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Hi all!
I've begun to paint my fleet trying to give 'em Leviathan colours because i've never painted before and for leviathan there are a lot of photos / tutorials ecc.
Now i'm playing my army for a month with Leviathan rules but i think that maybe Kraken would fit better to my play...
As i play only with my friend i don't see any problem in saying to him "today i'm kraken, today i'm behemot, today i'm leviathan" just to try...
But do you think it would be a problem going to the shop to play with someone, with my leviathan painted army and tell them "they are <HIVE FLEET>" ?

I mean, if i give my army a complete custom color scheme i can think my own background and give it whatever adaption i will.
But in this case i'm using an "official" color scheme.

Well.. Honestly... i'm not so good in painting so i can say that they are not exactly the same as Leviathan if someone complains..

There is no official rule that states you need a certain color scheme to use the rules of a certain order/hive-fleet/faction.

Of course you may get some weird looks if for example you show up with Blood Angels Marines and declare them to be RavenWing.
But in case of Tyranids, frankly I do not believe that most players even know which color scheme is which swarm-fleet, unless they are Tyranid players themselves.

Just make sure that your opponent is not confused about what rules you're using and it is absolutely fine.

Hey since world is full of ultramarines that are used as white scars or dark angels or whatever happens to benefit models in question why not hive fleet.

I have seen same models used as: Black templar, space wolves, white scars, grey knights and chaos marines...

That's chapter traits for you. The second GW introduced these players dropped all pretense of having chapter X for fluff.

As it is you don't even need to have different colour scheme for models using different trait! Same models for kraken or leviathan. Completely GW approved way.

HMint wrote:
There is no official rule that states you need a certain color scheme to use the rules of a certain order/hive-fleet/faction.

Of course you may get some weird looks if for example you show up with Blood Angels Marines and declare them to be RavenWing.
But in case of Tyranids, frankly I do not believe that most players even know which color scheme is which swarm-fleet, unless they are Tyranid players themselves.

Thank you! Yeah, i think i'm overthinking this thing..
But it was only to be sure not to "get weird looks" the time i go to play with people i don't know.. As You said, i think it's not a problem (not for tyranids at least...)

And if you are worried about running into TFG that insists that official colour scheme can only use official rule figure tiny alteration that doesn't bother you that alters it. Small part of body has different colour. Marine kneepad in different colour. Hey presto instant custom fleet/chapter.,

tneva82 wrote:
Hey since world is full of ultramarines that are used as white scars or dark angels or whatever happens to benefit models in question why not hive fleet.

I have seen same models used as: Black templar, space wolves, white scars, grey knights and chaos marines...

That's chapter traits for you. The second GW introduced these players dropped all pretense of having chapter X for fluff.

As it is you don't even need to have different colour scheme for models using different trait! Same models for kraken or leviathan. Completely GW approved way.

Whilst I agree with most of this, it could be confusing and difficult to keep track of which models are using which rules if you have an army of mixed detachments using different Hive Fleet rules but they're all painted the same. There are ways around that of course, I've heard of people using coloured elastic bands around bases to denote squads, could be done the same for detachments.

True confusing so if possible certainly helpful for you but not all want to buy multiples of same models for changing traits and since GW push people to soup up traits unsurprising people go for cheap way rather than fall for GW's marketing ploy.

A few thoughts

1) Most people don't even know the official schemes for anything that isn't a marine chapter (even then they don't know them brilliantly). Most Tyranid players won't even know the official schemes.

2) There has NEVER been a rule that your paint scheme affects the rules you can use for the model. There is never a rule that you must use official schemes and, if anything, GW encourages you to paint as you want. You want white Blood Angles - great; Red Ultra Marines - great; etc..

3) The only thing that matters is that your opponent is clear on what you are using with what. So use whatever hive fleet you want at the time for the game no matter what you paint your tyranids as.

4) IF you want to use two or more different hive fleets in the same army there's a few things you can do to help things along - these tips also often help you identify different squads of units as well, so can be used even if you are using a single hive fleet; it can help resolve matters if you've got two units close together on the table (esp gaunt units where its easy to mistake which hormagaunt is in which group when they are mashed together)

a) Paint a small tab of colour on the back (carapace) of the model. A simple pattern, dot, different highlight shade etc... This basically lets you then paint all of one squad with that same little marking. That squad can then easily be told from any other so you can just note on your army list "gaunts with blue dots are X Hive fleet; Gaunts with white dots are Y Hive fleet etc..". If you vary the colour on squads then each different group you've got can have its own colour.

b) Paint the raised lip of the base in a colour. Eg paint the ring in red or blue or white then you can say all the white based gaunts are group 1 etc...


All those ideas are just allowing you to tell units apart from each other to aid the gameplay.




At a purely practical level it is uneconomical for any player to be 100% faithful to a single hive-fleet. It's basically a series of stat boosts and that's all it is. There is no sense (beyond your own fluffy desires) to stick to one hive fleet; indeed the rules are such that different fleets are designed to work best for different tactics.
The number of people who will insist and refuse games because "its not official scheme" are TINY and honestly chances are most who act like that won't even be fun to play against anyway so its no loss for you (and chances are most people will never actually meet anyone like that anyway)

As long as you are consistent and make it clear which units are part of which faction, it should be fine. It might help writing it in the army list, so you can keep track of it.
Of course, if they are all part of the same hive fleet, then it doesn't matter.

Also Tyranids are known to change their color scheme to adapt to certain worlds if the hive mind thinks such an adaptation is worth genetic modification on that particular world.

Nids do what they want.

Perfect, everything's clear... Thank you!

At the moment i've no problem in recognizing the place for various models because i've not so many units but i definitely go for differentiate them when i'll need.

Thanks!

I would find it confusing. I know players who agree to this.

Could you not tweak the leviathan sceme? Orange or yellow instead of red, both of them contrast great with purple.

Thing is outside of the massive marketing that GW had done, which includes years of posters and official schemes and also custom parts; most people don't know official schemes for anything outide of the Space Marines. Even then its the likes of Blood Angles, Ultra Marines, White Scars which people know. the rough colours off (red, blue, white).

Go to Tyranids and most people just don't know the schemes well enough that it would confuse them. Treat colour schemes like biomorphs and upgrades - nice to have, but not essential for "what you see is what you get" gaming. And honestly its not economically viable for most either.

The difference between hive fleets is a handful of custom rules and that's it. Gameplay wise you'd pick a hive fleet might like you would any upgrade - to suit your strategy for the army. So there's no sense in shackling yourself to a single paint scheme that then dictates what hive fleet you have and thus what bonuses and then army compositions you have.

This was discussed pretty heavily when the codex came out and people realized their custom hive fleets had color schemes remarkably close to the codex ones. Since Tyranids don't have any hive fleet specific pieces (like shoulderpads on marines) it's pretty standard to tell your opponent which hive fleet you are using before the match. It's simpler than asking marines players to memorize paint schemes and their exceptions.

At my local store, probably only 1/3 of armies are even painted. And of those, a good chunk are only painted whatever color the last ebay owner painted them.

The white primed squad and grey plastic one that have no arms are Catachan. The civil war guys painted with globs of pink paint are counts-as crusaders. The plastic army men that have been apparently microwaved are Militarum Tempestus.

So, if you're painting them, you've got a leg up on > 50% of my area :-\