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Hi there, all. Figured I'd start up a blog as I construct my Tau army. I figure that forcing myself to update a blog is a good way for me to keep myself from getting lazy and letting my models gather dust in the basement where I model/paint. Hopefully I'll actually get to work painting everything over the next few days/weeks, since my school semester is almost over and I've got some free time open over break.

I only just started collecting a few months ago, so my army is kind of pitiful (About 660 points worth, though I can stretch it to 1000 with butt-loads of useless upgrades). Presently, my collection consists of:

HQ
- Don't have any Commander units yet, but I do have a Crisis Suit.

Elite
- 1 Crisis Suit
- 3-man squad of Stealth Suits (x2)

Troop
- 12-man squad of Fire Warriors (x2)
- 12-man squad of Kroot Carnivore

Transports
- 1 Devilfish

Just about everything is fully modeled (I wanted to give my Kroot some more time to dry paint, because I screwed up big-time and had to glue on arms with some very small contact points...luckily my glue is liquid cement) and all but my Kroot are primed and ready to paint, again because I'm not yet finished modeling them.

My paint scheme will be a custom sept, which I call Krai'la. It consists of a Flat Red basecoat for the armor, and (I believe) Regal Blue for the sept markings. I intend to actually write up some fluff about the sept, but I don't have any quite yet. I use Vallejo paints, by the way, because they tend to be fairly high-quality, and IMO much better than the Citadel ones.

My army from the front...

From the left...

And from the right.


I will get some zoom shots later on (Specifically of the various units).

The painted Fire Warriors were an early scheme that I tested - Sa'cea sept, with light blue armor and orange markings. When I was midway through painting my first ones, however, it dawned on me that I didn't really like that particular scheme, so I decided to change over to what will become my current one. Obviously nothing's painted in those colors, however. Hopefully I'll be able to start painting this weekend.

As I mentioned, my Kroot still need some modeling work, so they aren't primed. And if you're wondering about the two Gun Drones in the Devilfish, they have bunny ears because my friend thought they'd look cute with them (and he's a 20-year old guy). I thought they made them stick out more, so I decided to keep 'em.

we look forward to the pics...

Also note that one of the best ways to photograph minis is in natural daylight, so perhaps take your pics above ground...

MeanGreenStompa wrote:we look forward to the pics...

Also note that one of the best ways to photograph minis is in natural daylight, so perhaps take your pics above ground...

I will post pics from two different settings and see how they turn out (It's night now, so I'm stuck using artificial light until tomorrow or Sunday).

Pics coming shortly!

Pics are up, some higher quality ones may come up in the future if I can work out how to use my fancy-pants digital camera. (It refuses to take pictures if it doesn't have something to focus on, which is a pain when I'm trying to take close-ups)

Also, as of December 15th (Today, at the time of posting) my Kroot are almost finished - all that's left are a few random odds and ends, as well as some prime and paint. Painted minis coming shortly, since I'll have nothing to do tomorrow or Wednesday.

Press the button with a picture of a flower on it for macro shots.

I know, it's been a while since I posted. I'm really bad about willing myself to do some serious work on my army. However, with a special game coming up in the morning (My FLGS hosts a Christmas-themed game every year where Abaddon assaults Santa's workshop) I decided to paint up my Crisis Suit to make sure I don't go in there with a black and gray army of doom.

Anyways, here's some pics of my painted Crisis Suit. The red is Flat Red, and the blue is Prussian Blue - both of them Vallejo paints (Excellent paints, by the way, though they do require a LOT of agitating to get them to mix properly).





I thought it'd look weird with all the blue I put in, but I really like how it turned out. I basically tried to make alternating sides by painting blue on one side one way, then the opposite on the other side. Like with the shoulder pads - the top pic has the middle bit red, but the other side has the middle bit blue and the outside red. What do you all think?

Also, I was planning on doing some basing with Styrofoam, since I want to make it look like the warriors are standing on rocky ground with bits of lava running around (As the sept world the army comes from is renowned for being hot and almost inhospitable to all but the toughest of troops). I have two questions with this: first off, does it work? I've seen some impressive work in the past, but I'm not sure if it was Styrofoam that was used to make custom bases like this. Second off, if it does work, what should I use to glue it to the base and to the model itself? I currently use plastic cement by Testors, which is great for gluing together models but doesn't work on anything else.