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Hello, I'm doing up a Tau list that operates in an oxide desert. My color scheme actually ended up very similar to Farsight, by accident, there's only so much you can do with dark red, brass, and grey. I have some plans for this army, like mesh grates over all the jet intakes on my vehicles and sand weathering on my vehicles/jetpack models (I guess that would just be a drybrush, not really that good at painting yet)

I was wondering the best way to base up some models with red sand. Is there dark red sand available anywhere that you know of, or should I just buy some fine sand and get an ink wash to make it red? I'm really looking forward to basing some of the new dreadnought base broadsides. I can cut some foam into a sand dune shape and put the leg down into it, so it looks like the broadside is standing with half a leg buried in the sand...

Ok, enough rambling. You get my point. Any red sand out there (any other advice would help too)?

You could try this. Stick a few blobs of ova on some card. Ans sprinkle normal sand over them. Once they are dry you have some testers ready. Try using blood letter glaze over the sand to give you a red look. You can also try mixing it with some other washes. To get the colour you want. I use plain old reikland flesh shade on the sand on my chaos bases. And it gives a very dark rich brown to them. Maybe add a bit of red to some reikland flesh shade wash.

Failing that. Go onto eBay and search for calcium sand, it's uses for vivariums. I have seen some bright red sand and some dark red sand. But they charge a fair bit for it around 10. But there will be enough sand there to base the entire tau home world.

I did a test for a martian-type base and what I did was glue sand down, paint it Mechrite Red, wash it with Devlan Mud, dry brush Mechrite and then highlight by dry brushing with Blood Red. It turned out pretty nice, though I ended up basing the army in something else.

Oxide paste (scroll down the page a bit to see the product info) from Vallejo. Fine texture, already has the color you're looking for, and should be more durable than PVA and sand, once cured. You can get a 30mL bottle to try out or a 200mL tub to base a whole army. If you don't have a local distributor, you can find it online at The Warstore or MiniatureMarket, as well as through various Ebay sellers and Amazon.

You can find sand in various colors (including red) at craft stores, but it's tinted sand, not painted sand (i.e. translucent and satin instead of opaque and matte). Unpainted sand tends to look "off" or "out of scale" next to painted models. If you don't use the oxide paste, I wouldn't be concerned with the color of your sand or texture paste, as you'll be better off painting it, anyway.