Going about trying to pick a theme

For a few weeks now I have been trying to think of a theme to do for a DE army. Thinking up a theme is actually quite a difficult thing to do. You need something that can be converted or styled across the entire army but one that can fit in well with everything. Speedfreaks harlequin army is one of the best themed armies I have seen in a long while, a simple central theme, convertable, and it looks fantastic and completely unique. After weeks of thinking about it I have still got nothing. I was toying with the idea of doing a Commorragh bounty hunter force, with Wytch and Warrior squads composed of bounty hunters from all manner of races. I was thinking of only using DE for the trueborn/bloodbride units. However the DE models are too awesome not to be the primary focus of the army. So I am back to square one.

So how have those of you trying to do a themed army fared? I think it is just going to have to come to me eventually, thinking about it seems to just draw a blank for me.

Pirates/Corsairs
Eldar/Dark Eldar hybrid?
Exodites

Just dropping words, rather than whole explanations, to start your imagination...

There are several themse or ways to go about theme.

As you said, Speedfreek has a brilliant theme with his harliquiens.

Mine are Dune/desert themed.

One of the ideas I had initially was a spider themed army, with lots of black and red and spider webs ( I was also reading Salvatorre's Drizzit books) and did a test model I liked a lot.

There is a buddy of mine who is doing his based on Hellraiser.

You could do something like and ice world DE with lots of white and blues and purples.

or even something based on ghosts and other scary otherworldy spirits, kind of like the dead guys from Return of the king.

I would not recommend Sesame Street and Elmo though...

IS there any video game or book bad guys that seem to fit the bill, or something you could work into a DE force.

I mean heck, the evil queen from sleeping beauty could make a heck of a Archon.

If You would like to include Wracks, You could use CybOrks. Also Ork Jetbikers would look cool.
For Warriors maybe... rebel Fire Warriors?

However I don't quite like "mixed" force, even My Space Orks (mostly scratchbuild vehicles + bikes) are pretty much "uniform". Unless You would give those "Xeno Xenos" Kabailte Armours and weapons, kinda like in Sslyth style.

I've (finally!) decided mine would be based on H. R. Giger (creator of Alien) works, lots of black metal and "ribs and scales".

I actually came up with something at one point. An army of the Monarch and his henchmen from Venture Bros. You could model Warriors with plasticard wings and the Scourges could be the Elite henchmen. You could have a squad of trueborn lead by 24, the Monarch is obviously the Archon, Dr Girlfriend would make a good Succubus plus I am sure she had some henchwomen at some point you could use as Wytches. If you really wanted to you could model a Beastmaster that looked like Dr Venture and have him bring a Clawed Fiend as Brock Samson, also use Orpheus as a Haemo with cloned dean and hank failures as Wracks. The whole thing would work on so many levels. The only problem is it would be sort of a joke theme and would cost to much purely for a joke army. The theme still works great though, maybe if I get a spare few hundred and a spare few weeks I may do it one day.

You could also just find a colour och scheme that you think will go really well.

I myself was tempted to go yellow, but will save that for my Hordes - Legion of Everblight...

I've always favored a themed colour scheme over a fully converted theme army, like the Hello Kitty Marines, though I've seen a few notable exeptions.

Myself, when the new book came out, I decided I wanted a new scheme to push myself to use more of the fancy new models. So I use a Harlie Quinn inspired theme with the quartered black and red, as much as I didn't want to be the standard black and red coloured DE, I stuck by the scheme for my kabalites.

xzandrate wrote:

So I use a Harlie Quinn inspired theme with the quartered black and red, as much as I didn't want to be the standard black and red coloured DE, I stuck by the scheme for my kabalites.

Pictures or it didn't happen!

speedfreek wrote:

xzandrate wrote:

So I use a Harlie Quinn inspired theme with the quartered black and red, as much as I didn't want to be the standard black and red coloured DE, I stuck by the scheme for my kabalites.

Pictures or it didn't happen!

Agreed. No pictures or it doesn't exist.

I tend towards visual themes over story themes. I've got a couple that are fairly silly, and will likely lose what little respect I have within my own community, but you're here for good ideas, not bad ones!

I saw a picture of a Talos recently that instantly made me think of the monsters from the movie "9". (Too new to post a link, but you'll find a few images up on IMDB.)

Scratch-built Wracks, Talos, Chronos, Grotesques, etc, would be fun to make. Warriors, et. al. could have a dark armor with splashes of color that could be mistaken for rust. The whole army would be based with a "junk yard" theme, tying everything together.

Ohhh... like "evil meat puppets"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7VzWitgeU4

I love that idea.

Well, if it helps, I got my themes and stuff from music, and then just let my ideas flow from there My Dark Eldar army is Black Metal themed, ie everyone without a helmet has corpse paint, and the major colors are black with white highlights.