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I offered to assemble, convert, base and paint an entire Tau army for a good friend of mine.
I'm doing it for dirt cheap (an agreed amount) + whatever materials/paints/supplies I need to purchase.

I'm creating this thread so he can keep track of the progress, as well as to get ideas with a few issues I'm having!

Anyway his 1st warstore order arrived recently so I now have 12 Crisis suits sitting on my desk.

So far the brief is this:
1. Dark Blue with Red trim and detailing (Eldar the same).
2. Model all the suits to be durable for gaming (not on flimsy GW flight sticks).
3. Somehow model some suits to be squad leaders, while keeping the same weapon loadouts.
4. Create a close-combat weapon for the 2 Commander suits (Space-Knife).
5. Assemble the 12 suits to be 6 Broadside (waiting on conversion kits still), 4 Crisis each with 2 SHOULDER mounted missile launchers, 2 Commanders with 2 SHOULDER mounted missile launchers.
Wrist mounted missiles are out, mate doesn't like the look.

Would love some advice/comments on the following:

So far I've got a solution for number 3, 4 and 5.
3, 5. Use the sensor/radar bit on one shoulder slot and mount both launchers side-by-side in the other slot (Aerial looking thing for Commanders, Laser-sight looking thing for Squad leaders).



4. Was thinking about this for a while. Then I remembered a bit I have in my box that would be perfect! But took a day to figure out what the hell it was originally from!
Long story short it was this knife attached to Tyrus' lighting claw:



Sadly I only have one, and the skulls don't really go with Tau style. So I had to make my own:



Here I've used a Crisis plasma gun and a Grey Knight halberd to create the space-knife.

Still need to do a test mini for a colour scheme but I think I'll use this tutorial as a baseline:
http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/how-to-paint-eldar-dire-avengers-grim.html

Edit: Updating with my vision for one of the commanders.

Cool looking knifes, I give my commanders/team-leaders katanas (since Tau do look a tad "samurai-ish" being made for the Asian market and all )
But I put mine on the side of the suits, so they can be counted as just bonding knifes...

But, onto you questions/need for suggestions:
Getting a squad-leader/commander to "pop" when compared to the others is real easy... I find that either "swapping" a colour (in your case red trimmings with... I dunno, white or something?) or just painting a "bit" (antennae, shoulder pad, thigh pad "stripe") in a contrasting colour...

I like the Tau when they look "serious" and not like some
rip-off anime-robot army painted in candy-gloss and stark colours. And in tone with that, giving their "leaders" easy but discernable markings, just sits right with me

Hope I gave some useful info in between all my ramblings!
Looking forward to seeing some painting

Subbed!

Been a little bit held up on this job waiting for various bitz and bobs to arrive in the mail etc.

But here's the 2nd commander wip with my gun drone conversions into shields

All I've got to go on vis-a-vi colour scheme is: Blue with lots of red bitz.

Really hard to make that look cool imo! But it's what my friend wants and it's his army. Anyway here is my first test mini following his brief!

Ok my mate is happy. Wants to ditch the red below the waist though, which makes me happy.

Just need to see how that scheme will look on a battle suit, devilish and some eldar stuff now!

For the record the job/army consists of:

2 Tau Battlesuit Commanders
4 Crisis Suits
36 Fire Warriors
1 Devilfish
3 Shield drones, 2 Gun drones
6 Broadside Suits

1 Farseer
3 Jetbikes
X Firedragons (Not sure how big the squad is, they havn't arrived yet)
3 War walkers

Click on the Firewarriors to view in gallery and zoom in a bit closer!

Loving the conversions man. Glad to see that you got some dynamic poses with Crisis suits without heavy converting. I love the Crimson Tau, it's very regal for them and I love your take one the scheme. I might have to go "steal" your idea and add it to my fire warriors.

Thanks for the comments!

Here's some more stuff I finished today:

Decided to add Tau markings to the Eldar vehicles to show their new allegiance to the Greater Good