71 - Tau Empire Stealth Team for TOEMP Challenge #7 Completed!

The Stealth Team is done with about 3 or 4 days to spare. Depending on how busy my weekend turns out to be, I may have an opportunity to put together a scenery piece I've been mulling over in my head.

Well, these Tau models were fairly painless and quick to paint. Again, as I mentioned in the earlier post, there weren't that many colors in the overall scheme - lots of Black, lots of Purple. The only difficulty would be in the highlighting to make the subdued colors pop. And, let me tell you, highlighting is tough, for me at least. I still haven't developed a particular technique or level of comfort with it.

For instance, what looks like "battle damage" on these Tau Stealth units was actually my attempt at highlighting. But I couldn't get the lines on cleanly enough - too much twitchy hands syndrome. So, I kind of got frustrated and just started dry-brushing the highlights on. A lot messier, to be sure, but after looking over the results on the first Tau Stealth unit I tried it on, I kind of liked the unintended result. It did give the unit a war-torn, weathered look which, in my mind, fit the fluff behind the Stealth Teams (i.e., lone wolf units operating far ahead of the main army, having to live off the land and make due with whatever they had on hand).

Highlighting the Purple areas was a bit easier because of the large surfaces I had to work with. I probably should have given the Purple another, lighter highlight to make it stand out a bit more, but such is life. I also added a few touches of Red to the models to break up the color scheme a bit. After initially finishing the Purple on the models, I was a bit underwhelmed by how monochrome they all looked. I guess I'm from the school of miniature figure painting that believes every model must have at least 3 primary colors represented on it.

Here are the points breakdown for the Stealth Team:

Foot sloggers = 4 points
Lenses = 3 points
Beating Deadline by at Least 24 Hours = 2 points

For a total of 9 points. Now let's go work on that scenery piece, maybe...

Click here for more pics of the Stealth Team.

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70 - Tau Empire Stealth Team for TOEMP Challenge #7 WIP

Seeing as it's been over a week since my last post, I thought I'd put up some WIP pictures of my Tau Stealth Team. At the moment, they've received 3 thin coats of a Purple basecoat, after which I then glued all of the various accessories on to the miniatures.

All of the Stealth Suits are equipped with Targeting Arrays (those antennae like things afixed atop their heads) while the two non-team leaders are armed with Burst Cannons. The Shas'vre is armed with a Fusion Blaster and also sports a Hard-Wired Drone Controller and a Markerlight (which is glued to the top of his Fusion Blaster).

The interesting thing about Tau models, for me at least, is how difficult it was to find reference pictures regarding which bit does what. For example, the things I'm calling Targeting Arrays could very well likely be something else entirely. I really have no idea. Googling "Tau targeting array" only gets me images of fully constructed Tau models without any specific pictures highlighting which part of the model is the targeting array. Same thing goes for the Markerlight and the Hard-Wired Drone Controller. For the Stealth Suit kit this isn't too much of a problem seeing as how the load-outs for the Stealth Team is fairly limited. But I can just imagine the difficulty (especially for the obsessive compulsive among us) of putting together a Crisis Battle Suit or a Broadside.

Well, overall I'm making good time on these figures. Honestly, the color scheme of the Stealth Team really lends itself to quick painting. The Black primer acts as a basecoat and aside from the Purple over roughly 50% of the figure, there aren't very many other colors represented. The only time intensive part I can see down the line is the highlighting. Due to the subdued and dark color scheme, these models are going to test my highlighting abilities in order to make them properly pop.

Maybe I'll be able to finish this team with enough time to spare to put together a scenery piece for them. We'll see...

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