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Trying to decide what colors to paint my vehicles for my Elysian's.

I was thinking of making them the same tan color as the guardsmen's fatigues. Thoughts?

Picture for reference to my paint scheme.

IG vehicles are normally camouflaged to suit their environs.

There are a number of different patterns you can find with a simple Google search

In terms of colour, I'd recommend the bone colour of your fatigues, with terracotta stipling, and maybe some Camel brown where the colours meet.

Good luck, and post results!

Here are my thoughts on vehicle camo:

You want your army to "pop" on the table top. You want it to look good. So you need models to stand out. So regardless of the colors you pick, you need to keep that in mind.

Your vehicles do not need to match your infantry, and I personally believe that a contrast actually looks good. It makes both infantry and vehicle stand out.

Historically, and oddly enough, you see this happen a lot. The Germans wore field grey and grey and luftwaffe grey unforms, with green and brown camo schemes in WW2. but their tanks were painted a brown-yellow with green and redbrown patterns. Americans wore light brown and then green, but their tanks were olive drab. The Israelis wear a brown uniform today, but their tanks are a brown-tan-grey color. The US currently wears a fieldgrey-tan-foliage green uniform, but the tanks are eith;er sand, or green, brown and black. If they change to the Multicam or adopt the Marine green-brown-black uniform, it would match up alot more with the tanks, but that seems to be an exception more than a rule.

Looking at your guys, I'd go with a light to mid grey color for vehicles.

Flyers are different, because their camo needs are different. They need to be light grey or blue or even white on the bottom, then the terrain they serve over on the top, or you could say meh and go with helo green ( a dark, almost black green).

The British actually had a gorgeous grey blue tan schem e for their early war desert tanks...do a google search for desert scorpion or caulder schemes.

I think going with tan on your tanks would make the army very bland.

That being said, I also think lighter colors work best on vehicles, so you can get contrasts with weathering, scratches, lights, lens etc and have them be noticeable.

Just my thoughts.

I think the bone/sand color of the fatigues as a base, then using the color of the armor or a different shade of brown for camo would work nicely. You could even throw in a third color such as a dark grey or dark brown as part of the camo scheme.

Depending on the theme you are going for, I highly recommend looking over some reference materials, specifically color photos of tanks or aircraft to draw inspiration for a camo scheme.

My IG tanks are going to be using luftwaffe colors. As General Hobbs mentioned, and as I am learning how to airbrush and paint vehicles myself, it can be a bit trickier to work with darker colors, but with a bit of highlighting before weathering I think you can combat that. I also agree with General Hobbs that your tanks should differ in color slightly from your troops. I am using one color to tie them together just so they have some coherency on the tabletop simply as a matter of preference.

Here are some shots of my camo and weathering just to give you an idea of what darker or earthier tones in combination with weathering can look like: