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Is it mean-spirited or unsportsmanlike to paint your gak units in loud, distracting paint schemes, while your workhorse units are painted incognito?

Nope, totally cool.
Tyranid can be a tough army to face as a new player due to everyone kinda looking the same.
Scouts painted in camouflage are often overlooked or left on the table between games.

Not at all. USed to see it in fantasy, where the rubbish heroes were really noticeable, and the army general / BSB would just blend in.

Camouflage is a viable tactic and doesn't just mean blending into the terrain. The game isn't just about who rolls dice better. Modeling to advantage is a different story.

smart, your not doing anything to the model as such making it taller or shrinking its height, just letting your oponant make a mistake and maybe miss those scouts.

of course cammo is a 2 way thing and urban on a desert board is never going to work

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Nope, totally cool.
Tyranid can be a tough army to face as a new player due to everyone kinda looking the same.
Scouts painted in camouflage are often overlooked or left on the table between games.

There have been times where I’ve wanted to make a big card to leave on the table:

REMEMBER TO SHOOT WITH THE SCOUTS.

I infiltrate my camo snipers into a woods somewhere, and totally forget about them.

Yeah, years ago I had made some scouts, camo'd them with cloaks and lichen and infiltrated them into woods in the center of the table. Both my opponent and I forgot about them the entire game until it was time to pack up and were pulling terrain off the table.

My first army, bezerkers in a lovely gore / warlock purple hue.

Play on a cool themed board, death world, with red coloured forest-style areas.

Unit talisman of burning blood'ed into one of those on my extreme flank (shortest distance to the enemy!) first turn, and both me and my opponent genuinely forgot about them until turn 4

THen, with some ludicrous dice ("6" for the extra move distance, 6" charge, 6" consolidation just taking me into another enemy, then another "6" extra move to get into a second combat, with another 6" consolidation at the end) they moved a total of 42" in two turns, to threaten his key unit all the way across the table. Almost as if they were pointin out how awesome they could have been all game

I paint all of my Alpha Legionnaires to look like Black Templars.

True story.

 jasper76 wrote:
Is it mean-spirited or unsportsmanlike to paint your gak units in loud, distracting paint schemes, while your workhorse units are painted incognito?

Given that it really wouldn't have any effect on the game, unless you forgot about them? The paint color doesn't really matter, since your opponent is going to be reminded of your 'work horse' units every turn when you do something with them.

Surely it's no different than talking about how tough/hard/killy that one unit is without actually making things up (like claiming it has rules it doesn't)? If the opponent buys it and lets your other units go to town on him it's really his own fault and he'll remember next time.

Or maybe he won't... All those Tau hate threads where players cried about how tough the Riptide was seemed to indicate some just have to go for the biggest target every time. Congratulations on spending three rounds pouring all fire into the Riptide so the Pathfinders and Marker Drones were free to buff it to insanity. Now tell us again why you had to try it over and over until you came to write a whine post on the forums.

Painting for advantage is definitely a new twist on me.

I forget to shoot with half my models anyways... I feel like dulling the paint would just hamper me more.

Overall I think it's a cool idea and translates into real world combat as well. No sense throwing flamboyant colors and drenching flags/spikes all over a general you want to keep safe.

What about painting your models in such a way to elicit an emotional response? Mismatched armor, stripes and polka-dots, neon, intentionally-awful paint job, etc. I could see it working as a kind of psychological warfare to confuse/anger/annoy certain players. (Note: I am not advocating this. )

Purposefully tricking your opponent is lame. Don't be lame. Be cool.

I'm pretty sure that even in the BRB, while you're given possible color schemes for your models, they encourage you to paint them the way you want to. They are your models after all.

...might have to make a DA Polkadot Squad

SG

 Cleatus wrote:
What about painting your models in such a way to elicit an emotional response? Mismatched armor, stripes and polka-dots, neon, intentionally-awful paint job, etc. I could see it working as a kind of psychological warfare to confuse/anger/annoy certain players. (Note: I am not advocating this. )

Sure, it's your money, so if you want to waste on models you make look like gak...

It wouldn't be mean-spirited to do that at all. I paint my assault marines a bright garish blue and everything else a muted blue to my opponent's gaze is drawn to them rather than my chapter master and posse in a razorback.

 Cleatus wrote:
What about painting your models in such a way to elicit an emotional response? Mismatched armor, stripes and polka-dots, neon, intentionally-awful paint job, etc. I could see it working as a kind of psychological warfare to confuse/anger/annoy certain players. (Note: I am not advocating this. )

Sounds Slaaneshi/Tzeentchian.

War Kitten wrote:
It wouldn't be mean-spirited to do that at all. I paint my assault marines a bright garish blue and everything else a muted blue to my opponent's gaze is drawn to them rather than my chapter master and posse in a razorback.

Okay? And? It's not like electric blue means grav canons are suddenly shooting at them instead of at the chapter master.

 Saber wrote:
Purposefully tricking your opponent is lame. Don't be lame. Be cool.

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that purposely tricking your opponent is as much a viable tactic as shooting at them or assaulting them. It's just another part of the game.

 Cleatus wrote:
could see it working as a kind of psychological warfare to confuse/anger/annoy certain players. (Note: I am not advocating this. )

Are you Secretly an Alpha Legionnaire?

Red goz fasta!

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Saber wrote:
Purposefully tricking your opponent is lame. Don't be lame. Be cool.

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that purposely tricking your opponent is as much a viable tactic as shooting at them or assaulting them. It's just another part of the game.

Depends on what you mean by 'trick.' Sometimes, it's tactics and gameplay. That's fun and mentally engaging. Sometimes, it's purposefully painting and modelling your miniatures in such a way as to add a new 'guess what my model does' phase to the game. That's annoying.

Your opponent is your friend. Don't annoy your friend. Give him a good time and some pretty models to look at. Maybe buy him a drink. Just don't poke him in the eye with your paint scheme.

Painting for advantage is an interesting concept I've never really considered.

I think most people would be fine with dulling down important units and glaring up unimportant units.

But here's an idea that I think some people might find more "TFG"-ish, how about you paint 8 of your bolters in muted colours, one randomly bright bolter, and then paint the plasma gun the same as the other bolters so that you opponent doesn't notice you have a plasma gun in the unit? Or painting a power sword in a way that makes it look the same as all the chainswords the rest of the unit is equipped with? Or painting Tyranid biomorphs so they aren't noticeable?

Would you consider that trying to subvert WYSIWYG or is that fair game as well?

I heard of this long ago, back with 2nd edition warhammer, when you could adjust stats of units for extra points.

One guy gave all his elite units rough paintjobs, and throwaway units decent paintjobs.

This to me is not acceptable if the paintwork or modeling is intended to deceive. Players should provide basic info on who the characters are and which unit is which, and an opponent should be prepare to repeat this info if necessary.

Skaven would be an army susceptible to this. If it is unclear which units are Stormvermin, slaves and clanrats respectively and the player doesnt clearly explain then he is cheating.

It's not really any different from parking my Seraphim behind a two story building for three turns waiting for the enemy to crowd into the narrow street on the other side of it, the jumping over now they're in neat hand flamer formation, so...

Most of my units are painted in either khaki or field grey. Then again these are my current armies colour schemes - British and German units in WW2.

What if someone paints their CSM in extremely decayed colours, and their Plague Marines crisp and clean?

I say paint your models how you want. If your opponet cannot determine target priority because your CM is dull green and your tacticals are bright yellow, that is on him. You just forked out a gak-load of money for that army, don't let someone tell you how to paint it.