i don't know if i like this or not but it is kinda interesting. Its gonna look out of place on BLU but thats just how it is with warpaints that aren't team coloured. You could, if you're still interested in improving/working on this warpaint, make a MK.II version using a different base that allows team colours and make a blue version but instead of the red rust colour you see on irons/steels you use the blue/green colour you see on copper! That way, you still get the rust you desire whilst also squishing the issue of a red-looking weapon on blu team

Not too sure what you could do for a custom wear (if you desire such a thing) as you can't really wear down past rust

i do like me a plated warpaint though it could use some albedo tinting

- It's very monotone and flat. Some extra brush work on the primary and secondary (maybe). However this definitely needs an accent colour. Some silver or green rust to break the brown would be really good.

- Thirdly, metal plate lines that are not orthogonal look really weird, this is because diagonal plate lines when constructing anything makes no sense and are impractical (generally). A base that has an orientation lock like Mannana peeled, park pigmented, helldriver would make this much better. OR you can just use lucky seeds for your promos and just ask valve to add the lock

If you want to use sticker bases because they have some desirable features but don't want the stickers, just make an empty texture as a VTF and then replace them. You can easily turn a sticker base into a non-sticker one.

good luck!

I really like the scrappy plating positions and layering but there's a couple of items that make it hard for me to really enjoy this paint.

- Firstly, plate lines in tf2 are rarely if every pure black, some parts are very dark but are usually thin and as they spread out they get lighter. A much better move would be to lower the opacity of the plate lines so that they absorb and simply darken the colour underneath. Or just pick a darker shade of your main colour