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.

No way the 11th Legion! They do look good though, very standout colour and would look good on the tabletop I should think.

I ran down to a shortlist of 5 Legions and then tried painting marines in colour schemes for each. I think I have settled, will post my results..

 Fugazi wrote:
Pacific, unless that’s a blur, you painted OSR on that tiny plasma gun? Great job and probably more patience than I can muster.

I’ll probably have to try a couple of different approaches on a few test marines and see what works best.

Nice pic and thanks for sharing.

Thanks mate but if it is it wasn't intentional, and probably caused by a shake of my hand!

Mediocre Hobbies (https://youtube.com/@MediocreHobbies?si=sDu73C6rpmHlBFyN) has multiple very interesting videos on painting infantry for LI, I definitely recommend a watch.
This one is on Imperial Fists : https://youtu.be/CLvqjjDoQSI?si=F5LG67Cr0LGTK_VD

I have done a bunch of test minis from my Legion 'shortlist' and think I've settled on either Night Lords or Death Guard. I do feel for the YouTube channels trying to do painting and feature videos, they are so hard to photograph!

Death Guard here, actually not that hard to do, I think yours looks both better and easier than mine.

what colours?

Thanks mate. It was pretty straightforward: Celestial Grey undercoat, Skeleton horde contrast wash, dry brush of Vallejo bone white. Shoulder green is Vallejo Cayman green. I might do one more highlight with a bit more white to clean it up. Also could try Wraithbone as a base instead of Celestial Grey, although I didn't want them to look creamy as a base, it's more of a stained, old Y-fronts look

mine are "Skeleton bone" from army painter as a base, a diluted GW sepia wash, ushabti bone then screaming skull drybrush and Caliban (?) green with loren forest highlights (on armour, infantry don't get that yet)

yours are more of a dried out bone colour and I like it

I have done a few more test minis for the Night Lords. Thinking of using the Legions Beakies for NL, and I have some other MK2/3 infantry to use as Death Guard (have those guys in ranks on square bases, as though there are just ranks of them marching forward firing their bolters)

I have settled on painting IF and SoH. Maybe a EC Formation for the Traitors, too.

Friend more or less decided for me. Pondering between ba and soh he went for green traitor SA. Ba contrast betters

IH & IW.

Iron of both kinds.

Planning 3 different sets of SM infantry for an Angels of Death* mixed force - Dark Angels (Terran Born in Black), Dark Angels (Caliban Born in Dark Green), and Blood Angels.

*ala the 2nd ed shared codex

Warhounds are to be Legio Atarus (Firebrands) whom I'm told fought with the Dark Angels.

Basically all the Astartes legions fought alongside all the titan legions at some point during the Great Crusade or Horus Heresy. The whole "what legion did my legion fight alongside" bit is mostly just down to whats actually directly referenced in the fluff and black library, but that only ever provides you a small snapshot of a very large and long conflict.

For painting, I'm thinking of keeping it real simple: Spraycan primer in the appropriate basecoat color (Mr Surfacer Red Oxide 1200 probably), followed by black bits, followed by metallics, reddish brown enamel wash to finish it off. I want to try enamels because they can be touched up with white spiritis if I accidentally go too heavy on the wash (might have to clear coat before going enamel just to be sure) and my experiences with Oil washes tell me they can be too random for "assembly line" style painting. This process should keep the majority of a models' surface painted with a just single coat of 1200 grit primer, so should look agreeable even under rigorous macro lens conditions with no visible paint caking regadless of zoom level. Well, at large enough zoom, the plastic details start to look too rounded and not plausibly "in scale" anyways..

The harder part will be getting the models prepped and cleaned. Removing mold lines from the infantry, cutting off the pegs and carving out excess undercut supports will take ages.. Took me about an hour to clean a single bolter Marine, so that's close to 5 hours of cleanup per stand.. I hope my speed will improve as I get more practise

For bases, I was already thinking of going with texture paints, and a pict on B&C convinced me, so it's going to be AK Diorama series "Neutral Texture for Rough Terrain" wih sprinklings of AK Splatter Effects "Stirred Earth" to break up the monotony. Just needs to mix a suitable brown/grey tone to the Neutral paste, maybe drybrush a bit after its dried to bring out the textures more

EDIT: I'm happy to report that the AK texture paste products I mentioned seem to be working like a charm! Results are looking exactly appropriate for the scale, I'm super pleased! Here's how a test base looks after applying the first layer of "Neutral Texture for Rough Terrain" mixed with some AK acrylic thinner and paint for color, just needs some more paste to hide the sidewalk lines completely on the second layer..



For most vehicles however, still figuring their colorscheme out..

chaos0xomega wrote:
Basically all the Astartes legions fought alongside all the titan legions at some point during the Great Crusade or Horus Heresy. The whole "what legion did my legion fight alongside" bit is mostly just down to whats actually directly referenced in the fluff and black library, but that only ever provides you a small snapshot of a very large and long conflict.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm not worried about too much other that whether they were loyalist aligned but I don't know much about Titan Legions so I "phoned a friend" and asked which one of a few color schemes I liked were loyalist. He told me the Firebrands were not only loyalist but had fluff with my Dark Angels - so that's the plan...

That's definitely the best way to do it - I just went for colours that complemented the white and blue of world eaters, so decided on Metalica/Iron Skulls, the most rocking Titan Legion A few people said I should have used Ember Wolves as those are mentioned directly in the background, but I didn't want to just use Warhounds and don't tell me the World Eaters didn't fight alongside lots of other Legios in the 250 years of thr Great Crusade!

I have done some more Night Lords and think I have settled on a fairly simple to create colour scheme (apart from the lightning bolts, which may cost me my eyes!) I'm doing the mk6 Legions infantry as Night Lords, as I think they always suit the beaky design, and have some printed MK2/3 infantry (which are a bit more bulky) that I will do as Death Guard.

I like the way Dark Angels look in artwork and in my mind's eye.... but in physical miniature form I just can't make them look "right" to me.

Here's an attempt at painting the black with trough-highlighting rather than edge highlighting in an attempt to get them to "read" as black but still have contrast, I dunno if I will like how it would look on a full army. Basically use a grey contrast paint over pure black, drybrush the black back on, then touch up the grey contrast on rivets and whatnot to bring back a bit of the contrast. The Rhino on the right was my first attempt, I think the ones on the middle/left came out a bit better. Any thoughts on improvements?

It is a bit difficult to photograph, the photos make the tanks look very black, there's a bit more gradation in reality.

It's taken me over 2 months to reply but those look great Skink ! Enough additional contrast and colour to make them stand out.

A quick question - has anyone done any Death Guard they want to show? I'm painting some for a friend who wants a cleaner/whiter appearance, rather than the 'heavily stained y-fronts' look of the official mini style, so wondering what recipes people are using.

Work in progress on some Spartan prints, Death Guard in "clean" mode



the green and the bone get highlighted to be brighter/lighter. advantage of this stage is they are not bad on the table even like this

 Pacific wrote:
It's taken me over 2 months to reply but those look great Skink ! Enough additional contrast and colour to make them stand out.

A quick question - has anyone done any Death Guard they want to show? I'm painting some for a friend who wants a cleaner/whiter appearance, rather than the 'heavily stained y-fronts' look of the official mini style, so wondering what recipes people are using.

Thanks! I haven’t painted any more Dark Angels because I ended up going back to my Tiny Tyranids.

As for the Death Guard, I haven’t tried them, but one idea I had was to prime white, wash with Seraphim Sepia (pretty lightly) drybrush white, then wash with Mortarion Grime. That might end up darker than you want though.

Haven’t tested it though, maybe it’d be horrible. I figure Mortarion Grime by itself wouldn’t have enough contrast at this scale though, hence the pre-wash and white drybrush. Maybe not seraphim sepia though.

Thanks a lot guys - those look great Leopard.

I'm trying to go for the cover of flight of the Eisenstein colours - more of a white and darker green (which I guess is more crusade-era) and before they started turning to chaos and stopped washing their undies. Might try a white base and very slight hint of a brown wash, then that darker almost bottle green and see how it turns out.

 Pacific wrote:
Thanks a lot guys - those look great Leopard.

I'm trying to go for the cover of flight of the Eisenstein colours - more of a white and darker green (which I guess is more crusade-era) and before they started turning to chaos and stopped washing their undies. Might try a white base and very slight hint of a brown wash, then that darker almost bottle green and see how it turns out.

that greens lighter and is much closer to how these look when done. Castalan green base, earthshade wash, castalan highlight, then loren forest as a layer, if you want more intensity a more saturated green or a green ink sees you right.

the scheme like that uses that palid witch chalk as a base colour, then earthshade (diluted) and highlight base and maybe uthulan grey after. pure matter of taste which you go with obviously, both look good, I went bone for my 28mm so followed for these - that choice came down to which colour primer spray I had at the time

avoid a white base, its way too much, however a just off white would work nicely, perhaps with thinned black wash over to get the "used but not dirty" look instead of brown (or a black/brown mix), then drybrushed the base colour and then keep white for final edge/spot highlights. would thin in this scale would be very simple to do. find the lightest grey spray primer you can with a matched brush on to finish. wash over, drybrush the base, light drybrush the white (for vehiles use layering not drybrushing for a better effect - suggest trying both). then go back for the green, for that look probably a mid green, Loren forst is good, camoshade wash perhaps or just highlight it if its only trim

 Pacific wrote:
Thanks a lot guys - those look great Leopard.

I'm trying to go for the cover of flight of the Eisenstein colours - more of a white and darker green (which I guess is more crusade-era) and before they started turning to chaos and stopped washing their undies. Might try a white base and very slight hint of a brown wash, then that darker almost bottle green and see how it turns out.

That's a pretty white-ish white. I'd just paint it how I paint other whites, which is to use apothecary white or soulblight grey mixed with "something else" over a white basecoat. The "something else" will be a wash or contrast that pushes it in the direction I want (e.g. seraphim sepia for a warm yellowish white, mortarion green for a more cool greenish tone, skeleton horde for something more creamy-bone coloured, agrax for a more neutral dirty tone). For my white scars I used 1:1:1 of Soulblight Grey : Mortarion Grime : Seraphim Sepia.

Instead of a pure white you could use something like Vallejo's white grey for a more subdued tone.

While I'm collecting pieces as I find them at reasonable prices, I'm not currently building an Astartes force.
But when I do? I think I'll make them Deathguard. I just like thier color scheme.

Oooh, oooh…the white-ish knight.

Ahem. Anyways.

Hopefully my latest acquisitions will pop my collection over the 3,000 point limit. Once painted (maybe a fortnight? Depends how long my remaining 28mm Contemptors take me) I can start seeking out games.

Go big playing 1st game eh? I started with 2k too impatient to wait more models

Think(if i didn't screw up math) i'm about 2900(more if i go msu max split) marines myself so still to go for 3k. Sa standing at 1700 with weird almost no tanks list.

Points add up and these latest releases ramp up points. Wonder if people go for more than 2k with these. Or size of armies will shrink notably.

Doc my advice would be don't try and start with 3k games. I would go 1.5/2 or even as low as 1k, it's a crunchy game and not a smooth/gliding set of rules - especially at first (longer if you are anything like me) having to look up the rules profiles. I actually found 1k was an evening's play in my first few games.

Unless you have put aside a weekend day or something but I think it will still be quite a slog.

started at 750 points here, accepted the game was going to be a bit "he who hits hardest first will win" but the aim was to have the game fast enough we could play a few in an evening while learning

worked out quite well

still think the key at 3k is going to be to set up so not everything is on the board turn one, just for crowd and traffic control reasons

Don't think 3k will in practice generally be that much bigger.

a) more titans and knight points can be spent. That reduces models needed
b) more fliers can be added without leaving ground forces smaller. Those are high pts/model
c) more and more expensive models are getting added. Spartans, jetbikes(12 tactical=83, 9 jetbikes=105).

Sure you will have crapload of stands at 3k if you spam basic marine infantry. Whatabout when you add in the more pricey stuff?

As is if you keep games at same size your army size will actually shrink now.

With the simple rules and high lethality as long as you don't spend 5 minutes for every decision it will fly by.