foundation paints are particularly good (assuming the shades fit requirements) since the very high pigment density allows you to get just the lightest touch on a raised area, and still leave a clear colour.

I must also mention Winsor newton Washes briefly. Dont know where I'd be without Their India black and Peat brown washes.

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Vallejo has GW comparisons in the FOW painting supplements.  Besides the CC paints, I also use Coat De Arms and Vallejo of course.

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Second all that.

Vallejo: the only reason I keep a handful of VMC is the range of muted colours.  Great for more subdued schemes (that I'm fond of, now and then).
People hail the vallejo dropper as the best invention since the wheel, but it's more of a hindrance than anything else, to me.  The thin nozzle; or the properties of the paint; or both; creates a lot of problems with seperation, clogging, shaking and remixing, etc. etc.  To the point it's almost mandatory to stick metal shakers (bits of sprue for me) in the bottles.

I've only tried two VGC.  One was night blue.  More chalk than Dover.

Incidentally Paul, do you dislike the droppers, or are the pots the only spare containers you can get?

Rackham: I was given a set of Rackham paints (ta Daemonkin) and I was amazed at how chalky they seemed.  Though the flesh colour looks like a decent highlight, at least, and I recently read something about using them to matt down glossier paints.

My main paints of choice at the mo are Ral Partha Europe's Miniature Paints - I bought up the whole line, excluding most inks and the coloured metallics.  Great quality for the most part and a great range of colours.  Reds and yellows are predictably transparent, and a couple of the greens and blues too, oddly.  Although I often say that Mustard and Deep Red could give Foundation paints a run for their money.
The gaps are filled by Coat D'arms which I have few complaints with, and a few remaining GW colours - switching to CDA when they run out.  £2 a pot was the point I thought 'they're havin' a laugh', MoK.  Not to mention VMC, GW Foundation & washes, a couple of old Humbrol acrylics, and some Anita's craft paints.

I must also mention Winsor newton Washes briefly. Dont know where I'd be without Their India black and Peat brown washes.

I use mostly Polly's S paints, they all are Tactical WWI, WWII etc. colors.  Only use a few G/W ...

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Yeah, coat d arms has a GW colour equivalent list:
http://www.gladiator.clara.net/coatd.htm

There's some really useful looking comparison online-tool-thingies here:
http://www.silicon-dragons.com/
Covers a lot of paint ranges.  Click on the Colormatch, Paintline Match and Colour Shade options at the top.

I'm too tired and sick tonight to type out another rant about silicon dragons. I'll just link to the two Warseer topics where I already did...

http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158511
http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163620

Wow! Cheers for all the adivce thus far; give me the rest of the evening to sort through it and i'll comment properly in the mornign!
R>

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If I didn't have a local store that I like that sells P3 paints, I would totally go with Coat D'Arms.  Excellent paints.  Infact, I heard rumour that Privateer Press contracted the company that makes Coat D'Arms paints to make their P3 formulas!  The only basis I've ever seen for this rumour is that they come in identical bottles.

Paints I've used:

Partha Paints (recently and back when they had branded D&D paints)
GW Hex bottle paints (old Coat D'arms line)
Vallejo Model Colour
Vellejo Game Colour
Reaper Pro Paints
Reaper Master Series
P3 Paints
GW Paints
GW Foundation Paints
GW Washes
Life Colour Acrylics (paints from Italy for airbrushing)
Coat D'Arms current line

If I were to pick one and only one line, I'd go with P3, followed by (tied with if they could be had locally) Coat D'Arms.  GW's foundation paints are fabulous, but you need to water them down and practice a bit with them to get used to them.  GW's new washes are really good too, but I like P3's inks just fine.  Other people say that P3 paint's metallics are not the best, but I manage with them.

A trick-- get yourself a bag of cheap glass or plastic beads.  Toss a couple in each paint pot the first time you open them.  If you ever shake the paint to mix it up, they'll help agitate the paint.  The only paints I don't do this to are ones I'm going to airbrush as I've heard you want to stir, not shake anything you're going to put through an airbrush.

Interesting.  I tried P3 on somebodies advice and I've found them quite irritating.  The black is the worst...paints like nail polish, but most of their darks have done the same for me.  I do like their off-white (Menoth white?)...it is very good.  It was a huge revelation after perservering with Skull White....but as noted, that was before GW released the very good foundation range.  I quite like Vallejo but do note the seperation issues occur with some colours.

Polly S is fantastic, but alas no longer available down here.

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I'm replacing all my GW paints pots by P3 pots except the metallic that are not good in P3 range. For metallic, when my current GW pots will be empty, I'll replace them by Vallejo metallic that are really good.

A chart with Citalel/Vallejo/Vallejo Game Color is available there.

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Thamar black is my favorite of the p3 paints.  It is so pigment dense that you can thin it and thin it and it still covers perfectly.  It's also perfect for black washes.  Difficulty with it is probably from not thinning it enough.