Originality and the Imperial Guard

[Vorlon]

Greetings all. It seems the time has come for me to face some difficult facts. Mainly, with the large IG player base is it possible to have an original army? It seems every color scheme (within reason...Id rather not have some absurd color scheme and have to call my army Cirque D'Imperial Guard"), theme, back story, and army doctrine has be created, copied and recopied. At this point I have sent my troops to the Simple Green bath for "reassignment" about 12 times and I would actually like to PLAY 40k at some point.

So should I admit defeat, use a color scheme that I like but has been used by countless others and move on with painting the rest of my army?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

-V-

[Aldramelech]

Goodbye

[Kahoolin]

I suppose the problem is that the guard are based on real world military, so they are going to look either familiar or ridiculous no matter how you do them: Familiar if you go for realism or use a codex colour scheme, ridiculous if you go nuts and make them pink or checkered or whatever.

First of all, try mixing them up. A lot of people (myself included) use different ranges of models in the one army. My vets are Cadians (because Cadians are meant to be killer), and for my regulars I have converted Cadians with West Wind heads.

My second piece of advice would be to do what I did with my converted guys and mix up influences to make something new. I wanted them to be sort of steampunk so as I said I gave them west wind heads (the British ones with the gas masks), and then gave them urban armour that matches the Cadians and dark blue uniforms with red trim. The combination of dark old-fashioned colours with grey ceramite plates and gas mask heads makes them look dark futurish, and next to the cleaner Cadians the army looks unified but varied.

The trick is don't overdo it. You only need a little bit of variation to make the army stand out. If that still doesn't work, then might I suggest that you are just sick of looking at guardsmen altogether, and you need to change armies ;).

[Lord Inquisitor]

If you wanted to do it it really isn't that much more expensive to do all Mordians or Valhallans. A sqaud of the other Gaurd cost s much as a Marine Tactical Squad.

[Lerra]

You could consider one of the traitor guard variants if you want to look unique. Genestealer cult IG is rarely done and would be great to see. Chaos Guard is also pretty rare.

[lobster-overlord]

I would go with the idea of picking something you like, no matter if it's been done before, and stick with it, and make it your own. Even if the guy at the next table comes in with the same scheme, why should it matter ,if you've done a good job and you like it. After all, it's called a "uniform" for a reason.

Aside from uniformity, it's not about what someone else thinks about the army, but what you like about it. If you like camo, as I do, you'll spend the time to do the camo colors on your models. I've found that even though I pulled my base colors from the 4th ed IG book, I've put them in a different pattern, and one that is easy to duplicate on many models, so it will look sharp, as well as be something I'm proud of in the end, even with having taken the idea from the Codex.


For my tanks, I totally ripped-off the color scheme from the GIJoe Slaughter's Marauders vehicles (A repainted selection of toys from the line lead by wrestler Sgt Slaughter) and adapted it to the scale of IG models. It even gave me the inspiration to use brown for my armor and make it leather like rather than ceramic or metal.

http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?t=3783

Find your inspriation,

Make it your own,

Have fun!

JOhn M.

[travinius]

it's a big galaxy dude. even in the modern military here on earth think of all the redundancy with regard to uniforms, weaponry, tactics, etc. i agree with the above post that if you just make them yours they're bound to satisfy. there's nothing special about my anjev IX in terms of color scheme, but i green stuff'd some shakos and facial hair, mixed bits, included some tallarn and praetorian and even a green stuff lion skin headgear piece for my standard bearer. nothing crazy but that and their background (in my head) gives enough narrative to my battles. just have fun with it and all things similar be damned!

[ColCorbane]

Guard probably have the most options open to them, your originality is only limited by your imagination mate.

[sebi81]

beside the cadian and catachan or some metal miniatures you can easily convert imperial quard from all human models in warhammer fantasy. bretonnians do really good, as long as you have enough lasguns.

[ggg]

- may not be a popular suggestion- but I think details add the character to guard armies- I popped into the Leicester store recently and I was really impressed by some of the guard on a display table - vets had tattoos, there were nice bits of graffiti (40k fluff i.e. kill them all and let the emperor sort them out!) on equipment - very carefully and tastefully done I must stress. The colour scheme was desert camo but the attention to detail in the poses and the head swaps brought them to life. Camo painted on skin works too.

For me guard armies can also be set apart from others by the 'weathering.' I saw a superb all metal army (mordian) that had a traditional colour scheme but the mud and battle damage made them look really unique.

Myself I have a viet kong style guard army featuring veterans based on Arnie's team in Predator (have seen viet kong jungle hats made from saftey pin heads detailed with greenstuff). So I am a classic ripper-offer.

When it comes to colour schemes though - I don't think you can be truly original as we have so much military history from so many different climates and regions (from Canadian digital camo to redcoats at waterloo) our guard armies will always be compared (as observed above) to a real world colour scheme. There are only so many colours that work in combinations that are plausible (particularly when usually played on green or grey or brown game boards).

Well that was boring, traditional old me - love to see pics of what you do come up with and would be glad to entirely corrected by a unique colour scheme (now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen a red guard army- it worked for the crimson guard?)

[Madness]

Picking up where ggg left it, there's some option for customization even in the official books, kanak skull takers for instance, personally I was attracted by an image I found in the munitorum book, basically it depicted those infantrymen with a full cadian armor but with bare arms, the fluff was that they removed the arm part to show the tattoos on the forearms, apparently a big deal for people from their planet. In miniature terms, cadians with catachan arms plus tattoed forearms.

[Vorlon]

Thanks alot for the feed back! Nice to see some of my IG Idols respond (Note to self...pitch "Imperial Idol" show to Fox TV) I think I found my problem. Its not my painting, or what colors I use (for the most part)...its the models! I hate to sound vanilla but I like the look of Cadian models more than any other IG army. This issue is that Cadians dont have ,for lack of a better work, "layers" to work with (Kasrkin not withstanding...but i am horrible with metal...co worker said the cannoness I was painting for my fiance looked like a burn victim) Ive seen the look I am trying to create (same colors) work very well on Tau/SM Scouts/Kasrkin due to the layers in their armor. So right now I am not going to worry about creating the totally original army with the paint/camo scheme I want ^_^ That is until the plastic storm trooper kits come out!!!
So for now I am going to practice my butt off ( I have a great boss who lets me paint at work)and buy LOTS of simple green so I will be ready when GW finally decides to release the storm trooper kit.

[Vorlon]

Although I did have an idea I really liked for a themed army...

The Greys, those little alien guys who keep abducting people? Im surprised they haven came up in any of the 40k fluff yet. So I thought a little bit of greenstuff for the heads, some codex grey paint....flying saucers instead of of valks, war of the world-esque walkers for vehicles, and of course....replace all of the close combat weapons and chain swords with probes and *gulp* chain probes >.<

Might be a fun goof off project at some point.

[BuFFo]

Greetings all. It seems the time has come for me to face some difficult facts. Mainly, with the large IG player base is it possible to have an original army? It seems every color scheme (within reason...Id rather not have some absurd color scheme and have to call my army Cirque D'Imperial Guard"), theme, back story, and army doctrine has be created, copied and recopied. At this point I have sent my troops to the Simple Green bath for "reassignment" about 12 times and I would actually like to PLAY 40k at some point.

So should I admit defeat, use a color scheme that I like but has been used by countless others and move on with painting the rest of my army?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

-V-

So, when you play with your IG in your local gaming area, are you playing with every IG player around the world? If the answer is no, just make something original for your local area and BAM, original IG army.

Don't worry about what some stranger whom you'll never meet because he lives in Singapore made.

[Dark_Templar]

There is also the combinations possible from FW sprues, PigIron heads etc.

Personally, I am using all of these to create something that I feel is a bit different and matches my image of them.

As long as you enjoy what you have done, and are happy with it, who cares (as Buffo said) whether some 12 year old in Singapore had a similar idea. There are definitely not too many original ideas around these days, and it all comes down to how you put your own spin on it. Make the models yours, and the paint scheme will fall into place.