"purple" Alpha Legion

[Breakthrough]

Hi guys again its me, and again I am asking about the purple schemed AL.

 

Yes FW make blue popular for the AL but what is with purple AL like on the "Legion" Cover?

 

Did one of you tried this?

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

That's the Alpha Legion's original 40K color scheme which they used to use in the older 30K artwork, before Forge World made the new metallic scheme. It looks purple because they are on a red planet which makes the blue colors look a bit more purple.

 

The lady that sometimes does painting videos for GW instead of Duncan did one for it before: 

[Lay]

The purple armor is their Great Crusade/pre-Heresy color scheme. It was first depicted in the Index Astartes article from 3rd editon:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mEQWxq88yV8/T-FJqT0SbhI/AAAAAAAABiI/V4bAHoplRbg/s1600/AL.jpg

In "Legion" the Alpha Legion's armour is repeatedly described as purple too, so that's probably the color of the Marine on the cover.

They gradually changed to Forge World's metallic scheme during the Heresy as described in "Scars":

"Some vessels were adorned with the new Legion symbols - edged with sapphire and emerald, the sigil of the striking hydra. Others still bore the colours of fidelity, crowned with the old chain-linked Alpha-Omega device. As ever with the XX legion, nothing had been entirely settled. Everything was still in flux."

[Kinstryfe]

I'm of the theory that they started purple (as noted above) and moved to blue specifically because of/to cheese off the Ultramarines. It seems like something Alpharius would do.

[Kizzdougs]

The Horus Heresy - Book Three - Extermination is the most up to date source and tells a different story. 

 

On page 91 it says:

Variously and without recourse to time period or progression, the Alpha Legion has been witnessed in liveries of pale grey, gleaming steel, veridian, dull bronze, sable, indigo, amaranth and azure blue - both in main and in combination. It has been variously recorded as displaying Principia Belicosa standardised rank and unit signifiers, elaborate stylised reptilian iconography of unknown meaning, and the complex logos-teknika forms favoured by the Emperor-shattered Panpacific Empire on Ancient Terra. It has also gone into battle without emblems or markings of any kind; a faceless, anonymous army of killers without distinction or division in its ranks.

 

So the Alpha Legion have a wide variety of contemporaneous colour schemes. 

 

In regards to the 'purple' scheme shown in the Index Astartes article (and the Visions of Heresy art book) I think it's actually closer to indigo, a mid-tone between purple and blue. 

[Daemonifugue]

I paint my alpha legion macragge blue with a purple shade then drybrush blue and green "colour swirls" in homage to the cover of Legion. Doesn't look to shabby.

[feuer_faust]

Alpha Legion is just too darned crafty: really, you can justify any color you want, since they're so busy being inscrutable in their motivations. :)

[Kinstryfe]

Well sure, they're canonically said to be blue, grey, metallic, black, green, red, indigo, purple, and bronze. But nowhere does it say they wear orange or yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They probably wear orange and yellow too.