On the painting table ... Tau-riffic

Warhammer 40,000 - Over the course of my hobby I've painted just about every race in the 40K universe however somehow I managed to avoid painting Tau. The is until now.

The Tau are an army that never really appealed to me. I don't play against them regularly so I have mostly a general overview of what they can do. Which is pretty much wipe units off the board in the shooting and assault phase.

The force I've been painting currently has two crisis suits, six stealth suits, one riptide and fourteen marker light drones. The anime inspired look of this force does look really sharp. I believe I'll have a few more drones and bigger suits that will join this force at a later date.

The paint style on these is a total departure for me. I don't typically like to paint white or sharp clean lines so this was a new experience for me. I was asked to match the paint style that Duncan Rhodes showcased on the Warhammer TV channel. In that he painted a Ghost Keel. The tips in the video were very useful. For white I typically start with a celestial grey and work my way up to white from a gray primer.  Ulthuan Grey over a white base with White Scar edge highlight is pretty clever.

These grays (I know grey/gray gets confusing the joys of writing about a British Company right?) are warmer which works well with the earth shade wash rather than the standard black. By applying the wash only to the recessed areas and corner with the lines of the suit converge these are much cleaner looking that my standard over wash that I do on marines. Which takes a bit longer to do correctly but the end result is really nice.

The majority of the drones are converted from guns drones with a mold of the existing sensor portion of the drones that came with the stealth suits. While not a perfect match I think they get the job done and in a pinch could be called out as gun drones.

I'm looking forward to painting more Tau units in the future and hopefully seeing more success when facing them across the table.