So I went and counted the amount of colours (including transparencies) needed for a sample of scale figurines to see how many materials one would need loaded in a printer to print it, similar to someone else having X number of paints to paint it. 

Histogram

Analysis

As I deduced after counting a few, 11 was the most comon for a figurine that had a seemingly average amount of colours. The mean backs this up. 7 seemed suprisingly rare and the modal class is 8-9. These figurines seemed to be somewhat simple in colour pallete. Contrast to this, figurines over 14 looked to have so many colours that it would be impractical to print with single colour materials, even though that isn't the case. 

Adding +1 for support material, 92.7% of figurines would be printable with 16 colours, and 97.6% with 18. I also feel like a larger sample size would further increase these percentages.

Conclusion

If space isn't an issue, I'll target 18 materials for #SecSavr Suspense [gd0105]. If 18 isn't easily possible but 16 is, I'll opt for that instead to match #SecSavr [gd0036]. I'll see if I can create a new render of the Suspense that is closer to my new expected finished outcome of it.