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I ordered an airbrush setup, and I want to start a new army that I can learn to airbrush with.

The army should ideally be

-xenos (I want to introduce some variety into my meta, but I am flexible if the benefits outweigh the monotony)
-not Eldar (ditto above phrase)
-infantry that respond well to airbrushing (usually larger infantry)
-not mechanized (I just don't like painting many tanks that much)

I am really excited about the airbrush but I am completely stumped on this, please help!!

Tau..
Judging from the "official" paintschemes Tau will be. A good army to get some airbrushing practice with..

space marine with helmets.

Spay, then paint shoulder pads moving on.

OgreChubbs wrote:
space marine with helmets.

Not xenos.

Personally, from the following:
- xenos (not Eldar)
- large infantry
- not mechanised

I get:
- Tyranids

 Tjomball wrote:
Tau..
Judging from the "official" paintschemes Tau will be. A good army to get some airbrushing practice with..

Ooohhhh battlesuits-I had not thought of that. I don't want to be another riptide guy though. I guess I could do without one.

Tyranids are very tempting but I have never really been an alien guy.

I think Tau is the only choice from you're comments.
Either that or a SW / BA dreadnought army.

Necrons

Necrons or Space Marines.

No space marines, because they're not "xenos" (aliens)

You have a lot of choices:

Tau and Necron are obvious choices, lending themselves to airbrush. However, there are a lot of units in Dark Eldar that are very airbrush friendly, too. The Kabalites, for instance, have single-color armor, and all their vehicles take gradients really nicely. For instance, Venoms, Raiders, and Reavers, the new Voidraven bomber all take airbrush gradients (way) more easily than Space Marine counterparts like bikes, land raiders, gunships. Then again, are Dark Eldar... uh.. too... Eldar?

Obviously, in every army there will be non-airbrush friendly units -- especially all the commander types, like the Necron Overlord, the new Succubus, and Tau Ethereals.

I think Orks, Imperial Guard and Chaos would be poor choices, though Guard is definitely non-alien and Chaos is technically non-alien... I think?

By the way, I think the most Airbrush-friendly space marine chapter is the Grey Knights, with an intermediate skill level. The fact that they're all silver makes it a good fit, and all those force weapons lend themselves to object source lighting, which is just plain easier with an airbrush.

I don't really want to do an Imperial army. I really considered the grey knights, but so many people have them and I dislike the original colour scheme.

My thoughts are Necrons, but do a snow theme as I want to do a lighter army as all my previous armies have been dark. A lot of blue to white gradients, with ice blades and such, and they can be standing on tundra-esque bases. I could also toy with some blood in the snow stuff, as red would be really striking in the midst of all the white. I dislike the monolith but I love the idea of putting it on a floating base and adorning it with snow...just got to make sure it doesn't end up looking like a christmas tree with all the green glow everywhere....

I also want an army that can lend itself to assault occasionally...and I LOVE the lychguard/praetorian guys. This time round for 40k I am playing for fun and not to win haha.

Thoughts on this?

MaxZ wrote:
I don't really want to do an Imperial army. I really considered the grey knights, but so many people have them and I dislike the original colour scheme.

My thoughts are Necrons, but do a snow theme as I want to do a lighter army as all my previous armies have been dark. A lot of blue to white gradients, with ice blades and such, and they can be standing on tundra-esque bases. I could also toy with some blood in the snow stuff, as red would be really striking in the midst of all the white. I dislike the monolith but I love the idea of putting it on a floating base and adorning it with snow...just got to make sure it doesn't end up looking like a christmas tree with all the green glow everywhere....

I also want an army that can lend itself to assault occasionally...and I LOVE the lychguard/praetorian guys. This time round for 40k I am playing for fun and not to win haha.

Thoughts on this?

Sounds awesome, man Look forward to seeing the models, and playing armies you love instead of armies built just to win is well... a lot more fun. It's cool if you have some friends you can play non-optimized armies with, because always losing is also no fun

By the way, since you're just going to start airbrushing, my biggest tip is not to get discouraged. It's really, really different from using a brush. All though some tasks are unquestionably easier, many things that seem so simple on a brush will suddenly seem incredibly frustrating, and mistakes seem so... big, often. If you get a Paasche airbrush, there's a little learning guide with excellent exercises to help you master the airbrush, like painting consistent dots, lines, and that kind of thing.

Sprues are really good to practice things like gradients on. Make sure you have a tub of isopropyl so that if you don't like your work on real models, *bang* erase and restart

Good luck!

You've basically eliminated every possible army from the list, friend. You said no imperials, so that's half the range. You said no Eldar so that's two more armies. You said you're not keen on mechanical stuff, so that eliminates Tau who are essentially 40k's version of Gundam. You said larger infantry, so that eliminates Necron.

So I'm seeing... Orks and Tyranids, maybe? Orks have a lot of mechanized units you kind of need in order to run them viably, though, and their basic infantry which you'd need to run a ton of are not not particularly large, nor is an airbrush a good way to go about painting them anyway.

I see you mentioned maybe doing Necron, and you wanted to do a lighter scheme. May I suggest a certain scheme idea I got from a video game? APERTURE SCIENCE. If you've ever played Portal or Portal 2, you know what I'm talking about. Sterilized off-white, with corporate Orange logo. I think it would make an excellent Necron scheme, honestly, and if I ever did Necron it's what I'd do mostly so I could make a custom Tesseract Ark that was simply Glad0S.

Given the 'no mechanical' rule, I say Tyranids. Tyranids and Tau are the only ones with particularly larger infantry than anyone else. And you can do some fun things with Tyranids and airbrushes, cos of all the insect markings and stuff...