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from the recent announcement

https://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/the-official-2018-2019-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament/

If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword. If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish.

Ok, so by transitional effects here, with them enforcing army color scheme rules, does this mean that if you DO have your own schemes, but multiple armies - say I give my black schemed Marines the White Scars keyword, do I need to have a separate paint scheme to represent my Ultramarines attachment - do you need to represent this by having two separate color schemes? Or can my Leviathan / Kronos mixed army all be the same scheme?




And how strict is something like this enforced? At what point is my Tau army a Vior'la Sept, and at what point is it just my orange and white paint scheme?



Last of all - how you guys feel about this rule?

 SHUPPET wrote:
Ok, so by transitional effects here, with them enforcing army color scheme rules, does this mean that if you DO have your own schemes, but multiple armies - say I give my black schemed Marines the White Scars keyword, do I need to have a separate paint scheme to represent my Ultramarines attachment - do you need to represent this by having two separate color schemes? Or can my Leviathan / Kronos mixed army all be the same scheme?

Next paragraph:

If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace. Contact us if you are unsure whether something is clearly distinguishable.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
And how strict is something like this enforced? At what point is my Tau army a Vior'la Sept, and at what point is it just my orange and white paint scheme?

I'd check with their Events Team (0115 900 4994 or whworldevents@gwplc.com)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Last of all - how you guys feel about this rule?

I'm not sure - my Iron Hands aren't painted black so that might be an issue. Did something happen to cause this rule?

On one hand, I like this as it encourages painted, thematic, WYSWYG armies. On the other hand, it punishes older players. For years there was no mechanical difference between paint schemes, especially in non-marine forces. Now there is. Got a few thousand points of XX painted red, while the blue rules are stronger and fit your army composition better? Tough. Even a fully fluffy army from one faction might be better served using another’s rules.

Not that it affects me, but I’m not a fan of it overall.

Interesting change. I like that it pushes players to invest in their own army colour scheme and fluff, because this makes them immune to the new enforcement. I dislike that it punishes players and restricts their options.

How do they handle personal schemes then? Say you have ainted your marines pink with green strips, can you have them count as a particular force like salamanders for example, or is it forbidden and yo must play them "vanilla" (if that exists)?

You also have to wonder if the next step is that if you don't have the proper paint scheme you can only be a successor chapter and therefore can't take specific characters. So no green colored Calgar.

The next question becomes what about shades of colors? If my army is blue but not exactly Ultramarine blue do I still have to play Ultras or can I then play blue blood angels?

Overall it's just going to open a can of worms and I believe they'll just not enforce the rule after a while.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
How do they handle personal schemes then? Say you have ainted your marines pink with green strips, can you have them count as a particular force like salamanders for example, or is it forbidden and yo must play them "vanilla" (if that exists)?

If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
You also have to wonder if the next step is that if you don't have the proper paint scheme you can only be a successor chapter and therefore can't take specific characters. So no green colored Calgar.

The next question becomes what about shades of colors? If my army is blue but not exactly Ultramarine blue do I still have to play Ultras or can I then play blue blood angels?

Overall it's just going to open a can of worms and I believe they'll just not enforce the rule after a while.

"I’m not playing Blood Angels. We’re the “Red Wingdrops”, a Raven Guard successor chapter."

Things can get silly pretty quick. Rules like this actually penalize people for painting the way they want. As long as everything is identifiable, I don’t care. The less barriers to painted forces the better. I’d rather see well painted BA being fielded as RG then primered/grey legions or bare 3 color minimum no-effort armies.

beast_gts wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Ok, so by transitional effects here, with them enforcing army color scheme rules, does this mean that if you DO have your own schemes, but multiple armies - say I give my black schemed Marines the White Scars keyword, do I need to have a separate paint scheme to represent my Ultramarines attachment - do you need to represent this by having two separate color schemes? Or can my Leviathan / Kronos mixed army all be the same scheme?

Next paragraph:

If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace. Contact us if you are unsure whether something is clearly distinguishable.

Thanks *facepalm* can't believe I missed that, well that's that that one solved. I'm gonna leave this all up here just to get discussion on it all anyway

Ech. Don't care. Glad they're reducing the number of ways people can be daft while encouraging people to come up with their own colour schemes.

Distinguishing between units using different rules is fair enough. "these blue space marines are Blood Angels but these blue space marines are Salamanders" could be confusing. That's fair enough.

What seems weird is enforcing people who've used a specific canon colour scheme to use the rules associated with it. For starters I have to question just how much, or how little variation there has to be before it's a unique colour scheme? Some of the official models have had varying shades or layouts of colours over the years. When I started all Blood Angels had black trims on their shoulder pads, aside from Sgts who had the red/black flipped, but now it seems the official BA don't use the black trims. The shades of red used have varied significantly from the early RT days to now as well, with at least 3 distinct reds.

What about unit markings? Will a Dark Angels player only be allowed to run Marine models as part of a Tactical squad if they've got the arrow icon on their right shoulder? Ultramarines not being able to use a normal marine as a 2nd Sgt if splitting a squad of 10 down to 5, because he doesn't have the right colour helmet?

It gets even muddier with xenos armies, because I'll be honest here, I'd not be able to pick out and name a lot of the official colours amongst a line up of a lot of original fan-made designs. Hell, Tau and Guard are known to swap their colours depending on the battlefield, so could you have 3 or 4 of the same army, using the same rules, but all painted in different, but still official, colours?

Also a bit weird that GW is highly protective of their IP, to the point where they're altering rules to restrict weapon options for units and such to only what's in their official boxes and eliminating any "need" for customising. Yet here they're actively encouraging painting all your armies in a made up, non-trademarked colour scheme, which could potentially be argued is owned by whomever comes up with it.

It still seems a little silly to me that I could paint an army up in some random colours and that I'd get to play it as any one of half a dozen rule sets whenever I choose, but I understand that most tournaments enforce that the lists stay the same between games, so that's ok in this context. Besides, there's nothing wrong with things being a little silly in a game of plastic soldiers. Punishing players who've stuck to your official, heavily promoted paintjobs, who've likely bought paints specifically from you to stick to those colours, who may, in many cases, have bought pricier models specifically to enhance the look of their army to specifically match those official looks...that seems more than a little silly.

This is a classic example of the fallacy the hardcore tournament lists are fresh out of the box plastic and only the causal players pair their armies well or care about the fluff. Anecdotally, this is 100% false.

Or, it’s just a money grab (now you have to buy 3 space marine armies!)

 greyknight12 wrote:
Or, it’s just a money grab (now you have to buy 3 space marine armies!)

Not even close. The rules don't say if you didn't follow an official color scheme you can't take that chapter. So you could have pink ultramarines or dark angels or whatever. The solution to the problem is for everyone to use custom color schemes and then the GT won't have anything to say but, "Where have all the official color schemes gone?"

I dislike this.

It penalises anyone who paints official schemes on their models and then wants to use a different chapter - remembering that within some books the different chapters/armies are really very slight variations. Daughters of Khaine its near impossible to tell one group from the other by painting alone.

Meanwhile anyone who paints in any old scheme can currently do whatever they want. So it punishes anyone who is inspired by and uses GW's official schemes but not those free painting.


Furthermore I challenge anyone to identify different armies based on paint schemes alone. I'm willing to bet most can do popular marines (And the shedload of marketing behind them) but for Xeno factions even within the factions most gamers don't know the different factions.



I also dislike it because GW has gone out of their way to add a lot of sub-factions within factions and to make these minor groups linked to rules; and now they are aiming to make it so that you've got to paint things for specific detachments. This is kind of nuts because different armies are going to want different detachments and I can't see the average gamer wanting to buy a dozen models of the same thing just to have them in different colours for a different in game bonus modifer.






I'm all for units being easy to tell apart on the table; but not this method of focusing the official schemes for set armies only.

If they'd made an even halfway decent attempt to balance the subfactions, this wouldn't be a problem.

zerosignal wrote:
If they'd made an even halfway decent attempt to balance the subfactions, this wouldn't be a problem.

People still jump around regardless.

I think they key part here is making sure people distinguish between different factions. Looking at a Nid army and trying to figure out which units belong to which fleet when they're all the same scheme is pretty exhausting. And when you're time limited and have to keep asking so you don't trip over yourself when they spring a "surprise" on you.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

zerosignal wrote:
If they'd made an even halfway decent attempt to balance the subfactions, this wouldn't be a problem.

People still jump around regardless.

I think they key part here is making sure people distinguish between different factions. Looking at a Nid army and trying to figure out which units belong to which fleet when they're all the same scheme is pretty exhausting. And when you're time limited and have to keep asking so you don't trip over yourself when they spring a "surprise" on you.

Thing is these rules don't really address that problem well.

If you paint your army in the official scheme then you've got to use the official scheme for your subfaction if you've got two or more detachments in the same army.

But

If you paint your army in a custom scheme you don't have to paint all the models in each detachment with a different scheme. Instead you only have to be able to tell which unit is in which group which can be done with base markers; markings, decals etc....




Ergo if you use the official scheme you are punished by being locked into that army choice regardless. But if you use a custom scheme you can freely choose whatever subfaction you want.It creates a situation whereby the rules encourage you to use a custom scheme; but that's counter productive to newer players since nearly all the GW painting info and advice is geared toward their official schemes.





Honestly its a rule that really should only apply in casual to space marine chapters and that isn't even limited to paint as GW has upgrade/custom models for most of the Space Marine chapters.

Asides which is a silly ruling because most players don't even know the official schemes outside of marines. As a tyranid player for years I can generally recognise most of the official schemes as an official scheme, but I can't for the life of me tell you which hive fleet they belong to. Meanwhile some armies (like daughters of khaine to pick a good example) have seriously marginal differences between the subfactions to the point where its honestly impossible to tell one from the other. (they are ALL red and black primary colours just in slightly different places and only shown on one model in the range - the only one that clearly stands out is the one with darker skin which, oddly, hasn't actually got its own subfaction rules anyway).





I get that GW wants to encourage things, but this is the wrong way about it for painting. Esp when painting has never before had any effect what so ever on the rules you can use for your army (with the exception of red-ones-go-fasta on orks years ago which was very tongue in cheek rule - and asides if you said it was undercoated red that was fine or that the paint tin said RED on it in orkish etc...)

The question I have is how it would apply to the Imperial Guard:

There are completely different models to be Valhallan, Vostroyan, Mordian, Tallarnian, etc, and the color scheme is independent of homeworld, since the Imperial Guard uses camouflage appropriate to the planet that the departmento munitorium thinks they're going to.

I everybody Cadian now, or does this basically only apply to Marines?

Wait, which Craftworld does that Shrine belong to?

(Aspect Warriors usually are not painted in Craftworld colors.)

In theory, if you're playing a couple units of UltraMarines with a couple units of Salamanders, I'd hope they *look* like they belong to different chapters. In practice, the rules make mixing subfactions so good, most people won't pass up the Trait that works for them. WSYWIG used to be a rule and, in theory, no need to look at the list: the models made it obvious which rules they were using. Traits and other rules have taken this from mostly-true-usually to no-chance-in-hell.

It's a tournament house rule. Nothing more. How strict it is is up to the TOs.

Bharring wrote:

In theory, if you're playing a couple units of UltraMarines with a couple units of Salamanders, I'd hope they *look* like they belong to different chapters. In practice, the rules make mixing subfactions so good, most people won't pass up the Trait that works for them. WSYWIG used to be a rule and, in theory, no need to look at the list: the models made it obvious which rules they were using. Traits and other rules have taken this from mostly-true-usually to no-chance-in-hell.

I'd disagree. Traits affect units yes, but they are akin to taking upgrades on units rather than changing the core function of a unit itself.

No one nor any event has ever required all upgrades on a unit to be faithfully modelled. Indeed its near impossible to actually achieve because many upgrades, such as imperial seals or medals, often appear as decoration on some units without that unit having any upgrade. To say nothing of the fact that many are tiny details easily missed when playing the game.

WYSIWYG has only ever applied to the model type and the weapons it is armed with. Upgrades are nice to model don't get me wrong, but they've never been required**

Traits for different subfactions are the same; they give a bonus to certain units and I fully support being able to tell which units are in which group on the table, but that doesn't mean each group has to have a unique paint scheme. Heck even with a single army with only one army faction present you'd still want markers or some such to tell which unit is with which group easily.


In my mind its no different to putting two units of genestealers down and saying one has extended carapace and the other doesn't. As long as you can say something like "The genestealers in this group with the red ring on the base have extended carapace and the ones with a blue ring don't" then its fine*.


*In practice you might have several colours within the same group as an efficent means to building and painting and marking models this way would be to mark each group up in minimum numbers. So you might have 10 blue, 10 red, 10 gold et c.... and then put groups together for larger broods.

**To say nothing of the fact requiring them to be so modelled would be very very hard for players to build armies with such a restriction. They'd either only build one or two army variations or they'd have to buy dozens of the same models over and over to represent each different configuration to let them chop and change upgrades for different points values.

NOTE - in Classic Warhammer many units didn't even have optional parts in the sprue/on the metal so alternate weapon choices or options weren't always even required WYSIWYG. It worked because that game used rank and file so it was easier to tell which rank and file block was which - you just checked your army list for what each had and played from there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's a tournament house rule. Nothing more. How strict it is is up to the TOs.

I was under the impression it was the official GW Tournament, rather than an event and house rule. Ergo this is a GW ruling for their event. Now yes they are perfectly free to do that, but how they set up a tournament is going to have a knock on effect on how the hobby is seen, played and interacted with including at other events.

Most TOs completely ignore GW’s tournament setup for the very few tournaments they actually run. GW also uses book missions with Maelstrom cards and almost no one does that, either.

It does make sense however.

If you get someone rocking up with a Dark Angels army professing they are Ultramarines so Bobby G can tag along with an allied detachment of Ryza Ad Mech painted in Mars colours it starts to get a bit daft. Casual games, no probs.

Tournaments, nah. My view has always been that tourneys should be wysiwyg and correct colour scheme - saves time. Probably not the most popular opinion but hey, to each their own.

Overread wrote:Meanwhile anyone who paints in any old scheme can currently do whatever they want. So it punishes anyone who is inspired by and uses GW's official schemes but not those free painting.

Overread wrote:

But

If you paint your army in a custom scheme you don't have to paint all the models in each detachment with a different scheme. Instead you only have to be able to tell which unit is in which group which can be done with base markers; markings, decals etc....




Ergo if you use the official scheme you are punished by being locked into that army choice regardless. But if you use a custom scheme you can freely choose whatever subfaction you want.It creates a situation whereby the rules encourage you to use a custom scheme; but that's counter productive to newer players since nearly all the GW painting info and advice is geared toward their official schemes.

I think you missed this part here

If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace. Contact us if you are unsure whether something is clearly distinguishable.

Sounds like they expect you to paint these separately too.

But yeah it's probably a lot more lenient. Wonder if you could get away with different bases being the distinguishing feature.


I agree that it seems like a rule aimed at wriggling more money out of people for using subfactions.

 SHUPPET wrote:

I agree that it seems like a rule aimed at wriggling more money out of people for using subfactions.

Honestly I don't think that's their intention. I think its them trying to enforce a style of play and visual display and advertising of their product (To GW a Tournament is as much an advertising measure as it is an event). I suspect its also been put into effect thinking "more" about marines than any other faction since you've got Blood Angels, White Scars, Ultra Marines etc.. GW puts a lot of money into advertising them, they don't want black and red "Blood Angel" marines fighting as Ultra Marines in their showcase event.

I can sympathise with that, I really can. But whilst this rule works for Marines it backfires on many other factions. It also backfires in the way that they've built subfactions. The bonus just isn't enough to warrant building whole double or triple armies of units jus to pain them differently.

Hmmm. This only affects my Ork army at the moment. Painted all my Shoota boyz Bad Moons, and split the 'Ard Boyz as Red and Blue with matching Rhinos.

The idea was to do each Mob a different color "to differentiate" them, and play up a little inner warband rivalry between units.
A trukk full of Goff Boyz racing to the front lines before the Evil Suns get there first.

Thats a great rule for GW run events. Its marketing strategy as well as a good way to FORCE THE NARRATIVE!

If you paint your army as Salamamders you should run them as Salamanders.

Now, it will suck for successor chapters becuase you cant use named characters(from parent chapter) . They have stated that clearly before. Calgar is the CM of the Ultras, not successor chapter #347.

It's not unreasonable for GW to want their tournaments run how they envision their product should be played.

WAAC go somewhere else.

WAAC players aren't really going to be effected by this rule if they make their own chapter paint scheme. The rule being implimented says that all red SM must be played as BA. However, it doesn't say the opposite- that all BA must be painted red. I could easily claim that I had a unit of BA that had to paint the armor a different color due to special circumstances on the battlefield. It's a fluffy explanation so what then?

I think this is great. You should play a specific chapter if that's what you painted out of the book. If you painted blue marines and added the ultramarine logo to every shoulder pad then I expect you to play ultramarines. If the fluff of a specific chapter encouraged you to paint your entire army that way then you should use your army as described in the codex. If you want to change what your marines are every week don't paint a specific chapter

 Overread wrote:
Daughters of Khaine its near impossible to tell one group from the other by painting alone.

These rules specify 40k, but yes, when I read this I could hear the argument in my head. "Those are clearly Khailebron they have blue on them.", "No these just have blue loincloths, I'm running them as Draichi."