Broadside minor conversion

 I know I haven't updated much on my blog lately, but here's something I worked on recently. I've been quite distracted lately, although I'm trying my hardest to keep interest in this hobby, as it is an amazing hobby when enough time is put into it, and I need to focus on one thing rather than a lot of things.
Ok, straight to the point. I pulled one of my Broadsides off of it's base, and ripped a leg off(the easier leg to pull off was the one that got the conversion). I knew exactly what I wanted to do, on paper, I just had to get to the practical work. I instantly began converting the leg in a very similar fashion to the work I did on the 'walking' Crisis suit. Except this leg was going to be extended forward. I took an old model from a box of models that was given to me, a Daemonette. I sawed her in half with my rusty old hobby knife, and glued her down to make her look like a victim! I then glued the leg to the model with plastic glue, and as soon as the leg came into contact with the model I applied super glue to the Daemonette and worked the foot into position. It took patience, and a little bit of cursing, but I eventually got it to work. I then glued the railguns onto the broadsides once again.

 I've decided to expand my army greatly based on a list I wrote up years ago, which I refined. I also decided that I'm going to commission a miniatures panting company to paint my army for me. I don't enjoy painting much at all personally, and I definitely can't find myself getting the results I want in doing solo work. I know that this kind of idea is frowned upon greatly by many many miniature gamers, but I want my army to look good while I'm fighting with it, and that's what I'm going to do to get the 'good look' I want.

To my luck, the specific Daemonette that I chose to use as the victim for my Broadside's pose had a standard. This is going to prove difficult for transporting the model and sending it away, but certainly adds more detail, if not much. When the model is in commission, I'll be asking the guys I'll be working with to add some 'guts' to the victim, to add more intensity to the pose and the corpse as a whole.

The company I'm going through is Blue Table Painting. I've gotten an estimated quote from them already to base my pricing on and I've seen some of their work, and it is absolutely worth the cost and wait just to field a good looking army. I'm still going to be doing 90% of the model/conversion work(short the magnets for any further models, and tanks) but I'll not be doing anymore painting.

New deilivery!

 Guess what came in the mail this morning! That's right! My black spray. Now I know the first thing you're going to ask is what is that base with the little antennae on the left there? Well, I figured my commander didn't look commandy enough, so I decided to remove his little drone antennae, and paint it separately, but I thought I'd add a second one too. It may end up looking a little cluttered on his head, but I still like the idea. I'm not certain how it will be on the practical model, but I'm hoping it turns out as great as I imagine.

My commander, all sprayed and drying to be painted. I didn't spray all of my battle suits at once as I'd prefer just to spray and paint them one at a time. It feels like less of a workload.

On another note, I removed my Broadsides' railguns shortly after painting my Pathfinders, to make painting them a little easier.

Painted Pathfinders.

 Today I finally got around to painting my pathfinders! I was quite afraid of doing it, but it had to be done so that my army doesn't look bland and boring when I play it on the table. Same sept - Vior'la.
I was in the middle of painting the first one when a sudden noise caused me to drop it. When I went to pick it up I noticed that the arm holding the gun(the only separated component while packaged) fell off. I took advantage of this and removed all of the models' gun arms, and painted them in a much, much simpler manner. Gold paint will be added to the Tau symbols on each weapon(same with my Fire Warriors) when my gold paint arrives.

 

Here's a close up of the latest one I painted. Painting metal models was very much different to painting resin models. After removing all of the arms, one by one before painting the models I had to go over them with Chaos Black on the parts that I missed when priming them with my Spray, some couple of years ago. Sure enough, they're finished.

I decided not to buy the custom bases from back2base-ix.com. I would much rather customize the bases myself, but first I need some practice and to learn some methods of basing in order to get the best outcome for my models' bases.

Customized Crisis pose.

Remember this guy? Boring pose? Not anymore! I was browsing through galleries online looking at other peoples' art work, and I saw something that definitely caught my eye! So, I took my boring looking crisis and gave him a bit more of an interesting pose :) 

  He now looks like he's walking. It wasn't that difficult to do either. The most annoying part was removing all of the components to re-shape them. The arms ended up coming off in order for me to do that.

 Getting this sort of a customization doesn't so much take work, rather it takes know-how for exactly what you want to do with it. Simple! I cut off one leg, the back leg at the knee. I also cut off both of the feet. The balls of the feet which were originally part of the leg component, stayed in the feet. Not a problem! I just shaped off all of the square-ish parts of the balls in the feet so I could use new feet positions.

 Putting the right or 'back' leg back together was just as simple. It took a little bit of carving(unfortunately I lack green stuff at this moment, I must add) but I managed to get the lower leg into the right position on the upper leg, to give a bit of a bent knee effect to it. Not much, as I didn't plan to customize it THAT much, but just slightly. Feet were glued back on, legs were glued back on, and voila!

Glued it all together, left it overnight to sit(sat him against my Broadside Battlesuits, so the pose would fix in place). Woke up this morning, first thing I did was get a drink and come out and look at the model. Perfect! Just what I was aiming for! I'm considering doing a pose with one of my Broadsides, but as they have metal components it may be a bit more of a fragile operation.

First stage Vior'la Tau(Image heavy)

  This is my Tau army. I started it some years ago, and took a long break from it for reasons I can't remember. I've recently dug up all my models, pains, books and the rest and continued working on it all, with the same amount of passion for it as I originally had.

Since there's a new set of rules out I can't guarantee what my final army is, but this is a force I put together for thousand point games. It was a pretty solid selection, and sported some awesome killing power in some games. Here are a load of photos I took to get this blog started. My army is still in the really early stages, some models not being finished in assembly, some unpainted, and a small few which actually are finished.

 This is my Tau Commander. The original kit is just a Crisis Battlesuit kit, and I used a drone antennae for the middle of the head, to indicate that he is my commander. I saw the idea some few years ago while browsing Tau images online, and thought it looked really good, so I decided to use it.
He has no weapons because all of my systems(Even the ones I haven't chosen to take in my army selection) have magnets on them, so I can continue using the models if I should choose to take a different systems or additional ones.

 This is one of my Broadside Battlesuits. Just generic weapons on the suits, with the Smart Missile Systems. The suits do have target locks on my army selection, but I haven't glued them on or added magnets to them at this point. Not sure if I plan to anytime soon as well.

 My other Broadside. Again, unpainted but assembled.

My Broadside suits together.

 On the left, my latest Fire Warrior team. On the right, the first Fire Warrior team I ordered. The left one was done with a black undercoat spray, and the right was a white undercoat spray. I found painting on the black undercoat a lot easier  than the white, and the paint didn't dry as quick, and spread a lot smoother.

 Tau Fire Warrior with the black undercoat.

 Tau Fire Warrior with the white undercoat.

 My whole team of white undercoated Fire Warriors.

 The base that I tried to do for the white undercoated Fire Warriors. At the time that I did this, I had not yet finished painting or assembling and decided to see if it would work out well for these guys, before doing it to my 'better' Fire Warriors. I'm not as impressed as I could be, so for all of my 25mil and 40mil bases, I'll be removing the models from the bases, and adding them onto custom bases I'm ordering in from back2base-ix.com. The bases have a desert theme on them and are really well detailed. I understand that I didn't detail the bases myself, but in my defense, base art isn't my forté lol.

 My first Crisis team together. Again, the battle suit systems are magnetized, and can be put on any of the four hardpoints originally intended for battlesuit hardpoints.

 This Crisis suit's pose I found on the the internet, and near fell in love with. So, I had to use it!

 Not sure how I came up with this pose, but it seems a bit on the boring side. Sure enough, all of my suits should look pretty impressive when painted, or at least that's the aim!

 My second team of Crisis suits. One of them is missing a Multi-tracker because one of my Multi-trackers went missing in transit while I was moving house(unfortunately). I have a spare, I just need to drill the magnet hole in and glue the magnet in.

 This was probably my favourite suit pose. The left arm was customized to look like it was slightly extended and gives a little bit of feeling and elegance to the model. It definitely stands out over some of my other models.

 Not sure how I managed to use this pose as well, but it still looks alright, for a generic battlesuit with no conversion. I kinda like my army a bit on the boring side, although I do plan to make future models look a bit cooler.

 My Pathfinders. 6 of them to be exact(obviously). I'm afraid to paint them as they're metal and I really don't like the idea of trying to get a paintbrush into the really tight spaces on the models. That's definitely not one of my key skills.

 My very first Devilfish! this one was done in a similar fashion to my first team of Fire Warriors, and it may help to add that it was ordered, assembled and painted at around the same time. White undercoat, again, but I still didn't like it as much. It has less of a gloss finish, which puts me off and sorta fades the colour of the final coat.

 This Hammerhead isn't actually a part of my army. This was given to me(I think) by a friend who bought it simply because he thought it looked cool, but he never actually used it. He noticed that I was playing Tau, so he just gave it to me free of charge(Bonus right!). It wasn't assembled by me, and I probably won't be painting it until the rest of my army is well finished.

 My second Devilfish. All of the smaller and moveable components are not glued on so I can paint them without the issue of getting into tight spaces, and will be glued on after painting.

 Third Devilfish, same deal as the first one.

And last but not least, my whole Cadre(so far). Oh and my keyboard. My desk is my workplace, which I like because I don't use the keyboard tray(Because my keyboard is simply just too big!) which allows me to use it for other things. I'm still yet to get a lamp though, to give me some better lighting to work with. Hope you guys enjoyed the pictures! I'll be uploading more as I expand, assemble and paint more models, and I certainly won't only be working on Tau models. I DEFINITELY want to put together some Imperial Guard tanks just because they look cool, but this is it for now.