Be Different - Paint a Solid Color

In case you don't know, I have an Eldar army.

Now before you boo me off the internet and make me feel shame for having the super cheese army, I'm going to try to do what any good high school student caught with a stash of undesirables does - IT'S FOR MY FRIEND!

Seriously, it's not my army. It's an army that I just happen to be holding for my friend Josh. What's even better than that, I made slight conscious ideas while picking up pieces from Ebay, to avoid some of the more cheesy aspects of the army.

But the problem comes when I'm trying to create an army color. I've been looking around on google images, cool mini or not, imgur, and just about any other place I can to see what other armies are looking like, and I've noticed one very interesting thing - no one paints solid, bold, bright, vibrant colors.

The reason that my Thousand Sons army seems so weird is that I have rich, bright, yellows, oranges, and reds without being ashamed of it. It's not muted, it's not covered in 'mud or whatever else that is happening.  There's something that makes them stand out, because everything else is dark muted colors.

Think about it just about every single Warhammer 40k game that is ever played is played on a 'ruined city' deal. If it's not a ruined city, it's some sort of dark black/grey/brown mat, that is dark colors on it.

For some odd reason, most people play within that dark color palate. Even when someone paints a yellow army, they never go full bright florescent yellow, they go a muddy mustard yellow, and then throw on even more mud and dirt onto it to hide it from being yellow.  There is the occasional Tau army that's white, but even that white blends in as a neutral color against the black and greys that are going on, and you don't really see what's going on. The closest army that does anything that's anywhere close to breaking out of the darkness is Eldar, with their typical yellow or red armies, but even their red army is washed out with browns and blacks over a stark red and never comes through as a bright candy red.

There's one possible chance to save this, and that's with the harlequin army. They're clowns. They're supposed to be bright and over the top. Too bad that they base everything with black and dulled down colors too and have only pin pricks of brightness within their schemes.

 The entire game is like this. Nothing is vibrant. Nothing focuses mainly on full, rich, colors, but instead tries to mute everything that they run into. There are no armies that when you look at the expected color schemes of them, that you get something that's going to stand out on a 40k game table. They might look impressive close up, but when you put them next to a large city that's falling apart that little tiny tinge of silver or red isn't enough color pop to really get anyone's attention from anywhere further than a foot away.

Even within space marines, look at all of the different color options you have with this. For a rainbow of color options, you have reds, yellows, blues, white, grey, black, and the occasional dull green.  You've got an entire rainbow of color to play around with, and those pretty much get every single one of these, with the exception of the stand alone purple, or dull muted orange.

Chaos isn't much better. Khorne you have the options of blood red, or blood red on everything. If it's not red, you're doing something wrong. Nurgle, make it look like dull vomit green. Tzeentch you have blue and yellow. Slanesh you do get pink, too bad that it's a tertiary accent color and your primary color past that is black on black. Even the non-diety chaos are just as boring. I mean, just think about it, there's an entire legion of the game called the black legion. Guess how easy that one is to paint?

Orks, aren't free from this. You've got either mustard yellow orks, or dull red orks. Sure you've got some dull forest green skin in there, but other than that, you've only got reds, yellows, or greens to look at, and none of them are vibrant colors but rather dull muted ones with the excuse that they're orks so they should look like they just got done being in a mud bath.

Tyranids - same problem. It basically comes down to do you want light bugs that blend into the light stuff, or do you want dark bugs that blend into the dark stuff. You're never catching a vibrant color anywhere near that army. There's a few that have tried to have red armies, but it's the dull muted magenta that you see everywhere else. No chance for these to ever look bright unless you go well outside of tradition.

Tau - welcome to boring mech suits. Default colors? Sand tan and white. It's depressing really, because out of all of the armies that I thought would have a huge following of choices onto them, I thought this would be where it would shine. Just look at all of the big blocks of flat surfaces that these have on them! You don't have to worry about curves, you don't have to do anything crazy, you just have big wide open flat spots to play with, and the best people can come up with for those spots are boring tan/orange or white. Seriously, if it wasn't such a bad idea to do it both gaming as well as my budget, or anything else like that. I'd love to get my hands on a fresh Tau army, and have permission to do whatever I wanted with them. There's a lot of options for chaos and color all over their bodies, and yet no one ever does an entire army with it. If anyone ever wants to bank roll that one, I'm all in. I'll drop whatever I'm working on to work on a Tau army that I'd be proud of calling my own. Vibrant, florescent, glowing, pastel, I don't care, just as long as it was something other than tan orange or white I'd love to give it a shot and I'd be totally open for suggestions too.

Eldar - red, yellow, or blue. Those are your options, and none of them are exactly bright. The yellow is the closest you're going to get because MOST people don't muddy that one down too much, but it's the only exception to the rule and even then, you are still working with a hyper limited palate.

Dark Eldar - DARK eldar, 'nuf said.


I could keep going through the armies, but it's really not going to be worth it. Every single one runs into the same exact problem - limited color options to pick from and dark. If you want to stand out, if you want an army that doesn't look like anyone else, and if you want something that people will pause and take a second look at and notice your hard work in painting - go bold. Paint a solid, vibrant, color as your main color. Stop muting it, stop trying to dull it down, but instead swing for the fences and do a truly unique thing. Just think about all of the colors you can see at a Home Depot or any other paint store. You have thousands of options for colors, so stop using the same boring limited ones.