I use black priming almost exclusively, although I've been meaning to try white for a stain-painting experiment with 15mm ACW figs. The effect is simply that you never need to worry about getting total paint coverage in all the nooks, crannies, and inaccessible regions of the figures. Since the really hard to reach places are black anyway, any spot you happen to miss just looks like a shadow, which is fine. Any areas you can see really well get painted over, of course, that's what we do for fun after all!

If you've got figures in mail or skeletons, black priming becomes part of the final finish. A heavy drybrushing of metal or ivory picks up the highlights, and the black primer makes the centers of the rings of mail or the hollow parts of the skeleton drop back into the background.

I have not had problems with paints covering the black. The very lightest of colors (yellows and whites) require a second coat, but the rest go on just fine. Note that I'm using Partha/PollyS/Testors/Armory paints. From what I've seen of Citadel paints, they are extremely watery and likely to not work well at covering darker undercoats.

My caveat is that I haven't painted large figures with lots of large smooth areas in bright colors. I've painted bright colors (15mm Incas) and large smooth figures (Battletech, but in a deep red finish) but not both at once. At this extreme, coverage of those large black areas with a very light would probably be spottier. I use the car primer spray cans, it's really cheap, sticks well, and doesn't obscure detail even on my 15mm's!

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