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Hi,

I recently picked up this game and I am painting an army as we speak. Although I enjoy the way the codex reads, the CSM book drives me a bit crazy when I start thinking about paint schemes. I really want to paint the heldrakes, tanks, unique non-marked characters, black, silver, gold, and some purple. However, this presents problems when we get into marks with the other characters, as the marks and their respective colors don't always match purple and/or I would just rather not mark up everything and have my table look like a bowl of fruity pebbles. That being said, if I forgo painting actual marks, or following the color schemes, I could see other people saying that my army is confusing if say a DP is black, silver, gold and purple and I am saying it is MoN.

My questions are these:

1. If I take a mark, of let's say Nurgle, do I have to actually physically mark the character (or paint it colors symbolizing nurgle)?

2. If I have two daemon princes, but I want to try out different combinations of marks as I am experimenting, can I paint them black, grey, and white, and use hints of purple for contrast? Or do I have stick to color schemes relating to the gods?

3. Is it acceptable to paint my characters the way I like, but put a magnet on the base that I can put different colors on to change the mark? (With this, I could just keep red, green, blue, and pink magnets, and stick one on the base. That way I could say my model is marked.)

Any help would be appreciated. Suggestions welcome. I am really trying to avoid painting an army the way I want and then finding out I can't use it because I didn't follow the rules correctly.

How you paint your army has no effect. Except for Orks. Ork vehicles painted red go faster. Just because. If you wanted to paint your army with pretty rainbows and use unicorns to represent the Mark of Khorne (because Khorne is (secretly) a brony) more power to you.

So, If I paint two units the same colors, but tell my opponent that they have different marks, that won't violate any rules?

No, but it is usually good to distinguish the units in some way to avoid confusion.

No, it doesn't matter. Paint them however you like.

One of the great things about chaos is that they are "chaotic". You have roving warbands made up of anything from a couple marines to a hundred or more that may shift allegiances between one god or another on a dime.

Loyalty is bought and sold easily, sometimes in the midst of battle. Each warband has their own color scheme and multiple warbands might be working together on the battlefield.

Some people like having a unified color scheme for their army. Others, like me, prefer each unit has its own flair. Sometimes that means completely different colors others it might just mean different trim.

The main thing is that when you start a battle that both you and your opponent are clear as to which mark a given unit has. You migh have a token next to them or say "pink guys are slaanesh" or unit XI is Khorne. It helps to have a written army list ( or one made with a program like army builder) which has this info written down