Personally (Call me what you will) but colour should really boil down to whatever the player wants, if the player wants pink and yellow, let the player have pink and yellow. Customization will be difficult for Eldar due to the Aspect armour being very specific so allowing any colour scheme the player chooses would be a good way to give some more. I personally would rather be able to have any colour scheme possible but I do see a problem with everyone in different neon colours, so having the colour combinations limited could the be next option but I would rather be given the freedom for whatever colours I want.

I also think that customization is important. The problem with giving the player total freedom is that the colours are not just an aesthetic element. Colour patterns represent Eldar lore, which is connected to certain aspects of game mechanics. So if your Warlock will be black and beige, he will probably somewhat better than his other-coloured counterparts. By giving the player total freedom of choice, we would be negating any need for subfactions. I would rather have 5 colour patterns available, but with some unique mechanics connected to each of them. This way, the devs could implement other craftworlds post-launch and give them some interesting characteristics as well.

I'm a little split on this for a couple reasons.

The first is that I grew up painting an army of Siam Hann, which I outright love the color scheme and iconography for, and thus chose to paint all of my aspect warriors as variations on that theme. Striking scorpions were a deep black with red plating and white markings, Swooping Hawks had white armor with alternating red/white wings, etc. It looked badass in concert, and that one Scorpion I had painted in the regular totally-unrelated green looked silly and incongruous by comparison.

I think a big reason that aspect warriors all had the same color schemes was a logistical one for GW - they wanted to put the best looking aspect warrior paint jobs on display in the codex, but every new squad of Eavy Metal models painted probably costs them a couple grand. So they write up some lore that says "hey, all the Eldar use the same aspect colors" and get to keep reusing the same squads for Siam Hann, Ulthwe, and Biel Tan alike.

That kind of leads into my second reason which is that GW started this in, what, the 80s? So we have some badass color schemes like Siam Hann and Ulthwe, but we also have the grotesque hair metal crap in Alaitoc and Iyanden. And if people want to avoid that crap using aspect colors or custom tools, I don't blame them.

It's still important to maintain factional identity, so maybe it'd be best if there were some broad color guidelines that can be tweaked a bit. Maybe a Alaitoc squad wants to go pure blue and ditch the yellow except for some peripheral bits. Or a Siam Hann swooping hawks decides they want white armor with red markings. I don't think changes like that would be a big deal, and I certainly don't respect GW's "lore" reasons for restricting them, which seem to be either cheapness or unwelcome tradition.

After thinking about it you may be right. On the oter hand, I fear with so many Craftworlds there will nothing to prevent rainbow squads. As stated somewhere else: Would have been better to get only one craftworld/chapter/legion. If then we would get a mix of craftworld/shrine it would be some consistence in the squads.

Wait. Am I the only on here, who would love to play an Iyanden character because of their color scheme?
But unless they let us change between the Craftworlds, then I will stay with Ulthwé, even though I dislike their color scheme (it is decent looking, but so generic, imho). Just because I wish to main Warlock, and Ulthwé will give bonus to that (if they look at the lore). But I certainly hope they let us change craftworld.

Can't they just let us choose between Craftworld and Class / Aspect color scheme?

A) I highly doubt there will be a bonus. If nothing else, Ulthwe's Warlocks and Seers aren't better, there are more of them.


B) Warlocks don't have Shrine schemes anyway, so a Warlock would use Craftworld colours by default.

Yep, there is a quote out there were one of the Devs (Brent?) says, that they exactly don't want to force you to play a subfaction just because thats needed to play a class to its full potential.

Just to add to Lich, he went on to say how they want the sub faction bonuses to not make any class more effective than another factions, so the bonuses will things like cheaper RP to call wraithguard ext. So choose faction based on what you like vs where the bonuses will be is how I'm going.

I have always liked Ulthwe but Iyanden is just so good. I love the positive necromancers as the Dark Eldar describe them.

Further though, for color schemes I still think Craftworld with shrine highlights is the way to go. This is an aspect that won't offer complete freedom and waiting to see what they say for final verdict on it.

I am with you on Iyanden.

I am willing to bet it will be Craftworld colors as primary as this is how it is for all other factions sub factions, and it would take away any point of having Craftworlds represented if no one sees them.

I voted for shrine colours. It would be cool to have one, or several shrines per Craftworld. it would fit the lore and we could still have neat colours chemes. In a way it would give us even more colour customization than Space Marines. A Blood Angel is always going to be red for example. There are also different ways to display what Craftworld you're from. Such as a sash, tabard, accessories etc.