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Hey Folks,

I'm looking for some advice/opinions and please feel free to post pictures.

My Faction is Space Wolves, they're purple, naturally. And in deciding to paint them a non standard colour, I embarked upon a series of difficult decisions regarding colour schemes and themes. I want there to be degree of uniformity to tie all of my army together, but at the same time would like to differentiate the different squads and individual items that set them apart.

In terms of squad markings opposed to the normal colours I went for:
Bloodclaws - Blue and white
Grey Hunters - Red and Black
Wolf Guard - Yellow and Black
Long Fangs - Black and White

In doing this I decided to paint they're weapons and other wargear to match, ie red bolters for the grey hunters. I'm relatively happy, but I'm about to start painting my frost blades and power weapons and I'm getting all in a tis. By making the blood claw chainsaws blue, I'm afraid they won't standout if I paint blue frost blades. If I paint blue frost blades should I paint normal power weapons silver to differentiate, if I do that will power weapons just look like plain old CC weapons. Don't even get me started on the blue plasma gun/blue bolter issue.

What I'm asking people is what do you do to unify your army and what do you do set apart individual squads or weapons or general things that you want to highlight as being a bit different.

I've already painted a lot of yellow stuff for my WG and I like the contrast against purple so that's not going to change. Same goes for my grey hunters however other units and weapon schemes I may be open to changing if it suits the army better.

Oh and let me say this isn't just colour schemes, maybe there is a modelling theme a distinct type of conversion part or some other method you use. I'd love to hear how you do it.

It sounds like you have a bit too much going on with colors. I always tell people to limit their palette and stick to complememtary color schemes. There's a reason why you like the look of your WG: yellow and purple are complementary colors that lie directly across from each other on the color wheel. I use basic color theory in most of my painting, and what I find is that 90% of the time, the colors pick themselves when I get down to the little details. Lastly, don't be afraid to go with black. Things like weapons, pouches, and accesories don't need to stand out, and painting them a color might compete or clash with the overall composition.

Not sure if that's what you were looking for, but hopefully that helps.

This was something of a challenge with my current army, a Horus Heresy force made up from the survivors of the 3 Loyalist Legions present at the dropsite massacre, the Salamanders, Iron Hands and Raven Guard. The problem was making each Legion look distinct, but also tying the force together so it looks good on the tabletop. Thus far, I think it's gone rather well, and there's a few things that have helped there,

1) the style/tone is kept consistent across the force. Everything has heavy weathering, applied in the same manner regardless of base scheme, and that does a lot to provide a coherent element to the army. Likewise, elements shared across all 3 schemes are kept similar; all the metallics, eye lenses, pouches and holsters ect get done using the same methods. The overall look is also very dark, so the disparate colours don't clash as much as if they were more vibrant.

2) The basing is also kept the same. The bases are really nothing fancy, just black rock and mud, but having these separate schemes stand together in one squad is really sold by them all standing on the same ground,

Here's a couple of examples. Apologies for the blurred pics (my camera does not liking photographing more than one mini at a time! ) but you can at least see how those elements keep it cohesive. In this case it's within squads, but the same elements apply across the army.

Well I thought my challenge was though but fair play, you've made totally different armies look like one. I really like the sergeant guy as well. This is a really cool idea. Thanks for sharing the pic.

You've made me wonder about my elements, my lenses vary as do helmet colours. A rethink could be in order

Use green. Purple and green looks sweet and can be used for "energy" effects like plasma guns and power weapons.

All the better if you throw in some OSL. Don't go overboard though.

I've dabbled with OSL, my issue with that is, all my special weapon dudes are magnetised to allow me to swap between melta, plasma and flamer. It might leave the mini looking weird if his chest is glowing for no reason whilst toting a meltagun.

Unless they're all Tony Stark