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General answer to the posters in this thread:

When you put it like that, it seems reasonable enough.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pain4Pleasure 688114 wrote:It has nothing to do with power gamers. This comment holds no actual purpose what so ever other than to assume something from nothing

Your army is unpainted?

Traditio wrote:
General answer to the posters in this thread:

When you put it like that, it seems reasonable enough.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pain4Pleasure 688114 wrote:It has nothing to do with power gamers. This comment holds no actual purpose what so ever other than to assume something from nothing

Your army is unpainted?

Negative. My army is almost completely painted, only unpainted models being those I recently bought and am assembling

The 3 colors is so that you don't just prime the model then dip the helmet in a different color and call it a day. I do have one very sad story of someone being negatively affected by this rule though;

At my old store back in toronto my friend told me about a player in a tournament he went to. This guy had a wonderfully painted army (I think it was word bearers or something?) that had the armor painted to look like it was etched with runes or glowy words. But because the entire armor had to look like that to get the theme going, he technically only had 2 colors on the models (highlights didn't count as a different color from the basecoat). Thus, for the first day of the competition he was banned from playing.

The next day he showed up with his army again, now triple-dipped in bright primaries. And I literally mean he dipped them, as they looked like a badly made 3-flavoured lollipop. The TO let him play, since he does conform to the rules now, but got major flak from the other players, who all say that the dude should have been allowed to play on the first day since his army was clearly a labor of love (he had painted it all by himself). Unsurprisingly that TO didn't last much longer after that one.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
The 3 colors is so that you don't just prime the model then dip the helmet in a different color and call it a day. I do have one very sad story of someone being negatively affected by this rule though;

At my old store back in toronto my friend told me about a player in a tournament he went to. This guy had a wonderfully painted army (I think it was word bearers or something?) that had the armor painted to look like it was etched with runes or glowy words. But because the entire armor had to look like that to get the theme going, he technically only had 2 colors on the models (highlights didn't count as a different color from the basecoat). Thus, for the first day of the competition he was banned from playing.

The next day he showed up with his army again, now triple-dipped in bright primaries. And I literally mean he dipped them, as they looked like a badly made 3-flavoured lollipop. The TO let him play, since he does conform to the rules now, but got major flak from the other players, who all say that the dude should have been allowed to play on the first day since his army was clearly a labor of love (he had painted it all by himself). Unsurprisingly that TO didn't last much longer after that one.

The TO was technically correct. THE BEST KIND OF CORRECT!

Seriously, though, I'd have told that TO exactly where he could insert his 3-color requirement before I altered my army to fit his stupid tournament. The rule was obviously designed to discourage laziness, not to ban well-painted armies from the game.

Traditio wrote:


What if I were playing chaos demons.

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch? Anyone?

You make your bases pink? Your pink horrors are only pink? Pink teeth and claws? Pink tongue? No wash? They all have jewelry. Rings, necklace, etc. Those are pink, too?

How boring.

When I started back in late 3rd, three colors was the standard that all my friends said you had to be at. It's always just kinda been that way from what I can tell. Base color, Secondary Color, Trim.

But very few models do not give opportunity for at least three colors.

My depth Perception is completely shot, so I never try to paint eyes on regular models, but even on a Bloodletter, not including eyes or washes, you can get three colors. Body, Tongue, Sword.

You can get three just on the sword alone even. Blade, Hilt, Handle.

Now in my area, they are kinda relaxing on the three color minimum to let people ease into painting their armies, but three colors is super easy to hit on just about any model.

Traditio wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, this is a rather old rule. I remember in the first GT I was playing back in 2005, this rule has been applied.

Again, I fully understand the intent of the rule. You want to keep the power gaming TFGs out.

I fully agree with that.

3 seems like such an arbitrary number, though.

What if I were playing chaos demons.

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch? Anyone?

My pink horrors are far more than just pink. Pink paint, crimson wash, silver metal bands on the arms, darker color for the tongue (like purple), gold highlights on the silver bling, and then white teeth and yellow eyes. My pink horrors are 7 different colors.

I couldn't imaging painting any of my models with only 3 colors. That would be a challenge.

For my black templars: Total, counting primer 11.

Prime black.
Cover with a layer of Reaper Pure Black for an even color.

Shoulderpads:
Reaper Bone white layer.
RP Pure White layer.
RP Stone Grey edge highlight.
RP Weathered grey edge highlight.

Trimings:
RP Silver or RP Ancient Bronze
GW Nuln Oil Wash
Edge Highlight with silver or Ancient Bronze

Gun:
RP Silver on barrels and bolts
RP Ancient Bronze on a few bits/bobs.
Sometimes RP HD Red casing.

Purity Seals:
Ancient Bronze
RP HD Red
GW Devlin Mud wash.

Random Bits:
RP HD Red (I like to paint knee pads or some piece of the model red)
GW Devlin Mud
RP HD Red

I got away with this at LVO for my white scars
1: Primed white
2: Base coated grey
3: devlan mud in the recesses.
No opponent complained but one who asked why They where like that and I answered "School"

 kronk wrote:
I couldn't imaging painting any of my models with only 3 colors. That would be a challenge.

I had to laugh at myself the other day. I was painting some Necron warriors, and I had 16 different paint pots on my desk.

 EnTyme wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I couldn't imaging painting any of my models with only 3 colors. That would be a challenge.

I had to laugh at myself the other day. I was painting some Necron warriors, and I had 16 different paint pots on my desk.

Currently my grey primed marines are standing on my mini painting desk gathering dust - like the pots of paint waiting to be opened. I really should make an effort at even 1.5 colours minimum......

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Traditio wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, this is a rather old rule. I remember in the first GT I was playing back in 2005, this rule has been applied.

Again, I fully understand the intent of the rule. You want to keep the power gaming TFGs out.

I fully agree with that.

3 seems like such an arbitrary number, though.

What if I were playing chaos demons.

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch? Anyone?

My pink horrors are far more than just pink. Pink paint, crimson wash, silver metal bands on the arms, darker color for the tongue (like purple), gold highlights on the silver bling, and then white teeth and yellow eyes. My pink horrors are 7 different colors.

Well now I feel like I'm overdoing it with mine... Orange Base and two progressive orange layers through the airbrush, Sepia wash, a thin coat of red pearlescent. Five paints already, and that's just main body section. Another four paints for silver, another four for gold, three for claws and two more for teeth... feathers are another three, tongue/mouths two more, flames another three... Oh, and then about five more paints for all the various jewels.

I spend hours on just each Ork Boy. It's a bit masochistic but I'm in it for the hobby first and gaming second. I go for all the details even the ones not readily showing between the gun and chest. All my models are base painted and some details done before assembly. Once assembled it's just a few easy to reach detail work, wash, dry then seal.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I couldn't imaging painting any of my models with only 3 colors. That would be a challenge.

I had to laugh at myself the other day. I was painting some Necron warriors, and I had 16 different paint pots on my desk.

Currently my grey primed marines are standing on my mini painting desk gathering dust - like the pots of paint waiting to be opened. I really should make an effort at even 1.5 colours minimum......

lol! I meant that I used 16 different colors of paint on my Necron Warriors. Lots of shading and highlighting.

 kronk wrote:

Traditio wrote:


What if I were playing chaos demons.

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch? Anyone?

You make your bases pink? Your pink horrors are only pink? Pink teeth and claws? Pink tongue? No wash? They all have jewelry. Rings, necklace, etc. Those are pink, too?

How boring.

To be fair, when I was doing Daemons I did keep my Bloodletters mono-red - was going for a sort of living, reconstituted blood effect with them. I just loved the idea of congealed blood forming into a violent and angry daemon. To they were red, dipping into different tones around the horns and claws (dark, almost black-reds) and very slick looking.

But as I said before, shading and highlighting generally makes all the difference. And TOs CAN make exceptions - it's entirely at their discretion. Bad TOs are the ones too lazy to do so - generally you go, look at the armies and it it's pretty much painted you just accept it and move on. The 3-color minimum is basically to stop people undercoating and calling it a day.

Yeah, even real life monochrome uniforms aren't really monochrome.



Yeah black primer and flesh tone right?

But you'd need some grey shading to highlight details, you can see the clip is dark brown, there's some silver on the helmets and goggles etc.

Outside of like baby toys very few things in the world are monochrome.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
The 3 colors is so that you don't just prime the model then dip the helmet in a different color and call it a day. I do have one very sad story of someone being negatively affected by this rule though;

At my old store back in toronto my friend told me about a player in a tournament he went to. This guy had a wonderfully painted army (I think it was word bearers or something?) that had the armor painted to look like it was etched with runes or glowy words. But because the entire armor had to look like that to get the theme going, he technically only had 2 colors on the models (highlights didn't count as a different color from the basecoat). Thus, for the first day of the competition he was banned from playing.

The next day he showed up with his army again, now triple-dipped in bright primaries. And I literally mean he dipped them, as they looked like a badly made 3-flavoured lollipop. The TO let him play, since he does conform to the rules now, but got major flak from the other players, who all say that the dude should have been allowed to play on the first day since his army was clearly a labor of love (he had painted it all by himself). Unsurprisingly that TO didn't last much longer after that one.

If you don't count highlights as a separate colour than the 3 colour rule is stupid.

What if you painted your army with a night fighting theme? Everything is either shadow grey and maybe a spot colour of green. If could be a golden deamon level paint job but won't pass the 3 colour rule unless you include highlights and shades.

Tyranids are another army that you could legitimately make in a 2 colour scheme, so if you don't include shades and highlights you could have a decent looking army that doesn't pass a 3 colour rule.

Pfff... you've still got three distinct areas for color in both of those examples. As has been stated many times before up-thread.

Wha? My examples were specifically ones where there is only 2 colours if you don't count shades, highlights and blends.

3 Colours I always figured was about right (barely).
Prime.
Main colour paint body of model.
Paint base of model a different colour.
It pretty much would be the minimum you could do.
I found a matt black prime is brutal on the eyes to see the detail on the model from the 3' away (like special weapons etc.).

I too find painting my "Black" Templars funny: they have an awful lot of different colours on them.

I think tabletop is more of a spectacle and facing a grey / chrome legion is a bit of a letdown.
It is also hard to showcase a game and develop interest when pushing bare models around.
No comments of "people make fun of my painting!" if they do: they are not terribly nice people and are not worth listening to.
Any efforts to pretty-up the models should be commended.

Dudeface wrote:

 Gashrog wrote:
Thinking back I'm pretty certain it originated from space marines *including* the base:
Paint the armour whatever.
Paint the gun silver.
Paint the base green.

But an ultramarine for example would still have the helmet lenses, the aquila and some tubing. Back when I was a noob the basic marine was blue head to toe, silver gun + aquila, black gun casing/tubing and red lenses. Likewise with the whitescar comments, don't the use colours shoulder pad trim for squad or rank marings? It's hard to think of an army that can be completed in 3 colours, at a push maybe nids - carapace/claws/teeth one colour, the fleshy bits/tongue etc. another colour then the rest of the mini a 3rd but it would be boring/flat.

Some people either don't care or don't like painting and happily turn up to games with completely unpainted armies. If you say 'no unpainted miniatures' then all they have to do is give their unpainted ultramarines a coat of blue paint from a spray can and call it a day. The point of the "3 colour minimum" is to force the paint averse to actually pick up a brush in the first place.

I maintain that to the uninitiated, if you do not paint the miniatures it just looks like we are playing chess.
Mind-you I did make a LOTR chess set for my dad... I was happy when that first came out.

I posted this in a similar thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/686921.page#8590380

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:

HuskyWarhammer wrote:
Hoping for some perspective from the dakka forum here:

In a tournament setting, it seems like a 3-color painting scheme is a fairly common expectation. So, in that situation, if you walk in and see a player who has an entirely black primed stormsurge, riptides with no basing, crisis sutis straight off of the sprue, (not to pick on Tau, just has been my personal experience that they're the worst offenders) etc., is it wrong of me to think that those models should've been disallowed from the game, or otherwise addressed by judges? I'm certainly no expert painter, but do try fairly hard to get my army tabletop-ready.

Thoughts?

Believe it or not, I just found out this 3 color schemes thing from a conversation on Facebook in a 40K orks group. It started with someone asking if people liked models new or painted to TTQ (table top quality). I asked what TTQ meant, and when I was told what it meant, I posted a picture of an Ork nob with lots of color. Then, that same person who told me what TTQ meant said: "basically... 3 colors, a wash and a highlight."

I typed out: "3 colors? Why not more than 3 colors?"

Person who told me what TTQ stood for: "Most tournaments require 3 colors."

Me: Just three colors? A minimum of three colors?

Person who told me what TTQ stood for: Yes and yes.

Me: so, the minimum is three colors, but most people bring models with only three colors?

Person who told me what TTQ stood for: lol yes.

Me: That...that just ain't right.

Person who told me what TTQ stood for: Well it's for the people that just want to play... To each their own.

Me: okay. I'll keep that in mind.

Very surprised to find this out. Especially now, since I've been in the hobby since 2013.

This is very new to me, as I didn't find it out until about a week ago.

It's three because it is the minimum point at which an army looks "realistic" on the table top, i.e. skin, uniform, base. That's the theory anyway.

Some people really just want to play I suppose. Sooner the better. A chore even for some. I don't complain so long as some effort was made. I also avoid criticizing basic paint jobs because I find a unpainted grey army nasty so I don't want to discourage anyone from doing at least a basic job.
I'm at the opposite end of the wide spectrum of different collectors in 40k. I came in for the challenge of getting all the tiny minuscule details painted while preserving uniformity of the army....well as uniform as Orks get. By the time I'm done a new edition will probably be out and this edition will only be remembered as the one I read in order to decide my army.
3 colours only on these guys wouldn't do them justice. At the price I pat for models my aim is to have a finished product that validates the price. After the primer my Orks have 5 different greens for just the skin (base, 2 layers, wash and dry). Still leaves shirt, pants, weapons, armour, misc equip, bling and base.

Edit add: I find it wrong to exclude highlighting as counting as a colour terribly wrong. There is a huge difference between space marines in black with no highlights, black with green highlights, or black with blue highlights. Not to mention highlights take a more steady hand then slathering on a base colour.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Wha? My examples were specifically ones where there is only 2 colours if you don't count shades, highlights and blends.

A "night fight" army would still have some exposed sin or lenses or metallic areas on it.
Tyranids have carapace, skin, claws, eyes, tongues, etc...

Bth have been described up-thread.

Traditio wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
Because it's a fairly good way to say "no, not just primed."

Of course there are places where it's out of place, but not on an actual painted army.

A "1 colour army" can probably just be called "Black, Dark gray, Light gray."

If it's cool organisers will make concessions. If you've clearly just primed and then flicked another colour on, calling your army the Jackson Pollock brigade then.... well if you've done it well then I supposed it could be allowed, but you get my point.

If I played white scars, I'd probably use three colors:

White power armor. Black for main parts of bolters. Silver for metal bits.

But then I think;

What if they wielded sticks?

Then I'd only use 2.

White power armor.

Brown sticks.

The whole white scar marine would be white?

What about the black joints in the armor, the lenses on the helmet, the grill for the mouthpiece, the white scare symbols with the red and yellow lightning bolts?

I'm not saying you'd have to do all of those, but to not even put the white scar decals or freehand your own own would just be kind of sad since that alone could put you at 3 color minimum and if your not going to put the chapter icon on the minis why bother?

Even the "monochrome" model still has at least 3 distinct shades/ colors on it as well as metallic effects. Just because it's black and white doesn't mean it wouldn't count for 3 color minimum

Even necrons warriors or nids can easily get over 3 colors, I don't know how anyone could claim otherwise. The nid will have the carapace, skin, and then even if you just did the claws/bones/ and eyes one color that's still 3 minimum. With necrons you have the eyes, skeleton, and all the cables/weapon/ glowy bits to get you a 3rd.

But in reality, the rule solely exists to prevent laziness and get armies that actually have some color on the table. It's more for your opponent's sake than your own so that he can tell what weapons, gear, and units you have, because it can be difficult to tell with primed/unprimed models (especially black primer) and in a tournament you need to be able to tell what the other guy has.

I used to play with unpainted armies myself way back when I first started and I know that I'd never willingly go back to unpainted games now if I could help it. It's so much easier on the eyes and leads to a lot less of those "oh crap, I thought that was a TAC squad, not a devestator squad" moments.

I wonder what colour the OP would paint Trolls?

Just wondering.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Wha? My examples were specifically ones where there is only 2 colours if you don't count shades, highlights and blends.

A "night fight" army would still have some exposed sin or lenses or metallic areas on it.
Tyranids have carapace, skin, claws, eyes, tongues, etc...

Bth have been described up-thread.

"Night fight" should be limited to whatever colours your lighting is. When you shine a green light on a white surface, it looks green, when you shine a green light on a red surface, it looks black. I've seen at least one night fighting army (might have been some sort of Elf army or maybe an Eldar one) where everything was just darker greys except for a few OSL areas which were green. Looked better than most armies I see on the table top.

Tyranids can be painted all the colours of the rainbow, they can also be as little as 2 or even 1 colour. If you showed up with a Tyranid army that was painted green, the whole thing painstakingly highlighted and shaded, eyes picked out with slightly brighter highlights, fleshy areas and claws picked out with slightly darker shading, it could look fething awesome.... but only counts as 1 colour if you don't include highlights and shading. It would be stupid to say "or sorry, that's only 1 colour, you're going to have to randomly slop some extra colours on your carefully painted models for it to be legal".

You also have things like ghostly apparitions that can work as 1 or 2 colours (think LOTR army of the dead). I've seen a pretty impressive Bretonnian Green Knight that I'm pretty sure was only green with a couple of spots of metallic silver for armour plates (I think the official model has a couple of other colours on it as well, but this guy just used green and silver).

Short and skinny of it, highlights and shading should be counted as different colours and I think most logical people would do that.

Also, let's not forget the context here. This isn't a philosophical debate over how much difference in RGB values qualifies as "different colors", it's an attempt to create a practical standard for "have you finished your models". A model painted with fewer than three different paints is almost certainly not finished, while one that has shading and highlighting with three different shades of blue probably involved some effort and a deliberate choice to use a monochrome style.