A Farewell Tau Arms

What's that coming over the hill?

The final Tau suit is pretty massive. The KV128 Stormsurge has feet about the same size as its pilots, so it's a great centrepiece for the army. It's also massive enough that I decided to use spray paints for as much of the basecoating as possible. For dazzle pattern camo (like the other big tanks in the army), this meant some masking tape.

The Mummy Retauns

This mostly worked very well - black undercoat, then stripes of Mournfang Brown for the first layer. I wanted a second of white, though, and that went awry. Spray paint is easily baffled by masking tape, leaving sharp edges. I used a brush for my Rakarth Flesh white undercoat though, with triangular tape borders, and the bristles easily got under the edges of the tape in several places. The lines were a bit rough as a result, although I could fix that later on easily enough.

The Rakarth bits got Pallid Wychflesh and White Scar finishes. Black got Eshin Grey and Longbeard drybrushing. Most of the Mournfang was edged with Skrag Brown, with some Tau Light Ochre sections painted on top, then TLO drybrushing for the dark brown bits and Ushabti Bone for the TLO sections. 

Battle damage mostly done with a sponge, Rhinox Hide and Abaddon Black as a finishing stage. 

But some also modelled in with a blade during construction. Deliberately, obviously. I'm not that clumsy. 

Why do the Tau even bother with gun turrets on their buildings? This damn thing is about seventy percent gun by body mass. It's like someone made a huge robot out of the NRA.

That's three missile systems right there, on just one arm.

No drones at least. Or arms. Just more guns. On which they've balanced extra guns, then hung some more underneath. And stuck a turret awkwardly under one of those.

The turret can rotate and elevate, and has a choice of twin-linked guns - flamer (depicted here), Burst cannon (elswehere) and Airburst Frag Launcher. 

Frag Launcher. Or tennis ball practice machine? 

The main gun (yeah, we hadn't even got that far yet) is a huge great plasma battery thing. I've chosen the option of having it cooling down after firing, and I wish I'd stuck the vent doors on afterwards. Trying to paint a heat effect through that tiny slit door was not a clever idea. 

Still, could have come out worse. 

In game, this bugger can set itself up with the anchors on its feet, then choose to forgo its next movement phase and fire twice instead. Somebody somewhere will have tried to stick it on top of a Tidewall Shieldwall by now, claiming that allows it to shoot four times. I know I would.

Mind where you're treading.

You can choose to model it with retracted anchors, but I went with the high heels on. Raiding the bits box netted me some spare dreadnaught parts left over from the Crypt Angels, so there's some nice dead red marines underfoot.

The coupé look is brilliant. Brilliantly stupid. It transforms the whole 'toweringly deadly walker' look into a mobile basketball hoop for grenades. I suppose there's some comfort in the fact that most people just can't throw that high. Hope they have a raincover. Or some foot drains, at least.

Nice painting it, all the same. I did the pilots separately and glued them in afterwards, otherwise trying to paint the controls would have been even worse than it already was. 

The spotter was lurking in the bottom of the Tidewall box, not sure where he came from. But I'd feel remiss leaving him out of the army, so he made a nice size comparison point for this week.

"Wait! These are just sterescope images of Paris!"

And that's it for the Tau! Er, that's it for now, anyway, as General Kas likes to point out to me when I claim to have finished an army for him. I'm sure there's a chance more will end up in the queue at some point. There's already four more models this size slowly trudging their way from the Rylstone Manufactorium for the future. Not Tau, but then Tau seem a popular army for GW, and I'm sure more of their stuff will make it into the army over time. Next, it's time for a palette cleanser, and then some more 40K.

"Whoever they were, they were far more dangerous that the original occupants realised. Proceed carefully, commander, the Brexiteers could still be out there."