Greetings fellow Tau’fann,

I reckon it is about time, that I displayed the small Tau cadre I have painted and modelled so far. So without further ado, I hereby present you with

The Balt’ca Tau cadre (Ke’lshan Sept)

The background fluff for my cadre is based on its origin from the Ke’lshan Sept. First of all, that means they are rather xenophobic (so don’t expect to see any allies or auxiliaries – not even Kroot or Vespid).

Secondly, as noted in the Tau background, the Ke’lshan Sept has suffered from numerous alien attacks through time. Recently, scout ships from the Ke’lshan Kor’vattra discovered that a substantial fraction of these incursions originated from the planets of the Balt’ca system near the Perdus Rift.

The Balt’ca system is nominally the domain of the Imperium of the Gue’la, who call it Baltica in their alien tongue. But in reality, the gue’la can claim hegemony of the system in name only. The close proximity to the Perdus Rift means that the system has been repeatedly invaded by different alien factions. This is compounded by the systems’ position at the edge of the extent of the Astronomican, which means that the Imperium of the Gue’la have had severe difficulties in keeping contact and sending reinforcements to maintain their hold on the planets.

Strategically speaking, the system is a geopolitical mess, with various factions having now established footholds and bases, which are constantly at war each other, and none having the upper hand. More worryingly for the Tau Empire and especially Kel’shan Sept, many of the factions use their minor bases in the Balt’ca system as stepping stones for incursions further into nearby Tau holdings.

Following this recent discovery, the Aun council of Ke’lshan decided that in order to terminate the threat vector originating from the Balt’ca system, it would be necessary colonise and fortify it as a frontline hold against incursions originating from the Perdus Rift. This of course would necessitate the assimilation or eradication of all other factions from the system, and eventual settling by Tau colonisers.

However, due to other, more pressing matters on the large strategic scale, chiefly the encroaching tendrils of the Y’he menace, the Sept forces are not able to mount a large-scale campaign to invade and colonise the Balt’ca system at the moment. Instead it was decided to send a smaller, largely self-reliable force, to make a reconnaissance in force of the system.

Enter the Balt’ca cadre, which gets its name from the Tau designation for the system. The cadre has initially been tasked with just establishing a small foothold in preparation for an eventual invasion and colonisation effort on the largest planet of the system: Balt’ca III. Their tasks include: scouting out the planet and identify landing sites, future base sites and the distribution of natural resources; launch pre-emptive spoiling strikes on minor alien forces massing for attacks into Tau space; and send advance warnings and information on large-scale impending alien incursions back to Ke’lshan Sept.

(Thusly creating some fluff giving me an excuse for fighting just about every other faction in the known Warhammer 40,000 Universe )

Balt’ca Tau cadre colour scheme

This Shas’La demonstrates the basic colour scheme of the Balt’ca Tau cadre:



The camouflage pattern is a direct copy of Mu’kaus urban camouflage pattern, but with different colours. The colour pattern was conceived to create an optimal concealment pattern in the forested areas of the second largest continent of Balt’ca III, where the cadre is currently stationed. Whitish dags represent the extremely common chalk and carbonate rocks, which are found jutting through in the immediate subsurface of the area.

Armour - light areas: Iyanden Darksun
Armour - dark areas: Graveyard Earth
Armour - triangular dags: Bleached Bone
Armour – metal: Dwarf Bronze

Fatigues: Scorched Brown gradually highlighted to Graveyard Earth

Gaiters: Scorched Brown with Brown Wash
Gaiter buttons: Graveyard Earth

The base is fine sand, which has been given a drybrush of Iyanden Darksun over a base of Bestial Brown; the chalk rocks are further highlighted with Bleached Bone. The static grass is “Battlefield Essentials Steppe Grass” formula from Army Painter.

One will immediately notice the lack of unit and rank signatures on cadre personnel, material and vehicles (:except a bonding knife carried by all Shas’Ui team leaders). This is completely intentional. The Balt’ca cadre eschews such use, as unit signatures might give away information about force composition to the enemy. Additionally, rank signatures have a distressing tendency to attract sniper fire.

(The reality behind this is just from laziness on my part. I am extremely slow painter, and I didn’t want to spend even more time painting markings, as well as messing with decals. The same goes for lack of highlights on the “hard” armour of models.)

Anyway, on to the units currently making up the cadre:

1st Fire Warrior Team:



XV-88-2 Broadside suit with shield drone



My only battlesuit so far. In my opinion, the Forgeworld XV-88s are *much* sexier than GW/Citadel ones, with their swept and segmented helmets and shoulder guards; substantial shin armour, and carrying the heavy railguns on the arms.

1st Drone Squadron



2nd Pathfinder team



Armed with rail rifles. The Shas’Ui has been extensively converted and repositioned using parts from several different Tau models (Tutorial available here).

Currently, a fully magnetised Devilfish and a standard pathfinder team are in the works – until then,

Tau’va!

Nice work!

I've allways lacked the dedication (faith in my skills) for propper field painting. I'm starting to feel like I should change my stand to something a bit bolder.

Aproved ^^

That sir, is one fine looking army!

'Nuff said.

These are ace! I am really glad someone has used my camo pattern and you really nailed it. Your colour selection is excellent. I particularly like the way you have applied the camo to the entire pulse rifle on the Fire warriors. I may just do this on my own models as I go through re-basing them. I think your way looks better.

Hope to see more soon,

Mu'Kau

Very nice. I like the camo you've done. It gets the look of a good camo but without being messy or overwhelming the model. I really like your bases too. They don't distract from the models at all but still have a lot of character and veriety. Which colors did you use for the soil?
Keep it up and your cadre's going to look top notch.

@everyone: thanks for the compliments

@Mu’kau: Thanks a lot for your good words. I am honoured and especially happy that the inventor likes my adaption of his great camouflage pattern . Your small tutorial on painting the pattern made it very easy to copy and adapt it to my models.

@filthy: thanks – again, most of the praise for the camo pattern must go out to Mu’kau. I remember selecting it, because it did not obscure the general shape of the model, had a “realistic” look to it, could be adapted to other colours, and looked a little bit “alien” to boot. The soil colour on the bases is simply fine sand painted with a Bestial Brown base colour, and then highlighted with Iyanden Darksun. The rocks are painted with Iyanden Darksun and highlighted with Bleached Bone.

In other news, I just finished giving the painted Devilfish a protective coat of varnish this morning. I am now waiting for the varnish to dry completely, before making hinges in movable doors and hatches. Photos to follow immediately when this work is finished.

Tau’va!

Without further ado, I’d like to present the most recent addition to the Balt’ca cadre: a Devilfish APC.

Connoisseurs will notice that the pattern of camouflage faithfully recaptures/blatantly copies Mu’kaus design for his devilfishes:

Devilfish No. 1



The Devilfish has been completely magnetised following Tael’s highly recommended “Maki My Fish”-guides, and the interior colour scheme is Zamesi Desert highlighted with Ushabti Bone:





Next up: a 5-shas pathfinder team and a pair of objective markers.

Tau’va!

That's a nice Devilfish - Seems the web-folks over at GW thought so too; it's just come up in the flickr highlight thingy-ma-bob on the daily update.

Good job!

@Blackstorm: thanks – sadly my devilfish’ appearance in the “From The Flickr Pool”-table is not due to special attention from the GW crew, but rather the section automatically shows the latest uploads to their Flickr Pool. Oh well…

Anyway, here are the latest reinforcements for the Balt’ca cadre:

1st Pathfinder team



The middle figure is a kitbash of the kneeling pathfinder with rail rifle model, and a set of ordinary pathfinder arms holding a markerlight carbine.

Objective markers



A downed drone is almost mandatory as objective marker for any Tau cadre . Above is my crack at one: an unfortunate forward observation drone, which got in the way of some lasgun fire. The model has been constructed from a standard drone, with the addition of the main body of a multitracker and two smaller aerials from a XV25 stealth suit.

And a standard Shroud generator:



Tau’va!

A very crisp and clean paint job! I agree that the the colors chosen are perfect together, I'm looking forward to seeing more so keep up the good work

now thats a great looking cadre. Well done Li'now.

Everything is very crisp and clean cut. The camo pattern you've used also comes across as very believable as well.


Im especially interested in your drone marker though (love the shattered lenses btw). The skid mark in the base pretty much blew my mind. That little detail sold the entire crash scene. I don't suppose youd be willing to share how you made the mark look so great?

Very nice looking models you have there. I really like your custom kneeling pathfinder in your last squad picture. Also the objective marker are cool. Well done.

@everyone: Again, thanks for the compliments. Now please stop it, my already-inflated ego can’t take any more

@shadow kat: First of all, the shattered lenses are actually embarrassingly simple. It is just a base coat of Chaos Black with really thin lines of thinned-down Space Wolves Grey painted on top, as well as a single reflection dot painted on one of the top areas.

Secondly, I’d be happy share my technique for modelling the skid mark. Unfortunately, I do not have any WIP pictures, so instead here is an attempt at an after-the-fact tutorial (apologies in advance for the lousy graphic retouching of the photos).

First, I carved a slice off the drone body (1) to help create the illusion that the drone has partially buried itself in the subsoil during the crash:



I then assembled the drone using the main body of a multitracker and two smaller aerials from a XV25 stealth suit. One small aerial was attached to the drone body, while the other was cut in two and left off. I then applied battle damage, and painted the drone and broken aerial to a finished standard.

Then I glued the drone body (but not the broken aerial) to a plain round 40 mm base:



Next step was modelling the skid mark. For this I used a simple standard filler for repairing small cracks and holes during DIY work at home. I modelled the skid mark itself by applying a thin layer of filler to the base and scoring lines in it with a modelling tool or cocktail stick (2). For a realistic appearance, I made sure the skid mark is exactly as wide as the part of drone in contact with base (*). In front of the drone, I modelled a small irregular mount to represent turf and subsoil, which was scraped off when the drone skid across the ground (3):



While the filler was still setting, I pushed the fully painted, broken aerial parts into the wet filler (4), cementing them to the base when the filler dried completely:



I then turned my attention to the soil outside the skid mark. First, I glued on some small rocks (5). Then I covered the areas next to skid mark (6) as well as the turf mount in front of the drone (7) with thinned-down PVA glue, and covered it in liberal amounts of fine sand. All the time, I took extreme care to not get any glue into the skid mark itself. The sand was then allowed to dry thoroughly, before shaking off the excess. This made the soil area become slightly raised compared to the skid mark:



Then I painted the base soil colours and skid mark, using the following colours:
Undisturbed soil: base of Bestial Brown drybrushed with Iyanden Darksun
Skid mark: base of Scorched Brown highlighted with Bestial Brown

I used the same colour (Bestial Brown) in both the undisturbed soil and the skid mark, to achieve a visual connection between them. However, I by using a darker tone (Scorched Brown) as a base colour in the skid mark, I visually distinguished the subsoil exposed here.

Finally, I added patches of static grass to the undisturbed soil area:



Hope the above attempt at an after-the-fact tutorial made sense.

Tau’va!

You sir, are an absolute champion.

I was hoping for just a quick description of your method and instead you go and make a fully illustrated tutorial . Thank you for all of the work that obviously went into putting the tutorial together. It was very easy to follow and left no room for confusion. Im looking forward to having a go at it myself now

absolutely great stuff man love it all. inspirational stuff

Ouch - it’s been more than half a year since I last added to this thread!

Work and family matters have taken most of my spare time, so I have not had much time to expand my cadre. Also, there has been a distinct lack of sunlight for the last few months at this latitude, allowing me to properly photograph my creations in the best possible light.

Anyway, enough of a waffle from me – some time ago, I finished painting up a bit of fast attack for the Balt’ca cadre:

Piranha No. 1



Tau’va!

your painting style is good! VERY good!

Myself, i focus on a more red/white appeal, and my fire warriors are situated on grass.

Sweet Jeebus!

Your paint job is crisp like a bag of extra-dried cheetos! A very nice camouflage pattern that works on pretty much anything in the Tau army. What the models lack however is depth. You should consider painting highlights to get that extra level of colour.

Make sure you post more images! I can't wait to see an entire army shot of this!

Nice clean and crisp paint job Li'now and the crashed drone looks great

As Freeloader writes you can improve your models with depth and this can include highlighting and washes.

1. Highlighting: use the base colour and mix it with a little white and some water to thin it in a mixing pallet or on a non-porous surface like a plate.
You want to get it to a thin cream like consistency. Use this and a fine brush on the raised corners of the models and on the edges of the armour panels. If you get too much on you can always go over it with the base colour again.

Another thing to consider is to mix up small bottles of the highlight colour as you will use it over and over again. This will help to keep the colour consistent.

2. Washes/inks: I always water down my inks 50:50 as it is far easier to give the model an extra coat of the wash than to repaint the model again.
Use a corresponding coloured wash in the recesses (ie where the winglets join the fuselage) to give shadow at that point. You can always use black ink/wash to smoke up engine exhausts and reduce the shine on metal piping etc.

My favourites are Vallejo Black Ink and Smokey Ink.

3. Jewels/Lenses: try the Tutorial here. It will really make your lenses jump out.

And I agree with Freeloader - we need to see an army shot

@Freeloader and El’mo: Thanks for the positive comments and detailed suggestions for improvements

You are completely right about the lack of depth on the armour of my models. The omission of highlighting – except on clothes and skin – was a deliberate decision by me. I am an incredibly slow painter (meticulous crispness comes with a high price in my case). Highlighting (as well as the subsequent correction of small painting flaws) would probably take at least an hour for each model. The thought of doing it some time in the future already sends horrific shivers down my spine, when thinking of the time I will use up in painting

But perhaps I should begun by highlighting the armour of just the larger models in the force - battlesuits and vehicles?

An entire army shot must wait at least until I get a truly battle-worthy force that can fill the required slots of a force organisation chart. Right now I do not have a HQ unit, and I am only beginning work on my second unit of troops…

Anyway, thanks for your constructive criticism, it has given me something to think about

@El’mo: Also, congratulations on your promotion – most well-deserved!