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Hi guys, I was recently asked about how to do Battle damage so it is easy to complete and looks appealing, without being overdone.

Here's my argument regarding discretion when using battle damage on models.

Opinions, examples and arguments would be appreciated and an idea of whether this kind of "Informative" post was helpful in making decisions in painting. (It's not quite a tutorial, but I'm hoping it might help people make guidelines for themselves when they paint.)



An example piece from the argument in the link.

My thoughts on battle damage:

I think it must be relatively universal across the entire army. If a rhino looks worn, road weary & haggard then it seems likely that other armour in army will be in the same state. It's unlikely that some equipment would be maintained & not others.

It must be thought out & not just random. So aircraft having chips, scuffs & bare metal on leading edges makes sense. So too does weathering & damage to the undersides of aircraft like valks & stormravens because they're transport gunships & so it's not uncommon to see their underbellies exposed to enemy fire & ground terrain. Similarly, walkers having scuffs, wear & damage to lower legs makes perfect sense, as does along the lower tracks of IG tanks which are almost on the ground.

Finally, the damage type needs to be obvious. It's unlikely to have a few randomly spaced bullet holes/dings in the armor plates, more likely there'll be a pattern as the weapon is swept across, up, or down the vehicle being fired upon. Meanwhile, a missile that explodes against an armor plate will do a severe amount of damage, unless it explodes as it glances off or prior to impact, in which case it will mar the paint & embed shrapnel over the area.

I can agree with that.

In my army, certain models will have more damage than others - death company, for example will actually have no wear. This is because Death Company paint their armour black before they go into battle and thus, any wear is painted over. (So, a concious decision not to paint wear.) There's still battle damage on some models, but not wear as I've done on those blood angels.

The Angels themselves have a bit of tear that's common across all models. Some of the wear borders on universal (most of my MkIV armour will have some wear on the plating where it is removed when off duty.) and my Rhinos will be suitably scuffed for a unit that's jumping from mission to mission in a campaign, rather than one that's been fighting a war of attrition.