Tau Battle Suits

Since Tau can't function I thought I should add some highly weathered battle suits to my force. They match the color scheme for my veteran fire warriors (the ones that protect Etherial Jones). They started out with a careful air brushing of blues, creating a shaded effect. I then proceeded to spray on sepia wash to give them the aqua color you see here. I have a lot of additional weathering to do, in addition to decals. I am thinking about adding rust to the metal plates as well as going back and adding some edge highlighting. Basically my Tau force look like they have been through hell, so these guys will fit in nicely if I keep weathering them till they are right.

My real camera takes much better photos than my iphone, but at the moment I am having a little painters block, so I am keeping away from the big camera setup and focussing on finishing minis.

Oath Of Moment

I don't normally review books, audio or otherwise on this blog, but today is an exception. Garro Oath of Moment is a fantastic audio book, well worth buying. The sound effects are a bit much, but the story is great, and it finally answers one of the great 40k questions. The script written by Tob Longworth and James Swallow is great. I know Swallow gets a lot of grief from the BA fan boy club, but just like his fantastic Flight of the Eisenstein, this is definitely worth buying. The authors did an outstanding job.

Tau Ethereal & Shadowsun

I know Tau Ethereals are supposed to be poor units, but I love the way this model looks, and am going to be hard pressed to not field him every time I get the chance. I have no idea why this model stands out to me so much, but it is a must have. Commander Shadowsun is so-so at the moment. I have her based, and am ready to start adding some more detail. I plan to add both blue and dark red to the model somehow, though I Have not figured out how yet.

Painting White

I started back on my tau after basing my Death Guard champion. My tau needed an HQ, so I decided to paint shadowsun. I don't paint white very often, but I think the white is turning out ok. It does not photograph very well, but in person it looks pretty clean. the trick seems to be two coats of a grey wash followed by white edge high lighting. She will stand out really well in the army. Some orange markings and battle damage are coming!

Typhus: Back On The Horse

I have not posted much since my blogger versus blogger game. I sort of fell out of the painting cycle, and was focusing on airbrushing Tau tank after Tau tank. I almost painted Typhus by accident. The white primer was working really well last night, and he was sitting near by. The tau Ethereal I was working on was drying, so I picked up Typhus and started painting. I painted him to match my plague marines, though I think he is a little better looking. I have one more glaze to put on him to tie in all of the edge highlighting.

Someday I may even field a Chaos army!

Warhammer 39,999

I met Rob from Warhammer 39,999 last Friday, and we got in a fun game in using the battle missions book. I learned quite a bit about Alaska, before getting thoroughly stomped by my Dark Angels. Rob schooled me using an army with funky old rules, a pts deficit, and with poor rules familiarity on both of our parts. I'll leave the battle report to him, since he has the play by play. Suffice to say, I had a great time, and look forward to a rematch in San Diego!

In other news, I'll need to post images of my Tau at some point. I have been painting gun drones by the bushelful, which is not particularly interesting, but does make the vehicles look much better. Next up is a small dark eldar force. Yes, I bit the bullet and added yet another army to my painting table. The new plastics were just too good to pass up.

Tau Artillery

I had painters block for a while, hence no updates, but fortunately it has passed. My Tau are progressing along now, with my first heavy guns painted. I really liked the way the grey pre-shading turned out on the suit, so I decided to paint in some highlight colors. I think the suits will be darker like this. Once I can't decide if I should paint up the 3 other devilfish chassis assembly line style, or if I should pause, finish off all of these pieces and then move on.

While I was traveling my HQ choice arrived, and I think a clean white battle suit with orange and red shading will really make her stand out! ;)

Washed and Weathered: Beat Up Devilfish

Here is a quick update to the devilfish. right before this step I hard lined the blue and orange areas and was really pleased with how the thing was looking. Then I tried shooting sepia through my air brush. That did not work out so well, so I had to resort to a brush to finish off adding the wash. Post wash it was two quick spongings and voila!

I have the forge world tau transfers, so I think I will try to get them on tonight. The gun drones and turret will be a combination of red and orange, much like my red fire warriors a few posts ago.

I got my mojo back, and painted up two piranhas with my base color scheme since I first posted this. I went with a red body and green wings for these guys. I also finished off the devilfish by adding the turret and hatch thing.