Paint Scheme - Advice needed!

[Markov Geist]

Hello there, fellow blueberries!

 

I'm building a 1500 points Tau force from scratch and I'm not sure what paint scheme to use. 

 

My problem is that I will be using a T'au Sept battallion and a Farsight Enclave Vanguard Detachment, so I need to choose a paint scheme that goes well with the FSE red/grey. My first idea was to go with the studio scheme of Vior'la since white is neutral enough and I'd be able to squeeze in a few white details on the FSE units as well if needed. 

 

But then again, I'm not a fan of just copying the studio scheme, so I've been looking for different possibilites (thank you, Fire Warrior Painter):

 

 

What do you think? Do you have another suggestion?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

[Kinstryfe]

I like the grey/yellow scheme. If you're already using grey/red, it'll help tie everything together with "warm" colors.

[Kythnos]

I actually like the last option the most.

[The Pounder]

Yeah, I’d go with grey but maybe do red Sept markings?

[Bryan Blaire]

The armor can basically be any colors you want, it's the sept markings that indicate the force it belongs to, so if you really want to stick to the fluff, any force from the T'au sept will have white indicator markings on whatever color armor they are using.

 

You might consider a darker grey armor for "ash wastes" type combat with the white markings.

 

If you wanted to just invert the Farsight Enclaves color scheme for a Vior'la Sept force fighting along side FSE, that would also look good, and have an "ash wastes" visual with the proper red markings for the Vior'la sept.

[Markov Geist]

Thanks for your input, everyone! 

 

@ Jud Cottrell , Kinstryfe: When you say grey, which one do you mean? I suppose it's the bottom one (they are all sort of greyish mixed with different colours)? 

 

 

The armor can basically be any colors you want, it's the sept markings that indicate the force it belongs to, so if you really want to stick to the fluff, any force from the T'au sept will have white indicator markings on whatever color armor they are using.

You might consider a darker grey armor for "ash wastes" type combat with the white markings.

If you wanted to just invert the Farsight Enclaves color scheme for a Vior'la Sept force fighting along side FSE, that would also look good, and have an "ash wastes" visual with the proper red markings for the Vior'la sept.

 

Thanks for the insight regarding the sept markings. I'll have to keep an eye on that!

 

My problem, however, is more about colour composition and what looks good on the table. Farsight Enclaves have pretty much a pre-determined scheme with a bit of wiggle room, but it's always going to be red+ grey/white. So looking at the complementary colour to red, that's bright green, which I'm really not that fond of. So my second plan was to use a relatively neutral colour, such as the beige/grey one in the bottom picture.

[Panzer]

Actually Farsight Enclaves colour scheme is as much pre-determined as the one of any other Sept. It's just that there's a bit of fluff to why Farsight himself prefers wearing dark red armour and why others from the FSE might follow his example but it's entirely possible for a FSE army to wear green armour with grey markings for forest/jungle warfare or white armour with grey markings for fighting in snowy regions and so on.

 

Of course if you don't care too much about the correct representation of your forces according to the fluff you can completely ignore the whole markings topic. They are your models to paint and play with after all.

However if you do care then you should definitely go with white markings for your T'au Sept units so the only question there left is how to paint the actual armour. I guess you don't care too much about having your army set to fight in a specific environment so that wouldn't be an issue for the armours colour scheme and it's more important to fit together with the classic FSE scheme.

I'm not a big fan of the desert scheme T'au Sept forces are traditionally shown in and I don't think it would mix particularly well with the dark red of the FSE anyway. How about a green colour scheme? I for example use Loren Forest green armour for my models and think it would look great with the dark red together in an army. I quickly clicked it together in the painter so you can see for yourself (I painted them as Sa'cea so everything that's white there is orange for me).

 

 

 

Going a bit more into special cases of official T'au heraldry there are also mentionings of some soldiers being allowed to invert their colour scheme to honor their deeds. T'au aren't big on personal heroic deeds etc so it's somewhat rare but it does exist. Best example would be Shadowsun and her white armour with brown-ish markings (inverted classic T'au Sept colours).

Why am I saying that? Well if you want to you could justify your T'au Sept detachment to be one of those special cases and then paint them completely in white and give them Sept markings in a colour of your choice depending on the enivronment they narratively are stationed in. I'd avoid red tho to avoid confusing it with the official Vior'la colour scheme as they are usually depicted wearing their parade uniform (yes, that's another thing that exists but it's barely or rather not at all documented outside of that one case).

Inverting the above colour scheme for example would look like this

 

[Progenitor]

Damn sfPanzer, you're not that far away from the scheme I use! 

[Panzer]

Well ... almost. 

But don't worry I'm going to re-paint my T'au soonish anyway. ;)

[Guest Triszin]

I actually like the last option the most.

Agreed, its kinda soothing

[Kristoff]

Is it just me, or is the first one rather resembling the Sa'cea Sept colors?

[Markov Geist]

Is it just me, or is the first one rather resembling the Sa'cea Sept colors?

 

I was trying to imitate this scheme here: 

 

[Panzer]

Yeah that's the classic urban warfare colour scheme Sa'cea models are usually shown with. ;)

[Progenitor]

I like the last two of the proposed 3, I do think the last one is cool looking. 

[Imren]

I like the option three with either white or light grey armour panels and dark/blackish soft armour underneath the hard armour panels.

 

Generally speaking, Tau are a bit like space marines in that they have a main colour (tau armour panels) and a secondary colour (tau soft joints). So if your choose one dark do the other light. I think going for lighter colours on the armour and darker on the soft joints will bring attention to the armour and less on the soft "fabric" underneath.

 

So in your situation I'd go with white armour and dark grey (skavenblight dinge-ish or vallejo german grey) soft joints and do teal/turquise markings, that would look good.

 

For tau I'd stay away from using blues as primary or secondary colour on their suits as it would blend in too much in those rare cases when you do bare heads that are blue. But if you plan to not build any of them with bare heads then that would not matter much.

[Markov Geist]

I might have found a compromise: 

 

 

- The green is a good complementary approximate to the red of the FSE, also present here in the helmet colour, which can be interpreted as a sign of solidarity with the enclaves.

 

- The brigt grey details match the FSE secondary colour while freshening up the overall scheme.

 

- The bright, glowing blue on the lenses and weapon parts will emphasize the futuristic look.

 

- White Sept markings to indicate Tau sept.

[Panzer]

I like that colour scheme a lot. Red helmets is very unusual since a differently colored helmet usually indicates shas'vre or shas'o rank, and especially red was the standard for commanders in the old Codexes regardless of Sept before GW reworked the heraldry/ranking colours, but I guess it works in this special case.

Funnily enough I once was thinking about something similar but instead with red parts on the leg armour. ;)

 

Lastly be careful with the bright glowing parts. It works if you can make it look like it's actually glowing, but it might clash too much with the rest if it's just some brightly coloured spot.

[Kristoff]

The helmet is a little too mauve and should be more red for my tastes, but if you like it, go for it.

[Panzer]

By the way, this thread should help a lot to find the correct Citadel colours for your colour scheme: Paint Color Hexadecimal Codes

[Trevak Dal]

That bright teal will be a pain in the balls. Go with the gray/blue yellow one (first pic), you got to consider ease of getting on the table.

[Imren]

Teal is easy, with GW you just basecoat with sotek green and mix in some white for the highlight layers

[Kristoff]

If you like/can stand P3 paints, Privateer Press just released some colors for their new faction of Crucible Guard which offer a teal aspect as well.

[Imren]

Check out P3 Eldritch, P3 arcane blue and P3 meridius blue, they are beautiful turquise/teal colours