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ArbitorIan's Tau Army P&M Log

So, these have been another long project - I originally built my Tau in 2005 based on a few eBay trades and painted them bright yellow for fun. I started this project blog in 2010 when I decided to update them all, do some major rebuilding and conversion work, and give myself a lot more options. It's been happening in spurts of activity - the latest being the release of the 6ed Tau Codex.

The first colour scheme back in 2005 was a Burntlack Lemon Yellow Spray, Yellow Ink and details in Black and Red. Plus my dodgy old grass texture. The new plan was for a remodel and repaint. Same STUPIDLY yellow colour, but the details are a much more interesting selection of grays and pale blues, and the bases are transparent with as many flying as possible. The army has some pretty simple themes.

- No weird aliens! - I will convert some 'counts-as' Vespid and Kroot, though, and the 6ed rules have given me the opportunity for some Gue'vesa
- Lots of drones. I really have TONS of drones, so things like Snipers and Drone fighters are great.
- No Antennae - I don't like all the spindlyness, so no antennae on any of my models.
- Better suits - I'll be converting all my suits to make them look a bit better than the pidgeon-chest XV8 suits - hence the 'XV7' suits listed below.
- MAGNETISED. As much as possible!


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Table of Contents

Pg1 - Spraypaint tests, drones, early Fire Warrior tests
Pg2 - Crisis suit conversion, FW squad
Pg3 - Crisis suits finished, vehicles started
Pg4 - Hammerheads/Devilfish finished, Broadsides built and painted, two games
Pg5 - Skyray, more vehicles, 6ed update, Tiger Shark, Fireblade/Ethereal
Pg6 - Stealth Team, Fireblade/Ethereal finished, Barracudas started, Interceptor Drones, NOVA, more Fire Warriors, Ion Cannon


Painting and converting - old and new comparison



More comparison pics below...



Current projects

I'm currently expanding for 6ed Tau Codex with some FW Flyers and trying to finish off lots of old jobs

- FLYERS!! I don't like the new model, so I'll be building and painting two FW Barracudas and a Tiger Shark I bought off eBay years ago, and then converting them with magnetised options for counts-as Sun Sharks and Razorsharks. Oh, and finally finish off the 4 Remoras.
- Finish off my Pathfinder and Fire Warrior squads.
- Finish off some Ion Cannons for my Hammerheads
- Tau Rangers! Counts-as Kroot with Hounds and Shaper

For the full army plan, see below...



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First Post - 2010/04/27

First thing was to make all my battlesuits look that little bit better with a conversion stolen from Tristan Hoag at http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15104

This is a XV25 stealth suit cut up. The XV25 head makes the battlesuit look a bit more hunched and powerful, and seems to make sense of the big pidgeon chest. I always hated the way the chest was huge with tiny arms and a tiny little head, yet people always tried to make them look graceful. I also used the XV25 shins to extend the legs of the suit. Since it looks a little LESS graceful and more stocky, I've decided to call them XV7s - as if they were the precursor to the XV8 suit.

This has been sprayed Burntlack Lemon Yellow. It's REALLLY bright, which is great. Last time, the Yellow Ink gave it a bit more of a rich texture, but now I'm going to have to see if Gryphonne Sepia has the same effect - let's hope!

Oh no! So, it seems that Gryphonne Sepia is NOTHING LIKE Yellow Ink.



This firewarrior has been washed half with Gryphonne Sepia and half with the remainder of my years old pot of Yellow Ink. As you can see, the Gryphonne Sepia provides a better contrast but lets the original flourescent yellow through, while the Yellow Ink stains the flourescent yellow a deeper colour while shading.

I WANT the deeper colour. Does anyone know a good alternative Yellow Ink that i might be able to get in the UK?

Or maybe I should go spraypaint hunting again? If the deeper yellow is the colour I want, maybe I should just get a spraypaint in THAT colour, and use Gryphonne Sepia for shading?

yeah,
I have at least one pot of the old yellow ink you can have... how many minis need covering/ how many pots do you think you'll need?

PAnic...

Wow BRIGHT YELLOW!!

Panic wrote:yeah,
I have at least one pot of the old yellow ink you can have... how many minis need covering/ how many pots do you think you'll need?

PAnic...

Well, the army is around 100 infantry, 15 Suits and 8 Vehicles, which is quite a lot! I have about half a pot left, but one and a half might not do it...thanks, though.

I went into Central London to browse the fantastic range of Montana Gold sprays, bought a couple, and tried them out on some old, really paint-heavy fire warriors. The previous test warrior is on the right - the model on the left is sprayed with white primer then Montana Mango (Ignore the lack of detail, the model had been painted a million times beforehand!)



It's a pretty good match, so I went a bit further and washed one of the Montana Mango models with Gryphonne Sepia, and then tried out a bit of my intended contrast colour on the helmet. Adeptus Battlegrey (lightened with a bit of Codex Grey), then Codex Grey and Fortress Grey highlights. Enchanted Blue lenses.

Obviously the wash hasn't worked as well on this model as so much of the detail is paint-obscured, but I think the general yellow colour is quite good....

So, some progress.

I've sprayed the battlesuit, drone and new Fire Warrior in the new spray mango, and washed them with Gryphonne Sepia. The pot of sepia had a fair bit of Baal Red and just a touch of Badab Black mixed into it, to give a slightly darker, oranger look. I've then started on the grey areas, and painted a couple of weapons. One thing I'll definitely be doing next time is removing the Battlesuit legs and painting them separately - the amount of detail I want to do on the back of the leg and front of the backpack is difficult if they're always in the way of each other..

Off on tour again, and taken a little box of stuff with me. This time I've got some of the drones and a fire warrior finished in the new scheme. I reversed the Fire Warrior scheme - keeping the armour yellow and the cloth dark grey...

They are looking good, really like the fire warrior.

And thanks for not falling into the trap of using red with yellow again! Grey is much more tasteful.

They look great! do you plan on doing any basing?

Firewarrior looks good, though I think it'd look better with blacklining, like you've got on the gun.

I'd love for my Eldar to play your Tau!

Your gundrones look like watchman icon o_O

legoburner wrote:And thanks for not falling into the trap of using red with yellow again! Grey is much more tasteful.

It IS, isn't it? Yeah, a lot of my armies have red detailing, and I thought my limited color palette this time round would be yellow, blue, grey, white. Nowt else...

Cjsuner wrote:They look great! do you plan on doing any basing?

Actually, since so much of this army is flying, I plan to mount the whole thing on custom-cut clear perspex discs. I'm just investigating the cheapest option - Litko do custom bases, but the international shipping makes them stupidly expensive. I got in touch with a few people in the UK at Salute though, I just need to ask for a quote...

The Dreadnote wrote:Firewarrior looks good, though I think it'd look better with blacklining, like you've got on the gun.

It probably would, but my brush control simply isn't up to it. Since the yellow is entirely sprayed, I don't have the ability to cover up any mistakes.

Tek wrote:I'd love for my Eldar to play your Tau!

This would indeed be the brightest game of 40k ever played. We'd hardly be able to look at the table for brightness...

So, I haven't got a huge amount done in the last week, but I managed to finish three pathfinders. I'm kinda against red for this army, but I was thinking of painting some red stripes/markings on the markerlights to make them a bit more obvious? Or maybe bright green would be better? Dunno. Anyway...

Looks good alot better then the original scheme!

Much better than the red and yellow
i like it, can't wait to see more.

Looking good! If you want to make the markerlights pop a bit more, I think green would suit the models a bit better.

Great to see what you're up to now! Admittedly, it's like some kind of giant JCB takedown, but nowt wrong with that!

Those look really good Ian, even though the scheme is not what you originally intended.

Is it just me, or do the drones remind anyone else of this?

yeah,
those pathfinders look good. I'm not sure which colour would be best to make the markerlights easier to spot... green sounds cool though.

I think that which ever colour you go with you should get some markerlight hit tokens that colour match to help with the shooting phase..


Panic...

I like it so far, the drones are turning out a bit like space wolves I think. Keep up the good work!

Great colour scheme, I like the suit conversion as well you need to add something their arms to make them match the stylin legs though, tau arms always seem stubby to me, unless you are going to mount the weapons FW style?

I like the XV7's they look great.
go for green markerlights.
Argh, everytime i see drones I think they are grining @ me.

So, my shipment of bases arrived - I haven't the rods yet to build the flying stands, but the clear disks are here for the infantry.

I got 100 25mm disks, 15 40mm disks and 15 60mm disks cut out of 3mm thick clear acrylic from Fenris Games - http://www.fenrisgames.com - for a total cost of £19 inc postage.

You have to be VERY careful rebasing on these. I had to varnish on the 'painting bases', then very carefully clip them away, trying not to damage the feet paintwork, then glue them exactly, trying not to get superglue over the clear base.

Anyway, the idea is that the infantry will tie in really well with all the flying stand stuff, and look good on any sort of table!

Fire Warrior (a little black got on his feet while painting oh no!)



Pathfinders (with green markerlight markings)

Clear bases just make everything look so much cooler, it's just a shame you have to be stupid careful with them...

Looks great. must be a pain in the if you get superglue on the base!

very clean painting style that's bound to stick out on the table.

And being tau that's alot of dakka... big mek stamp of approval

These guys look pretty cool. I love brightly coloured armies

looking nice. big up

Those look awesome kinda make me want to make a bright yellow army....

Maj. Kolbak