Topic: Painting an Empire Army -Strategies

[Rutgar of Wissenland]

Hi All,

I was going to have fun with my Empire army.  It's my secondary army and not my primary.  That means I don't want to expand it like crazy.  My budget isn't as big for it.  So....that leads into my question.

How do you paint your army schemes?  Do you do the whole army one uniform style?  Do you paint different units differently?  Do you paint detachments the same as the parent unit (or slight variation)? 

I was originally going to paint each unit to look different than the rest of the army.  This way, I can add some variety to the whole army, but keep it all within one scheme.  Less boring, too.  My problem is that I'm just getting into the army.  I thought I had a good strategy for my army, but then I read a really good strategy guide on the Griffon Formation.  That would completely change how I would use the minis I have!  It got me thinking.  If I paint each unit separately, I would be stuck in how I can use those units! 

There is the idea that I could paint up two main unit styles and just be prepared to paint all my options for detachments and such for the army.  This would mean I would have to buy a lot of different units and not be able to inter-change them.  If it were my first army, I would have no problem doing this as it's really cool looking and why not?  Limited budget and not sure how much I will get to play with Empire makes me want think about it.  I could just paint them how I want them and then just mix things up any way and not care that detachments might not match the parent unit.  Would that work?

I could just paint all the army in one uniform style.  Do people do that?  I worry it would look boring.  If that were the case, I wish I had started my first unit differently!!!! 

How do you guys do it?  What do you suggest?

[Eldjin]

I think that one of the unique things about Empire, and why they look stunning on the table, is the fact that they are uniform.

And you can put some extra effort on the special characters to stand out a little extra.

[harv]

If you are going for one Province you can create extra colour using special units and detachments. Knightly Orders, Flagellants and detachments are a good way of creating less uniformity.

I personally prefer less uniformity in an entire army and like a patchwork quilt look of different provinces and uniforms coming together under one banner. That was always the way I envisaged the Empire from when I started with 4th ed.

Choice is yours, if you love the look and history of one particular province go with it, if you can't decide choose everything 

[Delthos]

I really don't like the mixed province look, so I stick with a single province. I paint mine in one general scheme, with some slight variation in each unit. At least one of my main colors is on pretty much every unit though. Some of my characters don't follow this, and that is mainly my wizards.

I quarter the uniforms on my statetroops. So halberdiers have right shoulder and left leg burgandy and the other quarters get yellow, spearmen have them reversed. Knights and Pistoliers are slightly different. The pistoliers have alternating puffs painted burgandy and yellow on their arms. My swordsmen, who are the old Regiment of Renown models Vespero's Vendetta, have white shirts, black high boots, and burgandy cloaks with yellow trim. Each troop unit is different, yet on the table the overall visual impact is that they are one complete army.

This allows me to use the same color palatte for the entire army, yet not get bored with painting those colors repetitively. Overall I use three main colors. Burgandy, Yellow, and Brown. I also use three other colors to a lesser extent: White, Black, and Light Blue. Those 6 color make up about 90% of my army. The other 10% is mainly my wizards who will eventually run the gammut of the color wheel, Knights, and a few other characters.

[Hoodling]

My army is (thus far) all in the one scheme, however I don't plan to keep it that way. I ended up coming up with a theme and kinda sticking to it, which is unusual for me.

My mental image of an Empire army is with lots of different schemes, drilling into me from reading dozens of articles and battle reports from back in 4th edition when the Perry twins' Empire army was all over White Dwarf. It's not the image I've tried to replicate with my army, but it's still what I like to imagine.

I can understand your challenges around unit sizes. For me, a detachment would be in similar colours to their parent unit, since they are meant to have trained together. As for being locked into a certain layout of units if you use different schemes through the army, I guess I would just counter that by planning to make the units as large as they could really need to be - so say 50 models for the mainstay units like Halberdiers, with unit fillers if you feel so inclined.

The other option is to go for a compromise - several units in a given colour scheme, which then means they will interact easily with each other in terms of being combined into larger units or being recruited as detachments. Even if you did an army with a certain colour scheme accounting for 3 or 4 units, you could still account for several different provinces in a decent-sized army.

[ZeroTwentythree]

I'm going to disagree about the uniform look thing. Sort of. That can look good, but so can variety. That's one of the benefits of painting an Empire army, in my opinion. My own army tends towards the variety end of the spectrum. (and by that I mean I am at the extreme...)

The thing about WFB is that ther is no scale. So there isn't a definition of how many soldiers a figure or unit represents. With that in mind, you really have a lot of leeway in the army's organization. So mixing uniforms has a lot of possibility. Even mixing uniforms within a unit, or a unit and its detachments, could represent troops from neighboring provinces being brigaded together.

[valmir]

It sounds like your question really comes down to whether it would restrict how you want to use your minis.

As I understand it, this is only going to be an issue with larger blocks of core infantry, i.e. units where you might realistically go "hmm, do I want two units of 25, or one unit of 50". If you were to use different colour schemes (i.e. different provinces) for different units, then, yeah, they're effectively locked into a single function.

Another option might be to choose, say, a three-colour palette. For instance, if you chose black white and red as your colours, this allows you three different units:
1. black and white with red detailing
2. black and red with white detailing
3. red and white with black detailing

The fact that the colour palette is the same potentially means that they won't look totally ridiculous if you then mix them together in a single unit.

[MrAbyssal]

If you paint the models in a unit using the same colours but with different pattern then it should still look relatively uniform. Can use stuff like plumes or other markings to tie a unit together. Worse comes as long as your colour palette is relatively uniform then mixing units shouldn't look weird.

[Rutgar of Wissenland]

I really appreciate all the answers so far.  I also thought it might be better to actually show you what I was thinking and describe it better.

I'm going with a Wissenland theme, which is gray and white.  I wanted to jazz it up a bit and have the units look good, too.  I was originally thinking of a unit of Halberdiers with a detachment of Swords.  They would have dark gray pants with split light gray and white tops.  I would use Scab Red for the trim.  I was then going to have a unit of Swords that had checkered medium gray and white with light blue for the trim. 

(pictures are in progress)





I was going to tie in the trim colors on the banners and such.  I thought it would make an interesting and yet diverse enough gray and white army.  The only problem comes in when I want to change my overall strategy.  Would it bug me enough (or other people) to have mixed uniforms for units and/or detachments?

Does that make sense?

[Spjuth]

I used to paint my army in green and white, and pretend these were the Solland colours. I than used the Wissenland and Averland colours to complement these. But that was some years ago and after the Uniforms and Geraldry of the Empire, I changed my mind, so the new units will be painted as Talabecklanders, wjile the older will be Stir River Patrol. A slightly mixed army.

I prefer some uniform colours, but then breaking it off with lots of odd colours. Say, all the members of a unit have green and white as in my older case. And then one model has gray and white as complement, another has yellow and black, and then a few has soem red, blue or what ever.

Anyhow, my main hint is to paint what you like and rather than repaint, just paint new models, in this was you may not be entirely pleased with all models, but your army will continue to grow. I often find that I', repainting more than I am painting, and my army is therefore quite small.

[mr chumley warner]

Grey and White are very very hard to get right.

[Spjuth]

Yeah, I kind of decided to get rid of those when I started out with NMM, easily get mixed up too.

[mr chumley warner]

I've got a rule,

use 2 complimentary colours, eg. Blue + Yellow, then also Metallics and Browns and Creams are allowed for wood/fabric, then also flesh colour.

If you add a 3rd colour, then keep it for small details.

[Rutgar of Wissenland]

Grey and White are very very hard to get right.

Yes, but I think of it as a challenge.  Oh, it may not be Golden Demon standard, but my unfinished minis are better than most Empire armies I come across already!  They aren't even done yet.  It's why the secondary colors are important, though.  I want to make sure that they all look interesting.  I'm wanting to do different units in different styles, but I worry that it will cramp my ability to play the army.  Maybe I need to just play some games with it unpainted and then make up my mind....

[Gustavus Magnus]

For my army, I am completely with the 023 extreme. 

 I like the Landsknecht look of the Empire and am painting a mercenary army made of of soldiers from every province, town, private army, etc. I can think of.  Some have colors common to particular provinces and others don't. If any two soldiers look exactly alike, then I will be disappointed in myself. 

Having painted lead soldiers for 30 years, I will say that it is much faster to paint uniformed groups by setting up an assembly line process.  If you are going to be trying to finish them fairly quickly then chose a uniform color, even if there are variations within the section.

[ZeroTwentythree]

I've got a rule,

use 2 complimentary colours, eg. Blue + Yellow, then also Metallics and Browns and Creams are allowed for wood/fabric, then also flesh colour.

If you add a 3rd colour, then keep it for small details.

That's all similar to my own colors too.

I also tend towards the heraldry rule ("more like a guideline, really...") in which "colors" (red, blue, green, black - less commonly a few others like purple, brown, orange) and "metals" (white & yellow -- "metals" because they represent silver and gold) only touch tinctures from the opposite group. So yellow will never touch white, blue will never touch red, etc. So a lot of my figures (but not all) have white or yellow as one of the two major colors. Note, this isn't a 100% solid rule, as the most important thing is to look good. I just happen to generally like the results of loosely following that rule.

[arjunstc]

I'm with the 2-main-1-side colour school as well.

http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php?topic=43186.0

For your army, you probably *need* a third colour since grey and white will look flat from a distance.

You may consider having a different accent for each unit though, which helps give a uniformity within unit and contrast between units.

[ZeroTwentythree]

I like the re an/or red-ish brown on some of the figures in the pics above -- that does break up the grey & white a bit. I think that was a good color choice.

[Rutgar of Wissenland]

You may consider having a different accent for each unit though, which helps give a uniformity within unit and contrast between units.

Actually, the main post was more about that.  Not so much overall strategies for painting colors (as in 2 +1), but more dealing with the various units in your army.  Do you paint all your units the same?  Or do you have variety in your army?  If you do have variety between your units, how do you deal with swapping them around for detachments and such? 

Anyhow, my main hint is to paint what you like and rather than repaint, just paint new models, in this was you may not be entirely pleased with all models, but your army will continue to grow. I often find that I', repainting more than I am painting, and my army is therefore quite small.

Yes.....I would love to be able to afford to buy new units.  This is a 2nd love army (OnG being my main) and I also want to try Chaos Dwarfs.  I don't see me growing this army much beyond what I already have.  I do have quite a few troopers, though.

100 Swordsmen
44 Halberdiers
50 Hand Gunenrs
20 Crossbows
30 Great Swords
30 Knights
5 Outriders
5 Pistoliers
2 Cannons
Hellblaster / Volleygun (can switch)
Loads of characters. 

I like the re an/or red-ish brown on some of the figures in the pics above -- that does break up the grey & white a bit. I think that was a good color choice.

Thanks!  I've almost finished the unit.  I've still got to figure out skin, do the banner, and paint the movement tray, but here's what I've got so far!







I really wanted to do each unit with a separate secondary color (light blue, yellow, etc) and tie it in with each banner, but reading one tactics article sees me wanting to radically change my army!  I'm thinking I'm going to have to go with the one style for the whole army.  It's a shame as I like the cross quarters style better and this was just going to be one style for this unit. 

[Shadespyre]

This is a great colour scheme, the dark red is an inspired choice and I'd stick with it. Or if you want to use other accent colours I would choose similarly strong dark ones (dark green, dark blue) rather than anything pale.

If you are worried about lack of variety, don't forget that your Knights can be from any Order, or even different ones. For example, blue and gold Knights Panther would be a real contrast to these infantry colours. Also there is no reason why your Wizards or Priests should be in provincial colours - I've used red cloaked Priests and Reiksguard Knights to break up all the blue in my Middenheim army.