I REGRET my Custom Space Marine Paint Scheme 

Centurions, BADLY disguised as maids/butlers

Maybe in an unit there is a guy (that is not the leader) that says fuck of and paints his armor with another scheme, like white .

I love how you enjoy so much more than just buying miniatures.

That F-Zero idea was genuinely amazing, so inspired and I loved that game on the N64!

An idea I think could be really cool: Have a unit like eliminators with a spare helmet on their shoulder as well as on their head. You can say their lore is they steal the helmets of all the unhelmetted models and then stick them to their shoulder to confuse enemy snipers on where their head is and how many snipers there are

Might be a bit of a challenge, but the dazzle camoflarge that you saw on ships in WW2. That might work better on something bigger like the large suit you have a or a tank you might get

Give 1 squad all captain markers so they are the main focus of the enemy as killing a captain is worth more or they are more scared of them but they are just normal soldiers and not captains ^^

Spitballing here: - If you are short of ideas you could have squads themed around power rangers teams. - One team could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but having a silver armour and black trim - If you can add a unit of Deathwatch (I have no idea how space marines works) you could have them in the scheme of their original chapter. - One squad could have a similar scheme to your intercessors, but the armour is coloured and the accents are black -Since from the lore units try to mimic different units you could paint a unit with a scheme that resembles the unit they mimic, or a third unrelated unit. For example you could paint the upper limbs of the brutalis a light colour so it resembles a scout.

Maybe a group of guys who are covered in transfers with no reasoning, maybe some even have the ultra marine symbol that comes in the boxes but it’s at 90 degrees or something

If you did scouts, I could see those all looking the same, to give the impression of a tide of sneaky bois you just can't seem to kill. As for the Dreadnaught, have you considered just covering him in random splotches of vibrant paint that looks like a clown trying to paint camo, and then tying it all in with a drybrush and shade + metallics? It'll be the clown car!

for a skirmisher unit: they really like pirates, and pirates skirmish fast n stuff. yea. Make some of em look like funny pirate guys

you could invert the colour scheme of a squad or two, maybe your other incursor squad could have the members of the first mirrored but with multicoloured bits replaced by black/silver and vice versa

Idea: having models with little speakers on their bases implying that they’re setting up speakers around the battle field to make even more noise. Another idea is to have them set up scare crows around as well.

Not sure how it would work lore wise, but what if you had models who were obviously Ultramarines, with the Chapter Symbols, gladii, crested helms, etc. but paint them as Salamanders. Then have a unit with Salamander bits and paint them like Blood Angels, and so on. They might just look like disparate successors though I guess, just an idea! Love the F-Zero inspired guys!

What about a Power rangers themed unit?

An entire squad of reflective marines. Itd probably be best of a dreadnaughts or tank but using one of those super reflective paints would be cool.

You should have the brutalis be number 3 so when the enemy is confused about where 3 is, he just “quietly”comes up to them a says “I’m right here”.

Here me out: raven boyz.The heads from the Nob box are the right size to fit over a standard space marine head, and with a little bit of green stuff you could very easily make it look like your space marines made ork masks and are now charging the enemy making ork sounds. The enemy will be terrified, because not only are the space marines attacking, but they're also allied with the orks as well!

I love the idea of eliminators or tactical scouts in camo, but none if them match the terrain. Like one in a red-sandstone and orange pattern, one in winter whites and greys, and one with a naval blue ocean camo in a bright green field. None of them blend in, and yet with all the bright colours moving around the battlefield, they just happen to get lost in all of the visual noise.

I like the idea of having them all the same, but you can push it further: make a unit with nothing but the exact same model. Imagine a squad of five Intercessors, all of them painted and posed exactly the same so there's literally no difference between them all.

I definitely like an army cohesive theme being a continuation of digging up an N64, finding a cool game or something and themed off of it since they think like, "Ah these cartidges from the dark age of technology hold profound knowledge long since lost to us, we must utilize this precious information" and then they like model a unit off of Dig Dug or something. pick your favorite games and just run wild with that idea, it 10,000% makes sense to me lore wise

hey paul, im about halfway through the video but from what youve described- almost every space marines player has gone through this same exact thing (or something similar) and i wanted to give some tips to get through the struggle: -not every model, or unit, has to have a theme; having some sort of "baseline grunt" scheme can help alot (i honestly thought your infiltrators were the baseline grunt scheme ngl) -sometimes it can be cool to have special characters/units not look that special (it helps give the vibe of 'too serious to care', and makes it funny when they do the stupidest things on the tabletop and DIE) -rules can be ignored when they make things hard or less fun, especially your own (deciding to make an entire unit cohesive sounds like an insider joke thing that would happen within the chapter to confuse the enemies and the chapter alike making them go "wait arent they all different? does that mean theyre in the chapter?? are they even in the same unit??? theres no way, its like, theres too many people who are different it has to be a joke/another lie") hope your screaming ravens go awesome, they give off this super cool badass vibe while also being wholesome in the sense that they just get to be *them* and most people consider that expression to be heresy, so its a nice breath of (admittedly edgy) fresh air, wishing you the best big man!

Having helmets as battle trophies, but half of them are friendly helmets instead of enemy helmets

Back when I was painting my Kruleboyz Orks for Orktober two years back, I did a "Halloween" paint scheme (oranges, blacks, whites, greens, and purples). But the initial arrangement of colors on my first squad wasn't working for me. So after getting them to a minimal level of "finished" (didn't even paint the bases), I switched to the next squad in the set. And I shifted the colors around to one I liked better, which I used on subsequent models. For October last year, I took a break from painting my Spooktober undead to repaint that first squad, bringing them fully in line with the final scheme. If a scheme isn't working out, it can pay to pivot early. Rather than subjecting yourself to a scheme you hate or is more work than you really wanted.

Now he knows the Ork-Player´s pain.... as for my suggestion: get your inspiration from there. Orks are litterally the Xenos-Faction-Version of your Space Marines in my eyes.

Feel like a natural idea here that also provides a bit of variation is to have one of the sizeable, maybe ten men squads have an incident in their recent history where every single person in the squad was heavily injured but nobody actually died or got dreadnoughted and its considered a bit of a miracle, so they each have a red section of their armour where they got wounded. Like one has a red arm because they lost that arm and its actually a bionic arm under the armour. Another had half their face blown off by a bolt round so they have a red helmet. One got hit with a guard-issue rpg type weapon in the chest so has a red breastplate.

Id say for the terminators make them exceedingly battle damaged, like there wearing every bullet hole and scratch as a badge of honor, so you can get creative with the damage rust etc

Add googly eyes 👀 My Howling Griffons army started off as a painting challenge to paint a single 10 man squad of Intercessor Space Marines. It spiralled out into a 3k points army 😂

i like this, because you wont get tired of painting a scheme for the entire army, that can get tideus and brutal at some point, you cant see the same 3 colours ever again after a big army project - but every unit different? yeah, that will keep things fresh

Hear me out LEGO

I love the idea of "All look the same", but you have to take it further. Marines already all look the same with the same trim, shoulder markings, etc. I would go for same Purity Seal placement (for example one on the gun and one on the left leg), and all of them have the red Sergeant helmet stripe.

The Screaming Ravens are coming along brilliantly, but damn, with this level of editing and humour I could listen to you talk about what the weather last week was like 😅 wonderful video, Mr Paul, sir 🧐

You could make a unit where everyone has camouflage, but each of the guys has camouflage for a different biome, so one would have like the leafy nets and stuff, another a white cloak, and another have sand stuck in their armour

Looks gorgeous. How about a unit where each of the marines encorporates a different detail/pattern from: 1) Eldar craftworld. 2) Tyranid hivefleet. 3) Ork clan. 4) Alpha legion. I have this idea I'd like to try one day of an ork blood axe army where the warboss was so impressed by space marines he's fashioned his own legion of orks where each of the different units would be done up like the appropriate chapter like raven guard for the stormboys, white scars for the speed freaks, space wolves for the beast snagga boys, and so on. The warboss of course takes the name Waaaghnius Calgork, as a mark of respect.

You've been hitting it out of the part lately with your videos, Paul! I think your realization of how you need to change your scheme is incredibly valuable insight, and I'm happy to see that you came up with a solution to reinvigorate your desire to paint!!! Here are my ideas for possible schemes/customizations of individual units. I've included a few that aren't in your current collection because I think they're cool.(and I expect you to buy more eventually😉) Judiciar: Do an inversion of the lore. In the lore a Judiciar is a Chaplain in training until they get promoted, and until they become a Chaplain, they are sworn to silence. So take that idea and flip it on its head somehow. Either by making it so the Judiciar can't communicate at all and has to fight with his hands bound, so he can't use the Screaming-Raven's special sign language. Or make him the *LOUDEST* person on the battlefield. Paint him with the brightest fluorescent colors, replace his hourglass woth a boom-box, anything that will make your senses hurt in his presence, on and off the table. Aggressors: Paint their Power-Fists to look like socker-boppers. Infernus: Paint their armor to look like Salamanders, to make the enemy think they're fighting more than one Space Marine Chapter at once. Centurions(all versions): Since Centurions are literally just Power Armor for your Power Armor, reflect that by giving all the Centurions a helmet on their helmet, or a hat on a hat. After all, it'd make a good visual metaphor for how absurdly excessive Centurion suits truly are. Invictor Warsuit: Paint it with a weird and wacky pattern to visually confuse the enemy on where the pilot is at, since people have called out how exposed the pilot is in a cockpit with no windows. So do what real world Zebras do, cover the suit and the pilot in a unique pattern to confuse/camouflage the pilot inside the suit. Inceptors: Make the grav-plates on the bottoms of their feet look like moon-shoes and their jump-packs look like. . . Another kids toy centered around jumping or flying from the early/mid 2000's. Intercessors/Assault Intercessors: Make a Squad of 5 themed around the Rangers of Power Rangers Dino Thunder/Abaranger. You can have Red, Blue and Yellow with white trim and sharp-edged, symmetrical white patterns painted/decaled around their armor. Gold trim/patterns for the black ranger and white armor with black trim/patterns and bright red eye lenses for the white ranger. Brutalis/Redemptor Dreadnought: If you do decide to follow through on a Power Rangers theme, then let the Dreadnought be the Megazord. Paint each limb as well as the chest in a different color. Stormraven Gunship: Cover it in Amps, have it blast rave music wherever it flies and paint it with a glow-in-the-dark/blacklight paint for MAXIMUM "Rave Energy." Desolation Squad: If people are going to call their rocket-launchers T-Shirt Cannons. Run with that idea! Sculpt some rolled-up T-shirts out of Green-Stuff and use some 3d printed blast effect parts to make it look like the Screaming Ravens are firing T-shirts at the enemy. You can make it all of them, or just some. Because if not even the Screaming Ravens know what their weapons will be firing, how will the enemy know until the battle begins in earnest? Stormspeeder: More or less the same as the Stormraven, but make it look like it just came off the set of "Pimp my Ride." Any Terminator unit, or any unit that has "Veteran" in their name: Make each one either a deeply integrated reference in their paint job/modeling, that way all of your "First-Company" styled Marines have some underlying theme that ties each and every one together, even if they don't look like they're tied together visually.

You should make your aircraft in dazzle camouflage it was designed during world war 1 and 2 to confuse and hide how far a ship was and what direction it was going which fits the theme super well

To explain a meltagun, imagine a "microwave oven gun", thats the meltagun

Conceptually and aesthetically I love the Howling Griffons but I'm wise enough to know not to even try to make my own.

One idea is that some units use a completely other chapters' color scheme. Like they paint all their armor yellow except their left gauntlet. So it looks like Imperial fists.

This chapter is more chaotic than Chaos marines themselves..... *I LOVE IT!*

Reminds me of some of the ninjas in "Five Element Ninjas", the metal ones using shiny gear to blind the enemy and the fire ninjas puffing out colored smoke ahead of themselves, both to obscure themselves in plain sight by fudging up the enemy's perception.

Could have a unit that has the scheme of 10 other chapters, like they suddenly get attacked by a salamander and ultramarine and get confused and scared that reinforcement is coming

One thing that might really help you out is randomisers. For example, i use a website that generates ancient greek names when im naming my SM units. You could find or make a random number generator which choses a random piece of armour, and another one which choses a random colour. That way, if you can think of a theme for a squad then you can use that as a guide so at least they still have a sense of randomness to them Otherwise, i think your idea is amazing and i cant wait to see what you achieve!

Your chapter's distraction tactic is working perfectly! Even your own guys get distracted and charge turn 1 when you didn't plan to

I love this concept! Worth the effort and they look great!

I had a very similar idea to yours - A Creations of (Fabius) Bile consisting entirely of drug enhanced Marines abducted from loyalist chapters. It meant painting every model in a different colour scheme and, yes, it got exhausting pretty fast. I managed one unit. 😬 I might come back to it eventually, but i I'll need a different approach to make it halfway possible to complete!

The Raven lore described at the beginning is right up my alley. For a proper paint scheme I'd focus on the stealth and camouflage aspect of the lore. The colours used should blend in with the terrain and all individuals of the same type should look the same. (Painting) Success level is measured by how often the opponent fails to notice a unit on the gaming table and how often they mistake one of your units for another.

You should add an eversor assassin. A man running at mock 10 on every drug known to man screaming at the top of his lungs would fit very well.

I always wanted to build a dreadnought army based on the arcade game "virtual on", but I always ended up with a less saturated color scheme.

I had a project that was plaguing me. This helped me stop and think before I just paint stripped my models. Thank you

Paint a unit as Alpha Legion with Black Armor. The gimmick that squad came up with was one they developed when fighting against the Alpha Legion. They had to gun down members of other chapters who were sleeper agents from Youth so they went "OH MY GOD, WHAT IF WE JUST PAINT OURSELVES LIKE THE TRAITORS?! They'd never know in the middle of a fight!"

Started a converted Genestealer cults army with Skaven bits when deathwatch came out in 2016. I got overwhealmed with it and shelved the project untill 2 months ago when its turned into my favourite project, a necromunda gang.Ive also had ork conversions sat on the shelf for years waiting on that bit of inspiration

An idea that popped straight into my head(thanks to me being a Ork player) for the dreads have it be designs from different chapters, using transfers from each chapter to conceptually trick the enemy to debate who the hell they are fighting chapter wise

One squad got really creative with their metallic trims. Just all kinds of metallic bling

As someone who's trying to do their first project with warhammer minis (A custom DA falling, not fallen, chapter, with colour flavours from various different chaos gods) thank you for the advice! I imagine having a general scheme too would make it easier to tell which unit is which quickly in a game.

So my buddy loves trains and also now the T'au of Warhammer. He is painting each major vehicle after a different American Train Company, with train tracks under the feet. Fire Warriors are the construction workers with the Cadre being a manager, and he gave the Ethereal a business suit as an executive. Anyway, for your Rhino, there's zero reason you can't make it look like a hippy van that's just hotboxed all the time. And any marines you'd normally put in there have tiedie shirts and faded pants (tiedie is super easy, a bright first coat and then little baby splotches of watered-down-to-hell whatever colors you want)

Very cool idea, I love it. What could solve some of your problems is rather than thinking about individuality in terms of paint schemes think of it in terms of modelling too. kit bashing/ scratch bashing could open many new doors to cool chaotic/random ideas. How about a unit instead of weapons they carry boxes with question marks on it or even the 40k equivalent of the amazon logo. Or a drop pod that is filled with electric guitar amps and the unit associated with the drop pod uses some kind of combi instrument/weapon Including modelling into your army might not be something you are familiar or comfortable with and will increase time and cost but it will increase the joy, and what is Warhammer if not using time and money in exchange for fun and learning new skills.

I’m doing something similar with my sister army, they’re called "Morvenn’s Elites". All the armor is a bronze/gold while the cloth is from their home branches. I have bloody rose colors for sacrasants, white rose for dominion squad, etc. so far really liking how their turning out

This gave me a really good idea for my eldar, having multiple color schemes in one army, which will combine with the ynnari i plan to play as

something I did with my chaos army was just reverse the primary and secondary color between units so 1 squad is copper/gunmetal and the other is gunmetal/copper.

Make a unit where every space marine has a obnoxiously bright colored cod piece

Here's a unit idea that I almost used for my Blood Angels successors. The space marines would use 'unpainted' armor with a basic metallic coloration. Every time they did very good (using the blood rage to defeat enemies in my case) they would get one armor part colored red as a badge of honor. Every time they did something awful (in this case, let their rage make them do something reckless and stupid) they paint part of their armor black. This way you can tell at a glance how new a unit is, how much 'blood honor' they have, and how many black marks they have. You could come up with a simialr badge of honor, and as a bonus you could start metallic and add swabs of colored paint as they earn abilities or flaws in Crusade mode. (I gave up the idea when I saw a really cool paint scheme on Reddit so I'm just gonna steal that and turn the reds into purple lol)

Naval confusion camo, use it. If you haven’t heard of naval confusion camo it’s basically where they painted a bunch of black and white stripes every which way to make it harder for the enemy to estimate range.

I know it’s been 5 months but some of them have an obsession with led lights (not actually leds but you could do glow paints) so they look like glow sticks

In my Blood Ravens army, each unit leader or major HQ (CPTs not LTs, etc) would either have a bit from another faction, or have generic wargear painted like another chapter. This held up until I got so deep into assembly line batch building and painting that I forgot about the do-dads on the Infiltrator chests. In the end it became a happy accident of just a few models that didn't look quite... right.

This would probably look totally stupid, but in addition to you "every guy is painted the exact same way" maybe have the entire unit in the same pose as well? You would probably have to trade a few models with other people to make it financially viable, or convert some cheap character (ebay) to a base troop. I don't have to much experience with space marines, but the necron warden converted to an immortal springs to my mind as an example.

I love how when witing the lore, even ChatGPT is concerned

Maybe you can have a squad with color schemes and possibly even emblems from the different houses to further confuse the enemy as to why a chaos marine is helping an imperial marine toss a corpse of an enemy trooper over a cliff. Make sure you at least have one small common item on the marines so you don't get confused as the enemy you are fighting against

My first thought was a spoof avengers squad so each marine's helmet is painted to look like an Avenger, "what're they here to do... Rob a bank?"

Red -> Orange -> Yellow ->Green -> Blue -> Indigo (Possibly replace with bone or gold) -> Violet Helmet- > Right Shoulder Pad- > Left Shoulder Pad- > RIght Shoulder Trim- > Left Shoulder Trim- > Backpack- > Right Knee Pad- > Left Knee Pad- > Right Arm- > Left Arm - > Feet Cycle each one, once per model. 77 unique color combinations which will look completely random but generate easily without a moments thought ;) You'll look incredibly creative, but, in fact you've just got procedural space marines.

Maybe add, caw caw caw in crazy lettering over the brutalis like grafitti, he is one that is put to sleep between every battle in stasis with the others grafitting him as a prank. As he is the most insane loudest of the bunch. Mad from the years of being sealed in a dreadnought only being able to speak in screaming bird so they put him in stasis to shut him up.

I do a little bit of this with my blood angels. they're encouraged to be artisans, and so I'll sprinkle in little custom painted bites, such as the face-masks, or especially things like tabards and other details for veteran units.

One word; Textures. Hear me out here. Make it where the Screaming Ravens have a few recruits that spent time with other legions, learning their tactics to better confuse the enemy. As a result, they have one of the signature textures of that legion. Marble for Ultramarine, Scales for Salamander, Gloss for Blood Angel, Cloth for Dark Angel, Fur for Space Wolf, etc. Just make it a little bob or just a painted on texture that denotes that that specific unit knows something special. Also would work for a deathwatch squad if you ever plan on using them.

What I am doing is separate paint schemes for separate units so I don’t get sick of doing the same paint scheme. It also helps explore what paint schemes work best for me

Something color wise I do with my tyranids is make the tanks brighter red, make the hordes darker with stripes for confusion, and the stealth units are covered in rosettes making them almost black, maybe you can do something similar by making all of these units bright and confusing then have one unit of Phobos or something who are actually just all black so their enemies are so confused by all the bright random colors and noise that they never see it coming when a unit is actually trying to be sneaky. Also thought I’d add that your chapter is similar to the black guard but a lot funnier

Just getting started with the models after reading a good number of novels and loving the lore for forever, and one of the first lessons I learned is that the benefit to reward ratio of a white paint heavy scheme is not worth it for me. Its a shame because when I just dream armies heavy with white look fantastic and I had paint schemes for multiple armies planned that were heavy with it, but even though you can learn to get good at white, or find much better whites, the inconvenience and extra difficulty when so many other colours look good makes me just decide to steer clear. My space marines I'm getting started with have a tiny but prominent bit of white for symbols on the shoulder pads-more often you can do this with transfers but it does mean for things like the crux terminatus or my ancient Dark Vengeance marines with the moulded pauldrons I'm stuck actually painting them, and even that's a pain in the ass.

7:36 you could do this but have it a horizontal transition with the legs being some sort of floor terrain but their heads and torso as the sky, so they end up camouflaged as some sort of walking set peice

Rave Ravens: A unit that blasts Sandstorm and whose weapons blast different colored energy as they march across the battlefield. Like put some big speakers on the centurions' shoulders and have their weapons be glow stick themed. Thanks for the advice on unit themes. I should do that.

Having every unit have a different scheme is kinda what I'm doing with by Blood Axes, different coloured camo oatterns for each 20 block of boys, and random stuff for vehicles.

Idea for the lore of the F-Zero X guys and the army as a whole. You can say that the chapter recruits its members from a hive world with an underground street racing scene, the vanguard veterans' jump packs can be based off the cars/jetbikes/whatever they used for racing.

You could use a reflective paint like chrome on one of the dreadnoughts. It would be very confusing to have a huge mirror like object running towards you. Another possibility would be special colors that change their pigmentation depending on temperature or light level.

Since they have a mimicry gimmick you should do a unit where every one of them has their uniform kind of look like a different chapters, there's lots of dark themed chapters they could imitate.

A unit with different space marines chapters on it's shoulder. So black armour but has like the Blood Angels logo on them, but also has the Space Wolves on there leg or something. The colours scheme reminds me of a more chaotic form of Deathwatch.

As somebody who has never played Warhammer, your Screaming Ravens series is the most tempted I've ever been to have a go

This is fun. You should have a unit where every single model has the same exact pose. (Ideally the spiderman pointing one)

My homebrew worked pretty fine. But I did think weeks before I bought any paint. And approved the chapter abilities with my friends beforehand. Even wrote a wiki like description of them and a short history. Pretty proud of them cause my other armies that I bought interact directly with them and form their own story, friends and foes. I would love someone to present them in a video.

Maybe missile units fire colorful or unnecessarily loud and disruptive munitions. Like when they’re frag munitions hit, they don’t just explode killing a few guys. They explode like massive fireworks, disorienting people who weren’t caught in the blast.

Might be tricky but you could try using WW1 battleship dazzle camo as this was designed not to obfuscate a ship but to make it confusing to know what you are looking at. You could use masking on a vehicle to get it to work.

I feel your pain in regards to not being able to bath paint. I do full colour scheme deathwatch, its a massive slog, constantly needing to learn how to paint new schemes....but its worth it :D

Give your scout boys camo green face paint, but colour code the night vision goggles (blue, purple, red, and orange specifically) While we're at old cartoons, style a unit after the thundercats somehow. One of the vehicles MUST be painted like the A-Team van.

Modoka Magica for just the color scheme. Specifically the confusing mess of how the witches look

This reminds me of when I had an idea for a Flayed One unit where each dude is wearing skin of a different species, it was way easier to do as a Kill Team of just 10 dudes

As neat of an idea the screaming ravens are, space marines often wear bright colors because they view themselves as so indomitable they often dont need camouflage and/or their heraldry is more important. So having this scheme for a loyalist space marine faction is kinda a "meh" idea imo. but chaos... oh this is a cool chaos idea.

Tbh you should probably do the base scheme (black silver white), this will be an easy ish batch paint, then go unit by unit and add colors and themes. It will get paint on everything then leaves time for theming which will now be faster with the base model painted.

"I want to make every model different!' That means you need to make every model different. "What?!"

The screaming ravens are truly masters of heavy stealth.

I have an idea for the brutalis: paint it like the grim reaper, something so ominous and silent on such an overbearing and loud machine of death just sounds amazing

That number idea is brutally cunning, gonna use it for a future ork project haha

You could have a Unit with a different Chapter's scheme to make enemies go "OH F THERE ARE 2 SPACE MARINE CHAPTERS HERE"

I think that a squad with spotlights on their armour, maybe with airbrushed glow effects, would be fun.