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I'm a big fan of Tau and their amount of damage they can dish out. I'm also a fan of the Japanese style of the army. There are a lot of Figures still needing painting/touch up but I have the marjority of the cadre done.
Kuy'arda Cadre:


Shas'O:


Shas'o with Bodyguard and Die Shield Drones (I had forgot all my drone back at home for this game so I proxied them)



WIP Counts as Shadowsun:


WIP Ethereal + Aun Shi:


Crisis Suits:


Out of all my 5 Fire Warrior Squads Yellow Squad has always done work and managed to dish out major damage, while Orange has done squat until yesterday's battle more on that later, and Red squad never making a debut on the field.


Plastic Pathfinders:


Kroot:


Vespid WIP:


Piranha (Drones WIP):


10,000 pts of Tau (My and my friends)+ the Enemies Custom Titan:


Now back to the story about Orange squad. Yesterday my friends and I did a 5000pts battle Tau and Chaos vs Dark Eldar and Chaos. It was a Dawn of War deployment and Annihilation. It ended in a tie but it was a major slugfest and brutal battle with 21 killpoints earned per side. I estimated that we each had less than 1000 points when the game ended with at least 1 troop choice each. I had 2 troops left blue squad and orange squad. Blue did decent for it's debut on the field and the dies showed their fear and lack of combat. Orange squad on the other hand killed 3 reavers by rapid fire, lost 5 to reavers flying over in return. When a squad of 3 Bloodbrides charged orange I had 7, lost 2 to power weapon attacks, and out of 4 regular wounds dealt from the bloodbrides only one died. The remaining 4 swung their rifle finishing the Blood Brides only to loose 2 warriors to Splinter Cannon fired as they dived behind the Hammerhead gunship (It had no Turret so I was using it's Burst cannons as Squad support) So at the end of the game I had 2 survivors to tell the tale. Those two are being promoted to Shas'ui and being given a steal suit.



Slugfest Survivors: 1x Fireknife Crisis Suit Team, 2x 5 men Pathfinder Teams, 1x Hammerhead no Rail Cannon, 2 warriors from Orange Squad and 7 warriors from Blue squad


I had one from yellow squad that survived so many shots to only be brought down by splinter cannon fire. I had 6 wounds to save and this is exactly what I had rolled 6,6,6,2,2,2 If he had survived that he would have been put into a stealth suit as well that has not been painted. heck even put into Shadow's suns stealth suit.

Almost survivor

Really nice army. Different painting style to normal.
Are you colour blind (I think red squad is really green squad)?

Good job, and I do like the ethereals!!

I have a total of 5 fire warrior squads, Yellow, Green, Orange, Blue, and Red. Yellow and green being my first 2 squads I've owned. In the pictures of Fire Warriors Red is on the far left behind the stealth suits.

Speaking from an objective view, if you were attempting the Japanese, more anime kind of style, you've done a very good job. Your colors all pop nicely, and it makes for a very vivid army. The action pose with the battlesuit looks like something right out of one of those Gundam shows.

These guys look really nice, it's clear you spent a long time on this army. I like Yellow Squad the best, it seems the most vibrant.

Thanks, currently I am making a custom Shas'O R'ymr but I need to finish making his unique shield

Those look really good, though you could stand to have a better camera

What colors did you use on the vespids?

I agree I need a better camera my droid isn't cutting it . The Vespid are Ice Blue with a Asuremen blue. The Armor is Scab red and their blasters are Shadow Grey.

Been a while since I've really done anything with my Tau but currently started my own conversion for Commander Farsight. In my interpretation of the fluff since O'shovah is cut off from the main supply lines he doesn't have a lot of access to spare parts for crisis suits so his enclave would harvest parts from down devil-fish or piranhas and "weld" them into the suits for a little more give and pull. With out further ado here are the start of the great commander.

WIP of my new Shas 'el his jetpack can count as vectored thrusters if I just take the twin-linked plasma rifle for him.


Here's him more assembled with his arm magnetized so I can switch out his third weapon/support system.



Kroot Suit Riot!


and last but not least a WIP broadside for my Farsight Enclave

That looks great! I like the blues, very eye-catching. and I'm totally loving your Kroot and Kroot-Zoot conversion

Thanks I really like doing different things for each of my squads to make them unique and tie them together in coherency.

Just a suggestion but Farsight can't include "Kroot", "Vespid" or "Etherals" in his army due to being cut off from the empire, if your doing a Farsight army then you'll have to cut these models from your rotation...

Also on another note, the "kroot-suit", although the idea behind it is good, the kroot themselves couldn't adapt to using a slow, heavy tactical suit with heavy weapons as kroot are and agile beast whom have evolved to using dense forest and shrubbery to get to the enemy unnoticed and then devour and eat them (however disturbing that really sounds)...

Your custom work is really good though and designing your own "Shadowsun", very good work, looks almost like the actual model, congrats...

Also can't wait to see the finished "Broadside" project...

Good looking force. I've literally just started my Tau force (painted my first fire warrior last night), only going to about 2k pts though! I would be interested in your opinion of who are the better units to take? I'd mostly be against marines or nids.

P.s not keen on the fallen blood angel!

@PRO3: MY Farsight Enclave is going to be a different color from the rest of my army to set him apart having more custom suits to go around. I have to agree with what you said about the kroot I wanted to do something a little different to set my squads apart. and yes that is the real shadowsun. The reason I say counts-as is because she isn't painted up in the Tau color scheme.

@Emperors_champion: Your number one thing in every Tau army will be your Crisis Suits and Broadsides as they give you the most amount of low AP negating MEQ their armor saves. But like anything the more you have someone roll the more chances they are to fail their saves. Stay away from using Vespids and maybe ethereals. Etherals may work if you have a unique way of playing them but there is always that downside of loosing half your army if they kill him. Vespids rarely make their points back in that they have a Assault 1 weapon with a 12" range which means they will be assaulted in the next turn. As you probably can tell Tau are not an assaulting army like the BA. Your main concern is stopping the enemy assault before it happens or weaken the enemy so they do minimal damage to your army. I personally always take a hammerhead due to the fact I like having a highly mobile weapons platform. But you two main choices are your Crisis Suits and Broadsides, always take a Shas'El as 25 more points for BS 5 and +1 wound is kinda unnecessary. If you can take drones on it do. If you decide to go with 9 broadsides have at least one team with the A.S.S. so you can have one always mobile. At minimum 1 pathfinder team is needed for markerlight support and because you have to take a devilfish for them give it to a Firewarrior team to use in game.

PS Sorry about your fallen battle brother but no one here plays blood angels. So I had to do it.

Enigma Crisis wrote:
and last but not least a WIP broadside for my Farsight Enclave

Those legs look familiar, any idea where they're from?

They are from a Jade Hawk from the Mechawarrior tabletop game

Your mods are very good.

Is the blue a dip or just a ton of wash?

A ton of wash on all models except Shadowsun. I started with a white background then washed it in Badab Black then a Asureman Blue. For Shadowsun I experimented and used shadow grey washed in Asureman blue and I got a similar effect.

Ok cool. So I need more battle suits, lots more! Thanks for that, hopefully i'll have my first squad finished in a week or so.

Keep up the good posting!

P.s I may have to use any spare tau bits I get to put something under my next dreads foot!

The max number or suits you can run because of the FOC is 12 Crisis Suits and 9 Broadsides. You can find a way to fit them all in but then you also got to think about Points and the FOC. For all of your Suits I would magnetize your weapons so you can swap them out. Dont be afraid to have your HQ Suits with weapons glued down if that is how you are always going to run them. The majority of my suits are the Fireknife formation (Plasma Rifle, Misslepod, Multracker) because that really works. When I'm hurting for points I swap out the PR for a Fusion Blaster.

My current Shas'El WIP I 'm giving him a Twin-linked Plasma rifle always and I have his other arm magnetized to have a fusion blaster, missle pod or weapon system for his third hardpoint. All Shas'vre and above have the option to hard-wire weapon systems so i have the ability to give him a multi-tracker if needed or give his experimental gear.

PS You'll have a lot of arms, legs, and a couple of head left over. You best buy is getting the Tau Battleforce a couple of times, and the sky-ray set to start you off. Heck the battleforce alone gives you enough models to meet the FOC

My WIP Shas'el currently in the painting phase. Decided to make him more unique and give him a different paint scheme from the rest of my army to make him more unique.

interesting colors

I'm trying to get the typical anime mecha colors and those are just the base colors. Gotta finish the metalic joints and throw a few washes and highlights one him/he still haven't decided if this Shas'el will be male or female.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Farsight in all his unpainted glory:


and the start of my first of Tau Terrain:

Very big Update

Shas' El Nar'sera "Sapphire" is pretty much done. I need to touch her up here and there and add tau markings on the left side of her chest plate.



Fio Ner'ath inventor of the XV-86 "Samurai" Crisis Suit variant. The idea behind the "Samurai" is the use of the proto-type Vectored-Retro Thrusters and make it standard on all Crisis Suits to help with the survivability of the Crisis suits and pilots. He is currently on working on plans for an energy blade to come standard as well but due to the overall distaste for close combat Ner'ath is keeping his idea under-wraps.



Currently I'm going through and magnetizing all my vehicles with seeker missles so that I will always have something to throw on a vehicle if I still need points in like Apocalypse.



My WIP Gue'vesa:


Pathfinder's devilfish before painting. I used an unused piece of the skyray turret for the top part of the marker beacon. Now I just need to add a little green stuff to smooth out all the cracks and she'll be ready to paint.


I have also picked up 4 more devilfishes, 6 broadsides, and 3 pewter XV-15 so I currently have a lot of work to help apocalypse-ize my Tau army. Besides all this work I'm actually pretty happy....mainly because I have a squad of 4 xv-15

WIP of Sam Fisher type of pathfinder:


WIP of Xv-15 shot of 3 models:


WIP Custom XV-84 Suit You may recognize the model from the custom rail cannon suit but no more:


WIP Custom XV-81 This guy has been plenty of things in the making but I finally and happy with his spot:


WIP Tael Pattern Broadsides:


Tael Pattern Broadside TL-PR arm:


Last but not least WIP Custom Objective/Stratagem Markers/ Mini Sensor Towers:


and I'm currently thinking or a new camo-scheme for my devil-fish chassis and I have one WIP any comments about it would help out a lot.

Update

I finally finished my Custom R'myr all i need to do now is to put on the transfers on his chest and shield and some minor touch-ups


Custom XV-81


Picked up some broadsides from my friend I now own 11 Broadsides. 9 Regular 2 Custom "Sniper" Broadsides



Decided to make a few Custom Firewarrior Vespids. I just gotta figure out what I want to do for their Rifles.


I have an idea for a DeathRain that is running forward guns-a-blazin so to speak but using an extra head from the Defiler

I finally been able to get a hold of Codex: Tau so I can see all the changes between the two codex's and I noticed my cadre's color is very similar to the one shown in the pictures especially my recent R'myr Custom:


I think I might have decided to go with a similar theme for my devilfish like the one shown on games workshop. I just have to wait to pick up more paint as I'm out of the ones I need again :/

Update: A little more on my Hammerhead. I think I will go ahead and just go with the camo scheme like the devilfish shown on Games Workshop. My devilfish will be very similar but the nose of the devilfish will be colored instead of the split lines. This specific hammerhead will be the command Tank for the Armored Interdiction Cadre Formation.





Looking back at the photos I didn't realize the touch-ups I need to do. Yikes!

I do believe my Shas'El is finished all that is left is to add a matte sealant.

It's been a while since I have posted on this thread. So I have a long large task set before and applied by me... and maybe a couple others at my LGS. Okay mainly myself. I currently have 5 devilfish chassis to assembly, and paint(3 Hammerheads 2 Pathfinders), 5 more to finish painting, 2 stealth suits, 24 drones to assembly and paint, 30 odd drones to finish painting 5 pathfinders to finish painting, and when my forge world items comes in 2 Barracudas, 2 tigersharks, and 4 tetras to wash, clean, assemble, and paint; all before the end of May/ beginning of June for an all out Apocalypse Brawl for a going away game as one of our players has gotten orders to a different base. I currently have everything besides the Forge World in. I just got to find the time between, work, friends, Zelda, and SWTOR. Do I think I'm for the challenge? I'm a bit nervous but I think I can manage it.

For the new Devil I'm also going to convert 2 Sky Ray parts for remoras if I have the time.