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The only downside is the complete lack of women. I have to get my fill of the fairer sex whenever I go on vacation. And of course, the lack of women explaine how I'm able to devote so much time to my Tau army, lol!

The whole Saudi Arabia bit's gotta be a bit of a drawback too...
Where's home?

Home is in the USA, roundabout Tampa FL. The place has more strip clubs per capita than Vegas, and believe me the girls love it when you feel them up. So, coming here after that is like night and day. Honestly, Saudi Arabia wouldn't be such a bad place to work if not for the women thing. I can even deal with the no alcohol and such, because I can make my own pretty well. But me and the rest of the dudes hang out, play video games, pump iron and do dude stuff in a very general sense. I wish one of my coworkers played 40k (my bro who does is in Riyadh, 4 hours away), but by and large the guys are just geeky enough for me to not be the odd man out.

 bossfearless wrote:
Home is in the USA, roundabout Tampa FL. The place has more strip clubs per capita than Vegas, and believe me the girls love it when you feel them up. So, coming here after that is like night and day. Honestly, Saudi Arabia wouldn't be such a bad place to work if not for the women thing. I can even deal with the no alcohol and such, because I can make my own pretty well. But me and the rest of the dudes hang out, play video games, pump iron and do dude stuff in a very general sense. I wish one of my coworkers played 40k (my bro who does is in Riyadh, 4 hours away), but by and large the guys are just geeky enough for me to not be the odd man out.

Sounds good and bad all at the same time. How long are you/have you been there?

Yours is just the latest story I have heard that makes me go "Saudi Arabia sounds weird."

I sometimes wonder if even the guys in Dubai think the Saudis are weird. "Why, yes, we did just spend $100 billion on a skyscraper shaped like a sea anemone on crack, thank you for noticing, we had the money lying the around and we are having fun with it. Why do you guys hate fun?"

(Meanwhile the rest of the Arab world is staring at them both and thinking "What.")

Actually, it's the Saudis who look at all the other Arab countries with a mix of scorn and pity, because they're all going to hell for not being true muslims like only Saudis can ever be. I kid you not, that is the prevailing wisdom here. It gets better though. God loves Saudi so much, that he can only see within the Kingdom's borders. The second you're out of here, the rules no longer apply. So these guys pop across the border to Bahrain every weekend, sin their asses off with liquor and hookers, and then drive back with the belief that they're still pure because God couldn't see them.

I've been here almost a year. Now, contrary to most guys who had some military experience prejudicing them against arabs, I came here straight out of university with an open mind and an open heart. I said to myself, "Self, you have the privilege of visiting an ancient, holy place. Set aside your preconceptions and embrace this culture and all it has to offer, and you shall be richer for it." Took me all of two months to realize that this place is in permanent derp mode. This is a time when I realize how the colonial explorers must have felt, as though there was some sacred duty to civilize the people they found. But no, I'm not gonna go there. I'm gonna just sit here, content to rake in money and laugh at the sheer idiocy of it all.

Bahahahahahahaha "permanent derp mode"

Okay, back on topic for a moment. I almost feel ashamed to post these WIP pics of the pimp suit, but this is about as done as it's going to be for a while. I'm out of green stuff. Not completely, I still have a tiny bit left, but I'm going to save that for modeling emergencies, like when a piece absolutely won't stay on without it or when I just need to fill a little gap.

So for now, here's the horrendous looking job I've done on the pimp coat:



I cannot stress enough that what I was doing was laying down a base layer I intended to build on top of. The finished product will be nowhere near that hideous.


So...now what? I suppose I could switch gears a bit and go back to painting, especially since I've got the whole tank crew sculpted and ready. I have a few minor bits I want to add to the tank (like something to cap those wing tips), but not much else that I feel like I can build at the moment.

Small builds that I can finish:
Tony Stark Tau
Diplomat standard bearer
2 Desert Pimps

So I can finish those up, base them, and paint them, as well as Darkblade, the new Broadside and the Remora drone fighter. The quad suit is going on the back burner for now unless divine inspiration strikes. Hopefully, what I've listed here will be enough to occupy me until my GS gets shipped over here.

Got this puppy all plugged up and ready for priming.



Big purple love machine incoming!

What's w the tape and yellow putty in the engines?

 bossfearless wrote:
Okay, back on topic for a moment. I almost feel ashamed to post these WIP pics of the pimp suit, but this is about as done as it's going to be for a while. I'm out of green stuff. Not completely, I still have a tiny bit left, but I'm going to save that for modeling emergencies, like when a piece absolutely won't stay on without it or when I just need to fill a little gap.

Is Green Stuff that hard to come by?

Anyway, it looks like it's going to be awesome in the near future, so that's good enough for me. I mean, not for you, obviously, you have high standards, but at this point in the thread I ain't gonna dicker about how the 99th awesome thing you've done has only powered up to 50% awesome so far.

@Brother Payne: Tape and tack to block areas where I don't want spray primer getting into. On the engines, it's so that the primer doesn't cover the LEDs inside. The tape is to protect the speakers from any possible damage from the spray, whatever it might be.

@Sister Sydney: If you live in Saudi Arabia, then yes, green stuff is a finite resource. There is no such thing as a game store anywhere remotely near here or even in the entire country as far as I know. They would probably consider 40k haram, since it deals with religious themes that are non-muslim. Anyway, I have to wait anywhere from a week to a month before more green stuff arrives via mail. It all depends on the fickle APO mail system.



Okay, I need to browse some modeling forums and find out whether or not the cold weather will affect primer right now. florida native here, so I don't have too much experience priming in cold climates. The desert has been getting mighty cold overnight, so I might have to wait until just before my shift at 5pm to spray my models, or else face the dreaded fuzzy primer syndrome.


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Oh! Before I forget, I've had a slight stroke of genius. I think I have come up with a (slightly labor intensive) method for building LED-lit components that are ALSO capable of being magnetized and swapped out!

I absolutely do not think this has been done before on warhammer miniatures. I may be the first to successfully implement this, and it's got me all giddy. Of course, I have to successfully implement it before I go getting ahead of myself and getting a big head. So, for right now I'm just going to leave it at that, a teaser, until I get to the next big modeling project. Probably going to try to implement this on the quad-broadside or the next riptide, because Crisis suit weapons are just a little too small for what I have in mind.

LEDs and stuff, 'course. How could I forget?!

No worries, lol. Everything is super purple now! At least, the models that needed to be purple are purple, but Darkblade is just primed black since I'm going to paint her suit up similar to the black side of Silvertongue.

I am all out of black primer now. It is staggering to think that I've allowed myself to get so low on some of the most basic supplies out here. Of course, my supply chain being what it is, it's no surprise that some special materials don't reach me in time. Strange, though, because bits I buy on eBay tend to reach me in a week or two, and I've been waiting for green stuff for over a month.

Ok, so how about another full army picture of everything you have finished, all lit up and shimmery?

I'll do that once I get this batch of models painted. It's going to be a significant addition to the painted force when it's done. After all, I think I've finished painting...maybe...nothing? Nothing since the last big army shot. Some great builds being put together, but more paint needed. I suppose though that I could include all the guys who are still unpainted, just as a WIP shot. Maybe I'll do that later tonight.

Ah the good old "I have way too many grey guys, I'm going to paint them all before I buy convert anything els — ooh that looks nice a good idea!"

Edit: fits you a bit better

Your edits make me feel pretty.

Ok, so I've got a question about the fluff. Do your guys have any knowledge of or relation to the Farsight Enclaves?

That's a complicated question. Given the nature of the cadre and the alliance of which they are a part, there isn't any one specific answer. One of the key tenets of the alliance is an exchange of knowledge as they try to piece together the shattered past of the 40k universe and establish the point at which everything went wrong. A lot of the forbidden lore of 40k gets traded between factions amid all that research. As such, the Farsight Enclaves are a known quantity, though it takes a while for the Tau of the Dubstep Cadre to accept that knowledge as a fact. The newer blood, meaning tau who transfer in or are raised within the cadre, all tend to deny the possibility of such a pocket empire at first, chalking it up to an attempt at razzing the new guy or some such. Eventually, it does sink in and it's a bit of a strange concept, but it gets accepted like much of the other strange lore that gets dredged up.

As to their relation, that's a yes and no answer. No, the Dubstep Cadre is not affiliated with the Farsight Enclaves by anything other than a species relationship. However, they are similar in concept because of their organizational structure. They are apart from the Empire and swear no overriding allegiance to their fellows, knowing full well that they might be called upon to battle other expeditionary cadres in the course of Akira's crusade. However, this was not done out of any grand iconoclasm like Farsight's departure, but was instead ordered by the Ethereals of Bork'An before the Cadre departed in the wake of the crusade. The Ethereals recognized the merit of the mission and gave special dispensation to the Cadre leadership to act autonomously in support of the crusade to euthanize the Emperor, knowing that the end result of their success would mean the destruction of several dire threats to the galaxy as a whole.

However, knowing the inquisitive nature of the humans, there were no Ethereals dispatched with the Cadre. Several individuals from the Water caste were trained in the fine art of "faking it," such as Envoy Musashi, so that if the humans ever decided to turn on their tau allies and "research" the mystery of the Ethereals, they would only find normal Tau of other castes. In this way, the Dubstep Cadre is similar to the Enclaves as well, because both of them are divorced from the direct leadership of the Ethereal caste.


Edit: I just want to point out that some of the "forbidden knowledge" that got traded to the Eldar was how to speak plainly and stop being so freaking useless all the time. This knowledge was "passed on" through a series of hard back-handed slaps to the face and repetitive strikes to their genital regions, along with a nearly endless series of wedgies and more than one farseer ejected into space for being annoying jackwagons.

Edit 2: I think I'm being out-dubstepped by this Skyray: http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-18662-3762_Skyray.html

I love how much you've thought about it all haha
I take it their aforementioned mission is to piece together the 40k past or is that a side thing?


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And that is one hell of a skyray!

The piecing together of the 40k past is the point of the whole alliance in general, as the past holds the key to (insert a thousand collective eye rolls and groans) finding the missing primarchs. Something vague about needing some primarch blood to build a weapon to kill the Emprah. And of course, the most logical choice is to go after the lost primarch Brosephius in the galaxy's southern fringe.

Why are we killing the Emperor, again?

 bossfearless wrote:
The piecing together of the 40k past is the point of the whole alliance in general, as the past holds the key to (insert a thousand collective eye rolls and groans) finding the missing primarchs. Something vague about needing some primarch blood to build a weapon to kill the Emprah. And of course, the most logical choice is to go after the lost primarch Brosephius in the galaxy's southern fringe.

Naturally

 SisterSydney wrote:
Why are we killing the Emperor, again?

Ever see the movie Dogma? If not, shame on you. It's kind of like that movie, they've got God incapacitated by putting him in a coma and keeping him on life support. If he ever died, boom, straight back to heaven and reincarnated immediately at full power. In my imagining of 40k lore, the Golden Throne is a life support system that also drains massive amounts of power away from the Big E. The Inquisition are his jailors, and also the ones slowly changing the prayers and hymns one word at a time over many centuries so that human worship no longer gives the Emperor power. Hence the immediate need to kill him as quickly as possible, before he crosses the point of no return and is lost forever.

Dude, how do you do it? Where does this stuff come from? I don't think that part of my brain even exists!

Well, back when I came up with all this, I had no life. So, there's that little edge. I had a lot of time to think about it, a 500 pound waistline and thus no girlfriend, and kind of a screwed up brain to begin with. It's fertile ground for creativity. Currently don't have a girlfriend either, but it's for different reasons now. Just saying.

Okay, so...I did this:



It's a good start, and of course like everything I paint it looks awful right now, but the cleanup will vindicate my efforts. And as requested, here's a big group shot:



Don't mind the kind of stupid pose on the Rex. It's not glued in place yet and I was just trying to balance it on the base I'm building.

I see no "awful." I see only "awesome."

They should have sent a poet...

 bossfearless wrote:
Took me all of two months to realize that this place is in permanent derp mode.

As the Saudi Captain said to my Dad: 'don't look at things as they should be, look at things as they are.'

 bossfearless wrote:

So for now, here's the horrendous looking job I've done on the pimp coat:

That made me laugh - in a good way of course! I love it, wonderful.

If you are struggling with GS coats and the like I recommend using cloth of some kind.

Example 1: Leather coat.



I used my own leather jacket as an example and just made one to scale and stitched it together using material from an old wallet.

Example 2: Camo Cloak.


I used an old handkerchief for this, cut to shape and then painted with watered down PVA glue.

 bossfearless wrote:
Well, back when I came up with all this, I had no life. So, there's that little edge. I had a lot of time to think about it, a 500 pound waistline and thus no girlfriend, and kind of a screwed up brain to begin with. It's fertile ground for creativity. Currently don't have a girlfriend either, but it's for different reasons now. Just saying.

I guess we can put this lot firmly in the Thorian camp then? Have you read the RoC books? There's also a snippet in the back of the novel Eye of Terror (great story, one of my favourites and well worth the read) that might be interesting to you.