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Hey Dakka. The basic color scheme I'm using for my IG is:

Armor: Snakebite Leather
Fatigues: Medium grey (custom mix)

Now my question is this. Would it look awful if some troops wore fatigues of a different color than most of the regiment? For most troops the fatigues would stay the same color grey, but in order to spice up the appearance of the army I was planning on throwing in different colors of fatigues to sort of show what environments the regiment have fought through in the past.

Ive noticed that modern military forces (just to be clear I'm not basing my guard on any modern military) sometimes have mismatched bdu's. I.e. desert mixed with woodland. This can be due to shortages of one type of camo or just personal preference among other things.

I don't plan on anything too crazy, just the occasional olive drab or flat desert tan bdu underneath the standard snakebite leather armor. Thats about it, so thank you in advance for any posts and keep on gaming!

Pictures?

Sadly, I just sold my digital camera so pictures of my minis will be an issue.


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Until I can get pictures up you could use this link to get a rough idea of what it would look like:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051102090310/uk.games-workshop.com/imperialguard/flash-painter/1/

forgive my bad english, but what do you mean by fatigues? my dictionary wont give me a proper answer!

fatigues are the combat clothing worn by the military usually a long sleeve shirt or "top" and pants or "bottoms."

and guard, you are right on the money when you were talking about real military color combinations. stationed in iraq my unit had mixed desert fatigues with woodland battle-rattle (helmet, flak vests etc...). while other units had desert camoflauge everything. I remember being aggravated because some of these units never left the base while we were boots to the ground every day.

so while it was about shortage, it's also how the military (army in this case) phases things in and out. priority usually goes to combat units first, though in our case, they didnt have enough for our whole squadron. although we did end up with new kevlar helmets that weighed 4 pounds lighter (yesssss).

in terms of your dilemma, I wouldn't see anything wrong with what you want to do. perhaps the empire is broke as hell these days, although priority would go to shock troops or veterans, the more valuable units.

although, those same units would be most likely be on the front line or even behind the enemy's and would have a hard time getting resupplied. so, it could go either way...

I know you're not basing this army on anything realistic, but soldiering is a realistic concept. keep in mind that every soldier wants the advantage on the battlefield to include the best clothing, weapons, and equipment.

there are also a number of ways to show "a more seasoned soldier." for my current ig army, I'm going to dirty up the experienced soldiers as well as paint their imperial crests on their armor in a different color for a more subtle approach to differentiate, while keeping the overall theme consistant.

anyways gl, hope some of this rubbish helps...

I have a guard army with two different camo schemes in their midst. Even two different weapon schemes. Just add some fluff about the munitorum facility that supplies the unit changing colors, or they changed thier supply altogether.

I'm interested in an actual picture though, that army painter is rough at best.

"Mismatched" uniforms can also be intentional to fit their environment.

Take these Royal Marines operating in the arid mountians and scub deserts of Afghanistan:



From the waist down they blend with the dirt, from the waist up they blend with the bushes.

So combine with issuing issues, you could easily justify some mixing and matching of equipment, especially among the vetern squads.



For what it's worth, my guardsmen (and a few guardswomen... so I guess it would "guards members" were I being PC) wear Graveyard Earth armor, Codex Grey shirts, and Light desert pattern pants made from Bleached Bone with a Scorched Brown Patterning ( end result looks kinda like the DCU pattern). An odd combination, but one that creates a nice solid flexible "Arid and Urban" uniform that also looks decent on a model and doesn't overdo the camo-ness and hide all the nice little details.

Thanks for the input guys. Special thanks to DeadBabysoup (nice name ) for the thorough answer it really helped alot. And thanks to Ghostofman for the picture!


P.S. DeadBabysoup what branch were you in? The Army or USMC? As a matter of fact, I'm enlisting into the Marine Corps pretty soon.

Well, Guardslard, then you'll get tonnes of ideas!

I was about to say the same thing as DeadBabySoup, but, well, he said it first!

And the same thing for Ghostofman.

The input I have is on the vehicles. There you will have to do some serious thinking. Do you want one colour? Camo? If camo, what colours? It's rear that the vehicles have the same themes/colours as the individual soldier, mainly because of their size.
You can make up your mind in two ways: Going futuristic, and get some fluff behind it, or follow a rule that atleast we use in sweden: Large areas in pattern to blend in with the nature, or one colour for the shadows!

Example 1 pattern
http://www.soldf.com/images/s_cv9040_2.jpg

Example 2 full colour
http://www.soldf.com/images/s_cv9040c.jpg

Ther's basically thousands of examples on patterns, but this shows the basic idea atleast

Btw, good luck in the service Guardlard!

Thank you danesk for the suggestions! I hadn't given much thought to the vehicles yet but now that you mention it I think I'll use a solid color for my vehicles like in example 2. Oh and thanks for wishing me luck....I'm sure I will be needing it

If I may throw this out.....I see three kinds of Cadian armies.....Grey ones, Codex ones, and then the ones painted red and blue or yellow or silver.

I'd love to see some well painted green Cadians. Or darker browns, or camo-brown, like multicam or atacs or even British ww2 airborne. If you want a unique army, avoid the greys.

Its funny that you should mention that KGatch113. I just decided to go with brownish orange fatigues instead of grey ones! I also changed the armor from snakebite leather to matte black.

P.S. Do you find that black is overused in Cadian armies?

Guardlard: I think that black isn't used enough! I'm not using it because I can't get the right looks, but those that can paint great black should!

I'll post pictures of my first squad when I finish them danesk. Hopefully I will get the black right!

Having mixed camo's is fine, you will either have a unit mid-phase of equipment (heck, who knows, maybe the new draft/replacements have a different mark of equipment) or its an amalgam of different forces operating in concert, as pictured above.

However, I personally prefer painting my entire army in the exact same colors, because I don't like the mix-match look when I drop everything on the table, and I don't want to waste time hunting through everything to make sure all of squad A is together, and all of Squad B is together.

I appreciate, however, that it can get incredibly bloody tiresome of painting the same colors on the 50th guard model.

I am in the process of putting an IG infantry gun line army with 70+ models at 1250 points. I have acquired some Cadians, Catachans, Steel Legion and Valhallans so far for the list. The models will look a lot different and I am going to paint them based on squads. The one thing I'm going to try and do for continuity is keep the equipment all the same colour and asthetic. I'm also going to go for a similar colour on either the cloaks or the pants of the models to tie them all together. But the "background" for my army is that they are a hodge podge front line guard force that has been mashed together from the surviving remnants of several armies to create a cohesive force. If you base them similarily too that can help add to the cohesion.

I think what I could do is, give all of the frontline troopers (vet squads, heavy weapons, snipers,kasrkin) brown fatigues and all of the support troopers (artillery men, vehicle crew, conscripts) will get either grey or green fatigues. I do however think this might make the army look a little segregated. What do you guys think?

My army uses mismatched camos, my vets have very nice, red and black fatigues with some members wearing camo reminiscent of the modern germans. all other forces (which are air based) wear primarily sky blue and black fatigues that blend in better with the tundra type environments they are used to.

Covenant themed Tau is just aces!

Well, in most cases the ordinary infantry and vehicle crews IS segrated in term of equipment. For example, the crew in a APC have, in most cases, a flak jacket, their rifle and a little extra am.
The guys that rides along in the APC mostly believes that the guy with the most stuff when he dies win.
I for example have different uniforms between the infantry and the vehicle crews, and then all those extra units that isn't from the regiment (kasrkin, ratlings etc) have their own.

Black that is badly done is overdone.

Do a google search for Dave Taylor's Tanith, and those look great.

Then you get the guys in black and red, or black and blue, or black and silver. They aren't space marines, they are guard. Unless you are Mordians you aren't wearing bright colors on the battlefield.

I'm also in the boat about different colors.....I've got 4 different came schemes I like...Multocam, UCP, Marpat and AOR-1. I can do the UCP in either grey or green.....so actually 5 schemes. Oh and the old woodlands BDU.

I've just watched Tears of the Sun and Heartbreak ridge, so the old woodlands is appealing to me, especially since the Marines are wearing it again in Afghanistan.

This is the scheme that I am going to use for my frontline troops. Its a far cry from the original snakebite leather/grey combo but I think it will look pretty interesting on the table.

It might look a bit like my Pirates then:

MrMerlin I like the guy with the dual chainswords! Do you have an entire army of these guys?

One thing i would say, from experience, is that what looks good in real life doesn't always translate to models. I would recommend having a contrast between the fatigues and armour, and having a flat colour, no camo, for the armour. I tried doing woodland camo on the armour, and desert camo for the fatigues, and the consensus on here and in my local GW was that the scheme was too busy...

To answer your original question, you could do different fatigues to represent different environments, but, if you're doing it for variety, I would change the colour of the armour and keep the fatigues the same for coherence.

Just my 2 pence worth...

Guardlard01 wrote:MrMerlin I like the guy with the dual chainswords! Do you have an entire army of these guys?

not yet, but im working on it. If want to see more pics of Santa Saws, go go my gallery homepage! (yeah i know its shameles self advertiment )

So, I'd do one of two things. The first would be to do your entire army in mixed camo. This would probably look the best. The second would be to have mixed camo, but to have the colors VERY similar to each other, and to have the exact same type of camo stippling pattern, to show that they were manufactured in the same place.

Thanks for the input Jamumools! I might use crimson (reaper paint) for the armor and black, crimson and snakebite orange (custom mix) for the camo.

MrMerlin, Santa Saws? I really want to hear the story behind that! Oh and self advertisment is the only way to get attention around here


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Ailaros what do you mean by mixed camo?

Guardlard01 wrote:Thanks for the input Jamumools! I might use crimson (reaper paint) for the armor and black, crimson and snakebite orange (custom mix) for the camo.

MrMerlin, Santa Saws? I really want to hear the story behind that! Oh and self advertisment is the only way to get attention around here


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Ailaros what do you mean by mixed camo?

pmd you about the fluff