Hey guys, discussion topic if you don't mind:

A friend and I recently started toying with the idea of painting our fleets. He typically plays Rebels and I typically play Empire. We were discussing how paint schemes should go and what would look best and what not. What do people feel about paint schemes, in respect to uniformity, when it comes to your actual game lists?

For example, should I have my ISD, Gladiator and my TIE Swarm all have the same paint scheme, since I'd run them together in a list? Thematically it would make sense to me that the Empire would require uniformity in all their ships. The Rebs on the other hand were literally a ragtag group of whatever they could scrounge together from private fleets and scattered remnants of the Republic, hence having differing paint schemes for each ship in a fleet would kind of make sense.

Just wanted to ask the community.

The above is exactly how I felt before painting my fleets...

Personally, I like uniformity for both factions, but especially for the imperials. Then again, I've never been creative with my painting, I've always gone for the "accurate" look, so my nebulon b's will always be grey-ish and my corvettes will always be white-ish. For some reason, I like armada to look just like the movies for my fleet. However, different colors with ragtags can definitely look good, it's just not for me and my fleet. Personally, when I see the imperials are all the same color, it seems super imposing and dangerous.

I have a thing for going for 'groupings' and my Imperial groupings tend to be larger than my Rebels. My Imperials tend to be grouped into larger task forces that are mostly homogeneous with a bit more variety in the squadrons (which tend to be 'alike' in squadrons or wings of 4 separate flights. So I have an ESB group, ANH group, Spire Guard group, etc). But with Rebels, I tend to split my forces smaller. so 3 CR90 are alike, 1 MC80+2 MC30, 1 MC80+1 MC30, etc. But my fighter squadrons are grouped into units anywhere between 3 and 6 flights strong and my rebels tend to be far more colourful. So they look more unique.

Great topic by the by, I like seeing things like this.

My imps are anything but uniform. Check them out at jukeys junkyard. I like to make them look like they've been out on the outer rim for years after the empire fell, plus a little battle damage never hurt anyone.

I have a thing for going for 'groupings' and my Imperial groupings tend to be larger than my Rebels. My Imperials tend to be grouped into larger task forces that are mostly homogeneous with a bit more variety in the squadrons (which tend to be 'alike' in squadrons or wings of 4 separate flights. So I have an ESB group, ANH group, Spire Guard group, etc). But with Rebels, I tend to split my forces smaller. so 3 CR90 are alike, 1 MC80+2 MC30, 1 MC80+1 MC30, etc. But my fighter squadrons are grouped into units anywhere between 3 and 6 flights strong and my rebels tend to be far more colourful. So they look more unique.

Great topic by the by, I like seeing things like this.

This was kind of the direction I was thinking about going. Like, having task forces that all shared a specific paint scheme. (Obviously, this is further down the road, I'm splitting money between this and 40k so like...it'll take a while to get to this point). Then possibly giving them a narrative reason to be painted the way they are or whatever. Similar to how in 40k you wind up with custom unit decals and such. Also, thank you!

My imps are anything but uniform. Check them out at jukeys junkyard. I like to make them look like they've been out on the outer rim for years after the empire fell, plus a little battle damage never hurt anyone.

This is a great idea! I never really thought about the ships that would have largely been forgotten by higher command after the Empire was founded, simply because they were too far out to matter on the larger scale. Like, the Gladiators and the Raiders and such could all have wildly unique paint schemes due to them being out of touch for so long.

I painted my rebels a very bright uniform colour scheme. That way its easy to tell at a glance which ships are mine and which are my opponents.

I'm an Imp. I haven't the experience some of the others here have but, like everyone, I've got an opinion and it … well never mind haha.

I've been working squadrons mostly as of late and they are true to XW and the movies. There are two main variants, light grey and blue/grey. I've also done a Fel, Gamma bomber squadron and Royal Guard interceptors. For the rogues, one of each is painted as their character ship and the others have a different theme/motivation. You can see these in "my go at tiny spaceships".

As for the ships, I'm working on a themed fleet (slowly) so I'll have a group of ships with a similar scheme. If I get around to it, I'll Repaint all of my ships the light Imp grey because I hate the multi-colored "replacement panels" the ships currently come with. I have painted a Neb B Imp grey and also done 2 CR90s in a "Manadalorian" theme so I can use them playing capture the station haha.

I'll try to update my old painting post when I get home, but the way I'm doing it is using one kind of gray for my imps while I use 4 or 5 shades for my rebs. I still modulate all the panels using thinned out watercolors, acrylic inks, and pigments though.

I'm trying to approach the problem similarly to Soviet vs American naval equipment: both basically "grey", but one a lot dirtier