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Hello,

I'm working on a Tau Army and I thought a cool scheme would be kind of a junker/lost army where they're cobbling things together to keep going. The army is VERY Drone heavy so that would sell the theme a bit more, but I don't just want to get normal Drones and scratch them up. I'm also trying to keep it a bit cheaper, something like using Tau Guns/Bits for the actual Gun/Markerlight/Shield Generator but something else for the body.

I've looked around online but most of the ideas I don't think would look all that good, such as using circular wood cutouts or 25mm bases glued together. I can get little bits of wire and so on to make them look a bit slapped together but I'm still not sure what to use for the body that would look right and be cost effective. Anyone have any ideas?

Getting normal drones and kitbashing them will give you the best results in my opinion. Otherwise they're going to look cheap and weird unless you're a super kitbasher. Look into scale model kitbashing. They call it greebling. You use bits of wire, other kits, and all sorts of odds and sods to make the kits more interesting. You can even buy greeble kits online. Doing this with a set of regular drones will give you the look you want.

25mm lipped bases glued together might be quite nice. You can make nice ducted fan effects with them. I used some larger ones for this conversion






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Or Warlord C3 drones, that I found to be useful for fan ducts again.

If you're really going to rough up your vehicles, harvesting their doors/hatches (replaced with looted doors, welded sheet metal, blasted openings, and so on) should net you four or so per vehicle, and I've always thought those doors look like drones, anyway. Obviously they're just the top dome, but that's what people see most of the time, anyway, so a few spare bits/rifles and you should have something that looks pretty good.

They're not all the same size, of course, so you might want to plan with that in mind, saving all of a certain diameter for shield drones, another for accelerator drones, etc. (or not, they're ad-hoc, after all).

I wouldn't take every door (or it'd look weird), but it lets you kill two junkyard birds with one stone.

The other option would be to keep the standard drone dome but then add tiny bits (and/or very carefully cut/drill out holes) to represent temporary repairs and part shortages. Do the same with the drone weapons and sensors too.

Similarly, careful filing and sanding can represent dents and damage - combined with a good paint job, that will give a nice junker look.