Finished - Tau Baracuda Base

I have had the base of the Tau Barracuda staring at me for about two months. I knew I wanted to do a more scenic base than just sand, but eventually phoned it in a bit. Two small walls, some razor wire and a land mine/hatch. I will add some patches of grass to it and many of my other minis in the future. 

The goal was to make a base with a soldier looking up at the flyer. I can always add that later, but for now it is done. 

Finished - Tau Barracuda

Finishing the Barracuda was a giant task. I had to relearn how to paint in the my Tau style all over. It had been way too long since I had painting an icy blue Tau of this size. I finished the Tetras and Remoras but they are not the same as painting something this big. Really the only practice that I had was the Sunshark and the Riptide and those were super long ago. I had to invent new ways of painting this scheme.

I sprayed the mini white then, rather than basecoating Fenrisian Grey, I used Celestra Gery insted. I then painted on the areas that I wants Fenrisian Grey. Next up was washing with Drakenhof Nightshade the touching up with Fenrisian Grey. That gave me the a good base to work from. After that it was just dialing in the amount of Celestra Grey that I wanted showing before a final highlight of pure white on the hard edges.

I used a broken line on the white highlights but tried to make it look like shiny glare rather than jagged metal, I also had to highlight rounded edges to create the illusion of reflection.

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

Things are coming along with this giant project. It is hard to see but I have all of my base colors and most of the highlighting done. Really it is just detail work at this point. Unfortunately, that is the part that takes the longest time and is the most frustrating part. 

I am close to being done with the main body. The weapons and accessories may take a while though.

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

The magnets are in and the nut is glued into the bottom of the flyer. I got my basecoat down of Fenresian Grey and have started shading with Drakenhof Nightshade. I am having to do some of the painting piecemeal due to the complexity of the mini. 

I have also done some interesting conversions. I have the secondary weapons magnetized in such a way that I will be able to swap the secondary weapons out as needed. The downside is that because of the way that I chose to do it and a few other reasons (like breaking one of the cupolas on the side that holds drones when trying to pound in the nut on the bottom), I will have to glue the drone turrets on the side in place. I am a little sad as I won't be able to rotate them to shoot someone behind me but the benefits outweigh the losses. For instance, these rotating turrets always end up rubbing off the paint where they contact the cupola. That alone would bug me more than not being able to rotate the turrets.

Look closely at the bit at the top of the picture. The Ion Cannon comes standard on the Barracuda. I have ideas to increase the points cost and let it use the overcharge mode that lays down S8 AP3 templates. I also envisioned a "tank hunter" variant as I talked about in my previous post (and likely every post about this mini from here out). I loosely based this idea on the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, a plane that was built around the GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon, a big bad phallus if there ever was one.

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

I am taking a bit of a giant project. Normally I hate large vehicles as they take too long to complete. I have been putting off starting this Forge World Tau Barracuda for a while now. I needed to figure out a few things. First, how to properly mount the ship on a stand. Second, hot to magnetize and convert the ship. 

The Barracuda does not come with a sane way to mount it. It predates the current flight stands and only had a randomly-sized hole in the middle of the bottom. I could use a brass rod to hold it up but that would not reliably hold this beefy piece of resin.  What I decided to do was to get a wooden base from the Christian-run hobby store and some nut and bolts from the hardware store and make my own base. I drilled though the base then widened the hole from 1/8" to 1/4" with a spiral bit being careful to keep my hole perpendicular to the base. After that I drove a partially threaded bolt through the bottom and Gorilla Glued it into place. After trimming up the predictable overflow, I packed the hole with super glue just to be sure. 

Finished - Tau Remora

Also from the China recasters, are these Tau Remoras. They retail for $25 each not including shipping which is insane. The Recasts are not awful. The detail is good, the lines are nice and deep and the wings are all almost straight. For $25 shipped, I got two Remoras which is fine by me. Depending on how they actually perform for me on the battlefield, I may be getting more. 

At 110 points each, they are expensive to fit into small games. They also eat up a very valuable Fast Attack slot int eh Tau army. That means less these days, but I tend to think in the old Force Org chart even in these Unbound days. For only 20 more points, you can get a Barracuda, which is superior in my opinion. 

Finished - Tau Tetras

Ugh, I just wrote a huge write up for these minis and I lost it. So frustrated now. 

I went into a lot of detail on how I paint the Tau minis and now I don't feel like rewriting it.

When I lost the document I was writing about hard edge highlighting. So many people, when they try it, just trace the edges in one solid line. (I tried to find some examples but gave up) With hard edge highlighting, less is truly more. You want to put the least amount of paint down needed to achieve the illusion of a three dimensional surface. On my Tau flyer, I used too much in some places, but even then I was still figuring out how to paint such large minis with this technique/pattern.

The mini was $20 each and the paint was pretty good for me *8 of 10) and detailed. I value the paint at $60 because of the detail work on the drivers. Total replacement cost is $100. 

On the table - Tau Tetras

Also in the package from the Chinese recasters was these two Tetras. Forge World pricing and shipping as well as lackluster rules in previous editions made them not worth the expense. Before X-Wing took over my gaming world, I had a game of 40k with Charles and he brought Tetras. 

They dominated the battlefield. The Heavy Markerlights were able to get 4 or more hits each turn. The unit is amazingly maneuverable and able to get into position quickly as compared to the static nature of Pathfinders. Even for AV 10 vehicles, they are tough thanks to their special rules and cover. I fell in love and had to have them. 

As far as painting, I am doing them in my standard "ice blue" Tau colors which is proving difficult to paint at the same time as other projects. I am noticing that red and brown paint is contaminating my rinsing water and sticking to my brushes. When I go to paint the white/blue colors on the Tau, I can tell that my paint is discolored. It is so frustrating that I have starting to keep a third was pot on my painting table: one for colored paint, one for metallic paint and one for light paint. This would be fine except I also have a water cup, a soda and a beer on my desk. Sometimes, I get confused as to which one is which.

Recasts Revisited

The frenzy over Fallout 4 has died down a bit and I can start to focus on the real hobby of 40k again.

To get me excited about painting, I used some spare cash from X-mas bonus to put in an order to the newly renamed Yoymart, Modelocenter. I put in two orders into Yoymart and was mostly satisfied. They did send me the wrong mini once. It was a giant pain talking to someone with broken English during a customer service issue. They eventually sent the correct mini but I had to pay for it.

As far as quality, they are about where you would expect for recasts. Not quite as good as metal but almost on par with Finecast. They take a lot of cleanup and care but when painted are indistinguishable from legit minis.

The prices are all under what GW and FW are but some are close. The Emperor's Children Dreadnought body goes for 30 pounds ($43 USD) and Modelocenter only had it for $30. Not a great discount but acceptable. Tot total for the GW minis would have been $117.50 and $194.64 for the Forge World stuff for a total of $312.14 retail. That is about 35% off. Again not great and I wish I had done this math beforehand.

Really it is not so bad. I probably could have gotten all of these things for the same or better price on Bartertown, but waiting for what I want to be offered stinks and things are rarely in good condition. This is an acceptable discount for being able to order what I want and get it in new condition.

I took this opportunity to order some minis that I have never found at a good price like Primaris Psyker (not a stellar discount and perhaps a bad purchace) and Crypteks. I piked up the DE Sslyth for a Slaanesh Chaos Lord conversion later. I only need one more Thunderwolf for the foam, but will maybe convert the other two.

I have always wanted Tau Remora fighters. They have been on the short list for every Yoymart order and I finally pulled the trigger. I used to poo poo the Tetras until I faced them. They are highly mobile and highly resistant markerlight vehicles. It is insane not to take them with Tau. They are both going to look amazing in the color scheme that I have chosen to repaint my Tau in.

Finished - Tau Etherial Conversion

I made this Tau Ethereal from an Island of Blood High Elf Mage. I traded for the base mini on Bartertown for a song ($5 if I remember right) and uses a Fire Warrior head. Carving the Elf head out was harder than expected and if I was going to convert the mini properly, I would have shaved off a finger of each hand to make it a real Tau. Unfortunately, that idea did not occur until I was already painting. 

As a conversion it works great. The only mistep that is not correctable is the magic smoke that the Mage is standing on. Tau don't cast any magic and him standing on that crap only make him a better target. 

I had some problems deciding on how it wanted to paint the ice blue that I painted the rest of the Tau army in on this Ethereal. I did not know how white or how blue I wanted the fabric and went back and forth several times. I think the end result does not look unduly out of place next to the other finished Tau though. 

Finished - Long Strike

 I am taking a short break from the Ork Wrecker (which is proving to be pretty frustrating) and painted up a Tau that I got in trade from Bartertown. I am keeping up the theme of panting named characters in unique colors. I wanted Longstrike red but at the last moment, changed it from blood red to a maroon red like Flesh Tearers. I think it turned out pretty well. I would give it a 7 of 10 for my skill. On CMoN it might score a 5 or 6. 

I had particular trouble with the skin. I am still unsure how to make blue skin look lifelike. I tried giving them red insides on the mouth and nasal slit, but now I just think it looks funny. It works on this mini because it ties into the red armor. I don't know what I am going to do if I have to paint more tau flesh. 

Finished - Tau Darkstrider

Took a quick break from all those damn Orks to paint up Darkstrider. I decided that I was going to paint all of the Tau special characters in unique colors rather than the ice blue color scheme the rest of the army has. I knew that with a name like Darkstrider, I was going to pick a dark color pallet. I went with black jumpsuit and dark blue armor. I took a leaf out of the Dark Eldar book and tried to use the "black as a color" scheme. I did not start with black on the gun and armor but did start with a very dark blue then wash it black. After a little touch up, I did some hard edge highlight with a bright blue (I think Regal Blue).

I am happy with how he turned out. I thought that the mini turned out overall too dark so I tried to make the base darker than the mini. It did not work as well as I thought I would but turned out ok. He certainly stands out next to the rest of the army. 

Finished - Tau Flyer

I kinda wanted the theme from Air Wolf to play when the post opened, but I have no desire to be that annoying. 

I bought this mini 3 weeks ago off eBay for $45 including shipping. I assembled most of it in a week and painted it in two. I am still working on some of the bits like the turrets, but they are minor things. The real challenge was getting the its to line up so I could make both of the two kits. 

On the Table Now - Tau Flyer

Finished

I have not been updating but I have been painting. Recently finished are:

St Celestine

A custom TH/SS Terminator Captain based on Lysander

A custom Chaplain

A second Crisis Suit

A SB/PF Sargent/Captain

A metal Scout with missile launcher

A Dreadknight and two weapons

Various Crisis Suit weapons

Each of these rally deserves their own post but it is unlikely that they will get it. 

On the table now - Tau Riptide

Just the weapon, jetpacks and some finishing touches and this Riptide will be ready to go. 

Finished -Tau Commander

This bad boy deserves an epic write up, but this post will have to do for now. This is really a Farsight model but I repositioned the arms, to make a regular commander. I think it is superior to the basic suit and on par with the regular Commander model.

MSRP for this mini is $50 and the paintjob is worth at least that. $100 is the value for this guy. There are also conversions and magnets involved valued at $25 for a grand total of $125. 

Finished - Tau Gun Drones

Just finished these drones. I thought the large flat surface would present a challenge, but it turned out really well. It was a good transition from painting Firewarriors to Crisis Suits. 

I did a little conversion on them by flipping the carbines from vertical to horizontal. Man, I hope they still fit in the the cupolas of the Devilfish.

Further EDIT: They fit in the Devilfish just fine and look sickening.

Even Further EDIT: I have realized that the Drones need more red on them. I may just put a few bands on the antennas or maybe they need some striped on the dome. Can't decide.

I'll wait to value these drones when I have finished more of them . They are hard to place a value on as they tend to come with other minis. They are also really hard ot paint and take a long time. Truly a conundrum. 

Finished - Tau Crisis Suit

Done! This weirdo has 4 magnets in him and is ready for the table.

... you know, after I mount him properly on a base.

Retail value for this guy is $25 and the paintjob is about that as well. There are also some pretty significant conversions and magnets in this mini that I value at $20 for a total of $70. When I finish more Crisis Suits I'll post them in the TMM CV. For now I am going to skip posting with that tag for this mini. 

On the table now - Tau Crisis suit and Drone

Just a quick post for now. I am working my way through rehabing my Tau army and the white and black color scheme is proving very challenging to get right. For the most part, I am happy with how they are turning out, but it is requiring some adaptation to my painting style to get the desired results.