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It’s time to choose a color scheme on the Eve of Armageddon – and get to painting!
Okay, folks, Armageddon arrives this Saturday, so there’s much to do. Last week, I talked about overall army planning, but the time is here to start making granular decisions. A giant box of plastic miniatures is about to land on us, and it means it’s time to finalize paint scheme plans. This kind of planning is super important to me when painting a new army. Having at least a half-assed plan before I crack open that box of minis means I’m going to spend less time stressing about how to get started and just get stuck right in.
I’ve got my plan sorted and will share it below, but I’ve been compiling some useful resources for anyone planning on an Armageddon-themed army this summer. I’m highlighting tutorials and techniques here that I find achievable for those of us whose first priority is getting our figures on the table in a timely fashion. You might want to bookmark this page, as I’ll be adding to the listed links as the summer goes on and channels and more tutorials start to roll out with the release of the box set figures.
Armageddon BasingBasing is the last part of painting for many of us, but I feel it’s the first thing you should be thinking about when figuring out a paint scheme. Your basing is what ties your whole army together and can go a long way towards making even a very simple paint scheme look impressive on the tabletop. The dusty wastes of Armageddon look great when paired with most paint schemes, but remember, your bases should usually contrast with the colors of the models. If your scheme is very light and drab, consider using a darker set of colors on the base, or vice versa. With that said, here are some great approaches for classic Armageddon bases.
Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy – How to Paint an Armageddon Ash Wastes Base
This is a fantastic and in-depth tutorial with a lot to recommend it. It’s a little heavy on different materials, but it will absolutely produce a fantastic-looking base with lots of interesting texture and color.
My Hobby Place – How to Create 3 Easy Desert Bases for Armageddon (Full Tutorial)
This is a set of three distinct and relatively simple but still evocative ways to approach your Armageddon bases.
Finally, I asked my friends at Huge Miniatures how they’d approach Armageddon-style bases, and they were kind enough to not just give me notes, but send an entire kit of stuff! I really liked their method, so I think that solves my own basing plans. Here’s the list of materials and a photo of my own experiment following their notes.
“I can see a couple of ways to approach this:
Build up the ground layer with rubble and medium grit, paint them, then apply a thin layer of the texture/crackle paste and add tufts
or
Apply the texture paste first, add rubble, medium grit, and tufts while wet, then add a wash, then drybrush.
Regardless of approach, you can sparingly add Earth Weathering powder as a final step to soften up the basing elements and blend everything together.”
With those notes, I cracked open the box of stuff they’d sent, which includes:
As you can see, I tried out both suggested methods. I’m not quite sure which I’ll ultimately choose, but they both look solid. Most likely, I’ll adjust the recipe a little to better match my final paint scheme, but this is already pretty close. I’ll also finalize my miniatures by dusting a little Earth weathering pigment onto the feet and lower legs of my models to help marry them to the basing.
I’m really happy with these bases. Both versions offer good visual interest without overwhelming the models that will stand atop them, and neither is too work-intensive to be a problem replicating across an entire army.
Armageddon Ork Paint TutorialsFortunately for Ork players, every Ork is welcome to join Ghazghkull’s Waaagh! No matter which clan they belong to, there’s a spot for your own warband’s colors. This is great because, aside from basing, any Ork paint scheme is going to be thematic for Armageddon games. Everything from classic Goffs and Evil Sunz, to warbands and clans of your own creation have reason to be in an Armageddon campaign. So, here are a few of my favorite Ork tutorials.
Warhammer – How to Paint: Battle Ready Goff Ork Boyz – Contrast Method
Here’s Games Workshop’s official take on Goff boyz. Quick and dirty but still solid techniques here, this process relies on Contrast paints to do the heavy lifting. This is a pretty good baseline from which to approach a Goff force.
Ph3lan’s Miniatures – Painting a Whole Battalion of Orks in the Goff Color Scheme
This is a fantastic tutorial for painting Orks in the iconic Goffs scheme with an emphasis on batch painting for a large army. Crucial stuff if you’re gonna get your greenskin hordes on the tabletop in a reasonable amount of time.
The Apathetic Fish Miniatures – How to paint Evil Sunz Space Orks
The Evil Sunz are one of the central forces of the Fourth Armageddon war, and this is a nice little scheme for your Boyz. Remember, just because Evil Sunz love trukks, they still have plenty of boyz to ride alon,g and they look great in the bold red and black of the Speed Freeks.
Warhipster – Contrast+ How to Paint: Armageddon Orks Weirdboy
Finally a tutorial for the new Ork Weirdboy from the Armageddon box set. I love Warhpster’s Contrast + conventional paint tutorials. They were instrumental in letting me paint the entire Tyranid half plus 20 more termagants in just 10 days when Leviathan launched in 2022. Really fantastic techniques for quick painting, check them out for sure.
Armageddon Space Marine Paint TutorialsQuite a few Space Marine Chapters are taking part in Operation Imperator, over 30, in fact! I’m going to focus on tutorials for some of the most prominent but there are quite a few other options out there. Blood Angels may be the poster boys for the Armageddon box set but they’ve got some iconic backup.
Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy – How to Paint: Blood Angels Primaris Bladeguard Veteran
Another tutorial from Mr. Two Thin Coats himself, this is a great basis for painting Blood Angels in an approximation of the contemporary Warhammer studio scheme. A little complex, but not overwhelmingly so and still useful for batch painting an army. No airbrush needed.
Warhammer – How to Paint: Battle Ready Crimson Fists Terminators
A very simple but striking paint scheme for the ultimate nemeses of the Ork hordes, the noble Crimson Fists.
JuanHidalgo Miniatures – The EASTIEST way to paint SALAMANDERS!
This is a really cool approach for bright and bold Salamanders. The chapter is deploying 6 of their 7 companies to Armageddon, so you know they’re not messing around!
There are tons of other options here offering some unique and less-seen paint schemes. If I wasn’t doing Blood Angels (or Crimson Fists) I’d love to tackle one of the more obscure chapters like the Hawk Lords or Masters of Protelus.
Finally, I want to close this section out with an honorable mention.
Warhammer – Painting Death Korps in Steel Legion Colours
The Armageddon Steel Legion are absent at the moment, though their return has been promised. In the meantime, though. Games Workshop offered a brief painting tutorial demonstrating how to paint Death Korps of Krieg in Steel Legion livery. It’s worth a watch even if you’re not going to take this route as it includes a quick little Armageddon-themed basing plan, as well.
And again, I’ll be adding to this list of resources as the summer goes on, so keep it bookmarked! But for now, let’s check in with all four of our Warlords as we prepare their own paint schemes.
Commander Updates
“As I said earlier, I decided to use that kit that Huge Miniatures so kindly sent me but I still had to figure out how I’d paint my Blood Angels. After much consideration I decided that I wanted to give them a bit of a nod to the 90s era Blood Angels but with a contemporary approach. Conveniently, Duncan had already done the hard work here in his excellent tutorial, Retro Minis: Painting 2nd Edition Blood Angel Tactical Marines.
I’m going to follow this pretty closely but use the period-appropriate yellow sparingly. I’ll probably reserve it for detailing on characters, sergeants, and vehicles. Since I won’t want to paint my Vanguard Vets and other elite helmets in yellow, they’ll be getting a more standard “Mystic Gold” recipe from the Warhammer Paint App. Here are my recipes for future reference:
Blood Angels Red Armor
Spray matte white primer
All-over airbrush of Mephiston Red Air (this is the only step in which I will use an airbrush)
Highlight 1: Evil Sunz Scarlet
Recess shade: Agrax Earthshade
Edge highlight: Wild Rider Red
Extreme edge highlight: Troll Slayer Orange (this may be reserved for characters only)
Weapon casings and black panels
Basecoat: Corvus Black
Edge highlight: Mechanicus Standard Grey
Silver metals (bolter parts, chainsword blades etc)
Basecoat: Lead Belcher
All-over wash: Nuln Oil
Edge highlight: Stormhost Silver
Yellow details
Basecoat: Averland Sunset
All-over wash: Reikland Flesh Shade
Highlight: Yriel Yellow
Gold ornamentation
Basecoat: Retributor Armor
Recess wash: Drakenhoff Nightshade
Highlight 1: Liberator Gold
Edge highlight: Stormhost Silver
This scheme will likely evolve a bit as I begin painting but I think it’s a solid foundation and I’m excited to get started!”
“So, I’ve been unhappy with my shading and highlights thus far. I used the Ork tutorial links that Simon shared as a diving board into the slightly deeper part of the painting tutorials pool. I found many “what I wish I knew”, “beginner mistakes”, and “top x mistakes” videos. Some were more helpful than others, but after many hours, I’ve identified my core issues as a new painter: paint consistency, brush handling techniques, and a fear of overdoing it. Now that I’m a bit more confident, I’m going to expand my palette to include more highlights and rely less on shading, but here’s the pair of deffkoptas I’ve been experimenting on.”
“This is my paint recipe journal for Orks. One of the longest processes for me (besides the actual painting part) is picking the color scheme and pulling the paints I need. Having a recipe journal makes it so much easier for me to start painting an army and making sure I have all the paints I need.”
“I kicked off with a lieutenant I had laying around as a test model. This let me work out all the various elements of the armor and weapons. I typically write down recipes for each of these elements in Google Sheets, especially when doing an army-scale project.
The base red is Vallejo Gory Red all over, then a zenithal of Vallejo Scarlet Red. This all gets a wash of Two Thin Coats Mud Wash. I then highlight the red back up by mixing Two Thin Coats Skulker Yellow into Vallejo Flat Red. I’ll work all this in batches of 10-20 models at a time. Many of the details are black. The undersuit and rib area, the bolters, chest eagle. For these I use Games Workshop Contrast Black.
Other than these things I keep the rest fairly simple; transfers and no battle damage for this army. Mainly because I’m walking my son through the process and he’s helping with some stuff like priming, some base coating, and some dry brushing.”
Now, to replace a few empty bottles of Nuln and Agrax before Saturday!
Simon Berman has been a wargamer since 1993 and has worked in the tabletop games industry since 2008 as a staff writer for the first three editions of WARMACHINE and HORDES. These days he's the General President of the Brush Wielders Union, a worldwide organization of miniatures painters of all skill levels, a freelance games writer who has contributed to a number of roleplaying games like Eclipse Phase, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, and The Hammer and the Stake. He runs his own small-press publishing company, Strix Publishing, and paints more miniatures than he can keep track of. Simon lives with his wife in Tacoma, Washington along with a number of cats and a pack of savage wiener dogs.
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