Bork'an Mobile Defence Cadre. (The Begining of)

[CaptainMatt]

Hello everyone,

As I said in my introduction, I have a bit of a tau force in the mix that I have been collecting for years. Unfortunately, not much of its painted.(Isn't that always the case.) But I do have some painting done, and I have a lot on the go. So with out further delay, here are some examples of my work.

First off, here is an example of the main scheme of the army. I wanted a snow/winter theme army, and I think I managed to pulled it off.


On all my Shas'ui, and battle suits will have custom bork'an patches and shoulder pads to make them more unique in the army.


Here is my very much WIP Devilfish, the paint isn't near done yet. Before anyone says, I know I didn't get the mold lines I was one of my first models and I just didn't know at the time. It is a lesson much learned, and It wont be seen in the future


Here is my HQ. The leader in the front has had extensive conversions done to his head to make him unique to the army.(Not originally my idea, but its a good one so I used it) As you can see I have used 3mm magnets in their arms and shoulders. I am in the process of placing metal into their weapons and suit upgrades to change their kits as battle dictates.

[Corryn]

Ah almost missed this thread Nice to see some tau that are a bit more tactically sensitive to the concept of camoflage hehe. I like the personalization on the Bork'an badges, and the tweaks to the appearance on your commander's battlesuit look good.

What other units do you still need to paint up?

[CaptainMatt]

Wow, the thread finally posted! Took a while after the 5 mandatory posts.

Anyway, on to business.

@Corryn - Thanks for the complements, I almost never see Tau players using real camouflage. I myself am knee deep in fluff so I know the score.

I still have 3 complete units of fire warriors, 8 pathfinders, 10 Crisis suits(Thank you Rapid Insertion Force) a broadside, 3 more Tanks(2 are hammer heads that can be changed to fish), 32 kroot, 4 hounds, quite a few drones, and 12 stealth suits(both XV15 and XV25) and this Ethereal that I made up to paint.

[Nathan138]

It's the little details that I love with your models Matt, I really want to see what you do with the Ethereal's base, it should be fairly epic!

[OutOfContext]

That is a brilliant Etheral
This is almost the exact colour scheme I planned for some Tau a while back. But you've executed it better than me. Nice work!

[CaptainMatt]

Thanks again for the positive feed back everyone.

@Nathan- I'm glad you think that. I definitely consider myself a better modeler than a painter, and rest assured there will be no epic spared of the ethereal's base. I don't care if he doesn't see combat much!

@OutOfContext- Good to see that I'm not the only one who likes the idea of snow-fairing Tau. I love snow themes/bases and I wish there where more around. But I suppose that just makes my army a bit more unique than all the bland sand floating around in the 41st millennium. If I get REALLY crazy and A LOT of free time, I would like to make a full 6x4 winter scape table to field this army on.

[OutOfContext]

You don't need to be crazy to do a winter board...you just need to be prepared that no one visits the terrain logs if you show it here
Seriously, I'd love to see an all snow board from you. I'm looking forward to more of this army.

[CaptainMatt]

I plan to do some stuff soon. . . it may take a little bit of time, my classes decided to crack down a bit. But when that workload is lightened I will get right back to the models.

[Corryn]

Ah nice looking ethereal, and he's got the sept marking to match I always wondered though, surely sept marks for different castes would differ in shape? i.e. Earth Caste technicians from Bork'an should perhaps have the Bork'an symbol worked into a vertical rectangle, Air cast pilots, the same but a triangle, etc.

[CaptainMatt]

@Corryn- Thats a very interesting point that has never crossed my mind. And I think the real answer to that would be: its never been discussed, so its the modelers discretion.

My instant opinion would be that the sept marking are like flags, whereas the caste markings are more of understood badges. The sept designs would have to be quite different from each other to distinguish planet origin. Where the caste design would probably have to be universal to keep confusion down.

Another thing I would bring up is, all sept markers are a circle, thus making it very important to make their design quite different. Where the castes seem have their own shape.

A good counter to that point would be: "Indeed, the castes do have their own shape. Which would make the distinguish very simple, even at a glance."

In the end Corryn, I really like that idea. I would like to see/experiment with that concept and see what the caste symbols come out looking like.

*Taking note of that idea*(It may come up in the future)

[CaptainMatt]

Well like I said, school decided to drop a lot of of work on me, and with Valentines day this weekend, I don't have much more done than what I did last post. I do have some pathfinders that I converted from Fire Warriors and gundrones that I am going to show off though.

As you can see, this is a minimum unit of 4, I have 4 metal ones, but I decided that I would never pay that much money for models of that caliber again.


Heres one of my favorites, he has the tank commander bi-noc arms as well as a kroot rifle strap on his carbine. He really looks like he should be in a scouting unit, much more than the stock models offered from GW.


Here we get a good look at how I made the unit their markerlights. I simply chopped up a drone antenna and glued it on top of the models carbine. A simple conversion, but I think it gets the job done.

[Corryn]

hehe Well, my logic for the designation of circular (i.e. Fire Caste) symbols for each sept in the codex, is simply that...

1) Players who will utilise these markings will always use the Fire Caste designation (because only a few diehard converters amongst us Tau players actually field Air, Earth and Water caste on the battlefield hehe), and arbitrarily including irrelevant caste specific markings in the codex would have been pointless.

2) The sept markings in the codex only appear in conjunction with brief details on the Fire Caste of those specific septworlds, i.e. the marking is for that sept of firewarriors. So the context of those markings is specifically for firewarriors, which is why they are circular, because they're not referring to the world, but the military of those worlds.

Generally though, as you say, it's completely up for debate. I think fitting some of the sept markings into rectangles and triangles is a bit of a bugger actually lol good luck if you attempt it

Nice looking Pathfinders, are you going to do anything different with their paint scheme?

[jeramy404]

I dig the work you've done so far on your pathfinders Matt. They're going to be a very dynamic unit once they're done.

Are you planning anything special for their paint job?

[CaptainMatt]

@corryn & Jeramy - No, I think they are going to be the same color scheme as the rest of the army. Just to keep it uniform and they would simply utilize the same camo scheme as the rest of the army.

[Dictator]

Great painting and awesome work with the pathfinders. Do you think you will give them rail rifles?

[CaptainMatt]

@Dictator- I actually forgot to mention that, I have, I think 2 of the pewter rail rifle toting ones already. But that being said, I may make a couple, if I find I have a bit of difficulty against marines.