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.

So, I've read a lot of posts here on Dakka (and other forums too) debating the hue found on plasma weaponry. Now, using real-world examples (such as stars, lightning, etc.), it all depends on how hot the plasma is (Fun Fact: plasma is ,in short, ionized & overheated gas). Blues and purples would be the ideal colour of choice if you're painting plasma, but using reds, oranges, yellows, and white works perfectly fine too. It could also vary for which gas is thought to be used.

*UPDATE* Just went on the wiki, apparently hydrogen is used as an ammo source (which means purple should probably be used). And if that tube is actually the coils used to propel the plasma, then it should be painted a metallic colour washed with whichever hue you wish to use. Cheers!

there's the reality approach, and then there's the approach that paints the model to look cool.

The other thing to consider is the weapon charging, charged or off? what material are the coils made of and what are the respective energy states of their electrons? Will you still see color when the energy state is so high that most of the emitted light is UV, meaning the entire thing is, well, glowing white? Just paint it however you want. I've got yellows for my Iron warriors, blues for my loyalists. My thousand sons have purple anyhwere there is a plasma weapon, and i've used greens as well, since I find green the easiest to work with when doing OSL.

The official scheme is metal with no glow, or green if you want to show the plasma. 40K video game plasma is light blue.

40K doesn't seem to follow real world physics in most areas.

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
The official scheme is metal with no glow, or green if you want to show the plasma. 40K video game plasma is light blue.

40K doesn't seem to follow real world physics in most areas.

No Tibbers. No. Yellow has been experimented, and aparantly, the official color is now purple.
actually, proving you wrong shocked me, because I didn't notice this change. It's funny that i saw one that was teal, the rest are all purple....

HA! FOUND A GREEN ONE! Actually all of the UM Still have green plasma guns. By and large though, it looks like GW is trying to pretend at this realism thing for it's game.... Doing it pretty badly since it would have to be a darn bloody bright purple, and these are matte and dark.

I follow the rule of cool for plasma. The thing about plasma weapons is that the larger the plasma weapon gets, the more lame it looks when you just paint the coils silver and use a wash on them...once you get all the way up to super heavies like the baneblade variants and titans, a silver coil with a wash just doesn't cut it anymore for that epic feel.

I paint my plasma weapons green, with the upper corners getting progressively lighter until they're pretty much pure white

 poda_t wrote:
No Tibbers. No. Yellow has been experimented, and aparantly, the official color is now purple.
actually, proving you wrong shocked me, because I didn't notice this change. It's funny that i saw one that was teal, the rest are all purple....

Your monitor must have color adjustment issues because posting one outdated yellow plasma model and three current silver ones doesn't disprove my statement. Neither does the big rulebook and most SM/Imperial models with recent 'Eavy Metal paintjobs, which features green plasma.

I'm not here to argue what color I think plasma SHOULD be, merely stating observational facts.

I neglected that it might actually be a wash, but those are not straight silver either way. Which might explain why it looks so damn bad

I don't know how many times this has been explained. The little ribbed thing on the top of plasma weapons is a heat sink. It's a piece of metal that dissipates heat. Like one of these guys:



Like you see in your computer, or on the back of your window air conditioning unit. The correct color is, and always will be, metal colored.

The only "glow" plasma heat sinks should have would be the color of glowing metal (so, an orange color), but that would only ever happen a fraction of a moment before the plasma gun exploded and killed the gunner. Plasma heat sinks painted at the moment of catastrophic failure have always looked silly to me.

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't know how many times this has been explained. The little ribbed thing on the top of plasma weapons is a heat sink. It's a piece of metal that dissipates heat. Like one of these guys:



Like you see in your computer, or on the back of your window air conditioning unit. The correct color is, and always will be, metal colored.

The only "glow" plasma heat sinks should have would be the color of glowing metal (so, an orange color), but that would only ever happen a fraction of a moment before the plasma gun exploded and killed the gunner. Plasma heat sinks painted at the moment of catastrophic failure have always looked silly to me.

True, but then the models would look bland. I'll take any chance for bright colors I can get

So they're not coils?!

Rule of cool stands

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't know how many times this has been explained. The little ribbed thing on the top of plasma weapons is a heat sink. It's a piece of metal that dissipates heat.
[/snip]

The only "glow" plasma heat sinks should have would be the color of glowing metal (so, an orange color), but that would only ever happen a fraction of a moment before the plasma gun exploded and killed the gunner.

Not Necessarily a high temperature alloy like Stelite can maintain structural integrity even when glowing hot, and a sensible design would use a Heat Pipe or Thermoelectric cooling to keep the working parts at a much lower temperature than the radiator unit (the obvious consequence of this being a catastrophic failure on the unit when the cooling system breaks on a

Rule of cool says that they use some ultra(marine) high temperature super material that glows blue hot without melting





And of course the chaos weapon glows purple because.... A wizard did it?



I got nothing

Forget about realism, what matters is how it looks aesthetically. Pick a bright color that goes well with the rest of your color scheme.

I find the topic of the OP interesting, but not nearly enough to sway my own Rule of Cool.

Sure, the small ones usually get a basic color with a wash, but generally OSL colors is just way cooler. It's a game! That, and I'm a tad more into the painting/modelling part of this hobby than the gaming, so... yeah...

My first attempt at OSL is on my Slayer Helljack. Red armor plates, and blue glowing necrovents. Should technically be red/orange/yellow because glowing metal, but blue contrasts the red, making it look more bad-ass.

If I die, at least I die lookin' good.

 Million wrote:
So they're not coils?!

Rule of cool stands

They are indeed coils, not a heat sink as described by Ailaros. On the 40k wiki plasmagun page it states that "... the plasma is ejected via a linear magnetic accelerator", and on the more distinguished Lexicanum it is written that there are cooling vents "along the front of the gun". Hmmmmm?

 kingofcephalopods wrote:

 Million wrote:
So they're not coils?!

Rule of cool stands

They are indeed coils, not a heat sink as described by Ailaros. On the 40k wiki plasmagun page it states that "... the plasma is ejected via a linear magnetic accelerator", and on the more distinguished Lexicanum it is written that there are cooling vents "along the front of the gun". Hmmmmm?

It's both actually, otherwise the coil would be closed over, and cause oodles of hilarious accidents each time the weapon fired, or be so heavy as to be a vehicle mounted weapon only.

^ But that would be the reason for us always having to roll for "gets hot!"!

The containment/acceleration coils fail and superheated gasses come flying out between the coils and venting ports instead of a controlled burst which would void the excess heat through the front of the weapon.