Sources of Alternative Ultramarines Color Schemes

[Cruor Vault]

I'm roughly 50K points deep into an Ultramarines collection.  At this point I occasionally grow weary of painting Blue.  I'm looking for lore supported alternative color schemes, preferably using little to no Blue.

 

I've painted some Inceptors up like Legion Destroyers, I have plans to paint the Indomitus Assault Intercessors based off a Codex Grey armored/Blue Pauldron'ed Assault Marine (maybe?) I found in one of the 1st or second edition rulebooks.

 

One of the other books has a green/brown multi-cam scheme and a grey/blue stripe pattern.  The camo look doesn't particularly appeal to me, it lacks the cleanliness of other color schemes.

 

Other than variants of Blue/White/Red does anyone know of warzone specific or Heresy Era Chapter (the legion structure version) alternatives to the blue and gold?

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I painted my army blue and black - it’s a pretty good contrast. Black Destroyer like units such as Hellblasters and plasma Inceptors could work . 

[apologist]

I added personal heraldry to the left pauldron of each of my Great-Crusade/Horus Heresy-era marines. Bit of a stretch to call the scheme itself lore-supported, but the Praetor armour pattern's named after them.

 

Alternatively, you might consider a 2nd edition style crusade army, made up of squads from different Chapters. The Ultramarines lend themselves to this approach, as the Codex allows disparate squads to act together cohesively and effectively. It's backed up in the lore in a few places, memorably the Ultramarines' successors attack on the Night Lords described in the Night Lords trilogy.

[Kenzaburo]

I was planning on going for black armour with a blue chapter pauldron for my Infiltrators and other Vanguard units - similar to the Legion Desroyer approach, just for stealthy units.

[crazyterran]

Marius Gage had an inverted colour scheme if I remember right, maybe an option for a character that inherited his armour.

[Cruor Vault]

Marius Gage had an inverted colour scheme if I remember right, maybe an option for a character that inherited his armour.

 

Are there any examples of this armor?  Presumably white armor with blue pauldrons?

[Brother Tyler]

All of the Marius Gage imagery (from the card game and as shown in the Visions books) depicts him in blue armour. His right shoulder pad is frequently shown as riveted metallic plates, but the rest of his armour appears to use the standard Ultramarines Legion livery.

 

The gold [shoulder pad rims] is a fairly recent innovation. Prior to that, yellow was more common. As suggested previously, you can always use one of the other companies if you want to reduce the amount of gold/yellow you're painting.

 

There's always room to try some other forms of camouflage, such as the Imperial Fists and Howling Griffons adopting primarily black armour instead of their normal colorful schemes when conducting operations on night worlds

 

The Ultramarines Legion members as depicted in The Horus Heresy Book V: Tempest tend to follow the standard livery of primarily blue and gold. The destroyers incorporate black; the specialists (e.g., apothecaries) incorporate their standard order colors (e.g., white for apothecaries). Some other colors are incorporated here and there, often white and gold, but no real alternate schemes are shown. There is room for some members of the XIIIth Legion to preserve the pre-Primarch heraldry (presumably plain ceramite).

 

If you're looking at painting some different colors, though, you might consider some of the successor Chapters, potentially via the Honour Company. This would allow you to choose any color scheme (as long as it's an Ultramarines Legion Successor). With about half of the total Space Marine Chapters descending from the XIIIth Legion, you will have plenty of options.

[crazyterran]

I remember in Unremembered Empire it talking about him in his inverted plate, but who knows, maybe it was just ceremonial.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Inverted could look a lot like a World Eater.

[Cruor Vault]

I found this guy in the "Hive War" book from the pre-epic era, I think it was an expansion to Space Marine?  I'm going to paint up the Indomitus Assault Intercessors like him, and the Eradicators like Legion Destroyers (to match my Plasma Inceptors).

 

 

I might use the Marius Gage idea for some of the other units like Blade Guard, leaving just the Outriders and characters to use the more traditional scheme.