[Archive] Army and Unit Colour Schemes

Nicodemus:

As I have been press-ganged into painting my army ( :smiley: ) I’ve been giving some thought to colour schemes and overall look, and I’d like some additional input from the community.

For starters, I have 10 units of 20 Chaos Dwarf Warriors - well, actually three of them have grown: one has 49 Warriors (7x7) and two have 42 Warriors (7x6).

Although I’d like there to be an overall ‘look’ to the army (and I’m not sure what that is right now, but I’ll probably address it with banners), with so many units and so many Warriors to paint I’m loathe to paint them all the same. I’m thinking some units will be painted with a scheme matching their tenuous trade alliance with various Chaos factions.

Chaos Dwarf Warrior Unit Colour Schemes

Centerpiece

49 Dawi Slave Warriors (counts as Chaos Dwarfs) with Gold and Silver colours (Gharzakk Goldgreed’s unit)

My ‘standard’ colour scheme

2x42 Warriors in standard red/black colours with gold and bronze highlighting

The other 7 units of 20)

1 unit with Nurgle colours

1 unit with Tzeentch colours

1 unit with Khorne colours

1 unit with the ‘standard’ colour scheme (as above)

I have no great ideas for the other 3 units of Warriors, and I’m not sure how feasible it is to think that daemons of chaos might ever employ Chaos Dwarfs for things… even a tenuous alliance, especially with the fluff developments of the last few years with Chaos Dwarfs making more use of binding daemons to things. That would seem to set them up as adversaries from the start. What about just shields and hats painted with Nurgle/Tzeentch/Khorne colour schemes? The other option would be to put a bit more work into the standard bearers and shields for each of units, so that along with the colour scheme they have something like a Flamer of Tzeentch bound with arcane chains, or the head of a Bloodletter on top of a standard…

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I making this too complicated? Is it going to look really lame??

~N

Shakhorth:

Although I'd like there to be an overall 'look' to the army (and I'm not sure what that is right now, but I'll probably address it with banners), with so many units and so many Warriors to paint I'm loathe to paint them all the same. 

Nicodemus
I totaly agree on the loathing part. It's tedious at best to paint an army exactly the same way. After a while it saps your will completely and the models will remain unpainted. So variation is the key, but you'll need to find a uniform look.

The feeling of an uniform look can be achieved without having to paint every model the same way. Personaly I got 3 methods to cover this.
By far the easiest method is by basing the models in exactly the same way. Usually I keep the sides of the base black and add whatever I want on top of the base. Just be sure you add the same flock/stones/sand/lava. Another way, as you already stated, is by adding similar banners/icons. Or a third method and most difficult of all, to get 1 re-occoring colour in your army scheme. The danger with this last method is obvious. You might end up painting every model the same.

As for the colour scheme itself. The daemon bounding the CD's do don't make them exactly the best of friends with the local daemons. So I'd go for diffrent 'clans/families' of Chaos dwarfs instead of the daemon colours. This way each unit could be painting a bit diffrently.
Perhaps you could keep your armour the same colour and use that as your uniform look. While you mix the other regions of the miniatures with any colour you'd like. Like the idea you had for the dawi slave unit that really stands out next to your regular army units.

In the end how you paint and convert your army is up to you. But personally I too struggle with the paint scheme for any new army.

Hope this helped a bit. Or more likely, it just brought more confusion. :)

zobo1942:

Personally, I really like the colour scheme of the force pictured in the indy GT book - inside cover, bottom picture.

I really like the way the rich purples and reds work with the greens of the greenskins - and because they are darker, richer colours, accents like bone skulls and horns and rich yellows on clothes and hats really look fabulous.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do - your sculping and modelling is AMAZING! I can only imagine how everything will look painted!