Best Pigments for All Around Armor?

I have found the new Tamiya Pigment Sets are great.  They look like a small make-up set, come with an applicator, and have perfect colors for tanks.  They are also a little more "sticky" than other pigments and pastels.  The Doc O'Brian stuff is also very good.  Particularly because they provide a wide variety of colors.  The more you use pigments, the more you will want to break-up the monotone look.

Raindog, I too took the plunge into pigments a few years back. I found a brand called Doc O'Brian at Micro - mark. It came with 12 weathering pigments for about 22 bucks. I figured that was a good price for just getting some to start learning with. I still have a good amount and they work very well for weathering. Check it out it may be something you could use.

My son is a table-top wargamer and has been playing "Flames of War" for a few years now. Thanks to him, I've wound up picking up quite a few paints and supplies under the FoW/Gale Force Nine labels. Recently, I purchased a boxed set of pigments intended fot armor, which included five bottles of pigment for $10 at the local gaming store. While three of the bottles feature the FoW label, the other two were MIG labels. The bottles with the FoW labels have retained the MIG names of "European Dust", "Vietnam Earth", and "Track Rust" and are identical to the MIG products of the same name.

Five bottles in a set for what my regular LHS asks for a single pot of the name brand - how can you go wrong?

I'm also a fan of just regular artists' chalks, easy to make into powder, and relatively inexpensive. I buy browns, black and white, then mix to suit.

I say stick with the pastels. I have compared them side by side with Vellejo and AK brands, and I cannot tell the difference. I use the cheap pastels that come in a set of earth tones. You can grind them with sandpaper or a mortal and pestle (or even a coffee grinder if you want, just don't use it for coffee anymore). You can mix the colors to get variations.

Mig,AK,Vallejo,all pretty equal,color and availability is your factor,they do go a long way b though.

All dry pigments are different oxides and carbon. They all come from a very few raw materials handlers to get dispensed into small bottles. Mig was genius in bringing them into this hobby by blending and naming them (he's no longer part of MIG if you choose to support his efforts).

Trust me, I have 80lb bags of them in my basement. I have a friend who deals with paint and ink companies and he gave me hundreds of pounds of the stuff free because they were tossing them anyway. The stuff is literally dirt cheap. The bottle you buy them in is much more expensive than the material.

For our hobby, you can get the same pigments from art supply in larger amounts, even Vallejo offers them too, or you can get them broken down into very small amounts with names like "Europeon Dust, Vietnam Earth", etc. (again, the genius of Mig).

I don't mean that to disparage any product, just telling you that so you don't get hung up on a brand. They're are all just dry pigment, choose them by what size and value you prefer. 

In terms of color, for armor you can concentrate of a light sand, darker mud, a few rust shades and a black for exhaust. You can blend them in a clear to make oil stains, etc. or in a PVA for caked on mud.