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Good afternoon ladies and gents,

New to the forum, and looking for a bit of advice if poss.

I have been working on some Dark Angels for about the last 14-15 years, on and off. I'm far from a prolific painter, and currently I have little time to game, but I do like whiling away the odd afternoon and evening painting some minis. I have a half decent stock of unpainted minis, and a fairly good stock of painted ones. I'm no expert or genius painter either; it's just something that keeps me contented!

As mentioned, I started painting these back at the turn of the century, and I still love the whole DA miniature set, especially since the Dark vengeance push brought some new models out. I'm considering a change of tack now however, as I now quite like the idea of creating my own successor chapter to the Dark Angels. I think the minis would look cooler, and if I eventually do manage to get back into gaming I think this would really ignite my passion for it more than a vanilla DA force.

I have a few models I can use as test miniatures to decide on a colour scheme, but I don't intend to stray too far from the Dark Angels scheme I have already followed i.e. dark green as my base colour - my intention would probably be to change the colour of the helmet, and probably elements of the shoulder pads & chest plate.

If I want to go back and change the colour scheme on my existing minis, what's the best way to go about this? Could I strip 15 year old paint from part of the models without damaging them, and if so how? Anyone tried this? is the "cleanest" way to completely re paint the models?

I have a swathe of follow up questions, but I'm guessing these will sit better in another forum so I think this will give me enough to consider for now. I'm currently "at work" but if I get a chance I will take a pic or two later to illustrate what I mean and what parts of the models I'd like to change.

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this has been asked elsewhere, I did do a search of articles etc before I posted!!

Cheers guys

Welcome to Dakka.

There are a lot of ways to strip paint from old minis. A good soak in Simple Green, Purple Power, or a host of other (very specific) cleaners will remove the paint but leave even plastic minis unharmed. Metal minis can use some more caustic things.

I’m not sure what products you can find local, but a search of the forums here for stripping mins should yield a good bit of info for you.

This stuff is amazing! http://www.amazon.com/4320P-Industrial-Strength-Cleaner-Degreaser/dp/B002HU5N4O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1441059386&sr=8-2&keywords=purple+power+cleaner&pebp=1441059320316&perid=00C18M6HE62WCNR67F8C

Its a degreaser so make sure you wear those yellow rubber gloves - it will prevent your hands from being degreased and drying out.

Thanks for the replies. I have three marines primed I'm going to try and use as test marines, maybe over the weekend, to try out a few colour schemes.

To follow up on my questions originally, I'm looking to probably change helmet, shoulder pad trim and chest plate, things like that. Using the products mentioned, is it best to just soak them in these and completely re-start? is it just a bit risky to try and remove certain parts of the paint on a 15mm mini, and more trouble than it's worth?

May well submit my test marines for comments once done to decide if I do want to morph my current collection into a new chapter :-)

Cheers guys!

If the paint isn't too thick, or gummy, you should be able to just paint the new shade over the top of the existing paint color without issue I would think?

Otherwise, yea, stripping the entire mini may be your best option.

There's another option, and that is: Keep your existing Dark Angels collection as an allied force and start painting new miniatures as a 'successor chapter' of the DA and use them as either DA or with the standard Space Marines codex. It's not unheard of for successor chapters to fight along side their parent chapter after all.

Just a suggestion. Take it easy for now,

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:
If the paint isn't too thick, or gummy, you should be able to just paint the new shade over the top of the existing paint color without issue I would think?

Otherwise, yea, stripping the entire mini may be your best option.

There's another option, and that is: Keep your existing Dark Angels collection as an allied force and start painting new miniatures as a 'successor chapter' of the DA and use them as either DA or with the standard Space Marines codex. It's not unheard of for successor chapters to fight along side their parent chapter after all.

Just a suggestion. Take it easy for now,

-Red__Thirst-

Indeed, thought about over painting and on some parts I should be fine

As you can see I went off piste at 15-16 with the scheme anyway and did a sunburst yellow pad trim (attached). I still like the look these days, but think I could make it even more interesting. As getting them battle ready is not currently a priority with my current situation I am thinking of doing a few more inventive things paint wise as I've done little in the way of highlights etc so maybe stripping and re-starting is the way forward. Gives me a project :-)

Cheers for the help all! :-)