I use Contrast and Vallejo Xpress Color paints almost exclusively, and I can't think of one I'd toss aside. I've noticed, though, that there's one Contrast paint I find myself using over and over again, and for sometimes very different textures. If, for some reason, you want to buy just one Contrast paint, it's got to be Skeleton Horde, and here's why.
As its name suggests, Skeleton Horde is particularly good for painting bone. Brush onto your army of the dead, or the pile of bones in that dark corner of the dungeon, and on all the skulls impaled on the spikes of chaos space marines or lying under the feet of any given Citadel character miniature.
I don't know what horns are made out of. Ivory? The same thing as bone? I actually don't know. Whatever it is, it looks weathered and dangerous when painted with a little Skeleton Horde and an obligatory splatter of blood.
Purity seals, oaths, scrolls, holy books. I paint anything that looks like paper or parchment with Skeleton Horde and it instantly makes them look significant.
After the apocalypse, or in the 41st millennium, or in far away fantasy realms, it seems that people really love wrapping their shins and wrists and axe handles in strips of cloth. Sometimes I paint these black or red or something to suggest faction affiliation, but when in doubt Skeleton Horde reads as aged cloth or gauze. It's never the wrong colour for scraps and strips of cloth.
I sometimes use Vallejo Xpress Color Wasteland Brown for desert fatigues, but Skeleton Horde is basically Khaki when you paint a soldier with it.
Guilliman Flesh is more vibrant than you might at first think. You may not notice it until you use it to paint something that's meant to not be alive. On the flesh of a zombie or ghoul, it brings way too much life to the miniature. Skeleton Horde, however, sucks the life right out of an undead miniature. It takes on an almost sickly, brittle, decayed look.
I often use Vallejo Xpress Color Copper Brown for wood, but for variety I've used Guilliman Flesh, and even Skeleton Horde. Obviously Skeleton Horde reads as a pale wood, like a birch, but does read as wood in certain contexts. Or maybe, honestly, it reads as bone and I just tell myself it's wood because that was my intent. Either way, as a touch of variety it works well, and I like throwing in variation when I have 4 other similar or exact same models in a unit that I feel ought to each have a weapon or gear that looks somewhat unique.
Skeleton Horde in a generic sense is a sort of "eggshell white". Arguably, it's really more a very very pale brown, but in the right context it reads as off-white. I wouldn't use it for white robot casing or anything like that, but I've used it to essentially conceal the white undercoat on something that otherwise actually does need to be white on a model. For a cooler white, I use Vallejo Xpress Color Templar White, so it depends on the use case, but Skeleton Horde is a great warm off-white.
I've used Skeleton Horde as a light Agrax Earthshade. It's less warm that Agrax Earthshade, but it functions similarly otherwise. It's got strong shadows, but retains highlights. If you don't have a brown wash handy, or you just want a slightly different look, give a Skeleton Horde a try as a wash.
I didn't expect to necessarily love Skeleton Horde, I just walked into the Warhammer Store and asked for "the Contrast paint for bone" or something like that. They handed me Skeleton Horde. The fact is, it looks amazing no matter what you do with it (within reason, anyway). It's a perfect paint.
Photo by Seth Kenlon.