Tau you see me

Tau you don't.

The Ghostkeel is another fine bit of GW manga-nese. Chunky, futuristic and covered in weird bulges that are probably full of very advanced technology. Or possibly just look cool for the sake of it, hard to say. This particular one needs a bath.

The plan was to make it look like it's in the process of decloaking, something that I've seen various different takes on across the internet. Paint it black with an electrical effect border to mark the change, is one, or match it to the base. I decided on the latter.

The mimetic camo is done with sand, basically, glued on with watered-down PVA. It needed two layers, the first was a bit patchy and you could see too much of the thing's skeleton underneath. The second layer still isn't perfect, but that's good - don't want it to turn into a sand sculpture, after all.

I painted the chassis first, of course, although I didn't do the layers on the bottom. (Actually, you got me, this whole exercise was just an excuse not to paint any more Tau Light Ochre on the damn thing.)

In keeping with many larger GW kits, there's a ton of unseen detail. The cockpit opens, and although there's no way you can see all the interior screens and controls past the pilot's arms, I only went and painted them anyway before I knew how it would all fit together. Wasted effort, rather.

The stealth drones go with it, apparently projecting the camo on to it if I get the fluff right. So similar colours on their projectors, which are conversions because I botched removing them from the sprue. Somehow I mistook the bobbly bits on the front for sprue attachments, and chopped them half-off, so they looked lopsided and weird. Their new lenses are taken from alternative bits that you could decorate the head or arms with instead.

Elsewhere, I decided I liked painting Keldan so much I did it again. This one's for Kas too (as all the Tau are), so I've done him in Dark Elf colours. That way, he can be used in the Delf army when he's not sagaing his way through a dungeon.

More Tau next week, but also some battle reports - the inaugeral use of my Kraken Mats frozen city is but a couple of days away. Time to relearn the rules for AoS...