"Paint schemeS for my armieS?" Topic

I'm in the process of organising and getting my 15mm sci fi collection and wonder what color to paint them… Any good ideas or cool inspiration?

The idea is to regroup all my forces under one of two major factions: the Terran Alliance and the alien Galactic Federation ) .

What I'd like is to have each army to have her own original scheme, but the overarching faction to retain a overall visual coherence.

So far I'm thinking to use light grey as the base colour for Terrans, and dark grey for the Aliens and to differentiate forces by secondary colour( s ) , camo pattern and so on…

For example:
- Europeans: light grey ( most of the surface ) and either two shades of blue or a blue and a darker grey ( but only as a tertiary colour as to not be confused with aliens ) ; traditional "amoeba" pattern; bright blue roundel and gold star
- Arabs: light grey and shades of tan/brown, some sage or some light olive maybe; angular "splinter" pattern; bright green crescent markings

The dominant colour of both forces being light grey and both forces working well visually as two detachments of a larger force when opposed to mostly dark grey aliens; while being distinct enough to be opposed

For now I'm looking at the following factions:
- Terran: Europcorp ( GZG NI and a mix of GZG hi-mob and early-grav vehicles ) , PLA ( probably Khurasan not-russians infantry and CMG mercenaries vehicles and Zas flyers ) and some sort of ME/Haqqislam Coalition ( Khurasan not-arabs + modern insurgents and not sure about the vehicles yet )
- Alien: my not-tau force ( link ) and some merchant organisation robot force, à la SW droïd army ( CMG praesidentia robots and drones, and Brigade pacfed vehicles ) …

Any suggestion on how to make this work?

Instead of two shades of grey, keep the Terrans grey and make the Aliens tan.

I agree with mad monkey – I would use a different base colour

For 40K (not that it is hard to tell 40K forces apart) my Imperial Guard are in dark grey plus or minus "ambush" pattern camo, while my Tau are all desert tan

Make sense, but I thinking about making my bases and board a rocky greyish iot multi-purpose them as urban/rocky desert/moonscape… And I'm a bit afraid about the tan not mixing well with it!

Tan is the base color. You can do a mottled grey blue tan camo scheme. Tan was just a suggestion, maybe feldgrau would work better for you.

Take a few figs and try out a base scheme, before committing an entire army to the paint process.

Generally, I think it's best to try to match the camo to the basic colors of your terrain.

A lot of people though, completely ignore that, going the opposite route instead, in order to make their troops stand out on the tabletop.

There is something to be said for that too, especially in 15mm, since they are so small. The theory is that brighter colors are better, so that they stand out from the background better, and are more visible.

You'll have to decide which you prefer.

I will say that one issue I'm definitely convinced about is to use lighter colors, if the figs have a lot of relief, and/or nice surface detailing, since with darker colors, or complex camo patterns, the fine sculpting will be harder to see.

I would go grey for terrans and bright colours for aliens.