Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I haven't settled on a color scheme for my mechanized army yet. It has a sort-of Soviet flavor to it so I initially planned to copy some Soviet armor schemes. The downside to that is these come in two forms: Flat green, flat tan, or ordinary woodland cammo. Not very exciting.

How did you decide on yours?

Straight woodland cammo seems overdone and a little boring, but going with something really striking - like bright colors - always looks cooler for other people's armies than it does for my own. Like, if someone where to bring red-colored tanks and troops it would be amazing, but I'm never satisfied with attempts to copy that.

I've seen some people select a scheme that represents what sort of world the army comes from. The planet the army originates from is supposed to be a hive world of some type, which I presume is normally devoid of plantlife, which seems like some kind of muddy gray-green-brown mix would probably represent well. Sort of examples:



Infantry bases would probably be a bit boring though - just mud and some stones, which lacks visual interest. Though, maybe some kind of plant that has learned to survive in toxic wastelands - some tufts might work well for that. I was considering dark grey body armor (I keep thinking an "oily metal" - need to figure out how to do that effect) and that Soviet-era gray-green-khaki for the cloth. Black boots, of course. And grey gas masks.

Then there's always the "This force is painted for the X theater / campaign", though then I'm back trying to figure out what!

How did you figure out what to paint yours? How can one make vehicles look visually interesting but still convey something more militant and less eye-catching?

(Am I even being coherent?)

Well, I started collecting IG at the time Eye of Terror came out. I didn't paint much, but when the Guard codex came out with the option to give your grunts carapace armour, I had an idea. I wanted to have a bunch of convicts that would loot the marines they killed to steal some of their armour. Yeah, that'd be cool, right? Average of a 5+ and a 3+ is 4+.

So they had orange jumpsuits, and white armour... cause what goes good with orange? Nothing. And then each squad was converted to have a chunk of Power Armour. Like, one guy with a helmet. One guy with an arm. One guy with the chest piece. And each squad was painted with a different Legion in mind. Khorne. Black Legion. Alpha Legion. You get the idea. And I loved it. I wasn't playing with anyone at the time, just letting the hobby juice flow, and I thought it was awesome.

And then I went out into public, with my fancy, heavily converted army. First guy looks at it, and says, "Are those supposed to be like rebels from Hoth?" And I looked at my minis, and realized I'd painted them just like the rebel pilots with the orange jumpsuits and the white "armour". I was devastated. I'd spent a crapload of time and effort, and not only did it not work out right, it looked like some kind of broken attempt at a Starwars fan-fic army.

Truthfully, I just don't have the talent to pick colours that look good together. So I tend to stick with "codex" colours, with a minor tweak. My Guard are Cadian clones, but many of the auxiliaries like the Astopath and Officer of the Fleet have unique, one-off uniform schemes. My Marines are in BA colours, with helmets painted to match role. Except my Vet Sarges have Gold Helmets, and my HQ's have White helmets. Minor deviation from Codex, but enough to make it mine. Veteran Sargeants in Veteran units have a White Stripe from front to back, on their helmets to denote elite-among-elite status.


My suggestion is that if you go with a real-world camo scheme, is to avoid using camo techniques to paint your minis. Camo disrupts the outline and shape of a figure. Mini painting artificially accentuates detail and shape, to make the minis easier to "see". Feel free to use the colour palate, but don't blend it together on the same "item". Make the Armour Green, and the cloth Grey, for example, and still use whatever highlight / shade methods you would normally. Guardsmen look great when you do them that way. Paint the leathers in black, and you're laughing.

If you plan to go that route, may I suggest buying an appropriate "Camoflauge" primer, such as...

http://www.krylon.ca/products/camouflage-paint-made-with-fusion-for-plastic-technology/

I find it faster to prime the cloth and paint the armour, but I didn't like the kakhi colour [too dark for what I wanted] so wound up using the Olive Green instead, and I paint the cloth on after washing the green with DARK green wash. Looks pretty good, and a quick drybrush of medium green for characters and such helps them to pop out.

For example, if you want to use grey for the cloth, I'd suggest a light grey primer, that you can wash over with a darker grey / black. No matter what you do with the rest of the model, if you use thin paint you'll have natural low-lights and high-lights from the washed-primer beneath.

Also, it's generally easier to paint a darker colour over a lighter colour. You'll get better coverage, and the lighter under colour will give natural highlights to edges. If you're serious about playing Guard, you're going to be painting 100 infantry or more for a 1500 point force, unless you're a dedicated tread head. Pick something you can produce quickly. Remember, quantity is better than Quality with Guard. You can spend extra time on Characters and special weapons, but the rest of your guys are going in the bin as fast as you can grab them. They don't need to be super detailed to look good.

I play Tallarn, my tanks are mono colored desert tan with a little weathering and some decals. I actually use an old Testors model master color called Afrika Mustard which is WW2 German.

Well, there are certain things you can do to make otherwise boring color schemes really pop out. For example, my Cadian army is a pretty standard green fatigues with brown armor, except for the shoulder pads, which I use to differentiate platoons, and the little ridges on the sides of the helmet, which I use to differentiate squads. So, the boring woodland scheme is accentuated by coherent flashes of red, blue, yellow, white, etc.

I used the same style with my Cadians painted in cityfight colors (a la the old 3rd edition Cityfight book), which either have a red or white should pad to make them pop. That way, they keep from blending in to the board while still looking like a military force.

As for tanks, you can do monochrome while still making it look good. Again this is done through flashes of color here and there. Look up Soviet tanks, for example: there are division symbols, national symbols, occasionally writing, squad markings, etc, which serve to break up the monotone color. It's still a "green" or a "grey" tank, but a yellow hazard symbol and a red flag gives the vehicle depth and purpose.

I decide what terrain the regiments are assigned to and decide on an approriate color scheme. Since my 40k stuff is all based on desert/scrubland terrain I'm going to go dark yellow with splotches of olive green. +

Krieg has a very cool art of a Guardsman in grey (possibly the most generic Krieg scheme, but I love it) so I went with that.

Since my Scion army is made out of men and women from a bunch of different regiments, I mix color schemes and seperate my guys according to their models.

As with all great things, the internet. I was looking around for a scheme and one just really popped out to me.

It was a Tale of Painters tutorial on a drab green Guardsman and I really liked how it looked. So I took it and used that! Easy to paint and looks pretty good.

I went the opposite to camo scheme, and used two colours that I think go well together, zandri dust / Russ grey.

After painting over 100 infantry models, my advice is keep it simple! At some point, you will get sick of it..

I went with something approximating old NATO woodland cam.

 greatbigtree wrote:

So they had orange jumpsuits, and white armour... cause what goes good with orange? Nothing.

It depends on the orange. From the real world, we expect to see black and green (from halloween and oranges, respectively). Grey often works well with orange as well, and blue and red can work as well.

My suggestion is that if you go with a real-world camo scheme, is to avoid using camo techniques to paint your minis. Camo disrupts the outline and shape of a figure.

There's a trick to it. You can use camo techniques on elements of the army to give it the camo feel without breaking up the outline too much. So for AM infantry, you paint the cloth a solid color, but the armor in camo, or vice versa. Just don't paint both of them the same camo scheme.

Also note that plenty of real world camo schemes would be barely noticeable on AM infantry figures and better represented by a solid coat of paint with some shading. A simple desert tan is good desert camo, after all.

The easiest way possible as it hate to paint many identical models: flat grey whit yellow shoulders.

Flat grey goes for moust backgrounds and yellow is a nice contrast that breaks up the boredom of the grey, bases will be simple brown mud.

I think if you did the soviet you can go with the khaki/tan/light brown and then paint all the armor a drab green. Look at flames of war schemes. If you want more pop and not the muted real life tones just take the colors up or down a shade. MaybI think black leather, with khaki, and then use calibran green with warpstone glow highliht. For blacks, use German Panzer grey, and then wash with nuln oil. You can use an Army painter soft tone or sepia wash on the khaki then hit it with a light drybrush of bone.

Just test out a few variations. You are basically looking at Green, Yellow, and Yellow orange analogous color scheme muted down. Try painting the the colors on plastic spoons first if you dont want to waste a mini. Paint the top of the spoon green, then do the edge highlight on the edges of the spoon. Paint the middle of the spoon khaki with the edges bone colored. Maybe put a wash on a part of the khaki to see how it tints it. Then paint your dark grey with the nuln wash on the bottom.

Look at these for Flames of War. Every nation has them.

 John Prins wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:

So they had orange jumpsuits, and white armour... cause what goes good with orange? Nothing.

It depends on the orange. From the real world, we expect to see black and green (from halloween and oranges, respectively). Grey often works well with orange as well, and blue and red can work as well.

My suggestion is that if you go with a real-world camo scheme, is to avoid using camo techniques to paint your minis. Camo disrupts the outline and shape of a figure.

There's a trick to it. You can use camo techniques on elements of the army to give it the camo feel without breaking up the outline too much. So for AM infantry, you paint the cloth a solid color, but the armor in camo, or vice versa. Just don't paint both of them the same camo scheme.

Also note that plenty of real world camo schemes would be barely noticeable on AM infantry figures and better represented by a solid coat of paint with some shading. A simple desert tan is good desert camo, after all.

In my own defence, I also want the Pumpkin Brigade. Red and orange in a flame motif, sure, but I also didn't want the burning legion. I wanted convicts. If I wanted people to gouge their eyes out, I could have used the contrasting blue, I suppose. I was trying to be funny, John.

Regarding the camo, what I meant was don't use something like modern, digital camo, as it does break up the outline of the mini and... you know what? I think that anyone not looking to knit-pick gets the point. Plus, like, 100 minis later, you'll be contemplating never painting again. So yes, keep it simple is decidedly good advice. Using camo colours is good, but camo-style patterns is not.

With respect to Mr Flinty, you can see how the details of the model become muddied with the camo pattern. Also, without being a jerk about it, we can see 3 models painted this way. Not 100, or 150, or 200 even. I'd be interested in how long 100 camo patterned dudes take to paint.

It doesn't take that long to do. You gain some time because you don't need to be that neat about it all. Kind of the point. If you spray the green Base coat then it's probably 2 or 3 minutes per model per colour before going back over for details. So if you want to do a horde army yes it will all add up but if you're just doing 30 or 40 guys it's entirely doable.

Bandwagon wrote:
After painting over 100 infantry models, my advice is keep it simple! At some point, you will get sick of it..

That was my philosophy when I chose my scheme as well. I painted Tyranids before my IG and found that after about 30 Gaunts I just got completely sick of the scheme I chose, it took about an hour per model to paint and I just got sick of it.

So for my IG I picked a scheme that only takes me about 20 minutes to paint, much more bearable.

Thanks; lot of hints on infantry for a thread I'd intended to be about vehicles, though.

Life has been getting in the way so I haven't so much as touched any models in more than a week, now, and not thought about this much either.

Anyone done a theme aimed at hive world / industrial wasteland? That is their "home theme" and might be interesting enough.

Bandwagon, that is one slick looking scheme!

Dynas, thanks for the scheme link - I was thinking the mech forces to be mostly later period Soviets (Cold War) rather than WW2-styled, though you did remind me I wanted to channel those colorful epaulets a bit - thought about doing that on the shoulder pads - a dark red line with yellow "pips" for rank.

My experience with choosing camo scheme was quite difficult. My first ida was to paint a sort-off woodland camo. It has tan base, green and grey patches finished with short, vertical, thin black stripes all over, much like Eastern German army had. It looked good from up-close, but it blended into brownish goo from afar. And it also took an eternity to paint.

As I slowly made up the lore, I chose winter planet instead of temperate, so I had to change the camo scheme as well. Then I found this . This image deided on the colors as it is tundra/taiga compatibile colors. Now the camo pattern itself. I always liked the Tiger Stripes from Vietnam so I tried it that way. White background and then many green, wavy horizontal stripes and grey armour. Later I added Kasrkin-style ornamentsmade of white trim and light grey center to break up the flat grey area. And I sticked to that and now I have over 100 Guardsmen painted that way, along with several vehicles.

In my opinion, the key to good-looking color scheme is to find a balance in contrast and colors. Flat green with combination with fla tan, like the Cadians have, isn't bad but rather boring. Paiting real camo schemes might again look good from up close, but not that good from afar as it will blend into nothingness (and thus serves it's purpose, right? )

White-green-grey pattern works good for me as there is a contrast between the dark grey (panzer grey) and white, and suplemented with the green colour and the ornaments.
Example on my counts-as Sly Marbo

Using the soviet soldier as an example, I'd kept the tan as the base and then added light and darker grey patches all over the fatigues. I'd keep the armor and helmet Russian green to conserve the overall style. I'd use different colours on the shoulder pads as squad/platoon marking and the belt with accessories would be leather-brown / dark brown. The gun itself would have wooden stock, and the frame painted with the same colour as the uniform (tan and maybe heavy weathering/chipplings as the gun is three times older as the solder is*) with gunmetal magazine and muzzle.

(*In Space Soviet Russia, the gun isn't made for you. You are made for the gun)

I have done splinter camo on my germans for FoW. Its 15mm though so it doesnt take long. As far as digi camo, i don't know how to do that, maybe stippling, or more likely stencils. That would be a pain to paint.

Always liked the Mordian fluff so did a basic copy job of that!

Truth be told, mine started with this rather crazy dazzle pattern on a 1/72 batch of pure heresy - Flanker wings and control surfaces on a Strike Eagle. I liked the way it turned out, and only mildly tweaked it onto my guard - no black, and I went with dark green on the patch borders instead of bright green. The pattern itself varies between roles and units, but remains with those colours and potentially an accent or tweak for some units.

That's sort of the effect I wanted on my Valkyrie, but I messed up and now I gotta repaint it all.

What, my dazzle pattern? Gotta get pics of that when you've got it settled in.