Tau army

I got a box of tau firewarriors just because I thought they looked cool, I had no real idea on how to paint them. So because of that i just glued them togheter and it took a while before I started painting them.

At this time I was painting orks and dwarfs to good results with the wash-technique, so for these I wanted to try something different. The idea that I went with was to paint the armour in flat layers of a bright color, contrast that with a really dark color in all the crevasses. Then another round with the bright color to clean it up. Cloth and/or secondary armour was done the same way but with a color somewhere between light and dark. Finally some contrasting (red) details and a few highlights with the base colors mixed with a little white,

This technique requires a lot more skill to get good results, and the problem that I have had is that the paints were a bit to thick, it does not show that much on tabletop but it is visible somewhat in the pictures.

Here are three of the warriors:

The colors were:
Armour – space wolves grey
Cloth – shadow gray
Crevasses- badab black and chaos black
Mixed in for highlight – skull white
Base – codex grey
Details – blood red

So how many of there do you need, I painted the full whole box of 12 and then I got another one, for a total of 24

Directly after they were painted I went and got a bunch of stealth suits, one of the best looking units available for this army IMO, they are painted in the same way: Here are the two test units, the paint is still a bit thick but I think they look nice:

I felt that just three lacked a bit of punch so I got three more for a total of six:

The stealth suits are extremely cool so I wanted more suits, I did not really like the look of the regular Crisis suit so I looked around and found some replacements on Forge World. I may have gone a bit overboard with these:

All three of these are the model Shas’o r’Myr, with the load out: plasma rifle and Fusion Blaster (commonly known as Helios). The posing and the painting is not perfect, but it is cool enough.

At the same time I made these, and now I finally solved the issue with the thick paint. These are also from forgeworld, a completely new look for the broadsides:

So now it was time for some leaders for the army, I could not find any of the etheral models that I liked and by chance there was a discussion about the myriad of usages for the Empire Wizard kit. I realized these would make nice etherals, here is the result:

At first I did not like the look of the pathfinders, I just thought that the pants looked silly and I looked for alternatives but after a while I gave up and bought some anyway, now after I painted them I feel that they look ok:

I also painted up the various drones that you get in the different kits:

Here is a photo of the full army as it looks at the moment:

Click here for a larger photo.