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Hello,

I'd like to use this thread to track the progress of a 'battlesuits only' Farsight Enclaves force which I am currently building and painting for a casual 'escalation' campaign which a few friends and I are undertaking this year:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/631406.page

I've actually been building a lot of the force over the last 18 months so unfortunately don't have a lot of wip images from the construction and conversion stages, which is a shame considering how much time has gone into chopping up XV8 legs and making tiny fingers.

In my imagination, the force is themed around an elite 'insurrection' detachment who have infiltrated some kind of urban human city/country/planet and are training and organising indigenous groups to fight against an established government 'for the greater good'. This idea has informed the painting scheme and style - I'm going for simple, practical and slightly dirty urban greys with minimal embellishment. This very neatly ties in with my lack of time, patience and fine detail skill .

All my Battlesuit teams will have a red left arm, and veterancy (that's a word, right?) will also be indicated with the same blood red to antennae and 'heads', in reference to the classic studio Farsight colours. The limited pallet and range of techniques used is intentional - I've not painted for many years and need to warm up for a more ambitious project...

Below is the first completed team; legs are re posed by cutting below the knee, filing and roughly crafting 'knee-lines' back onto the upper leg stump and then cutting in grooves into the back of the XV8 leg so that the now-separate lower leg can slot in at a more acute angle. Those of you who have battled with the horribly static XV8 kits before will know what i mean! The result is a slightly more dynamic range while still maintaining the bulky and awkward feel of the models as befitting their in-game profile.

The hands are made from various sized pieces of square plastic rod, as devised by Biddo in his amazing tutorial over at Advanced Tau Tactica: http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=21087

The painting process is very simple - I spray undercoat with Tamiya Gunship Grey 2 (I have used a bit of Halford's grey car primer recently but I'm not liking how it blends with one of the Citadel paints I use), and then wash with GW Agrax Earthshade. Black bits are just painted with any old acrylic and the greys are tidied up with Mechanicus Standard and then highlighted with Dawnstone and then Adminsitratum Grey (all GW paints). The red parts are just Meph Red with an Agrax wash and then re edged with the same red. I get through a lot of Earthshade.

Rocks of the bases are mostly made of cork and model railway ballast. Obviously the are loads of opportunities for more detail and colour here, but right now I just want to get the 750 points table top for Scrotox XIII.

Here are the team's marker drones - still a wip but you can see that I've tried to create a more floaty, supporty kind of look by using 1mm aluminium rod to atach them to the bases. The same will be done with my gun drones which I'll no doubt display later.

Below is the wip of my next team - a little boring really as they are identical to the first, but once these are ticked off the project list I'll be working on some HRRsides.



Over the next few weeks I aim to complete the following:
A Commander (actually just a standard XV8 with an interesting pose).
8 'custom' gun drones.
2 HRR XV88s.
Actually that doesn't seem like much at all!

Comment and criticism most welcome - it will encourage me to paint more betterer.

Mid-Life.

Totally agree with the Crisis Suits. They're nightmarishly bad. Like what you've done with the legs. Modifying the arms is a bit of a hassle too. Couldn't really tell if you'd tried much of that. Hadn't seen the hand tutorial. I kinda like that idea as opposed to using Grey Knight Terminator fists which have 4 fingers instead of three.

Thanks - Some of the teams I'll be painting over the coming months have had work done on the arms. I started a process of cutting each arm into 3 sections (upper, joint and fore), extending the upper and fore with a 3mm rectangle of plastic and pinning both parts to the central joint for a greater range of poses. The results did not justify the amount of work involved so I resigned myself to just converting the legs on the rest of the teams. I'll post an example when the camera is next out.

I love your true scale stuff BTW, a real labour of love.

Mid-life.

Subscribed!

These are looking really neat, shameless plug for the Campaign thread that these guys will be getting themselves into.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/631406.page

That is really great conversion work! I also really like the paint style, it is very similar to what I prefer myself, a subtle and more 'realistic' feel instead of very explicit highlights. Also the contrasting reds work really well.

Yeah they are looking great, I can't wait to shoot at them in the upcoming campaign.

Like a new mother gazing over her unexpectedly unusual-looking offspring, it is with equal parts pride and concern that I present some more of my enclaves which are being hastily coloured in for a friendly escalation campaign documented here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/631406.page

Here are a few shots of my second plasma/missile XV8 team with converted heads, legs and custom hands...

The team itself - I now have a better lamp but still struggling with photos as you can see:

Here are a few close ups:




To be honest I'm finding documenting this (for the first ever time) to be one of the best ways of reflecting on my technique. For example, in the dimly lit rooms I tend to frequent, a heavy wash of Agrax does not appear to pool or break up some of the nicer surfaces on Crisis Suits, however looking back on a nice big HD screen its clear that a lighter wash of Nuln would have meshed better with the level of highlighting I'm currently able to do, probably resulting in a smoother finish.

Here's a team shot!


Thanks in advance for any comments or advice - I'll be back v soon with some sexy drone shots but right now I have to go cook a Sea Bass ****Aaargh - cannibalism!!!***

Peace Out...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hello again.

I've been building and painting a Gun Drone Squadron to attach to my Commander in our first round escalation campaign. I've probably mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of the drone models and find them to be too clumsy and static. Aware of my limited time I made a few alterations:

The gun mount is made from a XV8 Burst Cannon ammo cylinder and I've just stripped down one of the drone carbines and attached it to the front. Aluminium rod provides a more dynamic range of height and angle for basing - I like to imagine these little buggers zipping about the place and making a nuisance of themselves.



Next up - a few shots of my next tasks...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As any readers who have looked at our Bristol campaign thread will know, there are a few of us putting together 750pt forces in time for... two weeks ago.... Unfortunately I've had to play my fist two games with a few unpainted models. Below are what needs to be completed...

My commander - Shas'Vre Arg'Os C'Tau Log. He's actually just a team leader for one of my existing WIP XV8 teams, but as I'm not quite ready to reveal (i.e. paint) my actual commander models he'll be filling in for a few rounds:


The (new) XV88 & XV104 kits have provided some great alternative parts (the head in this case), and yes, that is a Pathfinder knife on his 'thigh' - it's way to big for its intended owner!

And then finally, a couple of HRR-sides - quite standard apart from the support-systems-for-heads thing going on, as I wanted them to look as 'snipery' as possible. The least painted one has a slightly converted stance (the legs come moulded with pins) but it's only really noticiable if you are familiar with the kit itself:



That's all for now - we hope to have some Batreps over on the Scrotox thread soon so you can see our toys in action.

Ta.

Looking good, they look better being shot at. I'll try to start that report today/tomorrow.

Great job modelling the tau suits. While I liked the original art back when they came out in late 3rd edition, the models never really looked right and changing them like you did helps alot. I'm not talented (or patient!) enough to make the hands myself but I recently got some crisis enforcer suits and I'm considering using the hands on my normal already built suits. I think your mod looks better though as I'm a bit worried that the enforcer digits will look like giant gorilla hands on the more squat plastic suits. In any case, I'm subscribed to the thread and will be anxiously awaiting further contributions to the greater good!

 RandyMcStab wrote:
Looking good, they look better being shot at. I'll try to start that report today/tomorrow.

Thanks Randy - don't you mean they look better running off the table in turn one?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:
In any case, I'm subscribed to the thread and will be anxiously awaiting further contributions to the greater good!

Wow thanks - I think you'll find the XV8 commander hands to be too big and I'd really recommend having a go with plastic rod. I was terrified to try and looked over Biddo's tutorial for ages before taking the plunge and to be honest the margin of error is quite large and they still look good. I've made 24 tiny hands now and most of them looked fine first try. Use poly cement (plastic glue) and tweezers and you can't go wrong.

They're looking sweet, keep plugging away!

Hi - I've had a weekday off work! Having spent much of it grimacing through the Damocles audiobook for inspiration, I'd like to present some photos of the two HRR-sides I've been painting for the Scrotox XIII escalation campaign...

And this is how all my Enclaves stuff starts out - Tamiya Gunship Grey 2, Mephiston Red and Abaddon Black:

I then apply a hasty wash of Agrax followed by some thick edging with Admin Grey (which is basically the same colour as the Tamiya base):


The model then gets an edge highlight of Dawnstone and then an even slighter one of the other light grey 'layer' that GW make:


And then it's really just a case of doing some gold bits and then I can move onto painting something else (i.e. another battlesuit) sprue grey:


"Supported by a Crisis Team, an XV88 Broadside languishes in the ruins of Cardboardia Prime, yesterday":


That's all for now I'm afraid. Next on the horizon is campaign objective markers...

Love the broadsides. Something about the massive rife just clicks, so much better then the missile pods, table-top effectiveness be damned.

“Listen up you primitive screw-heads! This is my Boom-Stick."

Looks good! I do have some questions though. I don't know if it is a continuing evolving paint scheme or the lighting but did the models paint scheme change from grey to blue tinted back to grey throughout the thread? Also, did you have to buy the cracked stone bases or do they come with the new plastic broadside kits ala the wraithlord?

Thanks Warboss.

There are a few things going on with the paint scheme; mainly some models are base coated with Tamiya gunship grey 1 instead of gunship grey 2! This gives some of them a deeper contrast with the gw greys and brings the blue out I think. I'm also a very lazy painter and my ink washes vary in depth. Finally, I bought an Otlight daylight lamp a while which may affect the photos. Well spotted!

The Broadsides just come with normal 60mm bases. These are SM Dreadnought bases which you may still be able to order direct from source.

Ta.

Thanks for the quick response. I'm actually not too good with colors but it just seemed like the ones in the middle of the thread had a bit of blue in them and were bookmarked by more grey suits but I wasn't sure if it was also because of the lighting and the increased edge highlighting on the more recent broadsides (which I like btw).

What do you think of the posability of the new broadsides? I've heard some folks complain that they're pretty much one pose except for some variations on limb angles. I don't own any of them yet (and I'm not sure if I ever will) but figured I'd ask. It's not like the old ones had much variability either though. I assembled one squad in the "normal" pose and another in a more active one personally.

 Nevelon wrote:
“Listen up you primitive screw-heads! This is my Boom-Stick."

Absolutely; thanks Nev. The HyMp arms do not look good. The in-game profile of both missile pods fits a medium/heavy machine gun type thing much better anyway (a la Autocannon). Which I think would look great on a Broadside.

Still, for me 40k has always been about balancing aesthetics with winning the occasional game!

Ta.

Also Str 8 is also better at high AV targets....

Broadies are looking great! Really nice, precise extreme highlighting there. Are you planning on adding any unit insignia/markings/daemon head trophies? I think this would take them to the next level.

Like Mark 'Mack' Morrison before me I return with some new content (although I've been at home painting rather than in prison for bringing a gun on a plane).

Below are a few WIP images of the force's 'Mark'O' Commander, and then a bit of a photo shoot of the completed 1K force for the fantastic Scrotox Campaign which seems to have de escalated to a very un-GrimDark but comfortable ceasefire between the Dark Eldar and Blood Angels forces.

As you will see the models have no lens/gem work or unit markings as my priority has always been to get them tabletop ready as quickly as possible. C&C always welcome.

Commander WIPs (Layering various greys as usual):




The finished article (image sponsored by Ottlight]:


Burst Cannon/Flamer team plus drones:


Plasma/Fusion team plus drones:


Both Missile Pod teams:


Railsides:


The whole Kit'n'Caboodle (Thought I'd try some natural light which was a bad idea obviously!):


Our next batch is up to 1.5K so a bigger jump (and I'm running out of battlesuits). I'd really like to add some team markings and lens work to take them to the 'next level' but I'm struggling to settle on a colour and style so I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

For those also following the Scrotox campaign I've posted my 1K list and left a few sentences re the thought process behind my new additions in the hope that others will follow suit. It can be found here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/631406.page

Thanks for reading!

Looking really good, I'd recommend not ticking the auto box in the Gallery (assuming you are) I think the colours are more naturalistic, give it a fiddle. Great looking force! That's a lot of suits, thanks for the IG murderising BC/FL unit, that'll be fun for me! My list is up in the Camp thread now too so you can peruse...