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As the title says, any ideas for a quick and dirty way of painting Tau? I'm not the best of painters, (my hand is quite shaky )

I want to paint around 850 points relativley consistently, so as long as it'll look good on the tabletop, i'm one happy camper. Colour-wise, the regular Tau ochre colour sceme is fine, but if you've got any tips for a different scheme i'm happy to hear them! Tips on basing are also appreciated immensely.

Lastly, if anyone has got any ideas on paint order (spray the sprues? Assemble the full model then paint?) that would also be a massive help.

Ok, what I would suggest is priming the Mini black, painting each area in the color you want and try a wash on it. Experiment with a few models and see if you can make this work.

Black? The guides I've seen all seem to scream 'use white primer idiot!' at me, especially for oche/white.

If you're predominantly doing a lighter colour, I'd definitely suggest a white or grey primer. You just need to be more careful about painting the recessed and less accessible areas then; black is much more forgiving in that respect.

Black primer will darken your base coat, which many players like (especially for schemes that try to build from dark to light). White primer will brighten your base coat (ideal for most lighter colors, although have to be careful with red and yellow or you will wind up with neon).

The vast majority of people I see use grey which is obviously in the middle depending on how light or dark of a grey primer you get. I personally use black, but thats because my base color is very dark.

Anyway, the best thing to do is just keep going an hour or two consistently, and you will get much better no matter what.

Best of luck!

To cut through the priming debate (and also give you something that will greatly speed up the highlighting process and make your miniatures look better) I would recommend pre-shading.

You first spray the minis black, then give them a spray of grey at a 45 degree from above angle all around, then a spray of white from directly above. Then when you're painting, keep your paints quite thin and you will see the gradient showing through, giving it a shaded and highlighted look. It's a real time-saver.

The other great time-saver I know of is Army Painter's quickshade. It's basically a tinted varnish, as far as I can tell. I used it on a horde of zombicide zombies and it turned out well. What you do is basecoat them as neatly as possible, then slop on the quickshade. Use an old brush you don't mind ruining. Then with another old brush, mop some off the quickshade off the upturned areas and where you want the highlights to be. Leave to dry for 24 hours, give them a spray of a matt varnish such as Testor's Dullcoat, and they look great. No need to add any highlights, unless you want to do a quick edge highlight on some of the upper edges of the armour. Here's my zombies:





They're not going to win any competitions, but they look okay, and are pretty solidly varnished for use on the table too. There's no highlighting on them at all, you might be surprised to read. My only worry is whether the quickshade might give too much of a grubby look for the clean anime-inspired Tau.

Yeah; I do want quite clean-looking Tau (minus a bit of basing on them for a smooth transition,) so that idea seems a bit of a bust. Anyone going to recommend a cheap grey spray, or should I just go and get one from P3?

Prime black and any missed spots either won't be noticed or be taken for shadow. Prime white and any missed spots show up as missed spots.

Also white over black on a model isn't that hard to do, just start with a grey and layer it up, for a model like infantry its far easier, only time I'd prime white is for a vehicle where and recessed areas are easier to get to or just won't show if missed later.