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So I've bought and painted games workshop stuff in the past, Imperial Guard are my favourite, but I never really did much with it, it was always just a bit of a time sink for evenings after work, like the commissar below. (I'm a fan of dark and gritty colours). Forgive the poor camera detail, I'm using an old ipod touch.

Packed it in for a few years, until recently a friend showed me the beautiful tau supremacy suit, and I've decided to post the progress of making an army to go with said suit here! (I'm not a great modeler or painter, but I hope this isn't too out-of-place.)

The first model I'm working on, a Tau Commander with Fusion Blaster, Missile pod and shield Generator.

Started on the base first, easier to get it nice and detailed and interesting, and easier to paint them both separate. I've made the base with a bunch of stuff from a local modelling stuff, I think it cost about £10 all together for enough various bits to do all my bases, and most of that was in the £3.50 for the grass tufts (though I've only used 2 tufts out of a few dozen). I'm going for a kind of abandoned industrial city or factory look, something like you'd see in those abandoned areas around Chernobyl.



It took forever to pose this bugger, with lots of blue-tack to work out where the legs and feet would go, and I really need to work out a better system. Thankfully this is all coming out now on a model I'd prefer to ruin over the Supremacy suit. Since I wanted a nice gesturing arm I had to put both other mounts, the shield and the fusion blaster, on the same wrist, which kinda looks a bit clunky and I've gone for a bit of a dynamic post, hard to show in these pics, but I'll take more once I beginning painting the model itself,

Here's the base for the Supremacy while I'm at it, complete with half a leman russ, as well as one of the un-painted bases for a crisis.

I like it- the posing is very dynamic and the bases are fantastic! I've got a basic Imperial Guard army to game with- now I'm painting to see how good I can do, and bases are next. What you've done is very much what I have in mind for my next squad. I look forward to seeing your progress.

So, finished up the crisis bases, my plan is to have one of the suits standing on top of the vertical girder, but it was far too flexible, so I've had to add a bracing piece of pipe (the middle one).



The commander's coming on, I painted it all in flat Skavenblight, Khorne red and Leadbelcher silver, then washed it quite heavily with Nuln oil. For some reason it's come out shiny, I'm worried I've contaminated my nuln oil, but maybe I just forgot to wash the brush properly after applying 'ardcoat.



Went over with the grey and red again and it's a lot nicer now, still 'shiny' in the recesses though, but it kinda adds an odd charm.



I've also put the shoulderpad on the opposite arm (the right instead of the left), since I like that look better, it makes the thing look more balanced, and I'll likely do the same with my other battlesuits.


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And that makes one finished Tau Commander.



Base coated the crisis bases, can't wait to get building the actual models, I think I'll paint it in pieces this time.

Finished another battlesuit, side by side, the commander models are so much nicer and infinitely more pose-able, I'm half tempted to just use commander models as Crisis suits.



Also decided to paint the fusion blasters muzzle white, like the plasma rifle. It adds a bit of brightness to the dull grey models!

So I finally got around to the interesting part, the supremacy! Assembled some of the bigger parts, like the thighs, waist and torso, and painted them with the basic colours first to get into all those little nooks and crannies, so it needs a lot of cleaning up yet.




Guardsman and Suit for scale for a friend.

It's all glued together with some Araldite 2-part epoxy, so It's pretty much rock solid now. I was worried the ankles would be a weak point, but I put a little 3/8" brass rod through each and into the foot, and it's rigid as my desk now. Tested by totally intentionally dropping the thing.

Only blue-tacked to the base for now, just so I could get the pose, but I'm going to paint and then wash each sup-part (the torso and the legs) as well as the arms, head and back mounted weapons separately.

Painted one shoulder, and the lenses for the defence guns and the little sensor ball. It's the first time I've painted lenses that aren't flat blue, and I had to look up a tutorial! Not a bad outcome I think for the first time.The white was such a pain to get flat too, and I think I put near enough 12 layers on, working up from Skavenblight Dinge through Dawnstone and Administratum Grey, with lots of thinned white scar over it, glad I bought some thinner to do it with!


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Forgot to mention that the grey bodywork (while it doesn't look so bad in person) isn't finished, and I haven't glued the arm on or the torso down yet, it's just sitting loose so I can go over the whole thing with thinner layers and a wash.

Taking a little break from the supremacy, started on my strike team. I'm making them equal parts human and tau, which is kinda frustrating since the arms for both are part of the weapons, meaning there's a lot of cutting and sanding needed. This is one of my segeants, with a guard torso, arms and legs with the eagle filed off, a tau rifle and backpack and shoulderpad, and I've cut down a chainsword and added some plasticard to make a dawn-blade esque power sword. Looks more at home than the chainsword. Plus a female head I got in a set off the internet, I'm equal opportunity!

Nice plog, keep up the good work

Disliked how the sword came out, but I recently (as in today) bought a dremel set, so cut down a chainsword and carved some plasticard down into a better shape. Plus I cut a slit for the blade to sit in this time, so it's not as flimsy as the original.




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Aaand there's the new sword painted. Looks better than the old one. Might return to that dawnblade shape for another char, maybe a human fireblade.




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Aaand there we go. One down, 19 to go.

Annd that's 3 down, 37 to go. Plus I bought a Ghostkeel and decided to use one of the 10 heads to convert it into a human pilot. It's bizarre how few bare heads you get on guard sprues too, and I'm tempted to get some storm troopers so I can have human-tau with berets.

More work on the supremacy. Left arm's magnetised and ready (even if I'm having a lot of trouble getting the magnets to sit well, I may have fone for too-strong magnets, as they're just pulling themselves out of the holes, even when stuck down with 2-part epoxy.). Railgun's not actually glued together yet, since I only got it today. I'm not sure it's a mistake or not, but I bought the supremacy suit with the Pulse driver array, which has the best game-rules I think, but the big rail cannon just looks so much better, so I ended up ordering it just for display purposes! I'm trying to work out a good way to keep its ability to elevate and depress, maybe more magnets...

Nice work on the Battlesuits. And the traitors....er, I meant Gue'vesa...look nice, as well.

Looking good dude. Love the sword you'very made.

EDC

Instead of working on the 34 fire warriors left to build/convert/paint I decided to work on my ghostkeel. I originally converted the pilot to be a female human, but unfortunately it meant the head wouldn't close, so despite the fact that I spent a few hours painting all the lights and dials inside, I glued it shut. Not sure about this base either, I wanted to try something new-ish, that still fits with my abandoned/wrecked cityscape.









I magnetised all the weapons too with some 2mm magnets.



On a slightly other note, I worked out how I'd keep the railgun still able to elevate and depress on the supremacy, and cut a strip from an old metal pencil case and bent it into a nice curved piece before gluing it in under the gun. Hopefully now, once I put a magnet into the mount itself it'll hold it down strong enough.

Finally finished magnetising the supremacy, and it seems to have worked better than I expected. Two 6mm magnets hold down the railgun perfectly, but still let it slide up and down. I'm not going to be magnetising the pulse driver array since it seems to clip on firmly without.

Cool stuff nice work !

Lovely stuff

Very smart idea with the metal strip, I'll try that someday.

I would magnetise the pulse driver though, its quite an expensive part to replace if it were to fall off.

Gravity is a harsh mistress.

Well I've not done much 40k for a busy month, finally got some more stuff ready. 10 fire warriors finished now, though I forgot to shake the wash well enough beforehand and they look too shiny now. Ah well, lesson learned. I've 10 more fire warriors made but not painted, and I'm moving on to finishing off my gue'vesa.

It's an absolute pain, takes about 10-15 minutes a model (though maybe I'll get quicker with the vast amount of practice I'm likely to get.)



Having to cut and grind away the lasgun from the guardsman hands, and then cut and grind the pulse rifles into a shape that fits.

So, while I didn't like the singular bare head you get with the cadian box sets, I liked the idea of the berets you get with storm troopers, and so bought a box, as well as ordering some new female heads with berets. I think it'll look far more uniform, I already like it better, and with the 'leftover' parts, (the whole box minus 6 heads), I made myself a human longstrike, and a human cadre fireblade. As you can probably tell from the amount of pictures I took, I'm extremely happy with how it turned out.

I have 0 sculpting skills with milliput and greenstuff, so I was reduced to kitbashing and some card painstakingly cut into shape, and I think it's come out really well.

The sword for that sergeant did turn out very well.

Thanks!

Finished painting the Fireblade too. I'm not a great painter, but I think it turned out really well. With room for improvement ofcourse.