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I'm not going to start a P&M Blog on this site, but I thought I would share some of my thoughts and look for a bit of feedback.

I suffer from a slew of entertaining issues from anxiety to ADHD. Both of which I suffer from when it comes to making choices.

In this arena, it comes to buying armies and then deciding what colors to pain them.

I wedged myself into a Combat Patrol League, but the people at the store keep mentioning that I need to paint my army. It is only 2 models after all.

This weekend I looked through old posts of mine, and found some previous paint jobs I liked, (but then remembered I saw almost the same paint scheme elsewhere and became discouraged).

Or, I find something I like and the Heraldry is so complex I know I can never replicate it. So I move on.

I spent an hour or two looking at the Dakka Galleries and the evening looking through my Adeptus Titanicus books, fishing for ideas.

I thought I'd nailed it, when I saw a bit about Titan Legion and Knight House Blackshields in the Horus Heresy.

But none survived into 40k. (And I really wanted an army that could play both games).

So, I finally had an idea that will hopefully stick. Something mentioned by a poster on this forum and her idea is a great one that I'm not sure why I initially overlooked.

Why not make them 30k Mendicants/40k Freeblades?

Instead if worrying about the background for a House, I focused on a Company. The Company of Coin and Lance was born.

I scoured the internet and could find no other uses of the name and I think it might work.

I will still need to find a bit of heraldry for them, but I think the broken lance transfer from thr Questoris box might work just fine, especially if I can put a circle around it or part of it.

I can grab the different paint schemes I like and use them.

And have one section of the paldron of each knight or Armiger be devoted to the Company Heraldry.

What do you think? Could this be a viable idea?

Any advice on making a bunch of different paint schemes look like part of the same team without me looking like I tossed a bunch of models.together at the last minute?

Sounds good.

One thing to keep a non-unified army looking coherent is to share elements. Base everyone the same. Do all the wires/lenses/hoses the same, even if the armor is different colors. Keep the same pallet when you can. Same techniques.

If you look at things like Eldar aspect warrior armies you can see how this can play out. It’s a riot of different colors, but done right the army still looks coherent.

You can also have each model be colored to be related to their role or use of weapon.

 NivNeos wrote:
You can also have each model be colored to be related to their role or use of weapon.

That's not a bad idea.

My brain has these great ideas for how stuff is supposed to look... and then it has to outsource those ideas to my limbs who refuse to be as awesome .

Sometimes just letting loose and just doing it is enough. I know it seems discouraging to do that with expansive models, which is why I believe there should be cheap, small packages like those easy to build troops GW used to make. Really helps me visualized my Eldar army when I got those 4 Guardians first.

I can't relate with ADHD but I can be OCDish. Once I have a design bible for an army, I tend to follow it rigorously, but it is starting to strain on my creativity, especially when I have to deal with unique parts and have to be really careful not to do something that would make the force look odd. My Imperium army really encourage these bad habits since it wants to be orderly and in line. Chaos is a relief because you can get away with alot. When making my Unique character, I gave them a red helmet rather than matching the Nurgle green to represent Khorne, but double checking my card, they are just Nurgle, so it wasn't a big deal since its just their signature gear so it seems reasonable. With my Imperium army, even on a unique character, it would have been odd. (Who are blue armor, white clothing)

My issue is that it's very difficult for me to focus on keeping to one style. My brain becomes very bored with a concept, and moves on.

I have honestly given serious thought to taking the money I was saving for some expensive resin models and paying someone to paint up and add decals to my Knights.

That's a respectable alternative.

While painting is a big part of the hobby, I believe that it shouldn't be a necessity, and especially that there's a considerable competitive scene where most comp players don't want to develop a new skill just to join tourneys to test their skills.

I don't know if pre-painted minis is feasible but lower model standards and pre-build can help lower that modeling cap. The comp battle map already looks bland, I don't think having grey models should exclude someone from tourneys.

Sorry for the opinion, if it sounded off-topic.

 NivNeos wrote:
That's a respectable alternative.

While painting is a big part of the hobby, I believe that it shouldn't be a necessity, and especially that there's a considerable competitive scene where most comp players don't want to develop a new skill just to join tourneys to test their skills.

I don't know if pre-painted minis is feasible but lower model standards and pre-build can help lower that modeling cap. The comp battle map already looks bland, I don't think having grey models should exclude someone from tourneys.

Sorry for the opinion, if it sounded off-topic.

I like hearing the opinions of others.

I've always noticed that you get 10 VP per game in s tournament for painting your army. So I assume that if just want to play and don't care about winning the event, you should be able to show up and play with a sprue grey army.