As a lifelong star wars fan I was totally blown away by Speedfreak's trade federation list, the conversion and paint jobs are amazing, and the modeling is absolutely top notch.

I was inspired to try my own spin on a star wars army and decided to take a stab at classis imperial army themed list, I know it's not Tau centered, but it's modelling related so I hope you'll forgive the marine bits.

Here was the first test model, I need to redo the paint as it came out pretty bad but this was the first test piece



After I get the first squad assembled commander Vader will be next in line

I'll also be building a Boba Fett with some Tau parts so there's at least a few fire warrior bits that'll be on the coolest figure in the list

It looks pretty good, but Stormtroopers are like completely white. I think that would look better. Also, the ribbons and things are not really appropriate IMHO.

I really like the helmet, how did you make it?

Did you add that tube like thing Storm Troopers have on the back of their belts? Kinda like that little part from a fusion blaster. I always loved that part about Storm Troopers.

EDIT@Wartang:

Umm, what? I said I liked it...

no I think it looks good the helmet is done very nicly

I didn't add that bit on as I didn't actually have any reference pics onhand when I built it, although it's definitely something I could add with some guitar wire.

The pure white and off white I was toying with to see how it seperated the various armor bits and give some extra depth. I'm not sure I want to keep it, it's also met with mixed reactions on the marine B&CS forum and after staring at him for several hours I'm not sure if I like it or not, still deciding on my final color decision.

Future versions I'll be using a micron pens to do the lining so it'll be much cleaner. Also I'll be using regular marines instead of the blackreach ones so they'll look better and it'll be easier to remove seals and bits, the black reach plastic gouges way to easy.

The head is from a dark trooper model from the star wars miniatures game. It's a bit oversized compaired to the regular troopers. I've got some classic stormtrooper heads on the way so the next batch will look more like the original troopers.

Not sure if I should keep the bolters or try scratch building and molding blasters to use.

I have a bunch of extra marine,guard, and tau bits laying around but I can't think of any offhand that'd be good for blasters so if you have any suggestions I'm all ears.

I really think that you have done a good job on this model. Can you post a link to the other guys star wars stuff please?

If you do a good job on converting the vehicles as well, a battle between this completed army and the drone army would be quite impressive.

Well you can definitely get an AT-ST out of IG sentinels. FWs Tanks section has the best looking Sentinel i can think of for the job. I'm going to have to follow this closely.

Speedfreak's WIP thread: http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11873

That's the army that got gears in my head turning


Here's the pic that started my madness rolling and inspired the marine element: http://g1d4n.deviantart.com/art/Star-Warhammer-40K-100829496

Also I'd seen this a while back and plan on doing a knock off of his Boba Fett: http://www.coolminiornot.com/pics/pics11/img456840781adc9.jpg

whell the only thing is that i don't think that space marines makes the most sence as beeing stormtroopers, you make em out of IG because of 1: you can have the at-st as senitels 2: you get loads more of storm troopers.

the only good thing with having them as SM is they would be more imba.

that is awesome, great job on the head.


that is true, sentinels would make a nice at-st.
Anyway, great job!

-pulse-

Guard rules would probably be ok but the problem with guard is none of them are in power armor, even though stormtroopers die in droves they are defiantely in PA. Also I'm not sure what type of psyker stuff IG has access to, which I'd need for Vader and the Emperor.

For the At-St I'll be using dreadnought rules, it'll be much tougher than a sentinel that way.


The regular storm troopers arrived, and their scale is a bit differant. The heads are smaller than the ones on the dark trooper, they are useable but they give the marine a bit of the "true scale" look, where the body armor appears taller much more massive and more inline with some of the 40k art.

So the question is go with the smaller classic heads or the larger darktrooper head?

dark trooper most definitely the dark trooper

Last night I spent about 2 1/2 hours gluing together legs torsos, primed them all this morning in white, and started painting test models tonight.

One I did in raw primer white with blackling it in pen. The white is entirely too intense and as a result you can't see any of the recesses or shades on the model. Even with the black lining it looks loke a stark white piece of paper and is completely flat. I added a light wash to it but it didn't help much, I also realized another side effect of the ultra white, it picks up even the slightest dirt I washed my hands before starting the model but it somehow found latent dirt from around the desk area and skin oils made some of the leading edges dirty looking. He's so ugly he doesn't get a picture.

I decided to trash that idea as a no go, so I mixed up a lighter shade of bleached bone, about 1/3rd bleached bone and 2/3 menoth white (P3 brand) which is a pure white like skull white but is slightly lighter and has more pigment so it can be thinned quite a bit and covers much better. I then gave it a very light wash of old GW brown ink which was watered down so that it wouldn't leave brown streaks and gave a very nice egg shell color. (I remembered a drop of hand soap this time so it didn't bubble for once!) After the wash I went in and applied the blacklining, most was done with the micron pen but the larger areas around the joints and feet were painted.

Then I followed up with 2 steps of dry brushing, first with a light dusting of the original mixed bone color that helped get the wash color off the surface areas, the second drybrush layer was done in pure meonth white. This was done very lightly so it'd only hit the leading edges and it also helped fade the black lined sections so they weren't bright and shiny as the pen ink is slightly reflective. I then finished off the white armor by applying a layer of pure menoth white on the key areas that I wanted to be pure white simular to the black reach test model, but aiming for a much more subtile contrast between the two whites. The toes of the boots the tiny armor notches, belt and torso center all have a layer of pure white.

The last step was going back and touching up the joint areas with chaos black as the ribbing had gotten a slight drybrushing of white that I needed to remove. I still need to tackle the non-white and metaillics areas like the purity seal, chest eagle, and the collar area needs some more blending. The arms and head will be attached once the body is finished that way I can get at all the areas I need blacklined as I'd never be able to get in there if it were fully assembled. There's a small panel I couldn't get at to blackline on the rightmost leg, unless I break him off the base which I'm not sure I want to do.

In all about 2 hours of work if I don't count in the horrible primer white guy. Total work time was probably close to 3 hrs maybe 3 1/2 for the two models, and a lot of that was drying time due to the wash and blacklining. (and time spent figuring out what the heck I needed to do)




At 8 mega pixels my camrea is so dang clear that you can see light pools reflecting off the backside of the knee and the edge of the base, which are comepletely flat black, the detail level is almost too much, I have to keep in mind I can't hide any short cuts from this camera. I just noticed a couple areas I need to touch up on the foot, grr.

A friend of mine was working on the project a while ago but gave it up.

A couple of tips:

Get rid of the shoulder pads and backpack (shave off the nub), it will help a lot witht the look.

Vader makes a great chap/force commander and you can buy red plastic rods that will make him look great.

:::cue the imperial march:::

-Inquistor Lord Vader-




Vader just had to be a black templar as he's the blackest knight of all time I decided the two iconic things that define Vader are the coweled helmet and the billowing cape, if you have those in place everything else can be modified but he's still instantly reconizeable as Vader.

These are the WIP shots, not sure if this will be the final pose or not. In the middle of launching some force push action or shooting force lighting provide I can make some wire into some sort of lightning-like effect.

I was originally going for the classic force choke effect with a biker hand but couldn't get it to look right, I swicthed the sword arm around and tried the force lighting pose. The arms are presently being held in place by a pin so I can adjust them if needed.

He'll still need some little bits added like grenades and likely a pistol, and I need to put him on a 40mm base. He definitely needs a good scraping for the mold lines and greenstuff work when I get the pose finalized.

I may magnetise the arms so I can change out the weapons, having a storm shield would be really good for gameplay although it's not something I particuarly think of when picturing Vader. His sword will be red per his normal lightsaber color and will be played as either a relic blade if I use C:SM or a nemesis force weapon if I use him as a inquistor lord or a grey knight hero. I'm thinking that the holocost psychic power would be a suitable stand in for his force lighting attack.

Not sure if I should drop templar cross and replace it with the funky lifesupport box or some sort of vox box etc.

Parts: Vader head, robed legs right and left sword arm from DA command squad, Templar chest piece, empire general cape, black reach commander sword hand, missle launcher flat hand from tactical sprue.

I wanted to get some more time to work on it tonight but work was super busy for a change, not sure if there's a full moon or if it's because of the rain storm what but people at my work were going nuts.

Simply put, Awesome. That's all nothing else. With this army and the droid army I have seen on the site, it has rekindled my passion for the hobby. I shall see what is available for me to get my grubby little hands on in order to begin anew my Tau Empire army.

Well tonight was fairly quiet at work so that gave me time to tackle the first AT-ST walker that I'll be using as a dreadnought.

The new sentinel kit is awesome compaired to the old junky one, lots of cool bits and artiulated legs so you can pose them in multiple stances without needing to do a lot of custom work. Anways I hit the bits box for all sorts of varied bits and this is what I've got so far, it's much taller than the standard sentinel. Took a ton of dremel work and chopping to get things how I wanted, some of the most intensive work isn't even visable as it's been covered over by other bits. I drilled the heck out of the underside of the hull so the bolters would fit, and for magnets. The weapons and sensor hood are all magnetized so I can switch out the parts to fit whatever dreadnought variation I want to run.

It took considerable time to figure out how I wanted the leg structure, this is actually the 2rd leg attempt, the first one I was working from memory and I completely screwed up the leg structure. After fliiping through some pics for reference I tore everything apart and came up with this design which I think fit a lot more closely. I also had to flip the hip and lower toso piece around, the sentinel hips stick out way far behind the cab and it looked very ungainly/awkward to me, so I brough the hips to the front to mimic the AT-ST design, bulked out the back of the cab and got rid of the smoke stacks replacing it with a reactor type thing. Extended the foot and bulked the ankle to give it a larger look to it.

I should have the other leg done tomorrow, there's a slight lean to the model as it's only being held up by a flimsy paper clip, that'll be gone when the other leg is put on, it's currently movable at all the leg joints which I'll glue in a fixed posistion once I have the final stance worked out. The head is mounted on a swivel so it can be turned to the right or left as desired, the melta and sensor can also be turned. The bolters are fixed forward although they are removeable.

Wow Jon this stuff is awesome! To be picky even with the longer legs it looks a bit too small compared the the Marine below it, but hey it's a mash together of two genres so who am I to say the scale is off :p

I only just saw your stormtroopers above too. Looking really great! I'd love to see non-SW themed marines with that kind of helmet!

Vader can't use lightning on account of being mostly bionic. Any Star Wars buff will call you out on this but if you want to do it knock yourself out.

Some guys on the B&C pointed out Vader can't use lightning, but I did notice he catches blaster fire with his bare hands on cloud city so I think I'll be leaving him as is so he can either be force pushing or creating an invisable sheild of force to represent a storm sheild mechanically.

While I'm not sure it's the best scale to judge by I have one of the AT-St for the miniatures game and the kitbased one is about 2/3rds the height and the AT-ST head is pretty bulky as it has room for two pilots. But being that dreads don't really have a pilot they likely wouldn't need to be that large, if I make it too tall/big people may have problem as it drastically effects line of sight. Plus I'm lazy and I don't want to scratch build the whole thing, so sacrifices must be made

He is quite a bit taller than a standard dread, but not as bulky.