Above I closed out the entries that related to the story 'Twice Removed' as I realized it had distracted me from the main topic and direction of this thread. I have saved the story and intend to re-post it elsewhere as it's own thread to re-organize and keep this thread on topic.

Recently I have been playing a lot of 500pt modified force org battles at my gaming group, and it has put a huge curb into my painting progress. No need to pain all my suits when the seven I already have are enough right? No, I have over thirty XV8's that either need building and/or painting and I have found my motivation waning as I keep playing small point battles. We played a large battle the other day and I was sadly reminded how many unpainted or unfinished models I had and thus I was revitalized a bit.

In the first post I modified the entry to include the three commanders of my cadre. This is because those three suits are going to be the first I build and paint for this thread and for my army. Shas'O Da'Korst is already represented as an XV-9, but I feel I need to give him his own converted model with a bit more character than my normal XV-9. Likewise, I currently field some standard XV8's with white markings as my Shas'el, and that is hardly fair for my two commanders.

In conjunction to these three projects, I am also building custom stealth suits to represent Jun'Yin and his team.

For now, I will post some pictures of my only Battle Fleet Gothic vessel I own so far, and the first of an entire tau armada I think. Those should keep things new enough while i get some work done.





Currently I have no name for her, nor an admiral to command her. Help from the community needed!

~Tau'va

The ship looks great! I am super tempted to purchase an Emissary and maybe a manta or two to use as my cadres transports. Is that model resin or metal?

So let's think of a name. Tau ship naming works this way:

Sept that built it, ship's class name, personal name of ship's first commander (always Kor'ui or higher), personal name of current commander (omitted if it is the same as the third element).

Now since your boys are in the Enclaves, the Sept would likely be Vior'la. The ship class is Custodian or "Or'es El'leath" in the Tau tongue. Then just think of names for your Kor commander. Maybe it could be a ship that the current commander had to get by some underhanded means. The Custodian is a new Tau vessel and (if I'm not mistaken) would have appeared in Tau fleets some time after Farsight split. So what we have so far is:

Vior'la Or'es El'leath (Original Commander) (Current Commander)

As for splitting up your story, I think that's a great idea. It would help to keep this as a good motivation for your army progress. You can always start a new topic in the Library and keep it going there. OH and I have moved this to the more fitting, Project Logs.

Thank you Wolfs16 I appreciate your input so far and the project movement.

The Custodian is a resin model, and luckily for me I got some good castes from Forgeworld this time. Maybe they put in some new molds recently because the quality of molds in this most recent order was much better than some of my older ones.

As to the acquisition of the Custodian, I was going to have it acquired through backdoor means. The idea I had in mind was this particular ship was damaged lightly in an engagement, and connections through T'au got the ship 'decommissioned' due to unrepairable damage. Then the ship eventually vanished from orbital dockyards. Any investigation into the vessel would show it was dismantled and decommissioned, though the crew no doubt would argue that it was bull that their ship got slated for decom with so little damage, and members of the dockyard crews might say they swear the ship left dock under it's own power...

Pretty much the enclave would have gotten the vessel through contacts within the empire, and with a few councilors or such and all the right paperwork, anything can disappear. =D

As to the name of my most recent commander or it's first one... I have no Kor in my cadre, nor am I all that familiar with castes aside Fio and Shas. Anyone here is quite welcome to suggest names, perhaps of one of their own captains to have been it's first commander, plus a new one for the current commander.


Unrelated to the tau fleet I am building, I have clipped apart an old XV9 I had built poorly, and am reassembling him to fit on a XV8 base as a counts-ass Shas'O so I can field Da'Korst in a normal non-campaign game. This suit is painted in my old color scheme and style, and currently is just propped up on some random base I had for pictures. Basically these two pics are the 'before pictures', after pictures to follow.



Also I found one of my favorite old Shas'Ui, who will be getting a repaint to current colors and standards.

Good work so far. Nice green-gray scheme, I like it. High painting standard... I look forward to your progress!

Does that XV9 model just have O'R'alai's head, or is that his model?

Though... just correct that:

My two Shas'El have finally been painted to spec.


Oros'Kais


Ka'Thryn


And I also painted one of my broadsides just for funzies today as well, even though he was not on the immediate 'to get done' list.