I recently picked up two of the new character models, Darkstrider and Longstrike. I'm going to paint Darkstrider in many army color scheme, but I'm uncertain as to whether I should paint my Longstrike in my army colors or white as per the artwork.

So I'm reaching out to the community to hear your thoughts and opinions...

Do you have a Shadowsun? If yes, I would paint Longstrike the same way you did Shadowsun, since they both have some sort of experimental suit.

(Some members painted Shadowsun white, others painted her in their cadre colours)

I have found that inverse color patterns work nicely when painting a model so that it stands apart from the rest of the army. I personally have a difficult time painting white to the standard I like, so this practice really helps knuckleheads like me.

for example, my cadre is a khaki color, with dark brown undertones and light grey accents. I used the dark brown color as the base for my Shadowsun and she really stands out nicely against the rest of the army.

I never picked up a Shadowsun, but I will some day.

I had the same thoughts as you Che, pertaining to the similarities of Longstrikes "experimental" suit to that of Shadowsuns... my arguement towards painting his armour white as per the fluff/photos. On the other hand, I've typicaly painted character models to match my army color scheme.

Either way, I'm pretty certain that the model will look nice nestled amongst my cadre... I just don't want to look at him one day and wonder "what if..."?



Great idea, but not something that I'm willing to do. I really don't want to mess around with reversing my established army colors, as it's taken me quite some time to get it to the "refined" state it is now... minus weathering of course. It just wouldn't look right to me.

What have you picked for your "Sept colour", that strikes me as the same sort of thing as Shadowsun's white armour and should also fit in nicely with the rest of your army as you've not altered the colour palette on one unit.

You can think of him almost as being a little bit of extra detail colour for a Hammerhead, so if you've distinguished your Commanders and squad Shas'ui in some way then use those colours to pick out the command Hammerhead (assuming your tank scheme is similar to your infantry scheme).

Here's a couple of examples of my army color scheme...

Fire Warrior Shas'ui -



Crisis suit -





Hammerhead -

The problem is twofold. I think longstrike would look odd in white, but I think he would look even more odd in green or red. I say make him the standard white.

The other option is to paint him the typical white but use a little green or red trim to tie his color in with the rest of the tank

As someone in a similar conundrum pending an entire cadre redux, I offer the following suggestion; paint his cloth armor to match your Cadre. Paint his armor black with subtle highlights.

Just a thought.

Hmmmmm... you might be onto something here. Perhaps if I were to paint his armour white, with the left arms shoulder guard in the colors of my army ( like the above pictured Fire Warrior Shas'ui )?


Not too sure about painting him all black, but I like the idea of making his undersuit brown, same as the rest of my cadre.

I have been in the process of building a second Tau army before the new Codex was even on the horizon. The paint scheme is going to reflect that this particular army is an elite cadre in its own right (too many forgeworld models included not to make it that way!) but that it also was part of the larger Tio've so I am painting certain panels on the vehicles and the shoulder armour and sections of the shoulder guards in the colour of the main force on the second Army models.

The suggestion I would go with therefore (not biased or swayed by my own idea, of course ) is to paint a section or two of Longstrike's armour to fit in with the rest of your force but to make the rest of his armour sufficiently different in order to make him stand out as the character model.

E.

Pretty much the conclusion that I've come to.

Many thanks to all that have contributed, you've helped me to make up my mind... and I won't have that dreaded "what if" feeling months down the road.