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Made in us
Been Around the Block





What would you say your Favorite and Least-Favorite army color scheme are?

For Me

Best: Scythes of The Emperor. The Scythes have the color black on their arms, legs, and helmet, while the rest is yellow. It's a Pretty awesome looking color scheme for a interesting Chapter.

Worst: The Flawless Host. I know their a Slaanesh Warband an all, but the Pink and Purple color is just awful. The Emperor's Children manage to look cool (somewhat)
   
Made in ca
Unhealthy Competition With Other Legions





Best: Luna wolves, really anything that is white and black on space marines make me love them so much.

Worst: Dark Angels. It pains me to say this but I hate green and gold. I like the lime green that the sons of medusa run but I hate the green marines, it doesnt register with me.
   
Made in ie
Norn Queen






Dublin, Ireland

Best - Tau (white version, whatever Cadre they are).
Worst - Cadians - too boring.

Dman137 wrote:
goobs is all you guys will ever be

By 1-irt: Still as long as Hissy keeps showing up this is one of the most entertaining threads ever.

"Feelin' goods, good enough". 
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






Best: My own! White Space Marines and black markings.

Worst: Not a fan of how the studio does Iyanden.


And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut






Worst: Imperial Fists/Iyanden. Yellow is absolutely the most revolting colour, even more so on large flat surfaces.

Best: Black Templars. Anything black is good. Thousand sons also pops pretty hard (40k not HH thousand sons)

Square Bases for Life!
AoS is pure garbage
Kill Primaris, Kill the Primarchs. They don't belong in 40K
40K is fantasy in space, not sci-fi 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






I've always loved the Speed Freek ork scheme with the red and yellow flames, and despised the old default How Now Brown Tau paint scheme.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and also a nominee for terrible: most of the default tyranid schemes that are two BIG BRIGHT OBNOXIOUS PRIMARY COLORS.

Why would this species whose whole shtick is being "the perfect predators" all highly evolved for deadly combat have absolutely no interest in camoflaging themselves in any way? Why would all the critters in this hive fleet be bright primary red and blue?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/11/16 17:31:10


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






Maybe thay're colorblind?

Dunno. I like the idea of their schemes, but usually not the execution.

And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
Made in us
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain






A Protoss colony world

I could probably give a best and worst in several factions, but I don't know about overall.
Space Marines:
Best: Dark Angels (but I'm biased). Three schemes in one (Green, black, and bone) makes for a very interesting army. Plus, I like how the characters and veterans have monk robes. That's part of what got me started with that army.
Worst: Gonna have to go with White Scars. I don't care much for white armies in general unless it's mixed with another color more so than on the Khan's warriors.

Astra Militarum:
Best: Mordians. Their old-school formal military uniforms are very cool-looking.
Worst: Cadians. Sooooo boring, and pretty much every Guard army I see has them (understandable considering they are the only regiment whose models are practical to collect in sufficient numbers).

Chaos Space Marines:
Best: Thousand Sons. I love the whole "Space Egyptians" thing they've got going on with the Rubrics and Scarab Occult Termies, plus they've got the coolest looking sorcerers.
Worst: Crimson Slaughter. They look like World Eaters but even more boring to me. What makes them lower is that I actually like the emblem for the World Eaters, but I hate the one for Crimson Slaughter. Plus at least World Eaters could be painted in their pre-heresy colors which actually look cool.

Eldar (Craftworlds):
Best: Biel-Tan. This is how white should be used in an army, with another nice color together with it. A properly painted Biel-Tan army is simply gorgeous!
Worst: Alaitoc. I can't really say why, their look just doesn't do anything for me.

Tau:
Best: Farsight Enclaves. The dark red is very cool on Tau models.
Worst: Vior'la. Same reason as I don't like the White Scars.

I don't know enough about the other factions to rate their color schemes.

My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/1/23, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~15000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Adeptus Custodes: ~1900 | Imperial Knights: ~2000 | Sisters of Battle: ~3500 | Leagues of Votann: ~1200 | Tyranids: ~2600 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2023: 40 | Total models painted in 2024: 12 | Current main painting project: Dark Angels
 Mr_Rose wrote:
Who doesn’t love crazy mutant squawk-puppies? Eh? Nobody, that’s who.
 
   
Made in us
Pyromaniac Hellhound Pilot






Maryland, USA

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Worst: Imperial Fists/Iyanden. Yellow is absolutely the most revolting colour, even more so on large flat surfaces.


For me, it's not that I dislike yellow but that the damn color is a chore to paint well.

M.

Codex: Soyuzki - A fluffy guidebook to my Astra Militarum subfaction. Now version 0.6!
Another way would be to simply slide the landraider sideways like a big slowed hovercraft full of eels. -pismakron
Sometimes a little murder is necessary in this hobby. -necrontyrOG

Out-of-the-loop from November 2010 - November 2017 so please excuse my ignorance!
 
   
Made in de
Regular Dakkanaut





This has to be broken down by faction. In addition it is obviously limited to the official schemes. There are countless gifted painters out there who have come up with even more masterpieces of composition. Sadly that is not a great base for a discussion.

Here v go!

Eldar:
worst: Alaitoc. Blue wants anything but yellow as accent.
best: Saim Hann. Black-white supplementing one opaque primary color is a homerun.

Orkz:
worst: Goffs (the black ones). Orks are a mess of gear and muscles. Black does nothing to break that up or to emphasize the chaos.
best: ??? (the red ones). Red not only looks awesome next to all the green. It is also faster. So no contest here. :>

Harlequins:
worst: all of them
best: all of them
They have color schemes at all?

Chaos:
Worst: Black Legion. It is just too generic.
Best: Night Lords. If done properly the lightning storm on dark blue interrupted by the bloody wings as the only relief being another symbol of pain and suffering. Perfectly diabolical. <3

Space Marines:
Worst: Imperial Fists. Garbage man in a can. While that is a bit poetic it just doesn't work as a threatening force.
Best: Ultra Marines. I hate them with a passion for being that lame predictable world savior and ever present small kiddy fantasy paladin stereotype. But for exactly that purpose they are perfect. Police wears blue because it is the color that can take the most punishment before it stops looking presentable.

Nids:
Worst: That red skin with black-blue chitin. Can't really tell why.
Best: The white-purple currently used on boxes. Because its sterile appearance conveys the alien nature of tyranids. In addition white is a superb antithesis to the Alien saga.

Tau:
Worst: Can't say honestly. Probably something blue would suck as it is the worst color for camouflage.
Best: That dark red one. I suck at remembering names. :/ Aunt Edith says thank you to ZergSmasher for his .... Farsight.

Necrons:
Worst: Necrons are almost impossible to mess up unless you deliberately do so.
Best: The standard dark green is hard to beat. The tone supports their cryptic and deeply hostile attitude.

Guard:
Too many schemes to draw a clear line what is in contention and what isn't.
I am not a fan of Mordia. While their fluff is worth a smirk or two it just doesn't connect with the grim dark of 40k. While Tau are deliberately put into that opposition to the fluff (like it or not) Mordians are not.
If I had to pick an official scheme they have a studio army of then I'd go with armageddon but would paint some more dirt on them.

Dark Eldar:
worst: Something bright
best: Something dark

I probably forgot several. Oh well *shrug*

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/11/16 18:33:14


 
   
Made in ca
Dakka Veteran




Imperial Fists and Alaitoc look horrible. I don’t mind Iyanden, but yellow generally is awful. Eldar with standard Aspect could colours generally look like an awful mishmash of units on the table though.

Blood Angels and Saim-Hann both look great; a nice red wth some contrast always looks great.
   
Made in gb
Zealous Shaolin




England

 Yougottapaythetrolltoll wrote:
Worst: The Flawless Host. I know their a Slaanesh Warband an all, but the Pink and Purple color is just awful. The Emperor's Children manage to look cool (somewhat)


Haha, Flawless Host is actually one of my favourites!

Pink and purple go together beautifully, and it's such a delightfully decadent scheme for a Slaanesh army.

I love the way that the purple licks at the pink like a corrupting flame, too.

---

While I'm here, shout-out to the lovely white-with-red Tyranids for being one of the few white colour schemes I actually like.
   
Made in us
World-Weary Pathfinder





Worse: Any halving or Quartering scheme... its just outdated and looks bad.

Best: Any DIY... even if its like; Grabbing Blood Angel models and calling them Mana Guardians and painting them up with Blue, Grey, White and Gold with some kind of obsession with librarians, apothecaries and chalices. And even if I'm not into your theme, hey at least your applying yourself distracting me with what the fluff is between turns... go you...
   
Made in gb
Power-Hungry Cultist of Tzeentch




Portsmouth, UK

Best: Thousand Sons, surprise surprise, but I do love that blue with gold. Big fan of the Iron Warriors as well though...

Worst: The studio paint scheme for Nurgle stuff, like the Death Guard. Not sure what it is, but it just doesn't seem to bring out the models like it should to me.
   
Made in us
Spawn of Chaos






Oh, this is a tough question. Let's see, I really like the Alpha Legion color scheme (especially if someone is good at painting those little scales) and Night Lords. I also really like Salamanders. I don't see many bright green color schemes, so they stand out. Especially with fire themed highlights of yellow, orange and red. If I had to pick a favorite, though, I'd say Alpha Legion. (Salamanders is a close second.)

As far as dislike, I was never a fan of the ones that could mostly just be primed black, like Raven Guard, or Black Legion. I just find it a little boring and drab. If I had to pick a least favorite, I'd say Raven Guard. (I like their lore though!) An honorable mention for dislike goes to red armies. It's not bad necessarily, there just seems to be a whole lot of them.
   
Made in us
Khorne Chosen Marine Riding a Juggernaut





Ohio

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Worst: Imperial Fists/Iyanden. Yellow is absolutely the most revolting colour, even more so on large flat surfaces.

Best: Black Templars. Anything black is good. Thousand sons also pops pretty hard (40k not HH thousand sons)

Lol, my car is yellow.

Best: I really like interesting colors, like orange, yellow and of course world eaters.

Worst: ultramarine, too bland.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/11/18 01:16:19


 
   
Made in dk
Khorne Veteran Marine with Chain-Axe






Best: Horus Heresy Space Wolves Grey

Worst: Ultramarines and Baby blue Space Wolves,

6000 World Eaters/Khorne  
   
Made in us
Adolescent Youth with Potential





>all this imperial fists hate

sad.

anyway i think blood angels are a bit garish, blood ravens always looked better to me.
   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




I like any colour schemes that are slightly muted with my least favourite being anything that is overall garish and I don't feel fits the 40k setting.

Harlequins no, no, no...



Harlequins yes, yes, yes...



It's totally personal to everyone but beware, if you play me I will be coming for your most colourful units first!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/11/18 10:14:31


 
   
Made in de
Contagious Dreadnought of Nurgle





The Leviathan scheme of Tyranids. It's that ugly that I hate the whole faction. But whenever I see Tyranids in a different color scheme I'm realizing, okay, they aren't actually THAT bad. Still the poor-mans Giger-Aliens, but not THAT bad.

Oh, and GWs newer color schemes of everything Nurgle-related. I'm a Nurgle player and there are incredible paint jobs for Nurgle out there, be it DG or Daemons or Renegades. But GWs paint job is not one of them, they are desparately trying to negate all the nastyness, probably to appeal to a wider audience.
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

Best: orks goffs.

Worst: imperial fists, bad moon and everything painted in yellow.

 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





Preface: many of the "official" schemes look just terrible - I get that GW tries hard to come up with as unique look of factions as possible, but they simply try too hard. So...

Worst: up untill Gathering Storm I would say official Tyranid schemes, all of them, but then GW came up with Yncarne... This is the single, most ridiculously painted model I ever saw from GW studio - it looks like washed out, old CMYK print where all yellow content just faded away, leaving only shallow cyan and magenta... And on top of that, Yvraine and Visarch do not match Yncarne because all that red on them.

Best: limiting only to official schemes - Thousand Sons are most harmonous yet intensively otherworldly, default Necrons are terrifiyngly calm and strong at the same time, default AdMech is the only "dominant red" scheme that makes sense to me and don't look dull and flat and I love Kharadon Overlords scheme.

As to DIY stuff:
Worst: almost all "three color minimal airbrush" themes, usually simply hideus...
Best: many, many schemes are great, but my favourites are well-thought Harlequins - this is the only unit, when "raindbow squad" can be made awesome as long as you don't put all your colours on a single mini.

Finally: IMHO hardest army to paint well is Aspect Warriors Eldar army, simply because you have to come up with a scheme, that has army-unifying elements and at the same time have matching but distinct shrines. Most people either end up with a dull "monoscheme" or reaches "chaos deamons" levels of randomness in army colours...
   
Made in ie
Battleship Captain





the_scotsman wrote:

Why would this species whose whole shtick is being "the perfect predators" all highly evolved for deadly combat have absolutely no interest in camoflaging themselves in any way? Why would all the critters in this hive fleet be bright primary red and blue?


Why does nature give dangerous creatures the brightest colours?


 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





It normally only gives small helpless but poisonous creatures bright colours - large apex predators, almost never.

I would post in this thread but it would probably take forever to type what I like and don't like.
   
Made in se
Jealous that Horus is Warmaster





Space Marines
Best: Iron Hands - Well painted Iron Hands look fantastic, just look at the Forgeworld colour scheme for them, it looks AMAZING.
Worst: Blood Angels - I've seen some really well made Blood Angel armies, but most of them are just red, red, red and even more red. Red everywhere. Gets boring and garrish.

Chaos Space Marines
Best: Iron Warriors - Simple, crude and awesome. Fits them perfectly and looks great with the hazards striped.
Worst: Emperors Chosen - Black on pink is horrible, just horrible.

Imperial Guard
Best: Steel Legion - Both the infantry and tank colour schemes look great, and fit the 40k universe perfectly.
Worst: Moridan - Just silly, doesn't fit the universe at all in my opinion.

Tau
Best: Vior'la - The white and red looks great on a high tech race like the Tau.
Worst: T'au - The colour used in the old line was called "Vomit brown" and I think that's fitting.

Tyranids
Best: Kraken - If muted down a bit, Kraken looks great.
Worst: Leviathan - Pinkish and purple, too colourful. Looks silly.

Eldar
Best: Iyanden - It might just be my Swedish roots, but yellow and blue fit really nice together, and it looks "alien" enough to fit the Eldar great.
Worst: Biel'tan - White and green don't go together and well as white and red in my opinion, and I don't like their "vine" designs.

Orks
Best: Goffs - Really dark and scary. Complements the orks silly demeanor perfectly, balancing them.
Worst: Bad Moons - For the same reason I hate the yellow Ironjawz in Age of Sigmar, they are the opposite of the above (Goffs). Too bright, not scary.

Necrons
Best: Maynarkh - Dark metallics and orange lights look great.
Worst: Sautekh - For the same reasons I don't like Biel'tan for Eldar, just switch "white" for "chrome".

Alpharius? Never heard of him.  
   
Made in gb
Thunderhawk Pilot Dropping From Orbit





 Viridian wrote:
Worse: Any halving or Quartering scheme... its just outdated and looks bad.


I quite like halved and quartered schemes on marines themselves but when the same* scheme is applied to vehicles it just never ever looks good.

* Forge World's Marines Errant vehicle scheme has merit, but it uses front/back split instead of the left/right split the marines use.

 
   
Made in au
Tough-as-Nails Ork Boy





Hong Kong

For me Ulthwe will always be the 'coolest' looking army (Thousand sons a close 2nd).
As for worst I agree with Cadia being boring, and also the old T'au sept which used to be on all the Tau boxes.

=6000
=4000
 
   
Made in us
Screaming Shining Spear





USA

Best : Imperial Fists If you find an Imperial fists or Iyanden well painted army on ebay it will literally be twice the cost of any other painted army....they look just that good.

the worst for me is any glossy purple Nid or Eldar army. Youn don't have to pick an ugly color just because your an alien!

I agree that Biel-tan is wrong....my gut instincts always thought they and Alaitoc with the whole ranger thing and vine motif should have swapped schemes.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/11/19 12:17:40


 koooaei wrote:
We are rolling so many dice to have less time to realise that there is not much else to the game other than rolling so many dice.
 
   
Made in no
Committed Chaos Cult Marine






Best is the FW Alpha Legion metallic blue, though there are several other ones I really like. Night Lords, Sons of Medusa, Lamenters (due to the checker pattern), Sons of Horus, Luna Wolves, metallic pre-Heresy Thousand Sons, Word Bearers, Red Corsairs, the Scourged...

I don't tend to like the black and white combos, but I don't mind the Black Templars.
   
Made in us
Implacable Black Templar Initiate





Oklahoma

Best: Black Templars - black white and red

Worst: Emperors Children - pink power armor

5500 pt 3500 1500 2000 3500 pt 3500pt 1500 pt 1000 2000 
   
 
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