Aspect Warrior colour schemes

[ionfish]

From the way Eldar are always coming second in those "Which DoW army are you most looking forward to playing?" polls, I'm reasonably sure there are a fair few Eldar players out there. Coming back - being brought back, in fact, mainly by Dawn of War and the fact that a friend of mine's started playing recently - into the hobby after an absence of four years, I find myself in need of an army. Eldar, my old favourites from 2nd Edition, were the logical choice. Despite an army list badly in need of revision (Shuriken Catapults, which used to be better than Storm Bolters, are now 12" weapons, giving my poor Guardians at most one round of shooting before being ripped to shreds in close combat), their speed, firepower and sheer style drew me again.

With a new army comes a new colour scheme, and I've been playing around with a nice bone colour for my Guardians and vehicles. Eldar armies can often look incoherent, with different troops having vastly different colour schemes. My plan was therefore to use a fairly limited palette of colours - black, bone and red - to make my Aspect Warriors both unique and yet part of a coherent whole. I haven't actually painted any yet, being busy with work, cleaning up the models, and painting a Vyper and some Guardians.

The real point to this thread was to ask how others paint their Aspect warriors. Do you stick to the codex colour schemes, or paint them in craftworld colours, or a hybrid of the two? Photos would make it all the more interesting. :)

[Firestorm]

Well my eldar are an invented craftworld of my own (which i look forward to translating into the game), they are a dark grey with dark red detailing. I find a great way to seperate your Aspect warriors from the rest of your army while still keeping it coherant is to take the colours of you guardians and reverse them. For example, if your guardians were mainly bone-armoured with black and red shoulders/heads/etc then your Banshees might have mainly red armour, possibly with a black undersuit and some bone on the helm or the weapons (this looks really good). You can also introduce an extra colour with the Aspects, so for example with Striking Scorpions you could do some of the detailing or possibly weapons in green.

[BlackTemplar]

I've always liked the codex schemes... it makes the aspect warriors stand out nicely.


You could unify them with your army via markings/runes, or just dull down the color so it's not as contrasting.

For example, if you're using a dark red/black scheme for your craftworld, you could paint your scorpians, for example, in a dark dark green.

This way the colors will be different, but they wont stick out like a sore thumb.

[Majestyk]

or do one arm of each aspect warrior in the dominant color of your army.

[Cailet]

I have no aspect warriors yet but when I do the armor will be aspect coloured and cloaks/sashes craftworld colours. The SS's are going to be all glossy black though because I don't like them in their neon green.

[Fang]

When I did my aspect warriors I kept them mostly in my main color scheme but played up a color similiar to their shrine. My overall scheme was black and orange, which I have on roughly all the models, however it ran down like this with my aspect warriors

-Dark reapers - made mostly black
-Fire dragons - made mostlly red
-Scorpions - made mostly green
-Hawks -made mostly blue

etc.
I think it says in the codex though that somtimes they are the shrine colors and other times the craftworlds or somtimes a mix so really I think you could go in any direction really.

Also about guardians, I saw and interesting tactic used once, using a large guardian squad as a shield with smaller squads with platforms fireing out from behind. The large squad blocked line of sight and had conceal witht he farseer to cast fortune for the reroll, I figured that would make a very stable center line and allow you aspect warriors to make flanking manuvers in wave serpents.

[ionfish]

Won't work in 4th Edition; they have, thankfully, scrapped screening (aka the meatshield of doom). We have to use proper tactics now. :)

I'm definately down with flanking manoeuvres though; currently my plan is to get a couple of nice big close combat squads (Scorpions and Banshees) in Wave Serpents. Scorpions are my favourite troops, and probably the most useful, versatile unit the Eldar have got, so they're a must-buy.

[Crackseed]

I had my Scorpions painted black like the "Emperor Scorpions" we have IRL (The big huge-clawed black ones that are like 7 inches) but I pained one arm in silver-streaking with one singular red slash...I also attached a tabard to my Exarch and gave a dry-brush of grey for highlight.

Was a rather interesting scheme :) Dunno if I'll repeat it. I'll post more later too about other color scheme ideas (at work...blegh)

[FluxX]

Anything blue or green is good ;) .

But me, I followed the codex look really, just having light blue/dark blue or green camoflage for the colours on a white main body of the model. But yes, my Gaurdians (they were the special ones, what was the name???) , I kept them white instead of the contratsing Blue that they are dipicted as.

[Crackseed]

I'll be honest, I never ever fully completed an army scheme. I worked so much at the comic shop that I played, I never got to get much painting down, so I had just lots of hodgepodge ideas and stuff but nothing ever totally complete. Still, lots of ideas and there's SO much choices.

One of the big selling points for me about Eldar is they are flashy and can be painted as such. And I love putting gloss spray on their armor. Looks so sheckshy :D