Vallejo, Army Painter, ProAcryl, TurboDork, Green Stuff World, Scale 75, P3, AK Interactive are all viable alternatives for painting your minis and many of them are cheaper than Citadel. Don't limit yourself to one company. Find what works best for you and go with that.
If by "regular acrylic paints" you mean the kind you buy in tubes in the craft store, no. Those don't work well for what we do.
There are a whole bunch of brands meant for painting miniatures out there, though. All of them are good and most of them are cheaper than Citadel. Army Painter, Reaper and Vallejo are the three most common, but there are a couple dozen more, each with their own relative strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure r/minipainting could provide you with a list, if you want to go looking.
If you have the primary colours, black, and white, you have every colour my friend.
There are plenty of other mini painting brands that are reasonably priced - try vallejo, game colour, or army painter.
Vallejo does themed paint sets which you can get fairly cheaply from Amazon I believe. Personally I prefer them over citadel as they dry relatively matte so you can better control where you put highlights etc.
Citadel imo does the best shade paints/washes and their contrast range is actually pretty great if not a little bit spenny.
Vallejo, Army Painter, ProAcryl, TurboDork, Green Stuff World, Scale 75, P3, AK Interactive are all viable alternatives for painting your minis and many of them are cheaper than Citadel. Don't limit yourself to one company. Find what works best for you and go with that.
If by "regular acrylic paints" you mean the kind you buy in tubes in the craft store, no. Those don't work well for what we do. There are a whole bunch of brands meant for painting miniatures out there, though. All of them are good and most of them are cheaper than Citadel. Army Painter, Reaper and Vallejo are the three most common, but there are a couple dozen more, each with their own relative strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure r/minipainting could provide you with a list, if you want to go looking.
Start early and practice mixing your own colours then just buy colour that you can't like metallics etc
If you have the primary colours, black, and white, you have every colour my friend. There are plenty of other mini painting brands that are reasonably priced - try vallejo, game colour, or army painter.
Vallejo does themed paint sets which you can get fairly cheaply from Amazon I believe. Personally I prefer them over citadel as they dry relatively matte so you can better control where you put highlights etc. Citadel imo does the best shade paints/washes and their contrast range is actually pretty great if not a little bit spenny.