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Greetings, and thanks for taking the time to look at my all-new shiny happy blog here at the great Dakka Dakka forum!

About
Hi, I'm Phil. I'm 28, from the UK. Cutting a long story short, I used to play 40K back in my school days, early 90s to '99 or so. Then, in '99, I stopped for a few various reasons (price being one of them, oh how I thought they were expensive back then! Shh, don't tell teen me how much they'd be NOW!).

Anyway, after a 12-year break I got looking at the GW site and fell in love with this gorgeous new (to me) army called the Tau Empire. Unlike anything I'd yet seen in 40K, it was enough to tempt me back... so here I am.

I started my Tau Army in December of 2011, so in the last month or so I have aquired and painted all you'll see below in this particular post.

Also, I will be doing occasional videos on my Youtube channel, see my sig, which will have unboxings, highlights of my army and various other exciting updates :p

So Far
I quickly decided my colour scheme was going to be mainly Red for my tau Sept. I wanted something bold, punchy and befiting of a race who were, lets face it, space communists. I was inspired by the Khador faction of Warmachine, and decided I wanted the main colours to be Red, Black and Grey. The red seems particularly fitting for warriors called Fire Warriors to me, a blazing sight of blood red on the horizon raining fire upon those who stood in the way of the Greater Good!


The painted army as it stood just before I got my Krootox. One Piranha, an Ethereal with Honour Blade, 3 man stealth team, Kroot Squad and 2 XV8 Crisis Battlesuits.



Here's my Kroot Squad, currently consisting of 12 Kroot Carnivores and 2 Krootox Riders. I also have a shaper and four kroot hounds, but they are only primed and will be featured in a future blog entry as I get to them.


Stealth Team


Crisis Battlesuits


Currently on the Horizon:
Primed for Painting: 6 Stingwings, 4 kroot Hounds, 1 Kroot Shaper, 12 Fire Warriors, One Crisis Battlesuit
Boxed, unassembled: 1 Devilfish, 1 stealth team, 1 Fire Warrior team, 8 Gun Drones

And the latest Update:


This is my test mini for my first squad of Fire Warriors. I figured I ought to stop putting them off so painted this guy up to see how I was going to do it. Please excuse the sloppy paintjob, it's not final and I haven't really done anything to the base. I decided for my main squads, I wanted something striking and bold, that wasn't just going to be a large sea of RED coming towards you. I have been using Camo Green as my spot colour for lenses and glows, as it isn't too harsh a green that it looks out of place.

These guys should be fairly swift to paint up once I'm happy with what is coloured which colour... basically I have them primed Black already. I will pick the armour and weapon out with Mechrite Red, then bring it up to the same sharp red as the rest of the army with Blood Red. I didn't want to lose the crisp black/red contrast on the guys, so I'm using a dark grey highlight on the black just to add a bit of depth to the leather. Then detials are picked out with Chainmail, Camo Green, and the Tau icon with Dheneb Stone and highlighted with Skull White.

I think a unit of these chaps will look great on the battlefield, especially once based nicely with patches of grass on there.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my colour scheme and progress.

That's a very nice and vibrant red you got there. Kroot skin ain't half bad either. Looking forward to seeing the progress of this blog.

Thanks Currently working on the rest of the Fire Warriors. It's slow going! :p

Can't be more slow going than me, I take 3 days to do one colour on one mini.

Took about six hours, but I finally got the Mechrite Red down on my guys Next is the Blood Red overlay, then I'm just gonna pick out details in Greatcoat Grey, Chainmail, Dheneb Stone, Skull White, Camo Green and Calthan Brown. Might highlight with blazing orange if I feel up to it! At the very least these guys will jump out on the tabletop!

Its a wonderful (if almost blinding) red

Great Tau army

Cheers guys next update might be a few days late cuz I'm moving out soon!

Your reds are beautiful. You have created some taus that i actually like! (usually find them a little weird)

keep it up!

Thanks MrMerlin <3 I love a strong red. I was kind of inspired by classic 90s 40k, with its brighter colours than the more recent 'dark' ones.

Its funny, I've actually been looking at Orks recently too. I've very much found them appealing.

I finally got around to ordering the Black Reach box, because I wanted a couple of quick forces I could let people use against my Tau and teach them the game a bit.

I'm pretty sure once I paint up the Orks I'll end up making them my second army. I'm sure they'd be VERY different to the Tau!

Okay, I finally got my first team of Fire Warriors done!



They're pretty much just tabletop standard again, but I like how they look as a unit. They're bold and striking, which is what I wanted.

Which means the army currently now looks like...



Guess it's time to build my Devilfish up! I'd buy some tanks but totally skint, getting a flat next week!

I know the feeling of being broke. I am right now.

Great reds as usual. Can't wait to see you handle a tank.

Thanks

Assembled my Devilfish earlier (was a learning curve, never build a model like it before so I made mistakes and stuck things together before things I should have, but mostly it looks okay.

She's just been primed.





Gonna clean up a few bits where theres some spray where it didnt need to go such as on and around the burst cannon, but then it's mainly a case of highlights and details.

Fantastic pace.

Oh dear... so I was giving my units a satin GW Purity Seal varnish. The Krootox and Fire Warriors came out really nice.

But then the Crisis Suits.... both of them frosted up >_> I managed to salvage them a bit with some red wash, but the highlights practically turned white and the shiny stuff is just light grey now. Bah!

Bewareofthephil wrote:
I finally got around to ordering the Black Reach box, because I wanted a couple of quick forces I could let people use against my Tau and teach them the game a bit.

I'm pretty sure once I paint up the Orks I'll end up making them my second army. I'm sure they'd be VERY different to the Tau!

If you need some advice on orks, be sure to post the question here on dakka and send me the link!

But Right now its me who needs advice:
How do you do that red? mine never really covers well and is way to thick when it finally does; even though i thin it down......

On the Battlesuits and Tank: Army Painter Pure Red Primer.

On the Infantry: Mechrite Red basecoat, two thin layers of GW Blood Red over the top. The blood red is only to highlight and brighten up the Mechrite, which does most of the work. It comes out a little darker than pure Blood Red, but it's easier to do.

Edit: since I be updating anyway, here's how it's looking. It's tabletop ready but a little cleanup wouldn't hurt.




Tried for a burned effect around the Burst Cannon, as if the heat from the weapon had almost stripped off the paint. I'm guessing the Target Lock feature I added is pretty new or they painted it recently.

Oh yeah, if you want to vote on any of my pics, I'd appreciate it. Most of them should be clickable to the gallery

Also, le sigh, here's the pics of the disaster from the GW Purity Seal. I shook it as normal and used it in mild temperature... but alas.


The chap on the left got away relatively lightly, but the guy on the right has been hit by something nasty. I think he wandered into Warmachine territory and looked at Commander Shorscha the wrong way. I don't suppose I can do much about him. Oh well, was gonna get more battlesuits anyway because I've wanted to have a few more Burst Cannon + Missile Pod loadout suits.

Really good painting and a great start, phil, but nooo! Not the Battlesuit! I've heard that some types of polish works really well to cure the problem, even a gloss coat... I hope that all is not lost!

I think we have a gloss varnish spray somewhere, gotta be worth a go.

I've read somewhere before that people have used spray floor polish, which works. It's quite a problem, but best of luck!

Thanks If all else fails at least I'll know how to paint a new one nice and quickly. I'm sure someone'd buy this and try fixing it themselves! :p

Now as a total change of pace...


Some Gobbos from the WHFB paint set I bought a while ago. Annoyingly it didn't come with full pots of paint, just mini ones. Oh well.


A Skaven whojamaflip from a friends WHFB box set. Painted it up for him for fun. Quite enjoyed it, I think Skaven are pretty fun to look at. I'd still probably go for Lizardmen or Wood Elves myself, though.

there is a tutorial here on dakka wich tells you how to recover from sealer diasters.

PM with link is on its way!

Ah, I think my Dad has some gloss spray. Let's see... thanks

Facepalm...



Silly rabbit, that wasn't gloss varnish, that was gloss WHITE. Thanks for that, badly labelled up spraycan that just said "gloss spray" without a colour indicator. And that'll teach me to test spray everything.

Still, the link will be useful if it happens again. This guy... yeah. XD

Made a fatal mistake :p

the poor suit...... I hope you can save it..... [edit] oh well.......[/edit]

if not, I'd suggets you proudly declare the result to be your advanced weathering technice

Yeah, it's the effect of thick volcanic ash in the air of my Septs planet.

nice army, like the red. shame about the battle suit though.

Thanks Lord Tobias It's okay, I've put the super fail one on ebay for cheap, someone'll be able to roll with it.

I ordered a couple of new battlesuits too anyway, so added to my primed one and the not-so-frosted one I'll still have four.

Next I need to really decide what heavy support to get first. I can get:

A Sky Ray
or A Hammerhead
or 2 Broadsides
or A Broadside and a Sniper Drone Team

With my current funds. What's best at this point, do you reckon?

Everyone raves about Broadsides, so I'll say that. Don't play Tau myself, but I do have the codex, so I wouldn't know too much.

I would get the Broadside first and then another set of Broadsides then the Hammerhead. There are those that say go for 9 Broadsides but I'm content to go with 6 and a Hammerhead. I myself have 11 but that's because I want an Apocalypse sized Cadre.

Hmm yeah think I'll order a couple of broads then. Reckon they'll make a no metal version of the broadsides at some point?