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.
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!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
Eventually when the Tau get their new codex. I don't know for certain when they are going to though. If you want you can try over at Paulson Games he has some resin stand in rail guns.
http://www.paulsongames.com/mecha_parts___54mm.html
Current shot of the painted army, with the new Devilfish and the absence of the now-sold Frosty The Snowcaste. I think my next paint job will actually be my Stingwings.
Thanks I'm trying to decide what colour I want them. Because the armour and weapons will be red, as will the Strain Leader's helmet, I'm considering something more neutral.
Perhaps a simple stone-like colour scheme. Dheneb Stone base, perhaps, with some bleached bone and skull white highlights, and a Gryphonne Sepia wash. I think that could look quite nice.
Forgive the quality of the photo, it's an iphone one. This is my Stingwings after basecoating and the first wash. They were done with Astronomican Grey, with detailing in Enchanted Blue, with a Asurmen Blue wash. The wash came out a lot darker than I expected, and the enchanted blue is hardly noticable now. I'm wondering what the best way to bring these back up with a highlight would be. Perhaps a mix of Space Wolves Grey and Enchanted Blue would be a nice highlight colour.
I must say, these guys are harder than they look. The breatplates are hard to get to with the weapons in the way there. It's like painting the crest on a space marine when the gun is held in front on it.
I'm loving your models so far, and i feel for your frosty. My Tau are all while anyway so they might take a treetment like that better than yours.
I seem to have a habit of painting some parts before gluing just for the reason you hsve with your vespid. I love the asthetics of the vespid, and if they didn't suck, I would try and field them.
Haha, yeah. Sadly the guns are moulded as part of the main body, only the wings and heads are seperate so the detail on the chest is pretty much unreachable unless you're a paint ninja. I'm hoping under the new Codex they'll be a bit more useful, and if we're lucky, for a multipart plastic Vespid kit.
Incidentally, this is what I've still got to assemble and paint after the Vespids are done:
Oh, and I've got 4 Kroot hounds and a Shaper sitting primed, too.
Ohhhh. Looks like you have a while to go yet. Does that stealth suit team have an eldar symbol instead of a tau one? You know, to the right of the 40k logo
only the weapons on the broad side is metal and the feet, the rest of it is a standard suite. If you are using path finders with marker lights, get a string ray if not. use 3 broad sides and 2 hammer heads.
When i played tau i ran 6 fire warrior teams 2 hammer heads and 3 broad sides, the rest of the points into suites, and did pretty good.
These resin bad boys turned up today from a great seller in the US, someone posted the link earlier... maybe in this thread, maybe a different one... I forget. Anyway, I'm thinking I can use these on a couple of the unopened battlesuits to turn them into Broadsides without paying the excess for a couple of models that'll constantly come unstuck because with me, metal and plastic never wants to stick for long. Plus they'll be lighter.
I guess I'll be wanting to do something with the jetpacks on back, and/or the feet. Broadsides don't have jet packs, do they? Maybe I could get some kind of plates to put over them.
Those do look nice, I look forward to seeing them on your suits... I've been looking at them on that site for a while, and I think I'm going to bite the bullet and actually order some to make my Broadsides with.
Though still unsure if I want to go with the long, or medium ones (I intend to have arm-mounted ones).
As for the backplates and feet, I'm not sure it really matters, so long as they are distinctive enough from standard suits it should be fine.
Ah right. If I can find something nice I'll pick em up to try anyway.
I also ordered a couple of the shorter 'handheld' cannons which look really nice. I can certainly imagine they'd look sweet. Perhaps if you had some hind of 'hose' or cable from the weapons to the backpack it could look awesome, too.
As for the jet pack, As far as i remember the model does have it, If you want some way of making a suite look like a broadside you could run lines to its back and make it look like they are supper charged cannons. Or place the tops of the gun drones on their backs and make 4 of them and have your self 2 squads of 2 teenage mutant ninja broadsides.
those guns do look good, are you running path finders with rail rifles? and if you do are you using those or the smaller ones? Or the stock Gw models? Can't wait to see more.
Use fire warriors and pulse carbines, change the stance a little and you have a path finder. Its a good way to get plastic path finders. might take a little work to get it the way you want it though.
Yeah, the easiest way to get Pathfinders is use Firewarriors, with Pulse Carbines, don't put on the shoulder pads.
Then use either the EMP launcher from spare carbines (I have plenty from converting sniper drones anyway) or spare drone-antennae cut down for the markerlights on top.
Well I ordered a couple of those ammo chains anyway.
I like the idea of the Fire Warrior conversions. I have a box of those guys so I could make a squad of 6 Pathfinders and add the rest to my other Fire Warriors to create a couple of 8-man squads of those chaps.
Here's how the Broadside is looking. I need to try and pop a bit of green into the hole in the back ventilation fan (which was sent as a freebie in a bag of miscasts with the ammo belts I ordered) and theres a few other bits to clean up. And I went a bit sloppy on the plastic glue here and there but hopefully that won't show too much.
Went for plasma rifles, because I don't have enough missile pods free to create Smart Missile Systems.
So you own any of the metal parts for broadsides other than the guns themselfs? Just thinking that your model lacks the bit that covers up the jet pack.
I dont have any of the parts. I asked about the jetpack earlier in the thread and people didnt seem to think it was a biggie. They're pretty obviously broadsides. I suppose I could try to find some conversion bits that'd do the trick.
Hi Phil, interesting to see your background story is the same as mine. Used to collect GW as a kid, stopped, have now got back in to it and am loving Tau too! Mine aren't red though. Loving the blog though, your cadre is coming along great.
Regarding the broadside, you could just get the metal broadside vent cover from a bits shop like here:
Although that's out of stock currently, how annoying. Not terribly expensive though. However, if you do get the proper metal bits, be warned that they don't always fit properly and it may require greenstuffing to hide the unsightly gaps that may result. At least that was the one experience I had with my broadside. :(
Anyway, will be keeping track of this blog. Maybe I shall do my own similar one to help motivate my own painting (I usually can't be bothered.)
So here's the Broadside and a couple of ordinary suits freshly primed. Well, mostly primed. My can of Army Painter Pure Red ran out before I could get in from a low angle so there's quite a lot of unprimed grey on the underside of these chaps and in tighter gaps, so I'll probably wait til my new can arrives before I try painting them. I could brush prime them I guess, but I prefer the finish with a spray.
I've actually got one more primed-not-painted battlesuit in a box too, so I'll do the four of them together. I think I'll have some Scab Red detail work on the broadside to help it really stand out as different from the others.
I didn't manage to get the railguns on the broadside quite even, they're at slightly different angles, but I'm gonna play that off as them in motion, moving to aim at a target.
When Broadsides eventually go Plastic/Resin I'd like to see them look even more bulky, preferably a different body than the current battlesuit standard one. I think the Broadsides should look even more like they're weighted to prevent the Railguns blasting them back a mile.
Looking good, I'm mobile it's very hard to read everything, but how many points are you shooting for ? Just started building my own Tau army. Going from space wolves this is a completely different army. I love the sleek tech. Lines offered by this army, plus who wouldn't love twin-linked railguns 10ap1. Blew up a killa kan first shot of the game against a green tide.
For the curious, here's the full army of assembled minis. Most are fully painted, apart from the primed-only battlesuits, broadside, Kroot hounds and shaper. There's also about 6 unprimed Drones there.
As for points, I've not been so focussed on how many I'm aiming for. I just wanted to collect an army that looked good! So if I end up with enough that I can vary my army play style depending on foe and points level, I'll be happy. Very quickly working out what's on the table now though... (tell me if I'm working these points out wrong, I need to learn!)
5 Vespid Stingwings plus Strain Leader - 102 pts
3 Crisis Battlesuit Shas'ui with Multitracker, Burst Rifle and Missile Pod - 150 pts
12 Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles + Shas'la - 130 pts
8 Gun Drones - 96 pts
Tau Ethereal with Honour Blade - 60 pts
Devilfish - 80 pts
Piranha with Fusion Blaster - 65 pts
12 Kroot + Shaper + 2 Krootox Riders + 4 Kroot Hounds - 206 pts
3 Shas'ui XV8 Stealth Suits, one with Fusion Blaster and Bonding Knife, one with Drone Controller plus Marker Drone, one with Targeting Array - 137 pts
So that's roughly, give or take depending on extra options and load out... 1026 points assembled so far there. Would be easy enough to knock a few things out to make a 1000 point list.
With the other Battlesuits, Stealth Suits, Fire Warriors and Piranha I've got in boxes still, I think I can make it up to 1500 with what I've currently got.
Yeah, he's just there because I have him. I noticed I actually forgot one of the battlesuits, and the broadside, when totalling those points up. So I'm well over 1000 points even without the Ethereal.
Anyways, I had my order from Warmill turn up for the Portable Utility Pod, which came also with an Antenna Array. I've already Tau-i-fied the Antenna with a few bitz, but I've just slotted the pod together as is for now. It needs a bit of cleaning up on the edges here and there, there's some rough bits, but I think when these are painted up to suit my army they'll be really nice terrain pieces to play with.
For fifteen quid, the PUP kit is wonderful. And I love the smell of the freshly lasered wood <3
I've started painting the Pod up with Blood Red. it looks really nice, the paint covers really well and goes on super smooth. I'll post a pic once its finished.
My other gap-filler stuff whilst I wait for my new can of red spray primer is a couple of classic late 80s or early 90s WHFB gobbos, and maybe starting on painting up some of the space marines or orks from the Black Reach box set.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Well, I ended up going shopping today, and I bought:
An airbrush starter kit (just with compressed air in a can for now)
The Ork codex
A unit of Killa Kans
I figured I'm gonna run an Ork army as a secondary force. It should offset the stay-out-of-combat Tau quite nicely. Anyway, back to the Tau...
I figured I'd try use the airbrush to go over the black-coated Kroot Hounds and Shaper to give them a nice basecoat. It's not the best result, seeing how these are the first real models I've sprayed with an airbrush, but I'm pretty happy with them in that regard and can see this being a great way to work on my miniatures with a lot of single colour base. I need to touch up the hounds with a thin layer of green to just cover the black a little more here and there. But seeing how I always find the basecoating tedious work these guys were quire nice to do this way.
I mentioned a while ago how I was going to collect Orks on the side. Well, I just started painting my first Ork model. Thought I'd start big, so I'm working on my Warboss from the Black Reach set. Here's progress so far:
I'm pretty happy with my skin shading on this one. Still plenty of cleanup to do but I'm really enjoying painting this chap. Orks are just... fun!
The way I see it, Orks are big on recycling. They're green, and they always scavenge a battlefield for usable tech and stuff after a big fight. So I was thinking creating an army with that kind of 'theme' to it. Perhaps I'll find a lighter green that contrasts enough with the Ork skin. I think it'd be fun to create an army with a theme like that. Maybe have a spin on the usual recycle logo with axes instead of arrow heads.
Or I might just make it a hodge-podge army of any Orks who happen to fancy a rumble.
Yeah, I wanted dark skin on him. From other angles it's highlighted quite a bit more but I like the darker skin. It's the shinyness I'm not so keen on.
My Black Reach nobz. I might go back and add some more skin highlights to some of the areas that seem to have not taken it as much. Its been a pretty dark weekend here so it was hard to really tell how they were looking :p
Again though I'm happy enough to call them done for now, certainly enough to stick them on the table for a game.
I picked up some of the new paints today, they seem pretty neat. I also picked up a Wood Elf Spellweaver, which I'm going to enter into the store event for the paint-a-hero contest. This is super early:
Using new colours like Kabalite Green for the emerald-coloured dress, and Waaagh Flesh for the flowing cape scarf thingy. The gems are Mephiston Red. The hair is shaded with a homemade glaze of Kabalite Green + Vallejo Glaze Medium, taken down into a blue shade near the end with some Enchanted Blue mixed into it.
The hard part for me will be the face. I know *how* to do them, I just have incredibly shaky hands which causes me to often get it messed up a bit.
Incidentally this is my first Wood Elf since 1999, and I'm loving it. Tempted to pick some more of them up, although will probably wait for the hardcover army book revision before I really consider collecting Fantasy again.
So I finally built and painted up the commander. To be honest I'm not so happy with it, but I went fast because I just wanted him on the table. I decided not to prime him red, but to give him a mainly black scheme with red highlights and weapons to signify his unique position in the army. His armour is heavily scraped and chipped, perhaps to the point of being totally overdone. Still, he seems to look okay on the battlefield with the rest of the army so I'll call him done and probably replace him in the future, be it with a Forge World piece or an eventual Tau update model.
edit: the photo really makes it obvious how quickly and slapdash the paintjob is. Oh well... don't critique it too harshly, Its purely for a basic tabletop standard.
I got a bunch of Tau models in a GW auction at my local store for £15 yesterday Check out what I got!
I'm just working on the grey Fire Warriors now, painting the weapons and shoulder pads Red to fit them into my army and repainting/flocking the bases. They'll do quite nicely as a troop boost!
Also on my channel you can see the Orc and Goblin stuff I got in a seperate lot, and soon I'll be showing what I got in a lucky dip
Wow, I haven't updated this in a year, I'm so sorry guys. Anyway, here's an update!
Currently working on my Pathfinder team. I painted a few of the finecast ones up shortly before the new Plastic kit arrived, so I'm basing the colour scheme on those guys, but trying to make it nicer and neater. It's primarily a black and red scheme, I wanted them to stand out as different from the FWs during gameplay and to represent their task sneaking into the front lines and lighting up the enemy from unseen quarters. I've currently got the reds edge highlighted. Wondering whether to edge highlight all the black cloth parts, or whether to apply a grey/black camo scheme. What do you guys think?
Your reds are looking nice as always. I like that you've switched to a somewhat deeper shade and taken the time to create lowlights in the grooves. The split color scheme on the helms looks very interesting. I've been considering getting some Pathfinders just for building a Kill Team, and this has given me a few ideas. Feel free to pop your head into my Dubstep Cadre and let me know what you think.
I found a pot of Mechrite Red, so I've been using that for my main Reds.It's such a nice colour and it covers so well, I really miss the foundation colours.
Oh yes, here's my Riptide and XV9 Forgeworld Suit. The photos show up some areas I need to go over, and the weapon on the riptide needs some more detail and grey areas added, but I'm happy with how they look as part of the army whole
Currently working on the rest of the Fire Warriors. It's slow going! :p
