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About five years ago I was convinced to get into 40k by a flatmate of mine who basically wanted me to paint his models for him and knew he could bribe me with models. After looking over the armies I chose what seemed to be the most hi-tech looking and cool army, the tau! Little did I know they are one of the most complicated armies to play and with all their crisp lines and flat surfaces they are also one of the hardest to convert. I then went and did the most fanboyish and most regretted decisions of my 40k career, I painted them in a white over black "star wars stormtrooper" theme. Dang. I love the look just hate how long it takes to paint! would beleive that I undercoated them in black then painted the white on in several thick coats( paint thinner, whats paint thinner?) At the time I had no real experience of painting minis and certainly hadn't heard about things like washes and weathering so my tau army looks like something out of an anime.. a badly painted anime.

Why am I telling you all this? because recently a friend of mine spied my lonely tau hidden away in thier case and told me I should play them sometime at the local club. I had no idea if I had a playable army and thankfully my friend ( a killer Tau player) was happy to work up a list with me, suggest I tear off all the special weapons I had loaded my suits with and convert my hammerhead to a devilfish.Now that I have a list I am planning on rounding ou tmy army and getting some games in with them and since I can no longer paint even a single model without setting up a blog about it (damn you Dakka!!) here we are.

I'll start with what I have painted and ready.

first is my Commander (of course) he is a FW suit with the smart missile system which I am now running as normal missile rack, his big sheild used to be a scratchbuild heavy gun drone and needs a bit of cleaning up and is a sheild generator crazily enough.





next are his two bodyguards the first is a standard suit with a commander head and the second is the FW suit with heavy armour.





My two stealth suit teams, you can tell how old my army is by the fact most of these are the old xv15 suits, I like them more than the new one cause they remind me of samurai armour.





Next are my firewarrior squads, the first is a suicide squad of carbine troopers that roll in my devilfish and the second is a bigger squad of riflemen that I use as in a gunline, or will use when I get around to playing





My Heavy Gun Drones , half of them twinlinked the other half loaded with markerlights



Heres my Broadsides, again FW models the squad leader used to have plasma rifles but my friend suggested I change them to missile pods which I havn't finished yet.



And last in my normal units are my two FW piranhas. I love these guys they look so much better than the standard ones and I thought that they had railguns on them, my friend pointed out that they were only rail RIFLES and so I will have to find some more missile pods to convert them.



and a close up cause I can, and yes that is a huge gap between the plastic kit and the resin one, this was my first army!



And now we get to the fun part, my messed up conversions!

Here are a few piranha kitbashes thanks to the fact FW give you the entire piranha kit as well as th resin conversion kit so I had plenty of bits around to play with

This first one was planned to be a one man scout vehicle like the tetra but I slapped on a burst cannon..so..yeah.





the second one was conceived as support vehicle for my stealth units and is painted in the same scheme





Third is a "counts as" piranha with twin-linked fusion blasters and missile pods, still to be painted







This suit was basically a way of filling out an 1850 point list and still needs a couple of flamers, I also had to scratchbuild his lower legs, torso and backback so he is a little ..um..interesting







next up are my drones, I really like drones they easy to convert and I reckon the Tau would use for all kinds of roles so I have played around with them a lot, this is jsut a couple of my favourites.

some FW engeneering drones.



A mine sniffing "horshoe crab" drone



and a delta wing spy drone loaded with sensors





Last up are a couple of models I bashed up for a kill team , which I never got to play with as I couldn't find anyone interested in playing it.

A rail rifle toting firewarrior



and totem draped kroot tracker, I'm planning on adding a unit of kroot to this army soon and am not sure whether to keep this scheme for the whole unit what do you think?





Well thats my Tau army as it stands, hope you guys like it!

C&C is very welcome!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Not bad at all! That white is crisp, even if it is layered on thick. Some really nice models and conversions here, with a good looking paint scheme.

Have you checked out http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/220201.page? Good source of inspiration perhaps?

CadianXV wrote:Have you checked out http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/220201.page? Good source of inspiration perhaps?

I hadn't even found dakka when I painted this army (it was back in 2006) which is lucky because if I had seen Sirath's work I would never have picked up a brush!

of course now I have his blog subscribed and when I get the chance I will be mining the whole 16 pages for inspiration

Cheers

BLACKHAND

What you can do is build up a clean white from black>grey>white

wheres that fire warrior squad leader from? i swear ive seen it before somewhere.

And all those drone and Tetra style skimmers are a real inspiration.

I like Piranha/Tetra things especially the one for stealth team support.
If its not to much trouble could you provide more pics of them? the second looks interesting and if I ever get the FW Piranha may build something similar.

Interesting work. Nice feel.

WHAT I really do not get is why people painting white armies don't start with a white primer?? WHY? You get an even, smooth white from the word go.

@murray - Yeah my skills back then were pretty basic, now I would definitely work up through grey or spray on a white primer.

@ghosty - Sorry forgot to mention that, the squad leader is a games day model. I'm not sure which year, I found them in a clearance box and to my regret I only bought 2 of the 3 that were there, Damn!

@chaoticmind - Thanks! I'll post up a few more pics of the stealth piranha tonight if possible. I still have to add some weapons to it as I have no extra fusion blasters or missile pods.

@migsula - Thanks for the generous comments,these models are definitely not my finest work but they do show my first attempts at posing and converting. As to the white issue knowing what I know now I would start with a white basecoat, I actually did it with the piranhas and it was a lot easier, though I did make a mess of them by trying to paint in the black lines with a brush instead of tracking down a microfine pen to do them. I have an unpainted devilfish which I will be doing with a white spray and I will post pictures as I do it (its just at the end of a very long list of models I need to paint!)

Thanks for the quick feedback I'm already getting fired up to repaint some of these guys! What do you all think of the Kroot colour scheme?

Cheers,

BLackhand

@chaoticmind - here are the pics you asked for bro.











underside shot



pilot without piranha



Hope these help if you convert one up

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Thanks! May be a longtime before I get around to it. I already am committed to a squad of megagrotz and tau have no place a chaos army. When I do build one I'll post pictures.

Veery thick paint there bru

Oh yeah, first models painted

going to update with any other new models? interested in your progression

I like the colour scheme.

Thanks murray,

I have some kroot and a devilfish to paint up but at the mo im concentrating on my marines

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/291910.page

and my guard/DH/GK

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/257417.page

Cheers

BLACKHAND

oh and thanks flying pooo

Thought I would throw up a pic of my next kroot warrior, I have ten or so of these to make up but I'm taking my time, using them as something different between my marines and guard. I intend to do a LOT of reposing with them and am really stoked with their legs as with so many joints they repose really well. Soooo... heres the pics.





Cheers,

BLACKHAND

Nice. (I'm here too)

Good work. Those kroot somehow remind me of Soo'Vah'Cha's blog from a while back.
Say, does anyone know what happened to him? We never saw those Leopard Shark pics.

I know! would have been cool to see a super heavy tau vehicle of some kind.

I considered doing a tau titan a few years back but the enormity of the whole thing kind of scared me off, plus my flatmate let me work on his wolfhound so I quickly got over Titans in a big way

Oh and glad to see you Tim!

I think we may have bugged Soo'Vah too much for the pics, kinda like what we did to DreadMC

Was DreadMC the guy that started the P&M blog for the scout Dread then never posted any pics?
that was fracken hilarious

IDK Shoo'Vah seemed to have the skills, maybe RL got in the way

Tim the Biovore wrote:I think we may have bugged Soo'Vah too much for the pics, kinda like what we did to DreadMC

How can you bug someone too much for pics? It shows how much the public like his or her work. Who wouldn't take it as a compliment?

How about you actually read DreadMC's thread?

Tim the Biovore wrote:How about you actually read DreadMC's thread?

Fair enough. But that's how I'd personally see it as motivation. But whatever.

Extra credit for the unique scheme as far as Tau go

Kroot are the shiz!
currently im working on a few, and i love how easy it is to get some great poses from them with relatively little work.

Like the kroot, good color scheme... very nice. Can't wait to see what else you do with them. I've got a box of kroot lying around that I bought for some reason and my youngest son has been pestering me about painting them. Would love to be able to show him your blog as an inspiration.

@ghosty - Yeah I'm really liking the double knees of the legs and the ball and socket join between the waist and torso, they provide a lot of room for dynamic posing.

@gitsplitta - Thanks splitta, I have another model ready for painting which I will take a pic of in its WIP stage to show how I cut the legs to get different poses tomorrow, it may help with any conversions you and the boys do down the line


Cheers

BLACKHAND

Heres acouple of pics of my latest kroot before paint to show how easy it is to repose the legs





Cheers

BLACKHAND

Wow, those are great Blackhand! Just look as natural as can be... for a kroot that is.