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Do you think that if an army is using a specific strategy or ruleset, it should be mandatory to paint them of that colour?

On one hand, rules with the army. On the other, repainting multiple armies each edition can be a bit tiring and unrewarding, especially for those who are very proud of their work. For example, a few guys at the LGS want to play alaitoc, given recent update, but they've only got saim-hann/biel tan. Similar deal with another guy, he's got catachans but runs them as cadians. IG guy loves his catachans (and rightly so, they're really well done) so he's very reluctant to swap em over.

I guess on a related note, what's everyone's thoughts on changing colour schemes? Eg. painting alaitoc white/blue instead of yellow/blue, or painting white/blue for white scars?

No, its never been a thing and never will.

If you are playing with different fleets, chapters etc... then just make sure they are noticeably different.

Its hard enough to get most player to put paint on the models and then to ask them to repaint? LOL or to tell a person that work hard and long that it doesnt count b.c its the wrong color.

People that say "re-paint your army" or "its the wrong colors" are paintcist!

DOWN WITH PAINTCIST!


Edit: Its equal to Re-painting your house for different holidays, how silly would it be if 1 neighbor did that and then questioned you when you didnt? its a large and costly job, and why would you? just throw a decoration on it and call it Halloween.

Paint your army the way you want. Play the rules you want for your army.

Otherwise be WYSIWYG for gear and if running multiple factions/chapters/regiments, then clearly define them for your opponent.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
No, its never been a thing and never will.

If you are playing with different fleets, chapters etc... then just make sure they are noticeably different.

Its hard enough to get most player to put paint on the models and then to ask them to repaint? LOL or to tell a person that work hard and long that it doesnt count b.c its the wrong color.

People that say "re-paint your army" or "its the wrong colors" are paintcist!

DOWN WITH PAINTCIST!


Edit: Its equal to Re-painting your house for different holidays, how silly would it be if 1 neighbor did that and then questioned you when you didnt? its a large and costly job, and why would you? just throw a decoration on it and call it Halloween.

I pretty much equate it to the folks who follow strict army-building choices depending on fluff (i.e. 'I must include X number of devastator squads and assault squads for every X tactical squads, then I may include...')

If you do that? Cool, I"ll be sure to bring the fun fluffy stuff as well and tailor to make sure we have a fun, narrative game, that sounds great. But if you whine about other people NOT doing the same thing with their toys, that makes you kind of "casual at all costs." Which, as long as there's no cheating, I think of as worse than "win at all costs." win at all costs is at least an accepted standard of competitiveness you know going in, when you play Casual at all Costs whatever is OP and Unfluffy generally has a very, VERY strong correlation with "whatever kills my dudes."

 Amishprn86 wrote:
No, its never been a thing and never will.

If you are playing with different fleets, chapters etc... then just make sure they are noticeably different.

Its hard enough to get most player to put paint on the models and then to ask them to repaint? LOL or to tell a person that work hard and long that it doesnt count b.c its the wrong color.

People that say "re-paint your army" or "its the wrong colors" are paintcist!

DOWN WITH PAINTCIST!


Edit: Its equal to Re-painting your house for different holidays, how silly would it be if 1 neighbor did that and then questioned you when you didnt? its a large and costly job, and why would you? just throw a decoration on it and call it Halloween.

Fair enough I like the house argument, it's pretty sensible.

Playing devil's advocate, if a newbie gets into it and desperately wants to be competitive, shouldn't they paint to fit? It's a fun way to give your army some connection between tabletop and fluff, and makes the decision of a chapter/craftworld/kabal/dynasty/etc more impactful.

Paintjobs does not officially affect you rules wise.

However I would be annoyed if someone played models with similar paint jobs as different subfactions. For example using only cadian models painted green, but half of them counts as valhallans, while the other half counts as cadians or whatever.
I think it's good sportsmanship to paint/buy units in a way that make it clear what squads represent which factions. If you know your list building is gonna confuse the opponent then maybe rethink if it's worth it, or if you can live with them all being for example cadians.
I would like to add that if you paint all squads the same, it would be nice if you adapt your game play to make it clear where units are separated. If units are clearly differed by paintjobs instead, they can be deployed/moved more liberally. So I think if you have intentions to make the game easy to grasp for your opponent, different paintjobs has to be handled in different ways.

Gitdakka wrote:
Paintjobs does not officially affect you rules wise.

However I would be annoyed if someone played models with similar paint jobs as different subfactions. For example using only cadian models painted green, but half of them counts as valhallans, while the other half counts as cadians or whatever.
I think it's good sportsmanship to paint/buy units in a way that make it clear what squads represent which factions. If you know your list building is gonna confuse the opponent then maybe rethink if it's worth it, or if you can live with them all being for example cadians.
I would like to add that if you paint all squads the same, it would be nice if you adapt your game play to make it clear where units are separated. If units are clearly differed by paintjobs instead, they can be deployed/moved more liberally. So I think if you have intentions to make the game easy to grasp for your opponent, different paintjobs has to be handled in different ways.

Yep. Clarity is really the only argument that has legs, and it definitely does. If you want to mix'n'match, please for the love of god include SOME kind of differentiator between the different subfactions.

If you're totally gameplay focused, a ring around the base does just fine for this.

Well I plan to build my army around Detachments for my CWE: My army has a unique paint scheme.

I will be using army specific detachments such as:

Sword Wind
Wild Host
Field Craft
Rune Sight (Ulthwe's ForeSight of the Damned)
and
Spirit Host ( Iyanden's Stoic Resistance)

As long as it's not confusing as to what is what then paint anyway you like.

 Puganaut wrote:
Do you think that if an army is using a specific strategy or ruleset, it should be mandatory to paint them of that colour?

No, it shouldn't. It isn't and anyone who says otherwise is a damn liar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
As long as it's not confusing as to what is what then paint anyway you like.

No, it literally does not matter. If you want to use Ultramarine rules for your Golden Daemon level painted Blood Angels army, you have every right to do so.

 admironheart wrote:
Well I plan to build my army around Detachments for my CWE: My army has a unique paint scheme.

I will be using army specific detachments such as:

Sword Wind
Wild Host
Field Craft
Rune Sight (Ulthwe's ForeSight of the Damned)
and
Spirit Host ( Iyanden's Stoic Resistance)

This is definitely something I'd be interested in seeing.

 Puganaut wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
No, its never been a thing and never will.

If you are playing with different fleets, chapters etc... then just make sure they are noticeably different.

Its hard enough to get most player to put paint on the models and then to ask them to repaint? LOL or to tell a person that work hard and long that it doesnt count b.c its the wrong color.

People that say "re-paint your army" or "its the wrong colors" are paintcist!

DOWN WITH PAINTCIST!


Edit: Its equal to Re-painting your house for different holidays, how silly would it be if 1 neighbor did that and then questioned you when you didnt? its a large and costly job, and why would you? just throw a decoration on it and call it Halloween.

Fair enough I like the house argument, it's pretty sensible.

Playing devil's advocate, if a newbie gets into it and desperately wants to be competitive, shouldn't they paint to fit? It's a fun way to give your army some connection between tabletop and fluff, and makes the decision of a chapter/craftworld/kabal/dynasty/etc more impactful.

No, not at all.... for new players you want them to enjoy everything about the hobby the instant something isnt what they like thats a step out the door. And right away your teaching a poor mindset, that you need to wysiwyg at all costs, every detail down to the paint. This will also kill conversion and creativity, they could be the next golden demon painter or crystal brush with amazing rainbow SM's who knows.

Gitdakka wrote:
Paintjobs does not officially affect you rules wise.

However I would be annoyed if someone played models with similar paint jobs as different subfactions. For example using only cadian models painted green, but half of them counts as valhallans, while the other half counts as cadians or whatever.
I think it's good sportsmanship to paint/buy units in a way that make it clear what squads represent which factions. If you know your list building is gonna confuse the opponent then maybe rethink if it's worth it, or if you can live with them all being for example cadians.
I would like to add that if you paint all squads the same, it would be nice if you adapt your game play to make it clear where units are separated. If units are clearly differed by paintjobs instead, they can be deployed/moved more liberally. So I think if you have intentions to make the game easy to grasp for your opponent, different paintjobs has to be handled in different ways.

to be fair this is why my Death Guard that can no longer be Death Guard (Raptors, Obliterators, Havocs, Chosen and a few characters and a tank) are getting redone with bone faceplates to be visually different from my Death Guard themselves.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Puganaut wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
No, its never been a thing and never will.

If you are playing with different fleets, chapters etc... then just make sure they are noticeably different.

Its hard enough to get most player to put paint on the models and then to ask them to repaint? LOL or to tell a person that work hard and long that it doesnt count b.c its the wrong color.

People that say "re-paint your army" or "its the wrong colors" are paintcist!

DOWN WITH PAINTCIST!


Edit: Its equal to Re-painting your house for different holidays, how silly would it be if 1 neighbor did that and then questioned you when you didnt? its a large and costly job, and why would you? just throw a decoration on it and call it Halloween.

Fair enough I like the house argument, it's pretty sensible.

Playing devil's advocate, if a newbie gets into it and desperately wants to be competitive, shouldn't they paint to fit? It's a fun way to give your army some connection between tabletop and fluff, and makes the decision of a chapter/craftworld/kabal/dynasty/etc more impactful.

No, not at all.... for new players you want them to enjoy everything about the hobby the instant something isnt what they like thats a step out the door. And right away your teaching a poor mindset, that you need to wysiwyg at all costs, every detail down to the paint. This will also kill conversion and creativity, they could be the next golden demon painter or crystal brush with amazing rainbow SM's who knows.

Yeah for sure. I'm far from a veteran, but a lot of the figureheads we have around are advocating a wide range of attitudes, thought I'd get dakka's opinion on it. Cheers for input, I'm pretty swayed.

In my view its always been that

1) Paint does not matter one bit. Outside of Space Marines no other faction has any formal paint schemes that are well known enough to the community to matter anyway. Ask the average game what Hive Fleet Leviathans scheme is and they won't have a clue. Marines have a huge amount of marketing behind them and even no one really cares if your Blood Angle are to scheme or bright purple.

2) Upgrades don't matter either. Grenades on marines; spikes on chaos; biomorphs on tyranids; scopes on guard rifles etc... - these are all upgrades in unit stat lines; but they all don't matter if they are modelled on a model or not. Most are so small that they'd not be seen during gameplay easily. Most are just pretties on the models and lets not forget that many models already have such features which are not upgrades (seals on marines).
Furthermore its vastly limiting to army building and restricts a player far too heavily in what point costs their units are. It's simply not economically nor hobby wise "fun" to have to build up armies with every possibility in viable numbers.


3) Main weapons count - most players can tell most key main weapons apart. They are a big feature of the model and should be represented as such. Magnets can also be used at a practical level on many models to allow swapping out of choices.

4) Base sizes - these matter but are a bit of a mess right now as GW has released new base sizes on some models and some (oval large) are not clearly shown which way is proper for the model to be mounted. Where possible these should be kept to current standards.

5) Units in groups - ideally you want to have different squads identifiable from each other. This is simply so that when you've two groups near each other there isn't confusion as to which model belongs to which - more of a point for swarm armies where the greater numbers causes more potential greater confusion. Can be easily done with a simple dot or mark on the base/model - heck if you want you can get fancy and give them different decal markings and such.

Absolutely not. Painting and gaming are and should be totally, completely seperate. That's why tournaments score them seperately.

Cheers for the input guys, looks like a pretty solid and reasonable consensus here.

I doubt any gaming group would ever enforce it as a rule.
You might get the very occasional player who has a serious issue about it; but chances are they'll often not be that fun to play against anyway (they'll be extreme examples of "That guy" and might even just use it as an excuse to play within a clique group only).

The only time I think anyone ever agreed to this was for the Ork's Red Paint upgrade.

And even then if you can manage to convince your opponent that some other color was "red", it was such a suitably Orky thing to do that people would allow it anyways.

This is a problem I've considered myself. My Ynnari/Exodites force is going to have a mostly bone white/purple/green colour scheme. I've already started with bone coloured Kabalites, and will likely paint my Wych cult dudes with a stronger green, was thinking of using the purple as the main colour for my Craftworld derived guys but because I'm customising from a lot of different sources (including using Scourge and Kabalite bodies for the Farseer and Autarch I've customised so far) I'm worried about confusion. I've yet to make enough to play a game with, but I'm a little worried at bamboozling any potential opponents because I've got a very DE looking dude using Craftworld rules, for example.

I totally get the versatility in running red power armour guys with the rules for blue power armour guys, or making a custom colour scheme which you can chop and change which list you build from though. I've already tried to think of ways I might build a squad of Aeldari that can fit the role of either a DE or a Craftworld unit, but feels a bit dodgy to me.

How you paint them has nothing to say aslong as you make it clearly understandable for your opponent what subfaction you are running before the models is placed on the table.
If you want pink ultramarines, or yellow and black cadians then you do that.

Running a flamer built dude and saying he has a plasma gun, THAT is alot worse.

This has very little to do with the paintjob, and more the person fielding it.

If you show up and say your Cadian Imperial Guard army is Valhallans...cool, whatever. If you show up and start changing each detachment (of your Cadian army) to respond to whatever your opponent puts on the table, you're just gaming the system and are probably playing with a different mindset (one I wouldn't enjoy playing against). If this same Cadian army then morphs again next week with each detachment being swapped to play against a different army --- at that point you're just a mathhammer/meta driven gamer, meaning we're not looking for the same type of game.

That kind of tinkering and constant switching, to me, is outside of the spirit of the game and isn't something I support. Personally I like an army, any army, to develop a story of some history throughout the course of many games. As such, it's preferable when an army is what it actually represents model-wise and some continuity adds to that immensely.

My CSM (Renegades, as they do not represent any other legion) are having a good run of games (I've lost almost all of them) against my buddy's Dark Angels. I would be off-put if he showed up and suddenly decide that his whole army (actual Dark Angel models w/ the proper paint schemes) were Raven Guard or something just so he could benefit from some trait for the game, etc.

edited by moderator

Nice attempt at a pathetic personal insult. Guess what - I don't play those people. Well stated, genius.

Look if you have a ulthwe painted army and are teling me you are using sain-samm. I will look at you sideways and wonder what you were smoking before coming into the store. But whatever let's play.

If you come in with that same ulthwe army and tell me you are running 3 different detachments, ulthwe, sain hann and alaitoc. I will be looking at you thinking, okay, i guess i just trust you? Because this is not a situation ready to be abused.

If you come in and it is reasonable/easy to identify your different detachments. Great tell me what you got. Let's get this game rolling.

Yeah, the most painful thing I would do to someone who says "I'm Alatoic" painted as Ulthwe or someone who says "I'm Tallarn" with Cadian decals on the sides of their tanks (or even "I'm Ultramarines" with BA models) is a gentle ribbing about army loyalty.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, the most painful thing I would do to someone who says "I'm Alatoic" painted as Ulthwe or someone who says "I'm Tallarn" with Cadian decals on the sides of their tanks (or even "I'm Ultramarines" with BA models) is a gentle ribbing about army loyalty.

While I honestly believe you when you say "gentle ribbing," try to keep in mind your opponent (who may not know you) may not always appreciate the comment. Make sure there's context to it or something. I brought my space marines to a local tournament, and their main armor color is green. I have a very nicely painted Guilliman in official Ultramarines colors to do him justice, but my other marines are a "successor chapter" of varying chapters, depending on the day. In the tournament, I decided to run them as Ultramarines to take the most advantage of the primarch, because tournament. When I told one of my opponents which chapter tactics I was using, he said "Oh, even though they look like Salamanders?" No context, no grin, nothing else, just that straightfaced question. I have no idea if he was kidding me or what. It pretty much instantly soured me a little on the guy because I couldn't figure it out.

Not saying that's how you would do it, just be aware if you give a good natured ribbing that there needs to be clear indication of it being good natured

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, the most painful thing I would do to someone who says "I'm Alatoic" painted as Ulthwe or someone who says "I'm Tallarn" with Cadian decals on the sides of their tanks (or even "I'm Ultramarines" with BA models) is a gentle ribbing about army loyalty.

Funny enough Guilliman, pre-heresy, was fond of "yoinking" stuff from other legions into his own and "improving" them, like the Fulmentarus Terminators VS the Tyrant Siege Terminators. So now that Guilliman is awake again (and with no one left to bitch into his ear about stealing their ideas) he might start "incorporating" other elements into the Ultras.

Definitely not, mainly because what color your army is has never had any bearing on the rules.

I mean, I'm not going to repaint my entire ork collection each time I want to try a different clan trait.

Jacksmiles wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, the most painful thing I would do to someone who says "I'm Alatoic" painted as Ulthwe or someone who says "I'm Tallarn" with Cadian decals on the sides of their tanks (or even "I'm Ultramarines" with BA models) is a gentle ribbing about army loyalty.

While I honestly believe you when you say "gentle ribbing," try to keep in mind your opponent (who may not know you) may not always appreciate the comment. Make sure there's context to it or something. I brought my space marines to a local tournament, and their main armor color is green. I have a very nicely painted Guilliman in official Ultramarines colors to do him justice, but my other marines are a "successor chapter" of varying chapters, depending on the day. In the tournament, I decided to run them as Ultramarines to take the most advantage of the primarch, because tournament. When I told one of my opponents which chapter tactics I was using, he said "Oh, even though they look like Salamanders?" No context, no grin, nothing else, just that straightfaced question. I have no idea if he was kidding me or what. It pretty much instantly soured me a little on the guy because I couldn't figure it out.

Not saying that's how you would do it, just be aware if you give a good natured ribbing that there needs to be clear indication of it being good natured

To be fair I'm not sure your opponent's question was that uncalled for. It doesn't seem like a gentle ribbing, more like an honest question. It would be a perfect time to explain your fluff about how your successor chapter differs from the Ultramarines in whatever slight way, and why they might have chosen green as their heraldic colours.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, the most painful thing I would do to someone who says "I'm Alatoic" painted as Ulthwe or someone who says "I'm Tallarn" with Cadian decals on the sides of their tanks (or even "I'm Ultramarines" with BA models) is a gentle ribbing about army loyalty.

Funny enough Guilliman, pre-heresy, was fond of "yoinking" stuff from other legions into his own and "improving" them, like the Fulmentarus Terminators VS the Tyrant Siege Terminators. So now that Guilliman is awake again (and with no one left to bitch into his ear about stealing their ideas) he might start "incorporating" other elements into the Ultras.

This might be my gentle ribbing, haha! Have my commander say "You too, eh? Well, I'm not going to argue with the Lord Commander of the Imperium if he points at me and says I'm an Ultramarine!"