Hi All,

It takes no effort to realise we have been bereft of new tau goodies for awhile. In the accessible sense at least, Forgeworld items are still a luxury for many. So I have become curious, particularly when I was painting some Warhammer figures recently, what others have been up to since there is a dearth of models for the Tau range. This sticky is a communal thread.

Personally? I've been eyeing off 15mm Sci Fi figures, there is some genius work out there by Mad Robot Miniatures, Khurasan, Critical Mass Games, Art Crime Productions, 15mmEU and Rebel Minis to name a few without spilling my overly full bookmark folder.

Khurasan Felids, Ground Zero Games USNC & NAC with Harook from Mad Robot.



There's aliens aplenty and a variety of tanks and AFVs. I'm pretty much looking at webstores as I type this.

So what have you been distracting yourself with hobby wise?

Some direct links for the kitty-people would be appreciated!

As for me, my focus has been on making cool stuff for my Chaos Marine army (the newest update can be seen here), which includes finishing WYSIWYGing my Havoc team, the Rat Ogre-based Daemon Prince, painting up troops, and finishing my Obliterator sculpts. I've also been workign on neat add-ons like combi-melta champions/lords, and a True-scale Warsmith that I could use as a Lord or possibly even a custom ruleset in Apoc/friendly games.

Lately I've just been working on my army to get it Apocalypse. I also have started a Britannia naval fleet in Dystopian wars but now that I think about it my models are currently scattered across the seven seas so to speak. I need to hunt them done and finish them

Starting a 2K space wolves army in 11 days (B-Day, also getting dreadfleet)
Mainly, Inquisitor 54mm (buying 1/32 grunts)

well, started painting the armageddon pattern basilisk for my gue'vesa. but don't paint that often nowdays, so it will take a while to get finished

Currently working on a Death Korps of Krieg army, up to about 1250 fully painted, aiming for about 1500 plus flyers and superheavies. Hopefully by the time I finish it, we'll have a new Tau codex and I'll be able to buy Tau stuff without worrying about it being obsolete in a few months. I'd consider other games, but really, none of them have the model quality or awesome vehicles that FW offers.



(Also, your thread title needs to be changed to "what have you been up TO lately".)

I've not been up to a lot, I painted a huge painting by numbers painting,wich I liked at first because you needn't pay attention to details, but it got boring fast so I won't be doing that again. Recently I spent my hobby time on thinking about cool conversions, I know, kind of lame to not actually make them... but hey, I did start painting my stealth shas'vre
Maybe I'll get myself to writing some fluff one day, too.
Kern

I've been working on all 4 of my armies (SM, Crons, Tau, NIds). Bouncing between repainting marines and crons, and finishing a battle set for both Tau and nids. The trick is just finding time between work and sleep.

Czar Ziggy

Been absolutely bogged down with uni work (last year, and working on my dissertation), but I've done the odd thing or two in the meantime.

New(ish) commander, actually had him up and running since the beginning of summer, here's an older photo of him (weapons are now painted).


also got a bunch of old kroot and broken suits im working on fixing and painting, might see something of them in the future, as well as some space marines. And finally done a bit on my story (for those who may still be interested), trying to move the plot along a bit and get the origin story done.

I'm currently ( still ) working on gathering together the final bits to custom kit my Firewarriors, and my customized Crisis suits... let's just say that it's requiring the use of resin, and leave it at that.

I've almost got the painting finished on all four of my tanks, then I'll be able to decal and weather them... still have two more to purchase, but I'd still like to finish my current four.

My new Forge World XV-9 has come in, but I've yet to pick it up from my buddys house. Once that's in my hands, I'll be doing some interesting conversions to it... creating my new Commander. More on that later.

Aside from those "personal" projects, I've got a decent amount of terrain pieces to create for an upcoming event in February, called Game Summit. So... I'm going to be quite busy for the next few months.

Been working hard on an Inquisitorial force; some Grey Knights, a Red Hunter and Deathwatch. As a result, I've finally moved into a diorama, which is currently in the early rough planning stages of styrofoam.

Essentially, a mock up of the Overpass map from Gears of War 3, it's been of course altered into an Inquisition building and as it goes, there will be a few Orks rushing the stairs, a lone Bloodletter to challenge the GKs and I'll be adding a heavy bolter turret and razor wire.

I've been busy with college work a lot lately and also my girlfriend recently moved in with me. I'm sure you can all imagine how much spare time that tends to leave a person with.

Despite the other things that by all rights demand my attention, I've managed to put together a small gaming group with my friends and we're running quarterly "tournaments" across central Indiana and Illinois. (PM me for details if you live anywhere across the area, we'd love to find more players.) I've been really busy making terrain and tables for those. I'll have to get some pics to update my hobby blog.

Aside from the terrain stuff, I've kinda shelved my Tau for the meantime. I just wasn't seeing the performance from them that I wanted. I'm currently bouncing back and forth between Grey Knights and Blood Angels as my armies. I've been having pretty good luck with my Blood Angels list at 2k with two stormravens and 3 RAS as the core. But that's another story.

Cheers,
SD13

At the moment I have slipped back to painting my Dark Angels (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=16225) after I managed to get a Librarian and Chaplain in Terminator armour for my deathwing. Pictures should be coming soon

Edit 28 Oct - Chaplain and Librarian done now, photos uploaded

Also I am trying to complete the Turret and Tower tutorial (viewtopic.php?f=21&t=17965) but I am having a few slight technical problems

Mainly waiting for the new Tau Codex!!!

I'm just painting my warjacks over the weekends since I haven't had time to do anything modelling related during the week due to Uni. 9 till 4 or so everyday is quite intense, ugh.
I have a hammerhead, some custom pathfinders (i.e. FW with no backpacks and sights made of kroot rifle barrels. 40K can be cheap at times! ), my cygnar battlegroup, a monolith and a battlewagon (which I got for christmas last year and still haven't painted! It's undercoated though...) on the painting desk. Add in the excitement caused by the new (and literally shiny) Necrons means I will be down at the store to get (at least) a new codex to read before deciding what new units to get, and the stuff on the painting desk won't be going anywhere soon.

So yeah, that's a lot of stuff for now to keep me busy. I'm liking this thread so far, it's interesting to see what everyone's up to!

Thanks for the great responses, good to see everyone's alternate projects.

Feel free to put up a snapshot of current projects, it's really interesting checking out the links and photos. See what some of our quiet regulars are getting up too!

- Tael.

I've been mostly trying to find time to paint approx. 1500pts more of my army with a new colour scheme. I've already done one Fireknife team with drones as an example, but I HAVE to find a better way of painting red shades on black surface, the time they now require is killing me. I've considered some dipping-method as the first few layers of paint, and then freehand the rest (especially the camo on top of the reddish black) but so far I haven't found a good way of doing that with that particular colour combination.

Otherwise, I've been mainly gaming and practising against the more recent codices with Tau. So far so good, out of six matches this year, I haven't lost any and tied only one match (that could've been avoided as well, should I've paid more attention on moving my last scoring unit on an objective, which was entirely possible and safe.)

I have been busy painting a commissar for my IG. He has a beard! Still trying to summon the courage to finish painting my Shadow Sword and have just finished re-assembling one of my broadsides after he had a particularly nasty fall off the fourth floor of a building (not a real one), onto the floor, and smashed into five pieces. Thankfully it was only the plastic joints that broke so a little glue fixed him up nicely (I really should pin stuff ).

Thanks for asking Tael!

I've been giving my project: Vor'pal 'Vre a rest while I regroup and rethink the backpack. I've been getting down and dirty with my circle punches, ellipse guides, hobby knives, and the obligatory pack of band-aids.

After many a stifled curse and cut fingers, I've come to a satisfying result:



I've been making this razor wing "friendly-er" by removing the abstract edges and softening areas like the intake and leading edges. I've removed a few gems here and there from the fuselage and added an Eldar canopy from my bitz box to turn this into a VDR one-off Apocalypse unit. The goal of this effort is to have an army of flyers (Eldar and undecided enemy) for 28mm scale aerial battles.

It is going to require a lot of scratch building, as this chassis the DE kit provides will only stretch the original concept so far before obvious similarities are drawn from a novice viewer. I haven't quite decided what to arm this flyer with yet, but there is a strong chance the shiny Prism cannon will make an appearance. The base I made uses plasticard cut from ellipse guide templates and various other things like; a wooden half wren egg from the craft shop, plaster bits from Hirst Arts, and cast resin gems scuplted and RTV molded by yours truly. I'll include some Eldar foot slogging action on the base to lend it more interest.

Now off to make some vertical stabilizers and dream up an enemy squadron... hmm, Tau seems to be popular in these parts...

modelglue

Also I'm currently making my own terrain but I'm running out of room to store them being in the barracks. SO currently having to pause on making my Shrine of the Aquila look like a real shrine and not some random door on the side of the building.

I've been working on a repaint on my Tau (don't worry, they're still brown! ), built a new gaming table, worked on new terrain, and been painting the huge backlog of Orks my boys have built. Oh, and add making skins for "IL-2 1946", plus enjoying a holiday in the Philippines.

(Edit: Improved grammar and content.)