Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Been painting some of my old dark angels army recently, going with a custom colour scheme. I've painted a couple of marines and a terminator, but the terminator came out far better than the marines.
I'm happy with the terminator, but I don't think it fits with the colour scheme of the marines. How would you paint the marines to better match the terminator?

Bonus points if you can give me a colour scheme for the bikes/ speeders.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Forgot to mention, but the first marine was my initial colour scheme (before the terminator), and the second one was my attempt to change it.

Apologies for the poor photos, phones aren't great up close

The main thing that stands out to me is the colour of the eagle on their chests. I think they may look more cohesive if you had it the same colour for both the normal marines and the terminator.

Thanks for the feedback, however the reason I didn't initially have white wings on the chestplate was because half the armour is already white, and I thought it would look a little strange. I could change the torso colour to just green maybe?

I tried doing a quick test of the suggested colour scheme with the same general idea. Should I keep it as the current quartered tan/green style, or should I try a different design?

I think the tan colour looks grungy. You’ve got clean green, white, gold, and then this grungy colour. I don’t think it goes well.

I’m personally not a fan of the quartered look. It’s hard for me to explain, but I would normally want a scheme that pulls the model together, where quartering the colours feels like it’s pushing the model apart. Which makes no real sense as I read it... but that’s kind of the closest I can get to explaining my thoughts on it.

The Terminator kind of reminds me of a green version of Crimson Fists. You might want to look at their schemes, subbing in a dark green for the dark blue? I’d try that, see if you like it. To avoid a Christmas theme, I’d suggest sharing the red with a purple wash. Not how I would normally do it, but a cooler red would probably mesh better with the cooler dark green. I would probably avoid warm gold metallics, focusing more on steel / silver, though antique gold looks good with both green and red. I’d hold that for spot colour / small details though. Shading the gold with purple... again not my normal, would help to keep it cooler, and tie into the red better.

Thanks so much for all the feedback. I don't have time to do any painting today, but I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

The quartered scheme is also incredibly difficult to pull off well. Personally I prefer marine armour with fewer accenting colours as possible. If you really must have white on their armour, I'd do one or both shoulder pads, excluding the rims. White is also very difficult to pull off on large areas like armour panels, so keeping it to smaller areas works in your favour. Try working it up from a bone coloured base for a richer, cleaner, colour.

Thanks so much for all the feedback, I've finally decided to just paint them as regular old dark angels. It's a reliable and easy colour scheme, and I realised now that I prefer it to all of my previous attempts. I suppose my custom chapter is going to have to wait for now

For what it's worth, I can't seem to pull a custom chapter out of my paintbrush to save my life. I've tried a handful of times, and just found it wasn't worth the hassle.

That said, I usually tweak a given scheme to my tastes. I have traditional Cadians, but all of the special / heavy weapons are colour coded to each other. Melta all have Purple and Copper, Plasma is all Blue and Steel, Autocannons have a Golden Yellow muzzle. Makes identifying the weapons easy on the table.

My Blood Angels generally followed the Helmet Scheme, but I gave the Sergeants Gold helmets to stand out as Elites. All of my HQ have White helmets.

For my son's Kraken Nids, I use a neon-green for the eyes, tongues, that sort of thing.