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Hi all,

New to the forum and the hobby. Hoping to pick the brains of some of you more experienced painters/hobbyists.

I've got a decent grasp of assembling and painting now having experimented with a few Tyranid Warriors and a variety of Necrons. I ended up (somewhat naively) buying the Necron paint set listed under "army essentials" on the GW website and after a month or two of painting Necrons I've gotten bored of them.

I'm thinking on trying Dark Eldar next because I have read that they can be a challenge to paint which is exactly what I'm after at the moment. I also hope that it will allow me to learn and practise a wider variety of techniques than the Necrons I've been working with so far. I'm considering buying the Dark Eldar paint set (minus the ones that also feature in the Necron set) from GW. I notice that the "standard" design for them features dark purple on a lot of the models however the Dark Eldar paint set from GW has no purple paints included with it which seems a tad strange. I will include a link to the set of paints I'm considering and I would be most grateful if any of you could advise me if you think a) It's a good purchase and b) what paints you think I'll need on top of/ instead of the GW recommended ones especially to cover the missing purple as I mentioned.

Here is a link to the set http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440230a&prodId=prod2070018a and thanks in advance for any advice you guys can offer.

The paint sets are literally the same price as buying individual pots. I would do some image searches for DE until you find a scheme you like then buy similar colors for them.

DE look great in black, green, purple or blue. So pick a scheme and buy those paints.

Mine are purple. I would recommend the slaanesh and gene stealer purple colors with gold and the elvish skin tones to start. Combined with the Necron set I'd think that would get you started

I use Reaper paints. About the same price as GW for 0.5 oz in a dropper top bottle vs 0.17 in a "watchallmystuffdryout" bottle.

They sell it in trios too, main shade plus one shade up and down for doing shadow and highlight for a slight discount. I have had good results. Just grab the core color wheel of colors, a couple for your main shade, a couple skin tones, white and black.

Vallejo Game Color is another good alternative to GW. Like Reaper, more paint for less money and packaged in a bottle that keeps the paint from drying out. They also match the old GW line.

I did my DE using Vallejo colors and Citadel foundation paints (which are no longer available) as such I can only recommend what the others have said, Since you get no price break for buying sets, just find a color scheme you like and go look at some cross reference charts and just get the colors you need.

Here is the one I use and its even on this site.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart

I would pick a paint scheme and then get the paints. I currently use Vellejo, GW, PP paints for my stuff. I have some Dark Eldar in my gallery that you can check out.