4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 12

Here we are a year latter once more preparing for the next Standish Standoff for 2014. Once more I changed up half my list going for an all Tau list this time. My play time had been hampered a lot this year and I wanted to run something I was very familiar with as I wasn't going to get any practice games in before the event. Also Space Marines and Tau are no longer battle bros in 7th ed. (A good change honestly). So I picked up my first Forgeworld model for this army. A new Crisis Suit commander type. I wanted this one to be my "Farsight" commander so I modeled the amulet on him as well. Points prevented it from being taken but the modeling came out well all the same. I kept to the same paint scheme as last time around but having a.) practiced with it before and b.) gotten better with my airbrush. I was able to knock out these models in a much shorter time frame. I nearly doubled up the models for my Tau army. 

I did some reposing of the Riptide to create a good mirror stance of the standard Riptide positions. Along with that I also used the airbrush to get a good blending on the twin-linked plasma gun and Ion Cannon to create a nice effect still in line of the pumpkin orange accent color. The inking and edge highlighting effect really makes these models stand out and I very much enjoy the brightness of these models. Re posing the model was really fun and I wish I had done something even more drastic akin to all the crazy stuff over wrecked vehicles or terrain I've seen with other modelers. Honestly I'm to cheap to burn a second model just to use as a base. 

I also knocked out an additional team of Broadsides, to help mark the two units as different I applied an orange glow effect to the power pack on the backs rather than blue as in the last squad. I also opted to just glue on the arms and not magnetize this time around. I have yet to even want to use a rail gun broadside and I have two of the old edition models that are rail guns already. So I potentially have 5 rail gun versions if needed. 

The event itself was a lot of fun. I had three good games. I wasn't expecting a lot out of my performance as I'd not played a game of 40k for months before hand. I just wanted a chance to get in three games that day. On that I was successful. First round I got skunked. I faced another elite army, only unlike me rather than volume of fire they opted for quality of fire shooting with Wraith knights (yes two) and wraith guard. So lots of low AP shots that just peeled thru my suits very quickly. Round two I faced Tyranids. I think I am cursed to face Tyranids as round two. I think it has happened at about half the tournaments I've gone to. And it never ends well for the Nids. I just know the army and typically they are not higher end players but getting back into the game. Last game I got to play against an old school marine guard army all done up in the early style paint job. I had heard an interview with this player on the Independent Characters just weeks before so it was kinda fun to see that. All in all a fun day with some great armies to look at. 

4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 10

Welcome back to part 2 of my 2013 Standish Standoff army. As we have already gone over the color choices for the Tau battle suit portion of this army we will do a list breakdown. As my first Riptide I built him in the standard layout. I magnetized the weapons for future options. My list was a pure Farsight list on the Tau side, thus no access to a Buff commander, nor did I do the 'Ovesa star. As with my past armies I opted to do something a little different. I played the army with 2 identical crisis teams both with marker drones. Practically speaking the commander would go in one crisis team to give the drones all BS 5, the other crisis team would get buffed by Tigerius and his divination to give them twin link or by using marker lights as needed. My typical opening would be to twin link the target lock squad so they and the commander would shoot at one unit twin linked, the drones would all shoot at another much tougher unit with BS5 TL marker lights. Then depending on how tough said unit was I would hit it with the broadsides and use up the marker lights, or first the second crisis team that would use the marker lights and then replace them with their own markerlight drones. 

The Riptide was my anti air support. With re-rolling 1's and 12 shots when overcharged it would take down most flyers in a single volley. I opted for the fusion blaster to give me something I could kill the odd landraider with if needed. The tactical squad was a backfield objective holder with a lascannon so they could contribute downfield with something. Granted a single lascannon shot isn't much but it gave me a second weapon that could hurt heavier armor. The long range meant they could stay out of range of most threats. Next I have the Thunderfire cannon to help me against larger armies. Being an elite force with only 38 models I would struggle with being overwhelmed by large blocks of weak troops. It also let me pick off lawn chair units my opponents used. Lastly I had a fast utility unit in the command squad. Having very little low AP weapons I wanted an option to take out a terminator block or similar elite deathstar like unit. 

Primary Detachment: Farsight Enclave (1184 for detachment) 1749 for total army.

• HQ - Crisis Suit Commander - 85 (177 total), Drone Controller - 8, Target Lock - 5,  2x Missle Pod - 30, Talisman of Arthas Molock - 25, 2x Marker Light Drone - 24
• Elite - Riptide - 180 (235 total), Velocity Tracker - 20, Early Warning Override - 5, Earthcaste Pilot Array - 30, TL Fusion Blaster - 0, Heavy Burst Cannon - 0
• Troop - Kroot Squad (82 total), 11x Kroot w/ Sniper rounds - 77, Kroot Hound - 5
• Troop - Crisis Team x 3 - 66 (210 total)  6x Missile Pod - 90  3x, Target Lock - 15  3x Marker Light Drone - 36  3x Bonding Knife Ritual - 3
• Troop - Crisis Team x 3 - 66 (210 total)  6x Missile Pod - 90  3x, Early Warning Override - 15  3x Marker Light Drone - 36  3x Bonding, Knife Ritual - 3
• Heavy - Broadside Team x 3 - 195 (270 total)  6x Missle Drone - 72  3x, Bonding Knife Ritual - 3  3x TL High Yield Missle Pod - 0  3x TL Smart, Missle System - 0

Allied Force -Space Marines (Ultramarine Chapter Tactics) (565 for detachment)

• HQ - Chief Librarian Tigerius - 165 (375 total)  
• HQ - Command Squad - 100, Bikes - 35  5x Grav Guns - 75
• Troop - Tactical Squad x 5 - 70 (90 total)  Lascannon - 20
• Heavy Thunderfire Cannon - 100 (100 total)

To help tie the Tau and Blood Angel Marines portions of the army together I decided to paint the Kroot unit shoulder pads the same as my Blood Angels. This would help to tie the army elements together along with the basing. Being organic models I kept the painting simple. No bright coloring or edge highlights here. I stuck to my tried and true methods of base coat, drybrush, wash and lighten. It works great with anything fleshy/organic. This unit served as outflankers to grab far off objectives while the suits cleared the area of threats to them. They are soft but cheap and mobile. 

4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 9

I wasn't able to attend the mid-year Fratris event in 2013, so we move forward an entire year now as my 2013 Standish Standoff army comes together. As you can see each year I try and build a new army then change it up adding in new units for each Standoff. It is the deadline to force me to complete projects by. This year I took a major shift and changed up armies completely. Originally I wanted to do a nice winter camo style theme for the army. I wanted to use a Space wolf grey type grey/blue coloring for the armor. The new Badger gaming line of airbrush paint had just come out when I started the project and I promptly ordered several bottles of "Werewolf Grey" thinking this would be their version of Space Wolf grey. Boy was it not. It turned out to be more of a robin’s egg blue or UN blue than anything else. It was a nightmare to apply via airbrush requiring several (read 6-7) thin coats to get a good solid color down. It’s not all the colors in the range, in fact I find most of them to work wonderfully. Just this color is so thin and light it takes tons of coats to go down. 

So after spraying down a number of models and not seeing a great way to change them up quickly I decided instead to run with it. Most everything I had painted up until now was dark. I used a lot of washing to help shade models and this inherently darkens the models. So I set myself some painting goals for this army. After seeing Steve's Daemon army and how bright it was I wanted to paint much brighter. Also as bemoaned several times in the previous articles, I needed to learn how to edge highlight my models (thanks Tony). So I set forth with those two goals in mind for this army. Something I will rue (the very hard to base blue) as I go to add models to the army in the future, but for now I wanted to improve my painting skills. 

Today we are going to go over the first half of the Tau Force and the painting formula and techniques I used. These days I prime basically everything a nice mid tone grey. Since I airbrush on my base coat after that I wanted something that I could get even coverage with most every color. My base coat for these models is Minitaire werewolf blue. Once this was laid down nice and smooth across the model. I start inking the recesses in the model black. I used a mix of black paint, black ink and thinner at pretty much a 1:1:1 ratio. This gave me a deep dark black that ran along the recesses. I found that if I first traced out the recess with water in the brush I could get the ink/paint mix to flow along the recess without coming out. This is how I got all the black lines along the model. Then I edge highlighted using a mix of Snow Shadow and Pure White from the reaper master series. This gives a nice cool white paint that matches nicely with the blue base. 

For lenses I did your typical gem effect using greens and reds. For a nice detail contrasting color I ended up settling on a pumpkin orange. I really felt this helped the model to PoP! It also helped fall into the brightness color style I wanted to do with these models. So I picked out all the missles for the missle pods with orange, as well as some sensor nodes and details across the army. Of all the choices I made this orange really helped to bring the army to the next level and just give it some flair and style. As you can see on the Commander I also painted up a set of Flamers for him to swap out with, I didn’t end up using them at this point with the army but they would be used later when I would run a buff commander version of him rather than a Farsight enclave Commander.

When building my crisis teams I gave each unit of three a different shoulder mounted wargear option bit. This was to help mark units, they would all have the same bit. This helped in case I got them all into a large mixed melee bash or clustered together on the table. Join us next week for a list break down and the second third of the models, Riptide, Broadsides and Kroot.