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So I have been playing for a decent amount of time and I still do not have a good color scheme for my first army, Tau. I have gone changed my mind about 10 times on what I would like to see my tau, from black and blue, red and black, white and blue, to red on red. I was wondering if anyone had some advice on a good easy to do color scheme for the tau to really unify and give some love to my first army.

Check out the gallery for Tau and see what works for other people. I'm using Red and Black as my main troop colours, with Red and Grey for my vehicles and battlesuits. I wanted a strong, bold colour scheme.

Perhaps see what colours DON'T appear in the gallery and see if you can do something that people haven't seen before. Maybe a gold and purple 'regal' look?

I think Tau are great for alternative colour schemes.

Camo Green, Devlan Mud, Chaos Black.

Picking colours is easy. Here's some general rules that often work:

I think Tau metal looks best as chaos black, or grey. In any case, not metallic. So you could do that. Then, you decide whether you want contrasting colours or two different tones. Given that tau fight in camo generally, I'd go with two different shades of the same colour. Then simply pick a colour, like red, blue, green, yellow...Choose two shades, one light, one dark, to give nice contrast.

For Tau, paint their top armour, the lighter colour and their under armour the darker colour. On Suits and Tanks mix it up a bit and use the dark colour for banding, stripes, details.

There are still two other colours you need. A contrasting spot colour and a non contrasting spot colour. For your contrasting spot colour I'd go to the other side of the colour wheel from you main colours and use that (obviously, give or take 1-2 segments each way. ( http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/images/color-wheel-300.gif ) For your non contrasting spot colour pick something unoffensive. Say, for a blue army you could use white. For the green army above bronzey/gold has been used. The tan games workshop tau use bright red/orange.

Anyway, that's just some things I made up that should help you get a good colour scheme

Thank you for the advice, and pictures. This gives me some good ideas =)

i think the two easiest colors to work with are natural colors. like brown and grey. if you are not opposed to painting camo i'd suggest dark grey or black armor with a grey camo fatigue. grey dark blue and black would be a good camo scheme.

Personally, if i had a Tau army I would make it very self-aware and just somepletely rip off be inspired by the Robotech colour schemes.

I am a very, and i mean, very beginner painter. I have been playing this game and building models for about 6 years now, and i still cant get myself to paint a model. I know the armies look so much better painted, but i have such high expectations and i always fail to deliver. This is why i have had a hard time getting started. I feel like if i can get my first army, my tau, done with a very easy to do basic color scheme that still looks good it will build up my confidence to do my harder more demanding color schemes, such as my Imperial Fists. So a camo color scheme is probably out of my skill range unless you have a very easy to follow tutorial i can learn from. That green, khaki, and black scheme looks good and easy. So i think i might borrow that, but i would prefer a camo scheme if there are easy tutorials out there.

If you're concerned about your painting skill, the only way to fix that is to practice! Honestly, if you ever want to feel better about yourself, just go onto eBay and check out some of their "specials."

Some advice...if you're looking for a simple, beginner paint scheme, go with a nice and light color for the armor plates/base color of the models (my army's main color is Fortress Gray). For a secondary color (use this on the cloth of the uniforms of the FW, Pathfinders, etc, and the non-armor plated portions of battlesuits), go with something darker (I chose Chaos Black). After you get the primary painting down, grab some black ink and ink in the lines on the armor. You can choose another color for some details/rank lines (I chose Blood Red) to add a little contrast that makes your Shas'ui FW, Shas'vre/'el/'o Battlesuits stand out. With my vehicles, I went with a Fortress Gray base coat, with a simple, airbrushed camoflage of random lines using Fortress Gray darkened with some Chaos Black. Each DF/HH/SR takes only about 30 minutes (not including dry time in-between coats) to complete to table standard. Should be pretty simple to do even with the most basic painting skills. Just remember to keep at it!