Tau

I have been enamoured with the Tau ever since the retail sales rep for Western Canada came to our WHFB Rogue Trader Tournament. He is a very good painter and as such, Studio in England sends him pre-pre-release gear and last winter he brought Tau with him. So it has been a long wait and now that I have them I am attacking them with a furry I have not known in quite a while!

I decided to do Tau for our tournament about 3 weeks ago and in that time I built and painted all the bases for the army.

'Bases are quite time consuming but the look is good once the time is spent. Paint the base Shadow Grey, then dry brush [heavy] with Codex Grey [don't skip this step]. When drybrushing the base rim ensure all the strokes of all the colours used are up and down. Then drybrush with Fortress Grey, Stone Grey [Vallejo colour that is a very realistic brown grey, unlike an GW has]. I then dilute some white and apply it to the edge and down the side in strokes to give a true concrete look. Then I paint the black lines for the grooves, make sure they are thick enough to contain an inside stroke of Shadow Grey at the rim edge. This give the grooves some depth. After the lines have dried I paint lines of Fortress Grey around the black lines. I then do a thin line, adjacent to the black line with SW Grey. Lastly I highlight the edge/rim of each line with white.' Description of how I do the bases from a post on DakkaDakka.

I like the feel of City Fight and decided to do the bases for the army in in a ruined city style. The bases are time consuming but they do look good with the models on them. I also decided that my Fire Warriors would have banners [like dynastic Japan] depicting unit designation. I did all the banners prior to even seeing the codex [too bad for me 'cause I have an extra 12 I will not be using].

So, I received 2 boxes of Fire Warriors, 6 boxes of Crisis Suits, 2 boxes of Broadside Suits, 2 blisters of Pathfinders, ltd. ed. Ethereal, Devilfish APC and a pile of drones on October 3rd. I will receive the rest, 2 more boxes of Fire Warriors and a broadside in a week.

Final army list.

The bit of 'fluff' submitted with the army list can be found here. Nothing ground breaking in the realm of Sci-Fi but a bit of insight into my army.

In two short days I have cleaned, assembled and primed all the models I received. I have also converted a 5 man squad of XV-15 Stealth Suits which is the first unit I painted.

6 Man Pathfinders unit

The first item in my army to receive the colours of my hunter cadre is the Devilfish APC.

I decided that I should do all the drones at once.

My Shas'o and body guard are done. I did them a bit ago but wanted to get some work done on the Fire Warriors before I posted pics. The 3 Crisis Suits will eventually become an Elite choice and I will do 3 more for my commander and guard. I was limited by time constraints so they are not as high qualityas I would have liked.

The Fire Warriors are finished! I did all 36 at once and while it was a tough go I am happy with the way that they turned out.

Aun Fal'Shia Lo'Xi [Ethereal]

Broadside suits