Disclaimer: Arrtx supplied the 90A marker set for testing. Every opinion, every test, and every con below is my own.
A box of ninety white markers landed on my desk on a Tuesday, and my first reaction was skepticism. I have spent fifteen years thinning Citadel paints to the consistency of melted ice cream, chasing two-thin-coats gospel, learning where a loaded brush wants to go on a 28mm face. Markers, in that world, are what you use on poster board and moving boxes. They are not what you reach for when a Space Marine helmet needs a clean edge highlight.
That box was the Arrtx 90A, and this acrylic markers review is what came out of setting it next to the tools I trust and making it prove something.
Here is the short version. The Arrtx 90A earns a narrow, real place at the hobby desk. It handles base rims, terrain, large flats, blocking in color, and opaque freehand faster than a brush will, and it holds up under a wash without lifting. It has no answer for fine detail under a millimeter, for smooth blends, or for tight recesses, and any gaming piece you paint with it wants a coat of varnish to lock things down. Think of it as a power tool in a shop full of hand tools. Wrong for the carving, right for the rough cut.
Key Takeaways
- What it is — a 90-color set of water-based, pigmented acrylic markers with a single flexible 1–6mm brush tip, priced around $66, which works out to under a dollar a marker.
- Best for — basing and base rims, blocking in large areas of color, terrain and vehicles, comic-style and cel-shaded work, Gunpla panel work, and opaque freehand over dark surfaces.
- Weak at — detail lines under about a millimeter, blending or gradients, non-metallic metal, and getting paint down into deep recesses.
- The verdict — a fast utility tool that lives beside your Citadel and Vallejo paints, not a stand-in for them. Check the current price on Amazon.
What the Arrtx 90A and Its Cotton Core Actually Do
Open the box and you get a tray of ninety markers standing nib-up, plus a printed swatch card mapping the color numbers. The set arrives from Arrtx, whose store you can find at arrtx.com, and the presentation is tidy enough that the shipping tray becomes a decent desk stand once you misplace the lid.
The mechanism inside is the part worth understanding. Each marker feeds ink to the nib through a cotton core, the way a felt-tip does, which means there is no shaking, no agitator ball rattling awake, no pressing the nib down to prime the flow. You uncap it and it is already talking. After fifteen years of knocking Vallejo dropper bottles against the desk to wake them up, that quiet readiness is a small daily luxury.
The honest spec sheet reads like this. One 1–6mm flexible brush tip per marker. Water-based pigmented acrylic ink, opaque, with a slightly matte finish. Waterproof once fully cured. Non-toxic and low odor. Ninety colors, with the palette leaning heavily on grays and muted earth tones, which suits terrain and armor plates more than it suits a rainbow.
The nib itself is a firm cotton cone, roughly half an inch from the point to the plastic collar, about the footprint of a number 6 or 7 pointed round brush. It holds a point well under light pressure. How long that point survives against the abrasive texture of a primed miniature is a real question, and one I could not answer inside a single review window.
Two quirks belong on the record. The first is splatter. Uncap a marker with any speed and you can flick a fine spray of ink, so point it away from finished work. The second is color matching. The printed caps and swatch card give you a reference, and a few of them run optimistic against what actually lands on the surface, so hand-swatch anything critical before you commit it to a model. The box also markets the ink as blendable, a claim my own testing complicated, which I will come back to. For a starting point on where opaque markers fit into a normal painting sequence, my guide on how to basecoat miniatures covers the fundamentals these are competing with.
The Problem These Markers Promise to Solve at the Desk
The pitch for a marker over a brush has nothing to do with quality. A good brush in a steady hand will beat a marker on almost any measure of finish. What a marker offers is lower setup cost. No wet palette to lay out. No paint to thin to the right ratio. No water cup, no paper towel, no brush to rinse and reshape when you are done.
That changes the math on a tired weeknight. The barrier to starting a small painting task drops to uncapping a pen. You can block in a cloak on the couch with the television on and no station set up around you. For a broader set of shortcuts in the same spirit, I collected years of them in 50 miniature painting tips from commission work. The marker slots into that category of tools that lower the cost of beginning.
The Reality Check, With the Materials Science
Opacity is where these markers earn their keep. Every color I tried covered in a single stroke, bold and even, with no patchiness and no second pass to hide the undercoat. When I based a miniature with one, it matched a Vallejo foundation paint for coverage and got there faster than a brush would. That single property drives most of the use cases worth caring about.
Durability held up better than I expected, with one caveat about surface. I ran a thumb test on dried black and white marker over hotel key cards, both matte and glossy stock. A hard scrub took nothing off. Leaning in later with real force, I could lift a little pigment, and almost all of that came off the glossy cards, where slick plastic gives the acrylic nothing to grab. On the matte cards, and on anything with a bit of tooth, the ink stayed put. The card test is a useful stand-in for miniature behavior, because it isolates the one variable that matters for adhesion, which is surface texture.
The lesson carries straight to models. A primed miniature has microscopic tooth across its whole surface, so marker ink grips it far better than it grips a glossy card, and I would expect it to be very hard to rub off by accident. Seal it and the question disappears entirely. Prime underneath and varnish on top, and any game piece you touch during play is protected. If you want the specifics on both ends of that sandwich, I keep detailed roundups on the best primers for miniatures and on recommended varnishes and how to use them.
One number I cannot give you is lightfastness. Arrtx publishes no pigment or lightfastness data for this line, so how the colors hold under display lighting over years is unknown. For a gaming piece kept in a foam tray, that hardly matters. For a display model under a lamp, treat it as an open question and varnish with UV protection where you can.
Blending is the honest limit of the medium. Color over color, wet-into-wet, the advanced brush work that builds a smooth gradient, these markers will not do it. The ink is opaque and it dries fast and stubborn, which is exactly what you want for coverage and exactly what fights you when you want two tones to melt together. The box calls the ink blendable. In my testing that word oversells what happens on the surface. For gradients, the brush and thinned paint stay in charge, and my eight must-know blending techniques hub, along with the deeper walkthroughs on wet blending and glazing, all still assume a brush in your hand.
My Hands-On Tests
I put the set through a sequence of tests that mirror how these would actually get used, from throwaway surfaces up to a real miniature.
I Started on Cards I Did Not Care About
I always break in a new medium on something disposable. Here it was a stack of hotel key cards and blank PVC cards, some matte and some glossy, none of them primed. The black and white markers, the two I lean on hardest, laid down flat and solid on both finishes without a fight.
The Smallest Line I Could Hold Was Just Over a Millimeter
Line consistency read the same across colors. With a very light touch, the most consistent fine line I could keep measured just over a millimeter, and I saw it hold that width two ways, with the black marker drawing a clean straight line on a key card and with the green marker running a steady stroke on the mat. Both held the line evenly along the whole length. Anything thinner got away from me, and a single twitch sent the line jumping. That defines the tool. These are made for bold work, blocks of color, base rims, and freehand at a scale where a millimeter still reads clean. They are not detail-line instruments.
A Wash Went Over Dried Marker Without Reactivating It
This is the test that matters most if you paint the way I do, building a base and then shading it. Once the marker dries, it stays down. I laid a Citadel wash directly over dried marker, and the color underneath held. It did not lift, bloom, or reactivate, and the wash pooled into the recesses the way it should over any acrylic base. Block a color fast with the marker, let it dry, then shade with your usual washes, and it behaves like a normal foundation coat.
That behavior opens up a fast workflow, and it pairs naturally with using shades to add contrast once the base is down.
Dry Time Ran Under Ten Seconds and Coverage Was the Standout
Dry time came in quick, under ten seconds in a room sitting around 55 to 60 percent relative humidity. Coverage is the reason to own these. When I based a miniature with one, it went down faster than brushing on a foundation black or a Vallejo foundation color, and it matched those foundations stroke for stroke. I ran the coverage test with yellow, which is worth calling out, because yellow is traditionally one of the hardest colors to lay down cleanly over a dark surface. The marker covered it in a single confident pass. If you have wrestled with that color by brush, my walkthrough on painting yellow Space Marines the easy way shows the slower route the marker shortcuts here.
A Flat Base Coat Worked, an NMM Attempt Did Not
I used a marker to lay the base color on a small weapon, then pushed to see whether I could take it toward a non-metallic metal effect. That did not come off, and the failure traced back to my hand and the medium more than to any flaw in the product. You cannot place the paint precisely enough with a broad cotton tip, and once the ink is down flat and refuses to move, you cannot build the smooth range of values NMM depends on. As a fast, flat base coat sitting under other techniques, though, it was clean and quick.
NMM stays firmly in brush territory, and if that is where you want to go, start with what non-metallic metal actually is, then work through layering and glazing for NMM and the loaded-brush NMM sword technique.
One scope note. I do not have photos of all ninety colors, which would be a piece of its own, but every color I tested behaved the same way, with no duds in the batch.
A Quieter Reason These Earn Desk Space
There is something worth naming underneath the specs. The value of a tool like this is that it lowers the cost of starting. Some evenings the whole barrier to painting is the setup, the palette, the water, the ten minutes of preparation before a single stroke lands. A marker collapses that to uncapping a pen, and on a tired weeknight that can be the difference between painting and not painting at all. I wrote about how easily an evening at the desk can slip away in why you lost three hours at the hobby desk, and a tool that gets you moving faster is quietly worth more than its price suggests.
Where the Arrtx 90A Works Best
Match the tool to the job and the 90A stops being a novelty.
Basing, base rims, and touch-ups. The single most natural use. One pass of a dark marker gives you a clean, opaque base rim, and touch-ups after a chip take seconds. Pair it with the right groundwork from my roundup of miniature basing materials.
Blocking in large areas of color. On a model you plan to wash and detail later, the marker lays a fast, even foundation that takes a shade without reactivating, exactly as the wash test showed.
Terrain and large flats. Buildings, vehicles, and big Age of Sigmar or 40K terrain pieces are where the broad tip and the deep opacity pull ahead. Large surfaces that would drink brush paint get covered in a fraction of the time.
Comic-style and cel-shaded work. Flat, bold color with hard edges is the marker’s native language, which makes it a strong fit for comic-style miniature painting.
Arrtx Markers for Gunpla and Model Kits
Gunpla builders should take a close look. Panel-lining aside, the bold flat blocking these markers do is well suited to Gundam armor plates and mechanical paneling, where clean opaque color across a defined panel is the whole goal. The quick dry time also suits kit work, where you are handling parts and want the color set before the next step.
Beyond miniatures. The set carries well past the hobby into rock painting, poster art, and coloring on ceramics, which makes it easier to justify for a mixed-media household.
What these are not is a detail brush. Fine lines under a millimeter, smooth blends, and tight recesses all stay in brush-and-paint territory. Everything bold and fast, they own.
At a Glance, Key Features, and an Honest Pros and Cons
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| Colors | 90 |
| Tip | Firm cotton cone, roughly a #6–7 round footprint, about 1mm finest usable line |
| Ink | Water-based pigmented acrylic, opaque, matte-ish |
| Dry time | Under 10 seconds |
| Price | Around $66, under $1 per marker |
| Refillable | No; singles run about $1.50 |
| Best for | Basing, blocking, comic-style, terrain, Gunpla |
What works. One-stroke opacity that hides the undercoat cleanly. Coverage that matches a Vallejo foundation and beats it for speed. Dry time under ten seconds. Durability that holds on textured and matte surfaces and locks down permanently under varnish. No shaking or priming to start. A ninety-color palette. Value that is hard to argue with under a dollar a marker.
What does not. No reliable detail line under about a millimeter. No blending and no NMM. The broad tip skips over tight recesses. Pigment lifts off slick gloss under hard rubbing, though that is a non-issue on primed or matte surfaces and disappears under varnish. Tip longevity against miniature texture is unknown after a single review period. Barrel ink volume is unknown, and the markers are not refillable. No published lightfastness data. Occasional splatter when you uncap, and a few caps and swatches that run optimistic against the real color.
Ready to pick a set up? Check the current price on Amazon, or buy direct from Arrtx.
How the Arrtx 90A Compares
The fairest comparison is not another marker. It is a foundation paint. Laying a base with the Arrtx marker matched a Vallejo foundation for coverage and beat it for speed, with no palette, no thinning, and no brush to rinse afterward. That is the real pitch, foundation-grade opacity you can uncap.
Against Posca, the reference point most people know, the Arrtx ink is comparable in opacity and lays down about as smoothly, at close to half the per-marker cost across a much larger palette. Posca’s finer bullet tips still beat the Arrtx brush for anything approaching detail, so a serious marker user might own both for different jobs. As a Posca alternative for miniatures, the 90A wins on price and palette size and gives up some fine-tip precision.
Against Molotow One4All, the Arrtx is the value option. Molotow markers are premium, refillable, arguably the most opaque on the market, and priced to match. If you want a lifetime tool and refill economy, they make a case. If you want ninety colors in the door for the price of a few Molotows, the Arrtx does.
Against mini-specific markers like Games Workshop’s or the Gundam marker lines, the split is opaque versus transparent. Many hobby markers are designed as thin, transparent liners for panel work. The Arrtx is squarely an opaque coverage tool, which is a different job.
| Marker | Finest line | Opacity | Reactivates under wash | Refillable | Price per marker | Best mini use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arrtx 90A | ~1mm | High | No | No | Under $1 | Basing, blocking, terrain |
| Posca (fine) | Sub-mm | High | No | No | ~$2 | Detail and blocking |
| Molotow One4All | ~1mm | Highest | No | Yes | $5+ | Premium coverage |
| GW / Gundam liners | Sub-mm | Low, transparent | Varies | No | $3–5 | Panel lining |
If you came here chasing gold, silver, or copper, the standard 90A set is the wrong tool, and Arrtx sells a separate metallic set for that job. For brush-applied metals, my roundup of the five best metallic paints for miniatures remains the starting point.
Summary
| Who should buy it | Painters who base, block, and touch up, plus terrain, comic-style, and Gunpla builders |
| Who should skip it | Anyone whose main need is fine detail, blending, or display-grade NMM |
| Standout strength | One-stroke opacity at foundation grade |
| Main limitation | No detail lines, no blending |
| Value | Excellent, under $1 per marker |
| Where to buy | Amazon |
Under a dollar a marker, the Arrtx 90A is a genuine value, and some of the best acrylic paint markers I have used. For basing, touch-ups, and blocking in areas of color on a miniature, I would recommend them without hesitation, and that recommendation carries straight into comic-style work, Gunpla, and well past minis into rock painting, poster art, and coloring on ceramics.
What I cannot tell you yet is how the tips hold up over months of rough miniature texture, or how much ink sits in the barrel, and both answers depend on how hard you lean on them. Prime underneath, varnish on top, and use them for what they are for, bold and fast opaque color, and they are hard to beat at the price.
A few things I want to follow up on down the line: long-term tip durability, barrel ink volume and how many models a marker really covers, and possibly a separate piece swatching all ninety colors so you can see the full palette.
Final Call
The Arrtx markers exceeded my initial expectations. Whether they are useful for the miniature painting hobby depends on what you’ll want to use them for. If you expect them to replace your brushes, you’ll be disappointed.
I’d personally continue to use them for speeding up repetitive tasks like dark lining, fast targeted base coating, and quick accent work. For larger crafts, like building DIY terrain or modeling, these could come in super handy. I suspect many of you will reach the same conclusion after giving them a fair trial.
If the 90A sounds like the right utility tool for your desk, the best price I have found is on Amazon. Check it here, or buy direct from Arrtx.
Do you use acrylic markers? What do you use them for? Drop a comment below!
Until next time, happy miniature painting.
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