Leaked Images: New Tau vs Raven Guard

This morning brought news of a particularly exciting supplement for me. Tau vs Raven Guard: My original army against one that I've been building for some time now. It looks like a Stormclaw style "Space Marines vs" box. If it is, I'm almost certainly going to get it. Looking at the minis, there's a bit of redundancy in the things I already own (like the pathfinders & stealth team), but I still need the Piranha, & all the Space Marine side.

The new Tau include a great looking new Ethereal. It looks like an updated version of Aun Shi. I like it.

The Breachers are also neat looking. Sure It's basically just a new helmet & weapons, but I still like the angular design

There appears to be a new fortification called the Tidewall Rampart. Maybe a heavy duty Aegis?

The Raven Guard side has only one new model, a captain with a grav pistol. Not super Raven Guardy, but not a bad design. I haven't been buying minis for a while, but I'll 

I'm currently in high school classrooms & at college, working on my Masters in Teaching so life's been a bit hectic, which is why I've been away from the blog for a while, but I'm updating where I can. I have a few things that I'm working on slowly, & I'll post those when I get the chance.

Take care all.

~Muninn

Days 27-29: Mega Nob, Warp Spider, and Vespid

So July is over, and I didn't make my goal of completing 31 minis in 31 days. I did manage to finish 30 minis, if you include the extra SoB & Seeker, but it wasn't what I was trying to do.

So what happened?

There were a few things I hadn't anticipated. My wife went to a teaching conference in another state for 5 days, leaving me with the kids. That wasn't an insurmountable challenge, but it did mean I had to be a lot more active at night, during my usual painting time. Then, when she was home, she was home. In May our work hours line up in such a way that we have relatively few waking hours together, so I use that time to paint as well. With her home I spent a lot less of my daytime painting as well. Add to that the fact I was taking a few surprisingly tough 5-week classes, & 5 days of family vacation, and you lose a ton of hobby time.

I imagine it didn't help that I also had more large minis, and HQ/Lord characters than I've had in past years, and those are a lot more detailed/time consuming.

Oh well, there's always next year.

In the meantime I slowed my pace a bit, and I've been completing the minis I'd been intending to paint in July. The "27th's" mini was a commission I took on a while back as part of a deal from splitting the Stormclaw box. We couldn't decide who would get the rulebook, and I offered to paint a mini of his choice in exchange for the book. He gave me this Meganob and asked that I paint him red & orange.

This guy is really scratch-built. I don't know where the bits come from, what the weapons are, or how it should look at the end of the day, so I figured I'd just ork it up, then add battle damage. I think it turned out pretty well, but I haven't gotten any feedback from the owner yet.

A long long time ago when I first learned about 40k, I wanted to build an Eldar army. One my my friends, Abusepuppy (who now writes for Frontline), was keen to help me, and I was immediately drawn to Warp Spiders. For me, they were like the poster-boys of the Eldar. I bought a few blisters, but it never went far past that. They have a sleek look, but I've never had a lot of luck painting them. I always try to paint them using a real spider as inspiration, but it never really worked out. To date though, this is probably my most successful stab at it.

Warp Spiders can get really busy really fast, so I wanted to keep it as uncomplicated as possible. All the cloth/underarmor was light grey, all body armor was green (except for the shins where I felt it needed a little black to balance it out), metal was silver, gun/shell black, & energy/gems were purple. Ideally, this kept it simpler, and cohesive. I feel like the green & light grey work well together, so it's pretty successful. I never know what to do with the gun barrel, so I was pretty content with my purple energy dots solution as well. 

While trying to find another Xeno race I remembered the oft-maligned Vespid. I had a plan for this guy, but I really didn't have the time. I intended to paint it up like a wasp. Yellow armor with black sections where the plates meet to give it a really insectoid vibe, but that was going to take way too long, so I played around with grey with a few organic speckles. It wasn't my original vision, but it was awfully fast.

I'm going to have to revisit this guy in the next few days, since I noticed the Tau symbol in incomplete. I might fix that next time I bring my paints down.

I have the last two finished as well. but I thought I'd do it in two posts to keep it from getting too wordy.

Days 27 & 28: Orc boy, & Tau Fire Warrior

Alrighty. Now that I've updated my Tyrant Guard shots, I can post these:

 First off. one of the Orc boyz from the front line of my O&G mob. I've painted the 20+ orcs that stand in the back rows, but I'm taking more time with the front.  The guys in the back will die first, and be lost in the crowd (plus they only cost 8 pts or so). But I feel like the front line should be painted well since they're the focus of attention.

I'm particularly pleased with the decapitated guy. He really looks dead to me.

Now it wouldn't be May Mini Madness without one of my white Tau. Its an easy enough scheme to accomplish with some white primer and a steady hand. So here he is.

To complete my Tau army I'm gonna want a Riptide. Although I'm not sure how well the white scheme will work on such a a large mini with flat-open spaces. I'd probably have to fiddle around with it.

More later today.

~Muninn

Building an $8 Ethereal

I'm a big fan of kitbashing. It's fun to take two (or more) disparate models and merging them into something all it's own.

My most recent conversion is a Tau Ethereal that cost me all of $8.09 (not including the bits I already owned). It's not quite finished, but it's really close. It's taller than your average Fire Warrior by half a head, but I'm good with that (IIRC, Ethereals are closer to Water Caste in stature, so a little taller anyways). Up to this point all I've done it carved away plastic to make it fit into place. The greenstuff will come further down the road.

The majority of the body is the Celestial wizard from the Empire's Celestial Hurricanum model. I modified the staff a bit by adding a topper from the Empire Wizard box (I also removed some of the fancy gilding & details to make it appear more sci-fi).

I cut away the wizard chest and replaced it with a standard Fire Warrior chest bit. To make it fit properly I had to cut away part of it's back, and trim off the belt. The head is one of the three new bits from the Pathfinder box set.

I'm still on the fence about which head to use. I like the "yelling" head, but the one I have placed on it currently looks more contemplative.

There are a few more small things to do before it's finished.
1. Carve the feet into hooves
2. Greenstuff the cloth to fit seamlessly with the chest armor
3. Greenstuff the belt buckle to be the symbol for the Tau Empire
4. Paint (after I'm done with my current commission)

Hope you like this, and that it gives you a few ideas for your own conversions.

~Muninn

Day 24: XV25 Stealth Suit

I'm deep in the weeds at the moment.

So Yeah. I'm way behind. It's Tuesday and I'm just now posting Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's minis. I bit off a bit more than I could chew by trying to mass produce a bunch of Tau Fire Warriors from start to finish. I'd forgotten how time intensive it can be to line a white tau mini.

I managed to finish the test mini for my stealth suit unit, but I'm still working on the rest of the Tau. Hopefully I'll have some of them done by Thursday.  Either way. Here's the Stealthy one.

I decided to extrapolate the white & red Fire Warrior scheme for these suits. I figure their cloth undersuits should remain red for consistency with the rest of the army. Then I painted the rest of the mini as dark sub-armor, and white exo-armor to help break up the mini and add some contrast.

~Muninn

Tau Pathfinders: Box Breakdown

The new Tau boxes have been in short supply, so I only just got the Pathfinders the other day. This is another box chock-full of goodies. Lots of bits, plenty of extras to go around, some nice conversion possibilities too.

Here are the Pathfinder sprues. A total of 2, with 134 individual bits. There are a lot of small, easily lost pieces here, so be mindful of that when you start clipping.

There are two general types of minis the box builds: Dudes & Droids (which sounds like the name of an alternative lifestyle magazine in Star Wars). In the interest of packing as much into each sprue as possible they aren't all clumped together, but much of the bit placement is intuitive.

The two things I'm happiest to see here are the three bare tau heads. Before this there hasn't been a lot of character in the plastics, so it's nice to see a bit of variety and emotion.

With a little modification I think the center one would be good for an Ethereal conversion.

Dude bits:
10 Helmeted Heads
3 Bare Heads
10 Chests
10 Legs (2 of which are kneeling)
10 Aerials
8 held Pulse Carbines (8 matching arms)
2 loose Pulse Carbines
1 Pulse Carbine with straps
10 Markerlights
3 Ion Rifles (3 matching arms, & 3 muzzles)
3 Rail Rifles (3 matching arms, & 3 muzzles)
2 arms to hold loose Pulse Carbine
4 arms holding items (sensor, clip, aerial, binoculars)
1 arm with empty hand
1 Shas'ui Backpack
1 Bonding Knife
16 accessories (pouches, grenades, sensors, pulse pistol, holstered pistol)

Drone bits:
2 standard drone domes
3 drone aerials
2 gun drone Pulse Carbines
1 gun drone base 
1 drone markerlight
1 markerlight drone base
1 pulse accelerator drone base
1 pulse accelerator drone panel
1 shield drone base
1 recon drone dome
1 recon drone cap
1 recon drone Burst Cannon (2 bits total)
1 recon drone base
1 recon drone sensor

All told, some good variety, plus if you have a tau army it'll give you bits for

Painting Competition: the "Scourge of Pech" Complete

I managed to complete the whole thing at midnight, the day before it was due. I wasn't going to be able to turn it in on Saturday since I'd be working in another city, but the game store was still doing it's Friday Magic Draft, so I ran it over. I know I say this every time, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I've never tried something like this before, particularly modeling armor, and it all came together exceptionally well.

I'd kept the scope of my project a secret, so I was happy with the overwhelmingly positive response.

As you can see, the colors balance out pretty well, and to me, it feels well balanced. I went for that ruddy skin-tone red instead of a fire-engine red, so the green and red don't give off a Christmas vibe.

I'm also happy that the Kroot itself stands out compared to the marine. If you're gonna do a Kroot challenge, you want it to be the center of attention.

 More good news, I wasn't the only entry! Three other painters submitted their models, although none of them converted, or when to the godawful effort I did (one of those painters is a professional, he has a card for his services & everything).

Now that this mini is done, I'm going to have to sit out the next competition in order to judge. Once a painter accumulates three wins (finishing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place) you have to take a break. I think it's fair, since it helps mix up the pool of contestants, and means the same 3 people aren't winning every time.

Just because I'm not competing for the next few months doesn't mean I'm not going to be keeping busy though, Oh no.

Starting Wednesday I'm going to be taking 10 weeks off work to take care of the twins, which means I'll have a bit of time on my hands when not changing diapers or feeding screaming little mouths. I have things in the works, including a Judge Dredd/Commissar commission, some army work, and a few bits & bobs along the way.

More when I have it.

~Muninn

Painting Competition: Almost there

True to form, I'll be painting this thing until the last minute.

The good news is that I made major headway over my weekend. The scenic base and space marine are complete, as are the kroot's skin, armor, & many details.  Bad news is that there are still a few hours left before it's done.

Here's the finished Space Marine. When coming up with the scene I decided I wanted to have the marine come from a chapter with a particular hatred of Dark Eldar (since the kroot was clearly working for them). It fell to either the White Scars or Salamanders, & I figured the battle damage would show up better on a green marine than a white one.

Here's the (99.9%) finished product:

More bad news is that, as of yesterday, *no one else has entered a mini.* So there's a chance that I'm going to all this effort with absolutely no one else in the constest. That might stick in my craw.

~Muninn

Painting Competition: Kroot base

Slowly but surely I'm working on my competition entry.

It's tough to balance all my responsibilties, but I'm managing to get a little work in every day. Deadline is Saturday, and I'm about to start my weekend, so I dearly hope that I'll be able to make some major headway in my painting.

You might be wondering what's taking so long since most of the modeling was done over a week ago. Well truth be told I was only showing you part of the final model. The whole entry is quite a bit bigger.

The whole scene is actually a duel between my Kroot mercenary and an injured Salamander. The bit with the kroot is blended in with the rest of the scene, and magnetized so it's detachablility should be hidden nicely. I've got most of the base complete, with just a white drybrushing and wash to go until it's finished. The Space marine has a ways to go still, and I haven't even started on the kroot itself.

I should probably prioritize the kroot, since it's the whole point of the contest. I can't help dragging my heels though since I'm going back and forth on the paint scheme. I've been planning to paint it's skin in a blue-green (Incubi Darkness base up through a light blue-grey), but looking at it now I don't think it'll be menacing enough, and likely won't stand out next to the prone Salamander. Maybe I'll go back to a ruddy red skin like my Fallen. It'd balance nicely, I just need to remember what I did to get that color....

~Muninn

Tau Codex cover art is here

Finally, over a week after the first White Dwarf Tau leaks showed up we have the codex cover art (albeit in German). I snagged this over at Faeit 212. I probably would've preferred a Fire Warrior or Stealth Suit, but I think it looks pretty good.

 Here are a few other shots from the German WD as well.

~Muninn

Even more Tau leaks! Broadside, & Characters!

Just got a hot batch of pics taken from Advanced Tau Tactica & they're beauties!

~Muninn

Painting Competition: Kroot update

I've gotten some pretty good progress on my Scourge/Kroot conversion. I've been able to get about 45 minutes of modeling in every day between feedings or after my wife has taken the babies to bed.

Here's the GSed armor as it was last week. I've cleaned it up significantly since. You can see in an effort to make him appear grizzled I've added a few scars around his head (There'll be even more on the rest of his body).

Here's where I am as of this morning.

The arms are only pinned at the moment, & still need to be GSed properly, and the head isn't in place either. The head will probably be painted separately since it's set in an awkward spot between the arms and wings.

The rifle & arms were a bear. What you see is a combination of three guns cobbled together, and two mismatched arms. It took a lot of time patience & pinning to get everything where I wanted it (I accidentally put my drill through the end of the gun, but that can be fixed). I still have to GS the shoulders, but it should be just about right.

Yorrik was kind enough to give me some of his Dark Eldar troop bits, & I've tried to put them to good use. You can see I applied a kneepad to the bent leg, and gave the kroot a DA loincloth. Both of those bits had to be carved out of a trooper's legs, but they add a nice bit of color to the mini.

I have two more weeks left til the mini is due, so I think I'm right on course.

More once I'm further along.

~Muninn