@@milktenders6219 Yeah, I think more than half of my 3,5k Death Guard is in some major or minor way kitbashed and I love it so much. Most of it wouldnt be legal on any tournament I guess, but I just cant help myself. Something inside keeps me from building models the way the are "ought to"...
@@milktenders6219 this, or youre just painting a dude and realized the paint just painted the doom slayer, so now you have a doom slayer space dwarf army, who specialize in messing up chaos.
An idea I think could be really cool: Have a unit like eliminators with a spare helmet on their shoulder as well as on their head. You can say their lore is they steal the helmets of all the unhelmetted models and then stick them to their shoulder to confuse enemy snipers on where their head is and how many snipers there are
@@dr.stronk9857 Maybe literally model a squad of infantry AS scarecrows, complete with little grass tufts stuck out from armor plates. So the home objective holders are just dummies meant to look more defended than they actually are. Maybe with some bolters rigged on a turret hiding in the brush, hooked to a proximity sensor, so they can catch people who think they've seen through the ruse.
Give 1 squad all captain markers so they are the main focus of the enemy as killing a captain is worth more or they are more scared of them but they are just normal soldiers and not captains ^^
Might be a bit of a challenge, but the dazzle camoflarge that you saw on ships in WW2. That might work better on something bigger like the large suit you have a or a tank you might get
100% especially since Dazzle camo is just geometric shapes in black and white. with the goal being to disguise what direction the camoflagued object is moving as well as disguising its silhouette
Spitballing here: - If you are short of ideas you could have squads themed around power rangers teams. - One team could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but having a silver armour and black trim - If you can add a unit of Deathwatch (I have no idea how space marines works) you could have them in the scheme of their original chapter. - One squad could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but the armour is coloured and the accents are black -Since from the lore units try to mimic different units you could paint a unit with a scheme that resembles the unit they mimic, or a third unrelated unit. For example you could paint the upper limbs of the brutalis a light colour so it resembles a scout.
deathwatch is more or less his own chapter taking space marines elites from other chapter to fight xenos. I really like your idea of a squad of power rangers you can even paint a dreadnought like a megazord with a different color for each part
My attitude Lance of imperial knights supports the power ranger's theme. All 21 have similar patterns but different colors along with a unique fossil and mod worked into the design.
I’ve actually done a power rangers scheme for my kill team set, it’s a lot of fun but definitely not fast and has the same issues Paul is having here on a smaller scale for breaking down each model. thankfully it’s just one box of characters
I actually made a power rangers themed army, built The Eight and made them a full power rangers squad, they look so goooood. It’s a great style to go with, definitely recommend
Maybe a group of guys who are covered in transfers with no reasoning, maybe some even have the ultra marine symbol that comes in the boxes but it’s at 90 degrees or something
I see that the comment section is vigorously advocating for these guys to be a loyalist (or simply deeply confused) Alpha Legion company or something. Frankly, it kind of fits with the premise.
If you did scouts, I could see those all looking the same, to give the impression of a tide of sneaky bois you just can't seem to kill. As for the Dreadnaught, have you considered just covering him in random splotches of vibrant paint that looks like a clown trying to paint camo, and then tying it all in with a drybrush and shade + metallics? It'll be the clown car!
you could invert the colour scheme of a squad or two, maybe your other incursor squad could have the members of the first mirrored but with multicoloured bits replaced by black/silver and vice versa
I love the idea of "All look the same", but you have to take it further. Marines already all look the same with the same trim, shoulder markings, etc. I would go for same Purity Seal placement (for example one on the gun and one on the left leg), and all of them have the red Sergeant helmet stripe.
I think it still has to make sense in the lore of the chapter. They wouldn't play dress up for fun, and 'lol random' isn't a good distraction strategy. What could work is a unit that is stealing stuff. But, like, random stuff, where the enemy thinks "They are after that? Why?" to confuse them about the mission objective. And then give them pirate imagery.
Not sure how it would work lore wise, but what if you had models who were obviously Ultramarines, with the Chapter Symbols, gladii, crested helms, etc. but paint them as Salamanders. Then have a unit with Salamander bits and paint them like Blood Angels, and so on. They might just look like disparate successors though I guess, just an idea! Love the F-Zero inspired guys!
You could make a unit where everyone has camouflage, but each of the guys has camouflage for a different biome, so one would have like the leafy nets and stuff, another a white cloak, and another have sand stuck in their armour
Idea: having models with little speakers on their bases implying that they’re setting up speakers around the battle field to make even more noise. Another idea is to have them set up scare crows around as well.
hey paul, im about halfway through the video but from what youve described- almost every space marines player has gone through this same exact thing (or something similar) and i wanted to give some tips to get through the struggle: -not every model, or unit, has to have a theme; having some sort of "baseline grunt" scheme can help alot (i honestly thought your infiltrators were the baseline grunt scheme ngl) -sometimes it can be cool to have special characters/units not look that special (it helps give the vibe of 'too serious to care', and makes it funny when they do the stupidest things on the tabletop and DIE) -rules can be ignored when they make things hard or less fun, especially your own (deciding to make an entire unit cohesive sounds like an insider joke thing that would happen within the chapter to confuse the enemies and the chapter alike making them go "wait arent they all different? does that mean theyre in the chapter?? are they even in the same unit??? theres no way, its like, theres too many people who are different it has to be a joke/another lie") hope your screaming ravens go awesome, they give off this super cool badass vibe while also being wholesome in the sense that they just get to be *them* and most people consider that expression to be heresy, so its a nice breath of (admittedly edgy) fresh air, wishing you the best big man!
I love the idea of eliminators or tactical scouts in camo, but none if them match the terrain. Like one in a red-sandstone and orange pattern, one in winter whites and greys, and one with a naval blue ocean camo in a bright green field. None of them blend in, and yet with all the bright colours moving around the battlefield, they just happen to get lost in all of the visual noise.
One idea is that some units use a completely other chapters' color scheme. Like they paint all their armor yellow except their left gauntlet. So it looks like Imperial fists.
I definitely like an army cohesive theme being a continuation of digging up an N64, finding a cool game or something and themed off of it since they think like, "Ah these cartidges from the dark age of technology hold profound knowledge long since lost to us, we must utilize this precious information" and then they like model a unit off of Dig Dug or something. pick your favorite games and just run wild with that idea, it 10,000% makes sense to me lore wise
One thing that might really help you out is randomisers. For example, i use a website that generates ancient greek names when im naming my SM units. You could find or make a random number generator which choses a random piece of armour, and another one which choses a random colour. That way, if you can think of a theme for a squad then you can use that as a guide so at least they still have a sense of randomness to them Otherwise, i think your idea is amazing and i cant wait to see what you achieve!
Here me out: raven boyz.The heads from the Nob box are the right size to fit over a standard space marine head, and with a little bit of green stuff you could very easily make it look like your space marines made ork masks and are now charging the enemy making ork sounds. The enemy will be terrified, because not only are the space marines attacking, but they're also allied with the orks as well!
Back when I was painting my Kruleboyz Orks for Orktober two years back, I did a "Halloween" paint scheme (oranges, blacks, whites, greens, and purples). But the initial arrangement of colors on my first squad wasn't working for me. So after getting them to a minimal level of "finished" (didn't even paint the bases), I switched to the next squad in the set. And I shifted the colors around to one I liked better, which I used on subsequent models. For October last year, I took a break from painting my Spooktober undead to repaint that first squad, bringing them fully in line with the final scheme. If a scheme isn't working out, it can pay to pivot early. Rather than subjecting yourself to a scheme you hate or is more work than you really wanted.
Feel like a natural idea here that also provides a bit of variation is to have one of the sizeable, maybe ten men squads have an incident in their recent history where every single person in the squad was heavily injured but nobody actually died or got dreadnoughted and its considered a bit of a miracle, so they each have a red section of their armour where they got wounded. Like one has a red arm because they lost that arm and its actually a bionic arm under the armour. Another had half their face blown off by a bolt round so they have a red helmet. One got hit with a guard-issue rpg type weapon in the chest so has a red breastplate.
My whole army is based on orks wearing crudely put together disguises of other armies, it got difficult after a while, but once I decided to do the unit individuality not model individuality it got easier.
One thing I would find funny is a squad pretending to be from a whole different Space Marine chapter. The enemy thinks they are engaging Ultramarines, but are completely thrown off guard once the screaming starts. Pehaps even squad pretending to Tau, Eldar, Ork, or any other race from the 40k universe. That would be a fun kitbash project.
I would love the idea of every model in a unit looking like a captain to conceal the actual captain of the unit. Sort of like an “I am Alpharius”moment where the real captain is just some random terminator on the group. Maybe if you don’t want to spent £100 on a u it if 5 captains just make them all really stand out to make the captain completely indistinguishable. You would probably run into the same problem you have of painting every single model differently, but I’m sure it’s be worth it for the most elite part of your army…
The Screaming Ravens are coming along brilliantly, but damn, with this level of editing and humour I could listen to you talk about what the weather last week was like 😅 wonderful video, Mr Paul, sir 🧐
Id say for the terminators make them exceedingly battle damaged, like there wearing every bullet hole and scratch as a badge of honor, so you can get creative with the damage rust etc
You've been hitting it out of the part lately with your videos, Paul! I think your realization of how you need to change your scheme is incredibly valuable insight, and I'm happy to see that you came up with a solution to reinvigorate your desire to paint!!! Here are my ideas for possible schemes/customizations of individual units. I've included a few that aren't in your current collection because I think they're cool.(and I expect you to buy more eventually😉) Judiciar: Do an inversion of the lore. In the lore a Judiciar is a Chaplain in training until they get promoted, and until they become a Chaplain, they are sworn to silence. So take that idea and flip it on its head somehow. Either by making it so the Judiciar can't communicate at all and has to fight with his hands bound, so he can't use the Screaming-Raven's special sign language. Or make him the *LOUDEST* person on the battlefield. Paint him with the brightest fluorescent colors, replace his hourglass woth a boom-box, anything that will make your senses hurt in his presence, on and off the table. Aggressors: Paint their Power-Fists to look like socker-boppers. Infernus: Paint their armor to look like Salamanders, to make the enemy think they're fighting more than one Space Marine Chapter at once. Centurions(all versions): Since Centurions are literally just Power Armor for your Power Armor, reflect that by giving all the Centurions a helmet on their helmet, or a hat on a hat. After all, it'd make a good visual metaphor for how absurdly excessive Centurion suits truly are. Invictor Warsuit: Paint it with a weird and wacky pattern to visually confuse the enemy on where the pilot is at, since people have called out how exposed the pilot is in a cockpit with no windows. So do what real world Zebras do, cover the suit and the pilot in a unique pattern to confuse/camouflage the pilot inside the suit. Inceptors: Make the grav-plates on the bottoms of their feet look like moon-shoes and their jump-packs look like. . . Another kids toy centered around jumping or flying from the early/mid 2000's. Intercessors/Assault Intercessors: Make a Squad of 5 themed around the Rangers of Power Rangers Dino Thunder/Abaranger. You can have Red, Blue and Yellow with white trim and sharp-edged, symmetrical white patterns painted/decaled around their armor. Gold trim/patterns for the black ranger and white armor with black trim/patterns and bright red eye lenses for the white ranger. Brutalis/Redemptor Dreadnought: If you do decide to follow through on a Power Rangers theme, then let the Dreadnought be the Megazord. Paint each limb as well as the chest in a different color. Stormraven Gunship: Cover it in Amps, have it blast rave music wherever it flies and paint it with a glow-in-the-dark/blacklight paint for MAXIMUM "Rave Energy." Desolation Squad: If people are going to call their rocket-launchers T-Shirt Cannons. Run with that idea! Sculpt some rolled-up T-shirts out of Green-Stuff and use some 3d printed blast effect parts to make it look like the Screaming Ravens are firing T-shirts at the enemy. You can make it all of them, or just some. Because if not even the Screaming Ravens know what their weapons will be firing, how will the enemy know until the battle begins in earnest? Stormspeeder: More or less the same as the Stormraven, but make it look like it just came off the set of "Pimp my Ride." Any Terminator unit, or any unit that has "Veteran" in their name: Make each one either a deeply integrated reference in their paint job/modeling, that way all of your "First-Company" styled Marines have some underlying theme that ties each and every one together, even if they don't look like they're tied together visually.
The text at 1:19 got me, well done. 5:02 Edit: Also, I think I had the same idea with my Blood Angels Successors, to have each unit be largely the same, but with little individual tweaks; for example, one could have an entire painting on his pauldron, or have his trim embroidered, or perhaps his creative downtime would go towards his weapon if he’s holding a weapon that’s limited to one
An idea that popped straight into my head(thanks to me being a Ork player) for the dreads have it be designs from different chapters, using transfers from each chapter to conceptually trick the enemy to debate who the hell they are fighting chapter wise
Screaming Ravens begin battle with a EDM rave stealth strike to rival the Noise Marines. All you hear is motors of long dead engines and the wailing tithe of angry electronic dance music.
i like this, because you wont get tired of painting a scheme for the entire army, that can get tideus and brutal at some point, you cant see the same 3 colours ever again after a big army project - but every unit different? yeah, that will keep things fresh
Now he knows the Ork-Player´s pain.... as for my suggestion: get your inspiration from there. Orks are litterally the Xenos-Faction-Version of your Space Marines in my eyes.
Red -> Orange -> Yellow ->Green -> Blue -> Indigo (Possibly replace with bone or gold) -> Violet Helmet- > Right Shoulder Pad- > Left Shoulder Pad- > RIght Shoulder Trim- > Left Shoulder Trim- > Backpack- > Right Knee Pad- > Left Knee Pad- > Right Arm- > Left Arm - > Feet Cycle each one, once per model. 77 unique color combinations which will look completely random but generate easily without a moments thought ;) You'll look incredibly creative, but, in fact you've just got procedural space marines.
Tbh you should probably do the base scheme (black silver white), this will be an easy ish batch paint, then go unit by unit and add colors and themes. It will get paint on everything then leaves time for theming which will now be faster with the base model painted.
Might be tricky but you could try using WW1 battleship dazzle camo as this was designed not to obfuscate a ship but to make it confusing to know what you are looking at. You could use masking on a vehicle to get it to work.
Add googly eyes 👀 My Howling Griffons army started off as a painting challenge to paint a single 10 man squad of Intercessor Space Marines. It spiralled out into a 3k points army 😂
6:31 Oh my god, please for the love of god be it Centurions because it just would be the funniest idea ever. Imagine the enemy being absolutely paranoid about a bloody heavily armoured dingus and being like "Oh my god, where is he?! Is he behind us? On the ceiling?? In the walls?!!?!", that would just be hilarious. Also, at 7:35 it gave me the idea of the unit being the cards for Exodia from Yu-Gi-Oh. Like, one having their left leg being colored gold or something but their entire body being just black and sliver. That would be, 1, funny if it's for a small, standard unit. 2, be bloody cool as hell.
Looks gorgeous. How about a unit where each of the marines encorporates a different detail/pattern from: 1) Eldar craftworld. 2) Tyranid hivefleet. 3) Ork clan. 4) Alpha legion. I have this idea I'd like to try one day of an ork blood axe army where the warboss was so impressed by space marines he's fashioned his own legion of orks where each of the different units would be done up like the appropriate chapter like raven guard for the stormboys, white scars for the speed freaks, space wolves for the beast snagga boys, and so on. The warboss of course takes the name Waaaghnius Calgork, as a mark of respect.
I like the idea of having them all the same, but you can push it further: make a unit with nothing but the exact same model. Imagine a squad of five Intercessors, all of them painted and posed exactly the same so there's literally no difference between them all.
You could make them emerald and blue, and give them a snake scale patter. Maybe even a hydra logo, as if they were all individual heads and even if you kill one of them, two more take their place.
Now just imagine we all Call them the same with a reference to the first letter of the Alphabet but one is actually called a name in reference to the last letter of the Alphabet.
It would be neat to invert one squad - have the trim colour be the armour colour and vice-versa. Enemies would just be like "who the hell are *these* guys?!"
Maybe you can have a squad with color schemes and possibly even emblems from the different houses to further confuse the enemy as to why a chaos marine is helping an imperial marine toss a corpse of an enemy trooper over a cliff. Make sure you at least have one small common item on the marines so you don't get confused as the enemy you are fighting against
You should make your aircraft in dazzle camouflage it was designed during world war 1 and 2 to confuse and hide how far a ship was and what direction it was going which fits the theme super well
Very cool idea, I love it. What could solve some of your problems is rather than thinking about individuality in terms of paint schemes think of it in terms of modelling too. kit bashing/ scratch bashing could open many new doors to cool chaotic/random ideas. How about a unit instead of weapons they carry boxes with question marks on it or even the 40k equivalent of the amazon logo. Or a drop pod that is filled with electric guitar amps and the unit associated with the drop pod uses some kind of combi instrument/weapon Including modelling into your army might not be something you are familiar or comfortable with and will increase time and cost but it will increase the joy, and what is Warhammer if not using time and money in exchange for fun and learning new skills.
You’ve given me an idea for a Space Marine army. Paint them like a multiplayer session of a 40k battlefield game. Some are properly decorated and representing their chapter for the guys swiping up. Some are default skins or have chapter insignias on the wrong paint scheme for newbies. Some with goofy paint jobs or edgy shit for the solos just there to have fun or try to impress people.
I had a very similar idea to yours - A Creations of (Fabius) Bile consisting entirely of drug enhanced Marines abducted from loyalist chapters. It meant painting every model in a different colour scheme and, yes, it got exhausting pretty fast. I managed one unit. 😬 I might come back to it eventually, but i I'll need a different approach to make it halfway possible to complete!
I really love your idea of the colour transitioning across the armor of the squad so when they stand in the line you see a traveling wave of colour on them. I imagine this for each 5 man squad and if you field them all in a formation you can actually see the wave goign across the entire force. neat
my head lore for your head lore, the f-zero vets race each other for training and this doubles as a form of entertainment for other members of the chapter
The Raven lore described at the beginning is right up my alley. For a proper paint scheme I'd focus on the stealth and camouflage aspect of the lore. The colours used should blend in with the terrain and all individuals of the same type should look the same. (Painting) Success level is measured by how often the opponent fails to notice a unit on the gaming table and how often they mistake one of your units for another.
Reminds me of some of the ninjas in "Five Element Ninjas", the metal ones using shiny gear to blind the enemy and the fire ninjas puffing out colored smoke ahead of themselves, both to obscure themselves in plain sight by fudging up the enemy's perception.
I love the mental image if a space marine in a full sprint, running up to the enemy and screaming "I'M SNEAKKYYYY!!!!!" and the dude he's screaming at is just like "wtf man" while he passes out from loud sound exposure. This may be cliche, but a big guy carrying a white flage saying "i come in peace" with a massive minigun may be funny
something I did with my chaos army was just reverse the primary and secondary color between units so 1 squad is copper/gunmetal and the other is gunmetal/copper.
Just getting started with the models after reading a good number of novels and loving the lore for forever, and one of the first lessons I learned is that the benefit to reward ratio of a white paint heavy scheme is not worth it for me. Its a shame because when I just dream armies heavy with white look fantastic and I had paint schemes for multiple armies planned that were heavy with it, but even though you can learn to get good at white, or find much better whites, the inconvenience and extra difficulty when so many other colours look good makes me just decide to steer clear. My space marines I'm getting started with have a tiny but prominent bit of white for symbols on the shoulder pads-more often you can do this with transfers but it does mean for things like the crux terminatus or my ancient Dark Vengeance marines with the moulded pauldrons I'm stuck actually painting them, and even that's a pain in the ass.
What I am doing is separate paint schemes for separate units so I don’t get sick of doing the same paint scheme. It also helps explore what paint schemes work best for me
I feel this majorly. My custom chapter the “The Forgotten” has a lot of different colors and schemes depending on the units. Lore wise there like the death watch. Love the videos.
As someone who's trying to do their first project with warhammer minis (A custom DA falling, not fallen, chapter, with colour flavours from various different chaos gods) thank you for the advice! I imagine having a general scheme too would make it easier to tell which unit is which quickly in a game.
One word; Textures. Hear me out here. Make it where the Screaming Ravens have a few recruits that spent time with other legions, learning their tactics to better confuse the enemy. As a result, they have one of the signature textures of that legion. Marble for Ultramarine, Scales for Salamander, Gloss for Blood Angel, Cloth for Dark Angel, Fur for Space Wolf, etc. Just make it a little bob or just a painted on texture that denotes that that specific unit knows something special. Also would work for a deathwatch squad if you ever plan on using them.
Paint a unit as Alpha Legion with Black Armor. The gimmick that squad came up with was one they developed when fighting against the Alpha Legion. They had to gun down members of other chapters who were sleeper agents from Youth so they went "OH MY GOD, WHAT IF WE JUST PAINT OURSELVES LIKE THE TRAITORS?! They'd never know in the middle of a fight!"
So my buddy loves trains and also now the T'au of Warhammer. He is painting each major vehicle after a different American Train Company, with train tracks under the feet. Fire Warriors are the construction workers with the Cadre being a manager, and he gave the Ethereal a business suit as an executive. Anyway, for your Rhino, there's zero reason you can't make it look like a hippy van that's just hotboxed all the time. And any marines you'd normally put in there have tiedie shirts and faded pants (tiedie is super easy, a bright first coat and then little baby splotches of watered-down-to-hell whatever colors you want)
In my Blood Ravens army, each unit leader or major HQ (CPTs not LTs, etc) would either have a bit from another faction, or have generic wargear painted like another chapter. This held up until I got so deep into assembly line batch building and painting that I forgot about the do-dads on the Infiltrator chests. In the end it became a happy accident of just a few models that didn't look quite... right.
If you can break the rules of not having cohesive schemes colour wise and the not marking special characters… then you have essentially made custom characters for their own units within the Screaming Ravens and heraldry being the colours you painted. So you could expand the army that way and that alleviates having to make future additions of the same models to be as unique as the ones you’ve done.
Could have a unit that has the scheme of 10 other chapters, like they suddenly get attacked by a salamander and ultramarine and get confused and scared that reinforcement is coming
Have one or two units paint their armor to look as if they are being viewed through nightvision or thermal scopes, to confuse the enemy into thinking their optics are set wrong. Similar, but hard to paint, idea would be having them paint themselves as normal, but just not extend the non-black colors all the way to the edges of their armor, the goal is to make it so they look like they are smaller ie farther away. Have them paint their armor with false eyes on the back of their helmet and all decals flipped to the other side so it looks like they are looking in the wrong direction. Another hard to paint one would be to have them paint their armor so when four of them are standing together, maybe with two riding on the shoulder's of the other two, they look like a single really-really big marine (or 'naught, or something). Have a unit that each person is painted to have perfect camo - but for wildly different terrain, so one is in snow camo, one is in desert, another forest, another city, etc. Personally, for my Death Guard army, their story is that they are the wave of plague and festering that sweeps across a battlefield *after* the fight is over and all the bodies are left to rot. Each of their units are recruited from the dead and dying. As such, each unit is a different color scheme to represent being originally from different chapters before being brought into Grandfather's loving, slimy, embrace. Right now I'm just designing them as having come from some unnamed successor chapters, so I'm just referencing my favorite hockey teams' colors, but will probably include a few original legions as well, especially Blood Angels as my friend plays them often. Jumping off of that, you could have a unit where they - and I realize this also pulls a bit from Alpha legion's thing *if an Alpha legion existed, I mean* - paint themselves in bad knockoffs of the original legions' colors, so some look like Blood Angels, some look like Ultramarines, some like Salamanders. But like, it's just a shoulder, or just the front and the back of their armor is still Screaming Raven colors, or they only knew about captains so they all look like captains from whatever legion.
Started a converted Genestealer cults army with Skaven bits when deathwatch came out in 2016. I got overwhealmed with it and shelved the project untill 2 months ago when its turned into my favourite project, a necromunda gang.Ive also had ork conversions sat on the shelf for years waiting on that bit of inspiration
Here's a unit idea that I almost used for my Blood Angels successors. The space marines would use 'unpainted' armor with a basic metallic coloration. Every time they did very good (using the blood rage to defeat enemies in my case) they would get one armor part colored red as a badge of honor. Every time they did something awful (in this case, let their rage make them do something reckless and stupid) they paint part of their armor black. This way you can tell at a glance how new a unit is, how much 'blood honor' they have, and how many black marks they have. You could come up with a simialr badge of honor, and as a bonus you could start metallic and add swabs of colored paint as they earn abilities or flaws in Crusade mode. (I gave up the idea when I saw a really cool paint scheme on Reddit so I'm just gonna steal that and turn the reds into purple lol)
I’m doing something similar with my sister army, they’re called "Morvenn’s Elites". All the armor is a bronze/gold while the cloth is from their home branches. I have bloody rose colors for sacrasants, white rose for dominion squad, etc. so far really liking how their turning out
I had that exact issue with my dwarves, as I wanted to give each of them an individualized paint job. After all, when dwarves march to war, they come bedecked in bling catering to their individual tastes. The problem was, obviously, that I had to come up with what colors to use on what model. I partly solved that by randomization. That is, I took five different shades of brown and painted the beards of the whole squad with just these 5 colors. Then I took five different colors for gems, and three different colors for hairbands, etc. I then painted the whole squad with these, trying to be as distinct as possible, but only having to watch out that not too many dwarves would have the same combination of hair, band and trinket color.
I do a little bit of this with my blood angels. they're encouraged to be artisans, and so I'll sprinkle in little custom painted bites, such as the face-masks, or especially things like tabards and other details for veteran units.
This would probably look totally stupid, but in addition to you "every guy is painted the exact same way" maybe have the entire unit in the same pose as well? You would probably have to trade a few models with other people to make it financially viable, or convert some cheap character (ebay) to a base troop. I don't have to much experience with space marines, but the necron warden converted to an immortal springs to my mind as an example.
Perhaps Space Marine Heroes would work for this purpose? There was that recent release with the Kill team with the two intercessors or the eliminator that might work is you could get your hands on enough copies...
Maybe add, caw caw caw in crazy lettering over the brutalis like grafitti, he is one that is put to sleep between every battle in stasis with the others grafitting him as a prank. As he is the most insane loudest of the bunch. Mad from the years of being sealed in a dreadnought only being able to speak in screaming bird so they put him in stasis to shut him up.
7:36 you could do this but have it a horizontal transition with the legs being some sort of floor terrain but their heads and torso as the sky, so they end up camouflaged as some sort of walking set peice
For Infiltrators or incursors, I like the idea of having each member of the unit be the same. Since they’re the stealthy marines, the idea reminds me of the ninja technique of making it appear as if someone is in two places at once. This could be done with several ninjas with similar height and body build dressing the same and mimicking each others voices when they needed to speak.
You could use a reflective paint like chrome on one of the dreadnoughts. It would be very confusing to have a huge mirror like object running towards you. Another possibility would be special colors that change their pigmentation depending on temperature or light level.
Something color wise I do with my tyranids is make the tanks brighter red, make the hordes darker with stripes for confusion, and the stealth units are covered in rosettes making them almost black, maybe you can do something similar by making all of these units bright and confusing then have one unit of Phobos or something who are actually just all black so their enemies are so confused by all the bright random colors and noise that they never see it coming when a unit is actually trying to be sneaky. Also thought I’d add that your chapter is similar to the black guard but a lot funnier
A unit with different space marines chapters on it's shoulder. So black armour but has like the Blood Angels logo on them, but also has the Space Wolves on there leg or something. The colours scheme reminds me of a more chaotic form of Deathwatch.
Holy hell, this video is a peek into my own future. owo; I have a Grey Knights army that I wanted to have the same individualistic approach to each unit, so instead of just having them glow blue and be boring, I have their weapons, eyes, etc. glow based on the legion of Astartes they were drafted from. To this end, if they hail from traitor legions, like my World Eaters Hammer Justicar, or my Dark Angels Ancient, they'll have heterochromia in their glowy eyes and weapons, whereas loyalists get a more monochromatic color scheme. I still have a lot of units to fill out, and I've realized by watching this video that I'll probably run out of legions by the end of this quest of mine, but thinking about other arenas for inspiration is a massive assist to the future of my project and it helps me to prepare for the future better so, thank you for this video. ........as for your project......well...... owo; Um.....Look for other old school games you're a fan of? Like Pokemon accessories, or maybe base a unit off of Perfect Dark?
Maybe in an unit there is a guy (that is not the leader) that says fuck of and paints his armor with another scheme, like white .
The Decoy, he wears a bunch of rank insignias whilst being just a random guy.
No
I love how you enjoy so much more than just buying miniatures.
The best part of the hobby is making custom models
@@milktenders6219 Yeah, I think more than half of my 3,5k Death Guard is in some major or minor way kitbashed and I love it so much. Most of it wouldnt be legal on any tournament I guess, but I just cant help myself. Something inside keeps me from building models the way the are "ought to"...
@@milktenders6219 this, or youre just painting a dude and realized the paint just painted the doom slayer, so now you have a doom slayer space dwarf army, who specialize in messing up chaos.
Centurions, BADLY disguised as maids/butlers
This
OKAERINASAIMASE, GOSHUJIN-SAMA. WELCOME TO THE CENTURION CAFE!
A classic
text you can hear
But with "uWu" in random, blacklight-reactive neon colors across their chests.
An idea I think could be really cool:
Have a unit like eliminators with a spare helmet on their shoulder as well as on their head. You can say their lore is they steal the helmets of all the unhelmetted models and then stick them to their shoulder to confuse enemy snipers on where their head is and how many snipers there are
DEAR GOD YES
hilarious
They could also have scare crows (ha ha bird) set up on the battle field for even more confusion
@@dr.stronk9857 Maybe literally model a squad of infantry AS scarecrows, complete with little grass tufts stuck out from armor plates. So the home objective holders are just dummies meant to look more defended than they actually are. Maybe with some bolters rigged on a turret hiding in the brush, hooked to a proximity sensor, so they can catch people who think they've seen through the ruse.
@@Bluecho4 or even better: make some small cardboard cutouts and base them
Give 1 squad all captain markers so they are the main focus of the enemy as killing a captain is worth more or they are more scared of them but they are just normal soldiers and not captains ^^
This but have the actual captain be the only normal looking dude
@@ROEstZwIebELNASCHER yes ^^
Scout company. If you make it out alive, you’re clearly badass enough to be a full battle brother.
This is just baby alpha legion
That F-Zero idea was genuinely amazing, so inspired and I loved that game on the N64!
My imperial knight Lance is power rangers themed. Once it's complete, I will post pictures everywhere I can on the Internet.
If I’m being honest all that went through my head seeing the f-zero marines was just “go go power rangers”.
Might be a bit of a challenge, but the dazzle camoflarge that you saw on ships in WW2. That might work better on something bigger like the large suit you have a or a tank you might get
This 100 percent. He can also look up the similar patterns they use to "disguise" in development cars.
100% especially since Dazzle camo is just geometric shapes in black and white. with the goal being to disguise what direction the camoflagued object is moving as well as disguising its silhouette
@@Person4772 Whip out the tamiya sticky tape.
I might have to try that on something at some point
Try the "Berlin" scheme that the British used to paint Chieftain tanks in.
@@HO-bndk That too that too. That might be a bit more complicated
Spitballing here:
- If you are short of ideas you could have squads themed around power rangers teams.
- One team could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but having a silver armour and black trim
- If you can add a unit of Deathwatch (I have no idea how space marines works) you could have them in the scheme of their original chapter.
- One squad could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but the armour is coloured and the accents are black
-Since from the lore units try to mimic different units you could paint a unit with a scheme that resembles the unit they mimic, or a third unrelated unit. For example you could paint the upper limbs of the brutalis a light colour so it resembles a scout.
deathwatch is more or less his own chapter taking space marines elites from other chapter to fight xenos. I really like your idea of a squad of power rangers you can even paint a dreadnought like a megazord with a different color for each part
My attitude Lance of imperial knights supports the power ranger's theme. All 21 have similar patterns but different colors along with a unique fossil and mod worked into the design.
I’ve actually done a power rangers scheme for my kill team set, it’s a lot of fun but definitely not fast and has the same issues Paul is having here on a smaller scale for breaking down each model. thankfully it’s just one box of characters
I actually made a power rangers themed army, built The Eight and made them a full power rangers squad, they look so goooood. It’s a great style to go with, definitely recommend
Maybe a group of guys who are covered in transfers with no reasoning, maybe some even have the ultra marine symbol that comes in the boxes but it’s at 90 degrees or something
I see that the comment section is vigorously advocating for these guys to be a loyalist (or simply deeply confused) Alpha Legion company or something.
Frankly, it kind of fits with the premise.
@@vdatethey seem a lot more like Emperor's Children with the noise based weaponry and the random colours.
That's all very Slaanesh coded to me.
If you did scouts, I could see those all looking the same, to give the impression of a tide of sneaky bois you just can't seem to kill.
As for the Dreadnaught, have you considered just covering him in random splotches of vibrant paint that looks like a clown trying to paint camo, and then tying it all in with a drybrush and shade + metallics? It'll be the clown car!
A rhino IS the clown car.
You should have the brutalis be number 3 so when the enemy is confused about where 3 is, he just “quietly”comes up to them a says “I’m right here”.
And you just hear a deep growling synthetic voice going "THREEEEEEEE"
you could invert the colour scheme of a squad or two, maybe your other incursor squad could have the members of the first mirrored but with multicoloured bits replaced by black/silver and vice versa
I love the idea of "All look the same", but you have to take it further. Marines already all look the same with the same trim, shoulder markings, etc. I would go for same Purity Seal placement (for example one on the gun and one on the left leg), and all of them have the red Sergeant helmet stripe.
for a skirmisher unit: they really like pirates, and pirates skirmish fast n stuff. yea. Make some of em look like funny pirate guys
I think it still has to make sense in the lore of the chapter. They wouldn't play dress up for fun, and 'lol random' isn't a good distraction strategy.
What could work is a unit that is stealing stuff. But, like, random stuff, where the enemy thinks "They are after that? Why?" to confuse them about the mission objective. And then give them pirate imagery.
Not sure how it would work lore wise, but what if you had models who were obviously Ultramarines, with the Chapter Symbols, gladii, crested helms, etc. but paint them as Salamanders. Then have a unit with Salamander bits and paint them like Blood Angels, and so on. They might just look like disparate successors though I guess, just an idea!
Love the F-Zero inspired guys!
love this
You could make a unit where everyone has camouflage, but each of the guys has camouflage for a different biome, so one would have like the leafy nets and stuff, another a white cloak, and another have sand stuck in their armour
Idea: having models with little speakers on their bases implying that they’re setting up speakers around the battle field to make even more noise. Another idea is to have them set up scare crows around as well.
Very cool and stupid! just like 40k should be
hey paul, im about halfway through the video but from what youve described- almost every space marines player has gone through this same exact thing (or something similar) and i wanted to give some tips to get through the struggle:
-not every model, or unit, has to have a theme; having some sort of "baseline grunt" scheme can help alot (i honestly thought your infiltrators were the baseline grunt scheme ngl)
-sometimes it can be cool to have special characters/units not look that special (it helps give the vibe of 'too serious to care', and makes it funny when they do the stupidest things on the tabletop and DIE)
-rules can be ignored when they make things hard or less fun, especially your own (deciding to make an entire unit cohesive sounds like an insider joke thing that would happen within the chapter to confuse the enemies and the chapter alike making them go "wait arent they all different? does that mean theyre in the chapter?? are they even in the same unit??? theres no way, its like, theres too many people who are different it has to be a joke/another lie")
hope your screaming ravens go awesome, they give off this super cool badass vibe while also being wholesome in the sense that they just get to be *them* and most people consider that expression to be heresy, so its a nice breath of (admittedly edgy) fresh air, wishing you the best big man!
I love the idea of eliminators or tactical scouts in camo, but none if them match the terrain. Like one in a red-sandstone and orange pattern, one in winter whites and greys, and one with a naval blue ocean camo in a bright green field. None of them blend in, and yet with all the bright colours moving around the battlefield, they just happen to get lost in all of the visual noise.
An entire squad of reflective marines. Itd probably be best of a dreadnaughts or tank but using one of those super reflective paints would be cool.
What about a Power rangers themed unit?
Ima do that for my deathwatch thx
Honestly, I was thinking of doing exactly that for my SM's as a whole. This video cemented it.
One idea is that some units use a completely other chapters' color scheme. Like they paint all their armor yellow except their left gauntlet. So it looks like Imperial fists.
I definitely like an army cohesive theme being a continuation of digging up an N64, finding a cool game or something and themed off of it since they think like, "Ah these cartidges from the dark age of technology hold profound knowledge long since lost to us, we must utilize this precious information" and then they like model a unit off of Dig Dug or something. pick your favorite games and just run wild with that idea, it 10,000% makes sense to me lore wise
These is a lovely sisters army that is modeled after finding the emperor's iPod and are punk rock themed.
One thing that might really help you out is randomisers. For example, i use a website that generates ancient greek names when im naming my SM units. You could find or make a random number generator which choses a random piece of armour, and another one which choses a random colour. That way, if you can think of a theme for a squad then you can use that as a guide so at least they still have a sense of randomness to them
Otherwise, i think your idea is amazing and i cant wait to see what you achieve!
Here me out: raven boyz.The heads from the Nob box are the right size to fit over a standard space marine head, and with a little bit of green stuff you could very easily make it look like your space marines made ork masks and are now charging the enemy making ork sounds. The enemy will be terrified, because not only are the space marines attacking, but they're also allied with the orks as well!
Could also be their form of Gene seed mutation - raving mad with an orky head
Back when I was painting my Kruleboyz Orks for Orktober two years back, I did a "Halloween" paint scheme (oranges, blacks, whites, greens, and purples). But the initial arrangement of colors on my first squad wasn't working for me. So after getting them to a minimal level of "finished" (didn't even paint the bases), I switched to the next squad in the set. And I shifted the colors around to one I liked better, which I used on subsequent models. For October last year, I took a break from painting my Spooktober undead to repaint that first squad, bringing them fully in line with the final scheme.
If a scheme isn't working out, it can pay to pivot early. Rather than subjecting yourself to a scheme you hate or is more work than you really wanted.
Feel like a natural idea here that also provides a bit of variation is to have one of the sizeable, maybe ten men squads have an incident in their recent history where every single person in the squad was heavily injured but nobody actually died or got dreadnoughted and its considered a bit of a miracle, so they each have a red section of their armour where they got wounded. Like one has a red arm because they lost that arm and its actually a bionic arm under the armour. Another had half their face blown off by a bolt round so they have a red helmet. One got hit with a guard-issue rpg type weapon in the chest so has a red breastplate.
My whole army is based on orks wearing crudely put together disguises of other armies, it got difficult after a while, but once I decided to do the unit individuality not model individuality it got easier.
One thing I would find funny is a squad pretending to be from a whole different Space Marine chapter. The enemy thinks they are engaging Ultramarines, but are completely thrown off guard once the screaming starts. Pehaps even squad pretending to Tau, Eldar, Ork, or any other race from the 40k universe. That would be a fun kitbash project.
I would love the idea of every model in a unit looking like a captain to conceal the actual captain of the unit. Sort of like an “I am Alpharius”moment where the real captain is just some random terminator on the group. Maybe if you don’t want to spent £100 on a u it if 5 captains just make them all really stand out to make the captain completely indistinguishable. You would probably run into the same problem you have of painting every single model differently, but I’m sure it’s be worth it for the most elite part of your army…
The Screaming Ravens are coming along brilliantly, but damn, with this level of editing and humour I could listen to you talk about what the weather last week was like 😅 wonderful video, Mr Paul, sir 🧐
Id say for the terminators make them exceedingly battle damaged, like there wearing every bullet hole and scratch as a badge of honor, so you can get creative with the damage rust etc
You've been hitting it out of the part lately with your videos, Paul! I think your realization of how you need to change your scheme is incredibly valuable insight, and I'm happy to see that you came up with a solution to reinvigorate your desire to paint!!! Here are my ideas for possible schemes/customizations of individual units. I've included a few that aren't in your current collection because I think they're cool.(and I expect you to buy more eventually😉)
Judiciar: Do an inversion of the lore. In the lore a Judiciar is a Chaplain in training until they get promoted, and until they become a Chaplain, they are sworn to silence. So take that idea and flip it on its head somehow. Either by making it so the Judiciar can't communicate at all and has to fight with his hands bound, so he can't use the Screaming-Raven's special sign language. Or make him the *LOUDEST* person on the battlefield. Paint him with the brightest fluorescent colors, replace his hourglass woth a boom-box, anything that will make your senses hurt in his presence, on and off the table.
Aggressors: Paint their Power-Fists to look like socker-boppers.
Infernus: Paint their armor to look like Salamanders, to make the enemy think they're fighting more than one Space Marine Chapter at once.
Centurions(all versions): Since Centurions are literally just Power Armor for your Power Armor, reflect that by giving all the Centurions a helmet on their helmet, or a hat on a hat. After all, it'd make a good visual metaphor for how absurdly excessive Centurion suits truly are.
Invictor Warsuit: Paint it with a weird and wacky pattern to visually confuse the enemy on where the pilot is at, since people have called out how exposed the pilot is in a cockpit with no windows. So do what real world Zebras do, cover the suit and the pilot in a unique pattern to confuse/camouflage the pilot inside the suit.
Inceptors: Make the grav-plates on the bottoms of their feet look like moon-shoes and their jump-packs look like. . . Another kids toy centered around jumping or flying from the early/mid 2000's.
Intercessors/Assault Intercessors: Make a Squad of 5 themed around the Rangers of Power Rangers Dino Thunder/Abaranger. You can have Red, Blue and Yellow with white trim and sharp-edged, symmetrical white patterns painted/decaled around their armor. Gold trim/patterns for the black ranger and white armor with black trim/patterns and bright red eye lenses for the white ranger.
Brutalis/Redemptor Dreadnought: If you do decide to follow through on a Power Rangers theme, then let the Dreadnought be the Megazord. Paint each limb as well as the chest in a different color.
Stormraven Gunship: Cover it in Amps, have it blast rave music wherever it flies and paint it with a glow-in-the-dark/blacklight paint for MAXIMUM "Rave Energy."
Desolation Squad: If people are going to call their rocket-launchers T-Shirt Cannons. Run with that idea! Sculpt some rolled-up T-shirts out of Green-Stuff and use some 3d printed blast effect parts to make it look like the Screaming Ravens are firing T-shirts at the enemy. You can make it all of them, or just some. Because if not even the Screaming Ravens know what their weapons will be firing, how will the enemy know until the battle begins in earnest?
Stormspeeder: More or less the same as the Stormraven, but make it look like it just came off the set of "Pimp my Ride."
Any Terminator unit, or any unit that has "Veteran" in their name: Make each one either a deeply integrated reference in their paint job/modeling, that way all of your "First-Company" styled Marines have some underlying theme that ties each and every one together, even if they don't look like they're tied together visually.
The text at 1:19 got me, well done.
5:02 Edit: Also, I think I had the same idea with my Blood Angels Successors, to have each unit be largely the same, but with little individual tweaks; for example, one could have an entire painting on his pauldron, or have his trim embroidered, or perhaps his creative downtime would go towards his weapon if he’s holding a weapon that’s limited to one
An idea that popped straight into my head(thanks to me being a Ork player) for the dreads have it be designs from different chapters, using transfers from each chapter to conceptually trick the enemy to debate who the hell they are fighting chapter wise
Screaming Ravens begin battle with a EDM rave stealth strike to rival the Noise Marines. All you hear is motors of long dead engines and the wailing tithe of angry electronic dance music.
i like this, because you wont get tired of painting a scheme for the entire army, that can get tideus and brutal at some point, you cant see the same 3 colours ever again after a big army project - but every unit different? yeah, that will keep things fresh
Now he knows the Ork-Player´s pain.... as for my suggestion: get your inspiration from there. Orks are litterally the Xenos-Faction-Version of your Space Marines in my eyes.
The issue with da Boyz is how much you effectively *NEED* to kitbash them as well.
Red -> Orange -> Yellow ->Green -> Blue -> Indigo (Possibly replace with bone or gold) -> Violet
Helmet- > Right Shoulder Pad- > Left Shoulder Pad- > RIght Shoulder Trim- > Left Shoulder Trim- > Backpack- > Right Knee Pad- > Left Knee Pad- > Right Arm- > Left Arm - > Feet
Cycle each one, once per model. 77 unique color combinations which will look completely random but generate easily without a moments thought ;) You'll look incredibly creative, but, in fact you've just got procedural space marines.
Tbh you should probably do the base scheme (black silver white), this will be an easy ish batch paint, then go unit by unit and add colors and themes. It will get paint on everything then leaves time for theming which will now be faster with the base model painted.
Might be tricky but you could try using WW1 battleship dazzle camo as this was designed not to obfuscate a ship but to make it confusing to know what you are looking at. You could use masking on a vehicle to get it to work.
Add googly eyes 👀
My Howling Griffons army started off as a painting challenge to paint a single 10 man squad of Intercessor Space Marines. It spiralled out into a 3k points army 😂
6:31 Oh my god, please for the love of god be it Centurions because it just would be the funniest idea ever. Imagine the enemy being absolutely paranoid about a bloody heavily armoured dingus and being like "Oh my god, where is he?! Is he behind us? On the ceiling?? In the walls?!!?!", that would just be hilarious.
Also, at 7:35 it gave me the idea of the unit being the cards for Exodia from Yu-Gi-Oh. Like, one having their left leg being colored gold or something but their entire body being just black and sliver. That would be, 1, funny if it's for a small, standard unit. 2, be bloody cool as hell.
Looks gorgeous. How about a unit where each of the marines encorporates a different detail/pattern from:
1) Eldar craftworld.
2) Tyranid hivefleet.
3) Ork clan.
4) Alpha legion.
I have this idea I'd like to try one day of an ork blood axe army where the warboss was so impressed by space marines he's fashioned his own legion of orks where each of the different units would be done up like the appropriate chapter like raven guard for the stormboys, white scars for the speed freaks, space wolves for the beast snagga boys, and so on. The warboss of course takes the name Waaaghnius Calgork, as a mark of respect.
I like the idea of having them all the same, but you can push it further: make a unit with nothing but the exact same model. Imagine a squad of five Intercessors, all of them painted and posed exactly the same so there's literally no difference between them all.
Yea you could put them in a really similar Pose
You could make them emerald and blue, and give them a snake scale patter. Maybe even a hydra logo, as if they were all individual heads and even if you kill one of them, two more take their place.
@@gustavoh.70A Hydra that Dominates your foes, eh? A+ idea, 10/10 (or rather, 20/20)!
Now just imagine we all Call them the same with a reference to the first letter of the Alphabet but one is actually called a name in reference to the last letter of the Alphabet.
It would be neat to invert one squad - have the trim colour be the armour colour and vice-versa. Enemies would just be like "who the hell are *these* guys?!"
I always wanted to build a dreadnought army based on the arcade game "virtual on", but I always ended up with a less saturated color scheme.
This chapter is more chaotic than Chaos marines themselves..... *I LOVE IT!*
Conceptually and aesthetically I love the Howling Griffons but I'm wise enough to know not to even try to make my own.
I'm attempting a howling Griffons kill team as a full army would just drive me insane.
they are just too aesthetically pleasing to ignore :(
As somebody who has never played Warhammer, your Screaming Ravens series is the most tempted I've ever been to have a go
Maybe you can have a squad with color schemes and possibly even emblems from the different houses to further confuse the enemy as to why a chaos marine is helping an imperial marine toss a corpse of an enemy trooper over a cliff.
Make sure you at least have one small common item on the marines so you don't get confused as the enemy you are fighting against
You should make your aircraft in dazzle camouflage it was designed during world war 1 and 2 to confuse and hide how far a ship was and what direction it was going which fits the theme super well
To explain a meltagun, imagine a "microwave oven gun", thats the meltagun
You should be proud! An amazing effort, looks fantastic 🎉
Very cool idea, I love it. What could solve some of your problems is rather than thinking about individuality in terms of paint schemes think of it in terms of modelling too. kit bashing/ scratch bashing could open many new doors to cool chaotic/random ideas.
How about a unit instead of weapons they carry boxes with question marks on it or even the 40k equivalent of the amazon logo.
Or a drop pod that is filled with electric guitar amps and the unit associated with the drop pod uses some kind of combi instrument/weapon
Including modelling into your army might not be something you are familiar or comfortable with and will increase time and cost but it will increase the joy, and what is Warhammer if not using time and money in exchange for fun and learning new skills.
You’ve given me an idea for a Space Marine army. Paint them like a multiplayer session of a 40k battlefield game. Some are properly decorated and representing their chapter for the guys swiping up. Some are default skins or have chapter insignias on the wrong paint scheme for newbies. Some with goofy paint jobs or edgy shit for the solos just there to have fun or try to impress people.
I had a very similar idea to yours - A Creations of (Fabius) Bile consisting entirely of drug enhanced Marines abducted from loyalist chapters. It meant painting every model in a different colour scheme and, yes, it got exhausting pretty fast. I managed one unit. 😬
I might come back to it eventually, but i I'll need a different approach to make it halfway possible to complete!
I love this concept! Worth the effort and they look great!
I had a project that was plaguing me. This helped me stop and think before I just paint stripped my models. Thank you
I really love your idea of the colour transitioning across the armor of the squad so when they stand in the line you see a traveling wave of colour on them. I imagine this for each 5 man squad and if you field them all in a formation you can actually see the wave goign across the entire force. neat
Modoka Magica for just the color scheme. Specifically the confusing mess of how the witches look
my head lore for your head lore, the f-zero vets race each other for training and this doubles as a form of entertainment for other members of the chapter
The Raven lore described at the beginning is right up my alley.
For a proper paint scheme I'd focus on the stealth and camouflage aspect of the lore.
The colours used should blend in with the terrain and all individuals of the same type should look the same.
(Painting) Success level is measured by how often the opponent fails to notice a unit on the gaming table and how often they mistake one of your units for another.
Having helmets as battle trophies, but half of them are friendly helmets instead of enemy helmets
Reminds me of some of the ninjas in "Five Element Ninjas", the metal ones using shiny gear to blind the enemy and the fire ninjas puffing out colored smoke ahead of themselves, both to obscure themselves in plain sight by fudging up the enemy's perception.
I love the mental image if a space marine in a full sprint, running up to the enemy and screaming "I'M SNEAKKYYYY!!!!!" and the dude he's screaming at is just like "wtf man" while he passes out from loud sound exposure.
This may be cliche, but a big guy carrying a white flage saying "i come in peace" with a massive minigun may be funny
something I did with my chaos army was just reverse the primary and secondary color between units so 1 squad is copper/gunmetal and the other is gunmetal/copper.
Just getting started with the models after reading a good number of novels and loving the lore for forever, and one of the first lessons I learned is that the benefit to reward ratio of a white paint heavy scheme is not worth it for me. Its a shame because when I just dream armies heavy with white look fantastic and I had paint schemes for multiple armies planned that were heavy with it, but even though you can learn to get good at white, or find much better whites, the inconvenience and extra difficulty when so many other colours look good makes me just decide to steer clear. My space marines I'm getting started with have a tiny but prominent bit of white for symbols on the shoulder pads-more often you can do this with transfers but it does mean for things like the crux terminatus or my ancient Dark Vengeance marines with the moulded pauldrons I'm stuck actually painting them, and even that's a pain in the ass.
Your chapter's distraction tactic is working perfectly! Even your own guys get distracted and charge turn 1 when you didn't plan to
What I am doing is separate paint schemes for separate units so I don’t get sick of doing the same paint scheme. It also helps explore what paint schemes work best for me
I feel this majorly. My custom chapter the “The Forgotten” has a lot of different colors and schemes depending on the units. Lore wise there like the death watch. Love the videos.
As someone who's trying to do their first project with warhammer minis (A custom DA falling, not fallen, chapter, with colour flavours from various different chaos gods) thank you for the advice! I imagine having a general scheme too would make it easier to tell which unit is which quickly in a game.
One word; Textures.
Hear me out here. Make it where the Screaming Ravens have a few recruits that spent time with other legions, learning their tactics to better confuse the enemy. As a result, they have one of the signature textures of that legion. Marble for Ultramarine, Scales for Salamander, Gloss for Blood Angel, Cloth for Dark Angel, Fur for Space Wolf, etc. Just make it a little bob or just a painted on texture that denotes that that specific unit knows something special. Also would work for a deathwatch squad if you ever plan on using them.
Paint a unit as Alpha Legion with Black Armor. The gimmick that squad came up with was one they developed when fighting against the Alpha Legion. They had to gun down members of other chapters who were sleeper agents from Youth so they went "OH MY GOD, WHAT IF WE JUST PAINT OURSELVES LIKE THE TRAITORS?! They'd never know in the middle of a fight!"
Centurion could just be the party boys, one's got shutter shades, one's covered in glowsticks, one has a disco ball in place of his Iron Halo.
So my buddy loves trains and also now the T'au of Warhammer. He is painting each major vehicle after a different American Train Company, with train tracks under the feet. Fire Warriors are the construction workers with the Cadre being a manager, and he gave the Ethereal a business suit as an executive.
Anyway, for your Rhino, there's zero reason you can't make it look like a hippy van that's just hotboxed all the time. And any marines you'd normally put in there have tiedie shirts and faded pants (tiedie is super easy, a bright first coat and then little baby splotches of watered-down-to-hell whatever colors you want)
In my Blood Ravens army, each unit leader or major HQ (CPTs not LTs, etc) would either have a bit from another faction, or have generic wargear painted like another chapter. This held up until I got so deep into assembly line batch building and painting that I forgot about the do-dads on the Infiltrator chests. In the end it became a happy accident of just a few models that didn't look quite... right.
If you can break the rules of not having cohesive schemes colour wise and the not marking special characters… then you have essentially made custom characters for their own units within the Screaming Ravens and heraldry being the colours you painted. So you could expand the army that way and that alleviates having to make future additions of the same models to be as unique as the ones you’ve done.
Could have a unit that has the scheme of 10 other chapters, like they suddenly get attacked by a salamander and ultramarine and get confused and scared that reinforcement is coming
Have one or two units paint their armor to look as if they are being viewed through nightvision or thermal scopes, to confuse the enemy into thinking their optics are set wrong. Similar, but hard to paint, idea would be having them paint themselves as normal, but just not extend the non-black colors all the way to the edges of their armor, the goal is to make it so they look like they are smaller ie farther away. Have them paint their armor with false eyes on the back of their helmet and all decals flipped to the other side so it looks like they are looking in the wrong direction. Another hard to paint one would be to have them paint their armor so when four of them are standing together, maybe with two riding on the shoulder's of the other two, they look like a single really-really big marine (or 'naught, or something). Have a unit that each person is painted to have perfect camo - but for wildly different terrain, so one is in snow camo, one is in desert, another forest, another city, etc.
Personally, for my Death Guard army, their story is that they are the wave of plague and festering that sweeps across a battlefield *after* the fight is over and all the bodies are left to rot. Each of their units are recruited from the dead and dying. As such, each unit is a different color scheme to represent being originally from different chapters before being brought into Grandfather's loving, slimy, embrace. Right now I'm just designing them as having come from some unnamed successor chapters, so I'm just referencing my favorite hockey teams' colors, but will probably include a few original legions as well, especially Blood Angels as my friend plays them often.
Jumping off of that, you could have a unit where they - and I realize this also pulls a bit from Alpha legion's thing *if an Alpha legion existed, I mean* - paint themselves in bad knockoffs of the original legions' colors, so some look like Blood Angels, some look like Ultramarines, some like Salamanders. But like, it's just a shoulder, or just the front and the back of their armor is still Screaming Raven colors, or they only knew about captains so they all look like captains from whatever legion.
Look up battleship camouflage, if you want visual confusion thats how you make your opponent suffer a stroke
Started a converted Genestealer cults army with Skaven bits when deathwatch came out in 2016. I got overwhealmed with it and shelved the project untill 2 months ago when its turned into my favourite project, a necromunda gang.Ive also had ork conversions sat on the shelf for years waiting on that bit of inspiration
Different construction vehicle stuff like hazard stripes for one, bright fuck off orange for one shoulder, etc
Here's a unit idea that I almost used for my Blood Angels successors.
The space marines would use 'unpainted' armor with a basic metallic coloration. Every time they did very good (using the blood rage to defeat enemies in my case) they would get one armor part colored red as a badge of honor. Every time they did something awful (in this case, let their rage make them do something reckless and stupid) they paint part of their armor black.
This way you can tell at a glance how new a unit is, how much 'blood honor' they have, and how many black marks they have. You could come up with a simialr badge of honor, and as a bonus you could start metallic and add swabs of colored paint as they earn abilities or flaws in Crusade mode.
(I gave up the idea when I saw a really cool paint scheme on Reddit so I'm just gonna steal that and turn the reds into purple lol)
I’m doing something similar with my sister army, they’re called "Morvenn’s Elites". All the armor is a bronze/gold while the cloth is from their home branches. I have bloody rose colors for sacrasants, white rose for dominion squad, etc. so far really liking how their turning out
I had that exact issue with my dwarves, as I wanted to give each of them an individualized paint job. After all, when dwarves march to war, they come bedecked in bling catering to their individual tastes. The problem was, obviously, that I had to come up with what colors to use on what model. I partly solved that by randomization. That is, I took five different shades of brown and painted the beards of the whole squad with just these 5 colors. Then I took five different colors for gems, and three different colors for hairbands, etc. I then painted the whole squad with these, trying to be as distinct as possible, but only having to watch out that not too many dwarves would have the same combination of hair, band and trinket color.
I do a little bit of this with my blood angels. they're encouraged to be artisans, and so I'll sprinkle in little custom painted bites, such as the face-masks, or especially things like tabards and other details for veteran units.
This would probably look totally stupid, but in addition to you "every guy is painted the exact same way" maybe have the entire unit in the same pose as well? You would probably have to trade a few models with other people to make it financially viable, or convert some cheap character (ebay) to a base troop. I don't have to much experience with space marines, but the necron warden converted to an immortal springs to my mind as an example.
Perhaps Space Marine Heroes would work for this purpose? There was that recent release with the Kill team with the two intercessors or the eliminator that might work is you could get your hands on enough copies...
I like the idea that the weapons and jet packs are more unique and customized based on the personality on each individual marine
Make a unit where every space marine has a obnoxiously bright colored cod piece
Maybe add, caw caw caw in crazy lettering over the brutalis like grafitti, he is one that is put to sleep between every battle in stasis with the others grafitting him as a prank. As he is the most insane loudest of the bunch. Mad from the years of being sealed in a dreadnought only being able to speak in screaming bird so they put him in stasis to shut him up.
7:36 you could do this but have it a horizontal transition with the legs being some sort of floor terrain but their heads and torso as the sky, so they end up camouflaged as some sort of walking set peice
For Infiltrators or incursors, I like the idea of having each member of the unit be the same. Since they’re the stealthy marines, the idea reminds me of the ninja technique of making it appear as if someone is in two places at once. This could be done with several ninjas with similar height and body build dressing the same and mimicking each others voices when they needed to speak.
You could use a reflective paint like chrome on one of the dreadnoughts. It would be very confusing to have a huge mirror like object running towards you. Another possibility would be special colors that change their pigmentation depending on temperature or light level.
You should add an eversor assassin. A man running at mock 10 on every drug known to man screaming at the top of his lungs would fit very well.
Something color wise I do with my tyranids is make the tanks brighter red, make the hordes darker with stripes for confusion, and the stealth units are covered in rosettes making them almost black, maybe you can do something similar by making all of these units bright and confusing then have one unit of Phobos or something who are actually just all black so their enemies are so confused by all the bright random colors and noise that they never see it coming when a unit is actually trying to be sneaky.
Also thought I’d add that your chapter is similar to the black guard but a lot funnier
Dat groove data hits you when da Sonic 2 music kicks in tho..... 🤩
A unit with different space marines chapters on it's shoulder. So black armour but has like the Blood Angels logo on them, but also has the Space Wolves on there leg or something.
The colours scheme reminds me of a more chaotic form of Deathwatch.
Holy hell, this video is a peek into my own future. owo;
I have a Grey Knights army that I wanted to have the same individualistic approach to each unit, so instead of just having them glow blue and be boring, I have their weapons, eyes, etc. glow based on the legion of Astartes they were drafted from.
To this end, if they hail from traitor legions, like my World Eaters Hammer Justicar, or my Dark Angels Ancient, they'll have heterochromia in their glowy eyes and weapons, whereas loyalists get a more monochromatic color scheme.
I still have a lot of units to fill out, and I've realized by watching this video that I'll probably run out of legions by the end of this quest of mine, but thinking about other arenas for inspiration is a massive assist to the future of my project and it helps me to prepare for the future better so, thank you for this video.
........as for your project......well...... owo;
Um.....Look for other old school games you're a fan of? Like Pokemon accessories, or maybe base a unit off of Perfect Dark?
Dazzler camouflage is designed to confuse optics you could use that on a squad or even the dreadnought, look it up!