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making a new space marine army, but can't find a decent shade of green. tried out nurgling green & ogryn camo, but nurgling is tooo ork-y, and ogryn is just a bit too puke coloured.

i'm looking for a paler green that's maybe even on the greyer side, that i can still shade with relative ease. any suggestions???

edit: i don't want to have to mix the paint each time, so it needs to be a pre-made one

While green is one of my least favourite colours - almost impossible to produce an attractive green in my eyes - you should look into historical colours.

Try Vallejo's range. Something like German Feldgrau from WW2 is a very attractive grey-green colour. With a green, I guess you have a few options:

1) Dark green...like the Dark Angels.
2) Emerald greens, more like Salamanders
3) Neon awful greens like...high visibility vests
4) Drabs...this is probably where grey-green would fall under. Canvas colours, drags, muddy or grey'ed greens.

How "green" do you want it? Have you tried simply googling "green space marines" and picking out something you'd like to emulate? If you can put up a picture or two people can probably match colours to it.

Yeah I tried that, closest one's I found to what I was looking for was the Raptors chapter. I do like the dark angels green (i used to field DA way back in the day), but it's too dark and I'm not into playing a codex chapter. And yeah, Salamanders is like opposite of what i'm looking for lol.

I combed walmart & games workshop, but couldn't find anything, so I ended up making a decent amount of what I wanted out of Ogryn Camo, Nergling Green, Payne's Grey and this little martha stewart green lol. It's in a tiny jar, I hope it keeps in there relatively long. Only problem with doing that is that it'll be hard to match in the future :/

That field gray and green gray are nice. always hard to tell until it's on the model though

edit:
do you think it's a terrible idea to mix my own colour? could give me a headache down the line, but for now i have the colour i want...

Definitely going to be a headache down the line unless you have a way to measure out what you want. If you can figure out how to measure it properly - you shouldn't have too many issues mixing it later.


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Have you considered looking at something like the Team Yankee sprays? They're akin to Army Painter but have several different drab-related greens. The Russian one is more ochre/pea soup...the German one a bit darker etc. Could be a very easy way to prime/base your guys if you find a matching colour.

Yeah, check out the Vallejo historicals (i.e. not Game Colour) for that kind of green. There's a ton of options.

Team Yankee is a good idea too. Maybe the Nato Green from your description.

Mixing your own base colour for a whole marine army is probably more headache than you want. It's tough to match the colour from batch to batch.

that chieftain reen looks good. thanks guys.

yeah, i've since thought better than to try to mix my own paint. the convenience of having it available to buy if i need more outweighs getting the colour as i exactly want it.

would you still prime it first if you used those yankee sprays?

I would, it doesn't say anything about doubling as a primer.. Probably black primer if it were me choosing.

You shouldn't have to - I'm pretty sure the Team Yankee sprays are very similar to Army Painter products (which are primers/base coat in one spray). Look for some reviews first.

"They are the same high quality paint Army Painter are well known for and come in a big 400ml can, perfect for basecoating whole units - or even your entire army
This is an aerosol can of Team Yankee American Green Spray."

sounds like it doubles as a primer

Basecoating and priming aren't the same thing. It's possible they are in this case, but in common painting parlance you prime and then basecoat. IDK . I've never used the Yankee stuff myself, so I'm just going by the wording.

Army Painter makes sprays which do both. They're a quick-drying coloured primer...basically, but you can spray it, paint details and be done if you so wish. It's how I do the majority of my minis. Now if you're doing super proper painting techniques with highlights and shading, etc...you'd probably do it the old fashioned way.

Well, yeah. That said, marines are a bit of an exception because thety're so very monochrome compared to a lot of other ranges, provided you're not using a multi-colour scheme. Even then, if it's all dark you could maybe still get away with the coloured basecoat. The problem is that a coloured basecoat can affect the look of the colour you paint on top unless you're doing a very thourough job with the secondary basecoat. If the marines in question here are mono-green, then I would fully support a green basecoat, especially for the vehicles, which we all know are a pain in the butt to paint from primer with just a brush.

Oh, I agree. Unless it's "the" base colour, I use black primer, or - on fantasy miniatures I'll use their darker leather brown (and then hand-prime the black portions as necessary). But for sci-fi based armoured folks, it's dead handy.

Yeah, considering I just stripped my entire army and will be repainting it, it's a lot to prime! If I could spray this as a primer that'd be amazing.
Are there any good sites that match colours across brands? Like, that would match the Yankee Green with something from Valejo, for instance?

Hmmm...not sure, particularly with sprays. There are a lot of colour match sites for small bottled acrylic paints, but I'm not too sure about matching a spray from one company.

One good way to get an idea is to simply google the exact colour - and you'll often find a lot of pictures of stuff painted that colour. Looks like Battlefront also has "War Paint" which is for WW2 vehicles, so even more colours available.

Plastic Soldier Company used to have base colour sprays available, but no longer. Companies like Army Painter actually make bottled paints to match their base coats, however they have a very limited palette.

Zero experience with Battlefront's paints (my dad has used some sprays) but they do have bottled paints which probably match/support their sprays:



I'd assume one of those colours would match the spray bottle?

Cheers, thanks. It looks like those match.

While I've got everyone's attention here, I've also got another modelling question. I've just striped an old half metal predator tank, which I'd put together years ago when I was fairly young. Now, the gun turret always sat slightly wonky on the top, and looking at it now I've noticed that the part that houses the twin-linked las doesn't sit flush on the table surface if i put it down. If I could get it to sit flat, then it would sit flat on top of the tank too.
Any way to bend it into shape you guys can think go that won't destroy it? I guess worst case scenario my predator turns into a rhino.. lol

Hmm...no clue, I'd have to see pictures.