Deathwing should be white!

[FerociousBeast]

When did Deathwing change from white to bone? The earliest pics I know of show the Deathwing as a pure white, not the yellowed off-white they now appear as. Personallly I think the pure white looks so much better, and looks far more striking next to the Greenwing's dark green and Ravenwing's black.

http://solegends.com/citcat9x4/c93585-02.jpg

[Noserenda]

Ah but werent the other Dark Angels black in those days? The Palette shifted for whatever reasons, if you want to go with White instead of bone all power to you but i dont think it makes a huge difference :)

[Brother dean]

2nd ed Angels of Death codex was around when they did it I believe.

[DAG42]

It was 2nd ed I believe as Brother Dean stated.

[shabbadoo]

Yes.  Bone white. Not pure white, but an ivory white.  Elephant tusk white.  I like all of the looks though- pure white, ivory, light tan.  The only thing I would recommend is just being cosistent in how one paints.  Choose one option and stick with it.  Mixing the types will just look bad.

 

Dark Angels white armor pr0n:

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e245/btmcrae/darkmillenium.jpg

[Interrogator Stobz]

 

I Concur; Deathwing should be WHITE!!!! These guys are painted Skull White, skulls are bones too :P

[Brother dean]

I agree with Shabbadoo.  Be consistant.  I remember a couple 'Eavy metal Deathwing done in a white with blue lowlights.  I knew I couldn't have done that so I went with the just changed bone color...  I can do white now but its been 20 odd years....

[Aradiel]

i also prefer the pure white deathwing over the yellowish one we have now. but since i utterly suck at painting both i just gone and painted mine black

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h222/caalsigo/deathwing/P8180017.jpg

[shabbadoo]

While black is indeed very forgiving as a main color, white is not really difficult to paint.  The main thing is to paint anything over it very carefully so that you don't have to touch up mistakes too much.  When you do screw up though, hit the area with very light grey first (like Vallejo Ghost Grey), then with white.

[Dantay VI]

I am not sure why they changed from white to bone colour, apart from to help them be different to maybe the White Scars.

 

They were originally black but changed their colours after 6 terminator squads returned to their home planet to find it ravaged by a genestealer cult.

 

The colour change came about after Cloudrunners tale was told, where they coated their black armour in ash to show they were dead men walking, they also marked their armour in their tribal totemic symbols, the captain was cloud runner, there was  also weasel-fierce, lame bear, the librarian two heads talking (who came to them in a death vision as he died killing the patriarch) and so on. I do not have the story to hand to flesh it out.

 

At the end of the story the suits of terminator armour are reurned to the chapter and the Captain Gabriel?/Cloudrunner and his remaining brethren are allowed by the chapter to see out their days living amongst their people and teaching them the old ways....

 

To me, if I have a barbecue the ash is white.... White would be nicer  (I hate it when my friend refers to his DW Land raiders as Blocks of Butter) but its also a symbol of purity, but are the Dark Angels pure? Or is there truth to the name "Unforgiven"?

[Aegnor]

Apart from anything else, a nice hit of nostalgia from the pics in the first post. Loved the Dark Millennium expansion and Space Hulk game on PC in particular.

[Dantay VI]

How is this for nostalgia Aegnor?

 

 http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing.jpg

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing2.jpg

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing3.jpg

 

From the original DeathWing story.

[Isiah]

Ah facial decoration too - don't see much of that used nowadays either.

 

Cheers

I

[Interrogator Stobz]

Isn't it funny (or is it just me) that although the proportions, scaling and perspective are way worse in the old pics compared to much of the more serious new stuff there is still much more of the frantic: 'Yeah boy, Pew-Pew get 'im' and: 'Kill the damned xenos before they take us' feel to the old artwork than now?

[Aqui]

Isn't it funny (or is it just me) that although the proportions, scaling and perspective are way worse in the old pics compared to much of the more serious new stuff there is still much more of the frantic: 'Yeah boy, Pew-Pew get 'im' and: 'Kill the damned xenos before they take us' feel to the old artwork than now?

There is something definitely lost in translation between old art and new. New art looks "Grimdark", and a lot of it I really like, but there's something missing, I just can't put a finger on what that "is"

And for the record - Deathwing = white, despite my DIY successor Chapter having bone as their main colour (their First Company is DA green ) I used to love the Death Wing expansion

[JeffJedi]

Dark Angels went from black to green about midway though 1st edition, Rogue Trader. Many seem to think they were black until 2nd edition, but the truth is once mk7 armor hit the DAs were green.

[Dantay VI]

That i true the Dark Angels did change colour, but I believe that the Ravenwing and the terminators retained the black colour, the terminators then changed colour scheme to whiye/bone after the story "Deathwing".

[Gillyfish]

The original 'bone' terminators came in towards the latter days of 1st edition. I believe I still have the White Dwarf in question too. That was back when the old metal Deathwign squad was first released. The models were painted bone-white. You can also see that scheme in the second edition Codex.

 

The original Deathwing story and box art would suggest a more grey-white scheme (also during first edition) and some of the pictures FB posted at the start of the thread were released during second edition.

 

I would have to go back and check, but I believe that the WD article and second edition codex might have both listed the Deathwing as being white, not bone. I suspect the bone scheme came about for two reasons - it was a cool and interesting way to paint white which complemented the red and green colours used elsewhere on the models and it made the DA terminators distinct from other Chapters, like the White Scars. I think the former is the more likely reason to be honest. That might then have become the standard way to paint Deathwing and then the expectation shifted to them being bone.

 

Interestingly, the same WD issue has Golden Demon winners and there are some blue-white Deathwing in that, killing a traitor terminator.

[Xwingt65]

How is this for nostalgia Aegnor?

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing.jpg

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing2.jpg

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/Deathwing3.jpg

 

From the original DeathWing story.

Wauv. Love that story.

 

Read it so many times the book fell appart.

[shabbadoo]

Isn't it funny (or is it just me) that although the proportions, scaling and perspective are way worse in the old pics compared to much of the more serious new stuff there is still much more of the frantic: 'Yeah boy, Pew-Pew get 'im' and: 'Kill the damned xenos before they take us' feel to the old artwork than now?

There is something definitely lost in translation between old art and new. New art looks "Grimdark", and a lot of it I really like, but there's something missing, I just can't put a finger on what that "is"

Seeing the old art makes us harken back to time when we were seing this old art of the first time, and at that time it was awesome. Now we have much better art and our perspective on this old art is now very jaded...and yet we still recall on some level the feeling this old art evoked within us.

[FerociousBeast]

@Gillyfish - Great info! Is it against the rules to post scanned pics from old WDs?

 

@shabbadoo - I very much disagree with that. While the technical skill of the latest artwork makes the old artwork look like child's play w/ crayons, the old art has much more character and is more memorable than most of the new stuff.

[GlauG]

I always liked the "Plains world" origin for the Deathwing armour... To which end, my Deathwing are more of an ash grey off-white. 

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img51/968/20120925161241.jpg

[Prot]

When I first read the title of this thread I thought... man that is pretty racist!!!

 

Then I read it and was like wow.... talk about needing context. lol

 

I think this topic opens up other questions for me.... like why didn't Ravenwing change their color? And why Green for regular Dark Angels?

 

Honestly though, I love both the bone color and the white. I think either look very good.

[Dantay VI]

Its alluded to in one of the HH books that the newer recruits from Caliban began to subtly change their armours colour from black to a dark green, or incorporated the green into their armour.

 

In memory of the forests of Caliban which were slowly being lost to the progress being made on their planet by the Imperium. In the same story, Lion' El Jonson has his newer Chjapter Masters shadow the Terran commanders, which makes them believe that the Lion mistrusts them and is having them watched.

 

Following this thinking, as the Terran Dark Angels die and are replaced with Calibanites, the armour subtly changes colours, which is then reinforced when the war comes to Caliban between the Black Dark Angels (probably mainly Terrans) and the Green's.

 

With the Lion going into the Rock with the Watchers, and the Legion now led by Calibanites, they probably stuck to the green in memory of teir lost home and to dis-associate themselves from the fallen.

 

Atleast that is my view of the colour change. 

[Bryan Blaire]

The lines could not have been quite as strict as a Terran/Calibanite divide, because the great majority of the "rebel" DA on Caliban would have been trained Calibanites, not Terrans. And Luther, their leader, was from Caliban as well.