Tau Color Scheme Photos Using a Light Box

I ordered a light box setup from Amazon a while back and decided to give it a spin today. For my tau I've decided to paint them in three different color schemes, blue, red, and black. The blue and the red squads have orange accents, while the black squad has purple and blue accents. I am considering a green and orange color scheme for my pathfinders. I love the way the two squads. are starting to look together, especially the gun drones. My goal with Tau was to create a super easy to paint set of recipes that I could use to quickly paint up and weather a force. You might have noticed that my tau are beat up. These are dirty tau, who have been on campaign for a long time, not the super clean tau normally seen. I hope my heavy handed weathering is serving to unify the the force.

FW Krieg Tank Bits on New LR Kit

I've been buying DKOK stuff for a while now, and am only now getting started building it. My first task was to build the single LR chassis that will be part of my 1500 pt force. I am going mainly with centaurs, but want one LR. The old FW kits do not fit on the new model without some work. The good news is that it is not particularly difficult. The engine filter requires a portion of the back engine cover to be sawed off. The trench rails simply do not fit. It turns out the FW full kit has a resin engine area. The tank gunner works, just not with the cool FW hatch because the new LR kit has the turret modeled on. I am luke warm about losing the more interesting turret, since it has more detail, and helps make the tank look more interesting. In any case, I am happy I bought the upgrades. I think they add a lot of character to the tank.

My plan is to run this as a regular old LR with battle cannon, hull las cannon, and bolter sponsons. It will support a static line of 2 teams of 3 heavy stubbers. Grenadier squads in centaurs, hq in centaurs, and quartermaster in centaurs work as my ultra fast open topped gun platforms. A single squad of engineers and death riders bulks out the army. Most of the army is made up of AP3 weapons, so it should be pretty fun to play SM. The centaurs have a built in gun mount so the heavy weapon from the squads embarked can fire. That gives me 2 heavy stubbers per centaur.

Kroot Ape Riders & Water Effects

I don't know what the Kroot riders are really called, but the thing the kroot is riding does look a little like a gorrilla. I painted this guy with washes, and I think the style contrasts really well with the ruined centaur. I am not sure more different styles could coexist!

I mixed some thrakka wash into some water effects and painted the mixture over the broken pipes on my resin bases. It took a full day for the water effects to go from a milky green to clear green, but it is worth the wait. The bottle is large enough that I don't think I'll ever run out of it either!

Water effects = epic win

Ruined Centaur Pt2

I tried out wet weathering powders on this centaur, and quickly discovered that mixing the powders with thinner was a bad idea. I skipped a crucial step in the FW master class book. It is really important to seal the model before moving onto further steps in the weathering process. I managed to get away without too much paint damage, but it could have been a lot worse. The dark metal panels in the floor took the brunt of the thinner, and it shows. I think I may try to make the tank more minty colored. I am beginning to think that my DKOK should be on desert bases, which would contrast really well with a darker color scheme. Imagine this tank with dust sprayed around the tracks, and the right side of the centaur embedded in a sand dune.

DKOK Ruined Centaur Objective Marker

I took a break from my tau to paint up an objective marker for my DKOK army. I have all of the miniatures now, and am just working our color schemes. To that end, I present my mint green and bone colored ruined centaur assault vehicle. The right side of the vehicle will be buried in mud. I haven't put the weathering powders on yet, but I am already pleased. I think scab red is going to be a really good accent color on these.

My army has 6 Centaurs, and I am considering making ruined versions of all of them. The centaur itself is just an amazing vehicle. Open topped, a heavy stubber, and a weapon mount for the squads heavy weapons. My company and platoon command squads in addition to 2 engineer squads, commissar general, and quarter master all get them.

Tau Stealth Suits Painted With Washes

Last night while my wife watched the Sex and the City movie, I painted my first stealth suit team. Using the pure wash technique I learned painting the stealthy fire warrior, I was able to get these guys done extremely quickly. One slight alteration from my normal painting method, is to go back over some areas of the paint chipping with dots of sepia wash. This makes some of the paint chips look older than the rest. Overall I am really happy with how the tau are turning out. I plan to finish up the red fire warrior squad today, though my purchase of one of those Kroot gorilla looking horse things is providing a difficult temptation. I would love to paint up some vehicles or battle suites as well.

Tau Fire Warriors Painted With Washes

Since I was happy with the previous tau painting test, I thought, why not try one more painting test. This time I used the all wash method, much like the kroot. I think I may have found a way to paint my stealth suits. What do you think? Should I maybe paint my fire warriors this way anyway?

The recipe is dirt simple.

• Black wash for armor plates
• Purple wash for head
• Blue wash for cloth
• Boltgun metel stippled on afterwards.

Tau Test: 4 Red Tau

I grabbed my camera from the car, and painted up a few more variations of the red battle damaged tau. One of the things I learned this go around was to thin my sepia so it did not produce such dramatic changed in the color of the clothing. I kind of like these guys. I will definitely paint up 2 more of them so there is at lease a full squad.

If I go this route for troops, my vehicles will be chipped red and blue from the top, and a dirty chipped cream color underneath. I think that would look pretty good. I will use the orange for sept markings. Is this the scheme?