So hi there everyone! *quavers* I'm decloaking this profile and posting up some of my attempts of making my new Battle force +2 XV8s (so far). Will give a write up on my army list maybe, after reading the codex a few more times, and sponging some information out of the B*B (which one is it now? Red? Only get my hands on one when I'm at a GW shop! )

I'm aiming this at the truly uninitiated, never before seen combat Shas'la (lit, never even glued a model together).

Firstly I'll got through how I picked Tau, my Paint scheme (I know some of that is covered in the members profile, more detail to follow here though), putting together a few models, and maybe eventually some painting! ( scary!)

But first as I have to leave for work in about 30 mins:

1. If the nice guy at the GW store says "Once you've made some models I'll give them a spray with a primer" You listen! You do not go out buy white car spray paint and douse your poor firewarriors. At least not without experience. Just opening the back door of the house doesn't count as ventilation!
2. Plastic glue does not stick to paint well/at all. Get ready to scrape it off, a file will do but I imagine a pen knife or even a butter knife (don't tell the misses!) would work too.
3. Firewarrior arms match up, so be careful when you put your arms together. (The ones you own, but not your own; they're your Fire warriors.) You can however use a) sprue clipping to fill the gap, b) clip some of the arm off so the angle it makes is better (be careful you can't unclip) c) use the arm guard to cover any mess
4. Keep sprue clippings handy (for the reason above).
5. Be innovative but don't go crazy!

p.s why won't the BBCode List function correctly?
p.p.s Got it work, silly me.

Oooh wow. I love seeing peoples new warhammer. Can't wait to see yours! post some pics up soon!

- T'Owel

P.S. I like all of the tips, but plastic glue does stick to paint. Just not glossy ones.

Looking forward to your beginnings!

My best advice for you is to search around and find a few army's that inspire you or just get a theme in mind for how you want to paint/model them. That way, you can keep yourself focused. Also, post a few goals that you want to accomplish with this army; that way people can give you advice that will really benefit you.

Looking forward to it!

Just to echo what Wolf16 said really, maybe you could do a blog of sorts as you start painting/modelling your army. By posting as you go every now and then, you'll get feedback from the community which really does help with the creation process and give you idea's that you otherwise would've missed. I personally have found that my skill has increased with what i've learnt on ATT and from my peers comments , you'll be in good hands here.

Oh and btw "Welcome to ATT"

I'm not sure what was in this paint, but it dissolved it first and then stuck, making a kind of paint-glue-plastic mix that was very poor at sticking the two pieces together, I'd just be careful if you want to spray the models first.

I've got a few photos (taken on my phone unfortunately) that I'll splurge up via Photobucket, as that seems to be the best way to do it.

'How I picked my colours' to follow soon!

Edit: thanks for the welcomes and the Advice, guys!

Edit Deuxième Partie (because randomly speaking french is fun...): Wolf16 (or should I say Wolf20 =p): I've been lurking ad liked the look of a few armies in colour scheme and set up, I have an idea how my 'el/'o will be (urging for the 'o just so my Cadre has proper leader in fluff), whose names include Doran'Ka and Ru'Fio, should be a clue as to how he is I am limited by cash and the fact that I have only got a battleforce pretty much.

Brokensword: Yeh I was planning on making this into a blog, maybe getting it posted into Project logs if I bat my eyelashes enough...

To Photobucket and my draw of wires!

Edit again, at work now, no photos til later.

These are my Fire warrior's after spraying them, won't be doing this again as I struggled to get an even coat with this spray. Plus it's not a primer (as I thought).

How best to spray them?


This is the first stealth suit, I got lucky and put the team leader legs and the fusion blaster on the right model. I made him left handed for kicks :p


A shot of what too much plastic glue looks like Most of the other Stealths look like this.


Lefthanded fusion blaster


I'll try to get some better shots of the warriors in, and also try to flock some bases, going for a volcanic, ice world, so eBuying some hornby 'ballast' and playing with paint!

Looking good! Ya know, the Stealth Suit looks fine, at least from that picture. I wouldn't worry to much about too much glue.

I like the left handed Fusion Blaster! Make sure to take the time to convert each of your models! It is a lot of fun.

With regards to what Wolf16 said: Yeah, don't worry about the glue residue. For the most part, it becomes undetectable post priming and painting.

Yay! So I just have to worry about wasting my glue.

Here's a photo of what I brought to work yesterday:



Also a Proposed colour scheme, fluff to follow excusing the random amounts of orange present!

Tried to base some pieces, put a load of them up but didn't contain much content (could have been renamed, 'Misadventures in Base land' ), so just going to summarise.

I applied some glue to the black GW base, and held the model down. It stuck for a second, I spun round on my chair (why we'll never know) and it fell off, a second attempt yielded no more luck. Checked and the two bits of plastic were melding, but not enough to stick properly. Was wondering how people do this? I couldn't find anything useful with search, nor in the Article Database.

Next the last few bits of my stealth team.


You can see where a gluey finger left a mark

A Stealth Suit in the hand is worth nothing if not on the battle board =p


Will face more FW and kroot next. Would love to grab some bits and shove packs on them.

Oh special extra, I've got a way of filling the nubs of plastic down, doesn't always work, what do you guys use?

With a lack of interesting pictures ( ) here is some fluff instead.

Aloh'Nars'Ya
Planet world - Designation MX-53 -O'Doran'Ka Commanding

The Shas'La signalled to his comrade in the flurry of snow, and then back to the white, scarcely dressed Kroot in the hanger door way, tending to the last few straps on the Knarloc. He could have used his helmet transceiver, but the exclusion of his Kroot Comrade would be frowned on by the agreement of the Shaper and the Shas'O who both commanded great respect on this desolate tundra-rock planet.
In a few minutes they would reach the hydrothermal station to check up with the Fio there. Then on to the Gue'La they had freed on the rock. With no Por caste, communication would be rough and stilted but the Shas'La presence would re-assure them.
*Static* "H'La'era, Tor'kan 2, stand ready". Now the Comm link was necessary, now there this was what Shas'La were for. They Linked with the local Cadre to intercept the creatures in the distance.

As promised my how to for picking colours, hope it's good enough in format, and content.

How to pick your Tau Colours, from concept to purchase.
Firstly, three questions. What is your name? What is your quest? What is your favourite colour!

So really the answers should be <name>, paint some awesome looking Tau, and your favourite colours. The last of which is fairly important.
As an example, I love Blue and Orange, so I wanted to have some blue and orange Tau, making sense so far? Ok, so write down the colours you love, you need at least two, or three and that will change how we apply them later.

Next you need to look at someone elses' army, then someone elses'. There are some beautiful Cadre and models on ATT. Make sure you look at both the armies in colours you like, and dislike. Odd? You often don't know how you feel about painting your precious Tau 'nasty' colours until you see them. I'll explain this later.
Next we use the Fire Warrior Beta Application from Bolter and chainsword. Go nuts, go bananas. Go any kind of fruit you like. Make several tries at it.

So this is what I got to first:

I kept seeing white tau forces and loving it, really looked crisp. Nevertheless, I was set on orange and blue. Altogether, I could see it doesn't work, at least not for me.
So next I tried lots of different goes on the Fire Warrior Beta Application. Not much luck until I decided my third colour would be a muted shade of the main colour.

I liked this look a lot and it gave me this:

You can see the resemblance, but it looks a lot more Tau to me. Still a bright orange in there but I can fluff that away (i.e. explain it with back-story).
So stage one is done you have the colours for your army! Are we done? Not by a long shot. There's no guarantee you can get those colours in paints or inks or however you apply it, unless your shop sells it by the hex code!

Between those two I toyed with a dark green and greeny/orange/brown, that I would normally not pay attention too. But at the time I wanted camouflagey colours, and it was worth considering.

I use these, Colour Matcher.
1. Click RGB colour search

2. Insert the Hex Code from the previous app, the FW painter.

3. Decide if your limited by Type, finish or colour line (I limited myself to GW in the end as I'm only beginning painting, and shipping Reaper Mini paint was too expensive, but go nuts like I said before!). Next click submit, you should be given your choice of paints, if not play around a bit. Unfortunately, you won't get the colours you want unless you're lucky.

4. This will give you more choice on shades and is perfect if you want a darker/lighter colour and/or can't find the paint you want exactly.

5.If you can find some obscure Himalayan paint, but you don't live in Tibet, you can use this line matcher, here. So you know it's in Reaper mini paints, but want a GW equivalent? Perfect! Select the two lines of paints (the one you know on the left, the one you want on the right) and click submit. Or use the first app (Colour Matcher.) and click on Paint Search, then select the paint line, press submit. Scroll down and select the paint you want, and it should give a list of alternatives.
Ok, so got the pain you want? No? Go back and play, it's trial and error.

6. Go back the first set of these apps: Colour Matcher, click on the paint search and follow the instructions in 5) now we're looking for the hex code of the paint you've picked. Then go back to Fire Warrior Beta Application, and plug them in and look at what you've created.

If you're not happy start from the beginning! I decided that my Tau colours fitted with an icy tundra world, as camouflage, whilst the orange cloth would be the thermal layer the Earth caste created, or the cloths my Shas'La had to take as they were stranded on that icy desolate rock.

From then on you can start to pick your other model colours, for example, I'm bringing back the white with my kroot.

Overall have a play and hopefully this will help you pick out your colours!

Nice little write up there, aswell as the linking to B+C for the Firewarrior Painter Beta, I'll be adding that to the Tau Empire Cadre Census as I was using the original Firewarrior Painter on it.

Nice work and feel free to add your fluff to the census

Bs

I thought the links would be important! Is the context clear that there are three more links, to the silicon-dragon website. They don't show up so bright for some reason. I'll put my Fluff up when I have some more bits to add to it.

Thanks for the offer though!

Just looked up some Tau pictures, found this:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/40287-.html

Can anyone recognise the base model? I wouldn't mind something like that, I know O'Shovah and R'Myr have shileds like that, but I can't place it.

Also, messing around I put a Carbine on a FW model that should have a Rifle, is that an issue/can it be undone? It's Plastic glue....I might snip it off and go nuts with arms I can find. I need to go over the codex and get down what drone controllers and stuff do as I have lots of bits and pieces I can add, and no idea which pieces are which. Photon and EMP grenades especially.

Hey, really nice work on that How to Choose a Paint Scheme post. Great links and explanation! I really like that color scheme and I'm looking forward to seeing a painted model!

As for the model in question, that belongs to ATT member Sirath. You can check out his amazing project log here. The model is a Shas'O R'myr, with some major conversions done. Any specific questions, I'm sure you can ask Sirath.

Thanks, I'll follow up that work. Need to take some photos of my FW, show people how bad the spray job was. Don't know whether I need to strip it off, I hope not...

Here is the paint job I tried a while back. It just looks wrong in some places and cracked. I used a car paint spray can that I was told 'was ok'.





Do I need to strip it?

I'd strip it if it was me, but then i'm a fussy so and so.

What you might be worth investing in is a Airbrush for undercoating and basecoating your models. Since I bought one of the GW Flamer airbrushes (Click here to see what I did with one, pgs 1,2,3,5,6 has a few pictures of airbrush work.) and I used it a helluva lot for undercoat and basing jobs, and never had a problem.

I didn't see quite how bad it was until I got the picture uploaded! I will look into something to strip the paint. I don't know if I have the time/money/enthusiasm for an airbrush... But I'll look into it. can I just base them with normal paint? Or do I need a black/white primer?