Excuse my ignorance but how many different ways can you paint a Stormtrooper and stay canon?

1 minute ago, TaeSWXW said:

Excuse my ignorance but how many different ways can you paint a Stormtrooper and stay canon?

Painting them will probably make them look canonically speaking like a different unit... Black for death troopers for example. But there is room for small interesting color changes. If u check the battlefront game u can get some ideas like the red markings but this might actually popup at some point as expansions bringing different weapons or the likes

Well there's white and black, and white and black, or if you're feeling a bit whimsical you could go with white and black...

Canon wise, there's the death troopers and shore troopers from Rogue one. Although they actually have different armor then Stormtroopers do, so just painting a Stormy black isn't quite the same.

Honestly I'm not sure there is many other canon options for Stormtroopers. You could paint the shoulder pauldron on the leader a different color... But even then I think the canon color for that is tan or orange.

Observation: the Battlefront games made by EA/DICE has some variances. Personally, it would have been nice for FFG to follow some of their cues and allow for some helmet-less troopers.

A lot of players will probably use some blue highlights on the shoulder, belts or arms, in a nod to the 501st Legion. (In Legends, even during the Imperial era some depictions showed them with the blue highlights. The 501st are still canon, but we haven't seen them with the blue.) Others will probably follow this idea with red, yellow, green, and so on.

Sorastro painted the IA Stormtroopers with battle damage, making the armor less stark white and more muddied and singed.

Depends. If you use Legends stuff, tons of ways to paint them.

New Canon, not so much. However, there are still some canon options such as Shock Troopers, Sniper Troops etc. Here's a page of the canon stuff, but as pointed out a lot of these might actually appear as options too.

Specialized stormtroopers Edit

In addition to the "standard" troops, the Empire had created a number of specialized stormtrooper units assembled to operate on varied planets and climates within its territory. Scout troopers wore lighter armor and used speeder bikes to patrol the perimeter of the Imperial garrisons they were assigned to. ^[20]

Sniper troopers were specialists pulled from Scout trooper ranks and wielded the deadly E-11s long-range blaster . Stormtrooper snipers were also pulled from standard stormtrooper ranks, and wore a blue pauldron over their shoulder and had a visor attached to their helmet, along with a black bandolier across their chest plate. ^[32]

Sandtroopers wore modified armor that allowed them to survive on desert worlds such as Tatooine. ^[33] To deal with problems on frozen environments, the Empire utilized their cold weather assault stormtroopers , nicknamed snowtroopers, who wore a special mask and a kama that both resembled the equipment worn by the Galactic Marines on Mygeeto during the Clone Wars. ^{[9] [1] [18]} Coastal defender stormtroopers were stormtroopers trained and equipped to operate in coastal and tropical regions, such as those found on Scarif . ^[34]

Death trooper armor

Similar to the Shadow Troopers , the black armored death troopers were an elite variant of troopers under Imperial Intelligence 's Tarkin Initiative . They were usually assigned to protect high ranking personnel and equipped with SE-14r light repeating blasters . ^[34]

Magma troopers were equipped to operate in extremely high temperatures, and were trained to fight on volcanic worlds such as Sullust. ^{[35] [26]} Spacetroopers wore armor designed to breathe in space and were used to patrol parts of the Death Star with no air. ^[36]

Shock Troopers were armed with heavy weaponry and wore stormtrooper armor with distinctive red markings, similar to those of Republic clone troopers who served as Coruscant Guards during the Clone Wars . ^{[22] [37]} There also existed Imperial Heavy Troopers who were equipped with heavy combat armor and electrostaffs , similar to the Imperial riot troopers . Heavy Weapons Stormtroopers wielded large, rotary blaster cannons while the more agile Jumptroopers , equipped with jet packs easily bounded over walls and other obstacles to assault targets directly. ^[37] Stormtrooper grenadiers wielded grenade launchers , and wore a red pauldron along with a black bandolier across their chest, while Stormtrooper chargers took down their opponents with extreme ferocity. ^[32]

Stormtroopers in mechanized battle armor armed with heavy handheld cannon were present at the battle of Sevarcos. ^[16] Purge Troopers helped enforce Imperial law in the Anoat sector , being lead by the formidable Commander Bragh during the Iron Blockade . ^[38] Flametroopers were stormtroopers equipped with incendiary weapons. ^[17] Storm Commandos were the special forces of the Stormtrooper Corps and were trained to deal with extreme combat situations. ^[7]

Thirty years after the Battle of Endor , variants of the former Galactic Empire's armed forces would exist under the auspices of a new organization known as the First Order . It would continue to utilize new stormtroopers , as well as megablaster heavy assault troopers , riot control stormtroopers , snowtroopers , and flametroopers . ^[23]

They are not only white'n'black - but sometimes they used camuflage (like in real world). IIRC there is a Forest and Desrt-like camo.

Look at the 501st Legion's costume guidelines and you can see there is a lot of variety in the standard issue trooper. Off the top of my head: you have standard, shadowtroopers (all black), magma troopers (all red), shocktroopers (Battlefront - white with red), incinerator (white with red), nova trooper (black with gold), stormtrooper commander (white with blue).

If i would like to paint i would consider not to paint them like shocktroopers, death troopers, nova, sniper, magma etc. because they may come later as a new type of unit.

5 minutes ago, VictoryLeo said:

Look at the 501st Legion's costume guidelines and you can see there is a lot of variety in the standard issue trooper.

Most of those are no longer canon though. Since they're from things like the Force Unleashed game which is not canon.

People are of course welcome to whatever they wish and I'd never refuse to play against someone who has camo Stormtroopers or anything else. But Canon wise there aren't a lot of other options.

Most of the other options for Stormtroopers include different armor then the standard, so while painting a standard ST black would look like a Death Trooper, the armor won't be quite right... Then if they release Death Troopers you're going to have issues.

4 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

Most of those are no longer canon though. Since they're from things like the Force Unleashed game which is not canon.

People are of course welcome to whatever they wish and I'd never refuse to play against someone who has camo Stormtroopers or anything else. But Canon wise there aren't a lot of other options.

Most of the other options for Stormtroopers include different armor then the standard, so while painting a standard ST black would look like a Death Trooper, the armor won't be quite right... Then if they release Death Troopers you're going to have issues.

There's a lot of gray areas of the game. Do they need to look like canon troopers for tournament play? Can you make them pink for breast cancer awareness if you wanted? I would be very careful myself since the different colors on a trooper does usually designate a variation. Just painting a standard TK black can be confusing if they do release shadowtroopers in the future. I'm personally going to vary weathering to show the different squads. Standard white, dirty TK like on Wobani in Rogue One, sandy TKs from Scarif, etc.

Shock Trooper (canon)

501st Stormtrooper (Legends look)

Magma Trooper (legends)

Scar Squad (canon)
If you want to do some green stuff modding

JetTroopers (sort of canon)
These guys have grey markings

Jumptrooper (legends)

Jumptrooper (canon)

Shadow Trooper (canon)

Nova Trooper (Legends)

2 minutes ago, VictoryLeo said:

Do they need to look like canon troopers for tournament play?

No, but the issue comes as you pointed out what happens if you paint them black so they look like Death Troopers, then they come out with Death Troopers as a Heavy or Support unit?

1 minute ago, VanorDM said:

No, but the issue comes as you pointed out what happens if you paint them black so they look like Death Troopers, then they come out with Death Troopers as a Heavy or Support unit?

You hope FFG made the miniatures look different enough that it's not confusing or you paint the bases different colors. Or the game is dead by that time since Imperial Assault minis and Legions minis are a 2mm difference and the end of the world did indeed happen.

Just now, VictoryLeo said:

You hope FFG made the miniatures look different enough that it's not confusing or you paint the bases different colors.

Well the Shore troopers and Death Troopers from Rogue One, and the standard Stormtrooper... I think wouldn't be that hard to tell apart even unpainted.

I plan on painting mine is some manner similar to the above Shock Trooper, but probably a different color. Maybe Jodo Cast Orange.

I just already painted too many stormtroopers for Imperial Assault to want to make more regular looking ones. Might as well spice them up and make them my own I guess.

12 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

Well the Shore troopers and Death Troopers from Rogue One, and the standard Stormtrooper... I think wouldn't be that hard to tell apart even unpainted.

As someone who is 99% done with building shoretrooper armor for the 501st, I would go absolutely insane over Rogue One models.

I expect to see Death Troopers eventually in Legion and Imperial Assault.

I'm more unsure about Shoretroopers though, as they're a much more specialized type of unit... They might feel out of place in most settings. But that depends on how cohesive they want Legion to feel.

In Imperial Assault Skirmish you can have Snowtroopers running around in the desert so maybe in Legion they'd be fine with tossing in Shoretroopers.

Technically you could just do what Space Marines do in 40k

Paint them in whatever scheme you want, give them some random name as a Successor chapter of another established chapter to use their rules. (even though in this case it literally just aesthetics).

Paint them in hot pink and call them the "Fairytroopers"

2 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Technically you could just do what Space Marines do in 40k

Paint them in whatever scheme you want, give them some random name as a Successor chapter of another established chapter to use their rules. (even though in this case it literally just aesthetics).

Paint them in hot pink and call them the "Fairytroopers"

Let's not call them "Fairytroopers".

10 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Technically you could just do what Space Marines do in 40k

Paint them in whatever scheme you want, give them some random name as a Successor chapter of another established chapter to use their rules. (even though in this case it literally just aesthetics).

Paint them in hot pink and call them the "Fairytroopers"

7 minutes ago, TaeSWXW said:

Let's not call them "Fairytroopers".

No no. Let's. That's awesome.

Big picture though, with minis games, you're trading convenience of prebuilt ready to play stuff, for the ability to customize. If you're putting in that much effort, I say break canon as much as you want. If I was setting up across the table from a table of Rainbow battalion troopers, that would be awesome.

21 minutes ago, RogueLieutenant said:

I expect to see Death Troopers eventually in Legion and Imperial Assault.

I'm more unsure about Shoretroopers though, as they're a much more specialized type of unit... They might feel out of place in most settings. But that depends on how cohesive they want Legion to feel.

In Imperial Assault Skirmish you can have Snowtroopers running around in the desert so maybe in Legion they'd be fine with tossing in Shoretroopers.

Shoretroopers (as much as I love them) are quite odd. The standard "grunt" shoretrooper carries the rank of sergeant and technically can command a group of regular TKs. So a full of box squad of shores would actually be quite inaccurate. According to Lucasfilm, they were specific to Scarif (even though I think that's a very limiting thing to confirm), so my guess we'll probably never see them in Legions unless they do a full Rogue One wave of Deathtroopers, Shoretroopers, Scarif Rebels, etc.

1 minute ago, demon3o5z said:

If you're putting in that much effort, I say break canon as much as you want.

Do at your own risk though... It may not happen often, it may never happen to you. But paint your ST's in rainbow colors and there will be people who will refuse to play with you. You may very well think someone like that isn't worth playing with in the first place and you may be justified in thinking so. But it's a chance you take.

In games like 40k, you paint your ultrasmurfs the wrong color and people may give you an odd look, and may refuse to play you... Again not likely but it can and does happen. In historicals you'll run into people who refuse to play with you if your list is the wrong shade of green. Again maybe that person is better off avoided, but if you break from the norm you may find it causes problems finding a game.

Are these guys still canon?

6 minutes ago, demon3o5z said:

No no. Let's. That's awesome.

Big picture though, with minis games, you're trading convenience of prebuilt ready to play stuff, for the ability to customize. If you're putting in that much effort, I say break canon as much as you want. If I was setting up across the table from a table of Rainbow battalion troopers, that would be awesome.

willing to bet there was a thought of there being a "gay jab" is why he said "lets not call them that"
Despite in almost every cartoon iteration of a fairy, they have a pink/babyblue aura about them (or wings). Hence, Fairytroopers.

Heck i would even go far enough to actually give them fairy wings LOL

1 minute ago, VanorDM said:

Do at your own risk though... It may not happen often, it may never happen to you. But paint your ST's in rainbow colors and there will be people who will refuse to play with you. You may very well think someone like that isn't worth playing with in the first place and you may be justified in thinking so. But it's a chance you take.

In games like 40k, you paint your ultrasmurfs the wrong color and people may give you an odd look, and may refuse to play you... Again not likely but it can and does happen. In historicals you'll run into people who refuse to play with you if your list is the wrong shade of green. Again maybe that person is better off avoided, but if you break from the norm you may find it causes problems finding a game.

I don't know if Legion will ever have those types of gamers playing. Other than the license, I don't think you're going to pull a lot of people away from Warmahordes or 40K.