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Dazzle Camo
Came across this today, and it seems like a neat bit of old tech with dubious benefits that would fit right in with the 40k universe. Perhaps applied to flyers and tanks/skimmers? I can imagine painting my Dark Eldar up in similar schemes to confuse their enemies/targets.

Damn, if I ever get back into the game I know how I'm painting my Slaaneshi vehicles

Its not really dazzle camo, but my Japanese have really obnoxious bright yellow lines breaking up the silhouette of their tanks. Its actually hard to look at in real life and once every 2 or 3 games my opponent fails to see them (because of their camo) and it even won me the game once.



The pictures dont show it well, but it really works. Dazzle camo will work in the fact its hard to look at but would be (in my opinion) hard to pull off on a vehicle that doesnt have large flat areas.

Id say go for it, no harm in trying.

The photo of the boat in the OP's link is amazing. I feel like that's an Ork army waiting to happen! Perfect for them!

The really crazy thing is that ships were actually painted this way!
Well, to me at least.

I would like to see a battlewagon painted like that.

I think an IG tank army would look very nice like this.

I always thought that WW2 British dazzle camo looked pretty sharp. Basically the colours of sand, sky, and rock, to break up the shape of the vehicle.


In terms of sci-fi, the ships in the Homeworld series pull it off rather spectacularly.

This would look amazing on a Sons of Malice Army.

Man... I wonder if it would work with something other than white... like maybe silver? Black and silver for dark eldar skimmers? Or even dark red or purple and silver instead of black. Color me intrigued

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Dazzle Camo
Came across this today, and it seems like a neat bit of old tech with dubious benefits that would fit right in with the 40k universe. Perhaps applied to flyers and tanks/skimmers? I can imagine painting my Dark Eldar up in similar schemes to confuse their enemies/targets.

Yeah half my tau use it:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/596301.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/595861.page

Not sure if that's really dazzle camo- it seems more like a digital pattern to me. This is more like what I was talking about-

I painted every model in my Blood Axes warband in a different camouflage pattern, using 4 different color schemes. It looks quite amazing on the table with all the different colors and patterns.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
I would like to see a battlewagon painted like that.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/513032-battlewagon1.html?m=2


this one of mine is close, but I cant clam credit for the paint job, I purchased it from a great guy who was annoyed with the changes in the rules and decided to leave the game.

or this one of another battlewaggon of mine,

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/513033-battlewagon2.html?m=2

There was a dude who made an awesome PM blog of his 30k Sons of Horus models. Had the flyer, Thunderbolt I think, painted dazzle-y on the wings. I think if you have the skills with masking tape, that's definitely a cool scheme for Eldar, Dark Eldar, Slaaneshi things and maybe the odd Guards army. Tau might look awesome in Dazzle too, come to think of it. A neon-green/dark-grey or black would make for an awesome Hazmat squad.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Not sure if that's really dazzle camo- it seems more like a digital pattern to me. This is more like what I was talking about-

I want to do this for my DE ships (vehicles)


Any suggestions?





Automatically Appended Next Post:
im thinkin an airbrush and a gakload of masking strips

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Not sure if that's really dazzle camo- it seems more like a digital pattern to me. This is more like what I was talking about-

I want to do this for my DE ships (vehicles)


Any suggestions?





Automatically Appended Next Post:
im thinkin an airbrush and a gakload of masking strips

That's how I plan to do it. Tamiya makes tiny masking tape strips- as small as 6mm I know of.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Not sure if that's really dazzle camo- it seems more like a digital pattern to me. This is more like what I was talking about-

I want to do this for my DE ships (vehicles)


Any suggestions?





Automatically Appended Next Post:
im thinkin an airbrush and a gakload of masking strips

That's how I plan to do it. Tamiya makes tiny masking tape strips- as small as 6mm I know of.

Ate you doing DE as well? I'd love to have someone to swap ideas inspirations and techniques with if you want to keep in touch on the subject

My entire DE is unpainted, I just couldn't settle on a scheme

@SHUPPET
I'm basically in the same situation- most of my DE has languished unpainted for years. I basically have a Venom, a Razorwing, 6 Reavers, 10 Scourges, an Archon, and a Succubus painted out of about 2500+/-pts. Some of it is desire to paint(I'm a builder really), the other is I barely have the time to paint. Hoping I might can break out my airbrush this weekend and try something out. I'm hoping this will be a fairly quick scheme to out on so I can get my Raiders, Ravagers, and Venoms painted up in one or two weekends.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So yeah, I'm totally fine with swapping ideas and such.

The only problem with doing camo schemes like this, in my experience, is they actually sort of work. It can make it very hard to distinguish the silhouette and especially see any of the details of your models.

Did digital urban camo for a friend's sniper scouts and we literally sometimes lose the models or forget they're there.

Did some pretty good camo on a UCM army for dropzone commander and the outlines of weapons, turrets, and details get lost.

Drybrushing/highlighting edges and getting a dark wash in cracks will help. Regardless of the different colors you use, building up grey to white highlights on edges and using a black wash will bring back the outline of shapes without clashing with your camo. Having one neutral highlight and shade method across the whole model helps unify things too. Just something to think about before you go down this road.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The only problem with doing camo schemes like this, in my experience, is they actually sort of work. It can make it very hard to distinguish the silhouette and especially see any of the details of your models.

Did digital urban camo for a friend's sniper scouts and we literally sometimes lose the models or forget they're there.

Did some pretty good camo on a UCM army for dropzone commander and the outlines of weapons, turrets, and details get lost.

Drybrushing/highlighting edges and getting a dark wash in cracks will help. Regardless of the different colors you use, building up grey to white highlights on edges and using a black wash will bring back the outline of shapes without clashing with your camo. Having one neutral highlight and shade method across the whole model helps unify things too. Just something to think about before you go down this road.

Might just be me but I think that would actually be a very cool thing , although I doubt it will happen. Wouldn't mind something a bit quirky on the eyes however, especially fits with the DE theme of Nightshields and the like

I’ve had camo work, but more of the traditional kind getting lost in wooded terrain. I really need to make a brightly colored card that says “FIRE THE SNIPER SCOUTS"

I think the dazzle might work (if doing it’s job) as to make people mistake a raider for a ravager. Or whatever the DE flying gunboat/transport things are called. That or help people loose track about if there are two or three of them over on the flank.

Or it can jus look cool. There's that too.

Yeah, you lose out on a lot of the artistic value of models when you use very extreme camo like this, even if you paint the details well. But then if you do that, whats the point of using the camo?

I made a squad of scouts when I first started playing decades ago(ok 2) and I used medical gauze and inked the hell out of them in various shades of greens, browns and blacks. Then I used that and made cloaks for the marine scouts(I don't think the old ones had cloaks, or at least these didn't.) I then glued on flock and various woody things. I painted their skin in camo colors and even added strips of the gauze to the weapons. Beautiful ghili suits. No detail was visible whatsoever. I would forget to use them half the time because of the camo. I infiltrated a unit to a woods in the center of the board one game and both myself and my opponent forgot they were there, middle of the board, battle raged all around them. I eventually lost them when playing at a store and I forgot to pick them up out of the wooded terrain they were in.

Desert camos look really good on 28mm figs, BDU camo is ok. A lot of camo just looks like blobs. Its really hard to do a realistic camo pattern with everything but still have good detail when the model is more than a couple feet away.

Be interesting to see dazzle on DE ships.

Every dazzle was unique too, false bows and towers. Etc.
Whole aim is to make them unable to tell your speed and class of unit.

Ideal for dark eldar, flat fighters etc would be perfect for it.

The models are only like 48" away. I can clearly see them no matter what camouflage pattern they use