A New Beginning
It's been quite some time since I last posted an entry to this blog. I'd completely forgotten that I even had it! I started a blog up recently but never got as far as posting anything, and decided to search for blogspot options, as the blog I made wasn't blogspot and I know blogspot has a good reputation. I ran into this, already signed in because my google account is signed into chrome. What a bad memory I have.......
Anyways, to the point. I've returned to the hobby since my last post 4 years ago, and there's been 2 codex updates since then. I sold most of my old models, and started getting newer updated ones because I felt my modeling skills had gotten better in my time away from the hobby (I know, go figure: I feel I got smarter, planning more before applying any glue or paint). Since returning to the hobby, I've prepared and painted 1 Crisis Commander and 3 Crisis Battlesuits, completing my 500 point milestone with the inclusion of my 2 old squads of Fire Warriors.
I added some fluff to this project too, giving it a little more life than just some glue and paint:
A'kish R'das'dorr (which translates literally to "The A'kish Research Defence Initiative") is a small elite defence force tasked with one role. Defending the secret and extremely important research facilities on the planet moon of A'kish.
A'kish is a small planetoid-moon in orbit of a huge gas giant on the outskirts of the Vior'la binary star system called Tarra'lor. Tarra'lor, while exhibiting a rather impressive orbit radius of the two stars, is a super large gas giant with many valuable and some even undiscovered chemicals within its many hundreds of layers of gasses. Unfortunately for anyone in search of these gaseous chemicals, Tarra'lor produces an insane amount of heat for a gas planet on a largely distant orbit of its star(s), making harvesting or mining almost impossible for anyone daring enough to try.. As a result, it provides A'kish with the right amount of heat for the Tau to maintain research facilities, and is unattractive enough for these facilities to remain well hidden.
While A'kish's surface is mostly made up of a muddy dirt, so much so that the oceans are all a dirty brown colour, the Tau opted to don a rather light green colour on all of their local forces and buildings on A'kish, accompanied by a secondary darker green, and finally with a red sept colour to signify being a part of the Vior'la Fire Caste. The reason they chose green is to mimic the colours of the leaves and flowers at the tops of the huge trees clustered all around the continents of A'kish. These lumbering giants, standing many hundreds of metres tall, have trunks as thick as Manta drop ships and host innumerable amounts of light green leaves on their tops, with some less common darker green leaves, adding a nice contrast to the treetops. While the Tau could have bored out the tree trunks and built into them, better hiding their research facilities, they instead decided to build independant facilities of the trees after noticing that the millenia old trees regenerate damage rather fast, often over as little time as weeks. This would have been a serious threat to the Tau, as building their bases into the trees would mean damage to their new hidden buildings would begin the minute they finished building. More intelligently, they built their bases near the clusters of trees and copied the floral treetops' colours to add a degree of camoflage against any enemies or threats that would decide to try and take satelite style scans on the planetoid's surface before decending down to claim it for themselves. This allows the Tau to remain hidden and prepare a plan of attack for the unknowing threat that would land on the surface of the planet.
A'kish's research facilities, known to very few of the Tau Empire, are responsible for a large number of technological innovations including the improved climate support systems added to the updated XV8 Battlesuits, the cooling system used on the improved XV88 Battlesuits, and a number of complicated and advanced targeting systems used in the Tigarshark and Tigershark AX-1-0 space and surface fighters, to name a few. These facilities, ordered operational by the Vior'la leaders, who were specially ordered by Aun'va himself albiet incognito of all other regular important communications, are within the backbone of Tau research advancements. They, and a number of more known facilities in the Fal'shia system, are responsible for many of the successes of great Fire Caste leaders. A'kish's facilities, however, operate under orders from a small number of Ethereal leaders in coalition with Aun'va, to research produce strange and unthinkable technologies. Technologies that would rival transcendance. Technologies that go beyond the current imagination of the Earth Caste scientists. One of the focuses of the facilities on A'kish is to develop an alloy compound so strong that it could survive the destructive environment that plagues Tarra'lor. For many years the Tau have been trying to gain access to the gas giant's rich resources, but even its first layer of gasses eats through Air Caste ships' shields and hulls in a matter of seconds. None who have ventured into Tarra'lor's atmosphere have returned, and they did so expecting not to in the name of Tau advancement.
The A'kish Research Defence Initiative is a collection of battlesuit-heavy cadres for swift retaliation to any threats that may wander toward A'kish and feel the need to explore its somewhat desolate surface. Vehicles are few and far on A'kish, as Tarra'lor's strange gravitational field messes with Tau anti-grav technologies, and the research facilities of A'kish have been unsuccessful in divising a solution so far. A'kish R'das'dorr isn't a large army like what the Tau use for planetary defense or campaigns, but instead has much less members, but does make great use of the variety of battlesuit technologies available the the Tau Empire, giving the A'kish researchers opportunities to test new prototype technologies and upgrades. Some notable members of A'kish R'das'dorr are:
Vior'O Or'es Kaais Il'var (Powerful and Skillful Commander Icewing of Vior'la)
O'Il'var has a long reputation for leading planetary campaigns against pirates and renegades in the Bor'kan system with his reputable XV8-6 Coldstar Battlesuit. He gained the name "Icewing" as his enemies would usually be mortally wounded but still left barely alive to die in the harsh and cold climates that cover a number of the Bor'kan worlds as he flew overhead.
Shas'ui Eyl'kan (Crisis Veteran Keeneye)
Eyl'kan was recruit around the same time as O'Il'var. He became well known for having a habit of spotting foe infiltration and scout operations where other Tau warriors would usually not. Some call it luck, some call it having an eye for his enemy, and some go as far as to claim that he is so accustomed to looking at non-Tau beings that he can spot them from many miles away. He preferred to retain the rank of Shas'ui, confident that he is a better warrior than he is leader, and so as to leave the role of leadership to more suitable candidates. That way, he could properly and more precisely exercise his unique skills as a Crisis Pilot without worrying as much about what his team members were doing.
Beyond the fluff, I feel I've grown as a hobbyist, putting more and more effort in to my planning, modelling, painting and basing (not in that order). I've also grown as a person, but that's got little to do with this post.
My first new model was my Commander. It was a foolish decision to buy what would be my coolest model, first, but I learned from that stupidity pretty quick. Nevertheless, I still put loads of effort and patience into it, and I think I achieved a great looking model for the first one I put loads of effort into and completed.
The paint work on him isn't that great, but in the time it took me to finish painting this model, I honed my painting skills to a level that I'm happy with.
I started by planning out the whole model from start to finish before I glued or painted anything. After that, I got to work on the base. I added fine grit stand to the base, with the two rocks in place but not getting glued down. The reason I didn't want to glue them down is because I wanted them to keep their original natural colours, and so I painted the base first then glued the rocks down before adding the grasses. After the fine grit sand, I added some larger grit sand to give the effect of a rougher surface. The Orc weapons are pinned down, so quite secure. After gluing everything down except the rocks, I primed and painted the base. I spent a lot of time trying to get the Orc weapons to look realistic, and regained my painting skills since the Orc weapons were the first thing to taste the bristles of a brush.
I had glued a lot of components together, but only in sections. For example, I glued the leg assemblies together, the torso, the arms, the crotch area, and the jet packs. Those parts were all separate from one another, and started painting them. I painted from the feet up, gluing sections together when I was finished with them. Originally, I had magnets on the jet packs just in case I wanted to change them out for the Coldstar ones at any point. Not long after finishing the model, I decided to glue the jet packs down, sure that I wasn't going to use the Coldstar suit anytime soon.
Now, when I had planned a 500 point army list, I originally had 20 Fire Warriors, a Commander and a Ghostkeel in the list. I changed my mind when I found some second hand new Crisis Suits new on sprue with all contents. I jumped on the opportunity, and re-tuned the list.
I wrote up lists for 500 points, 1000 points, 1500 points, 1850 points and 2000 points in a way that all of my models from my previous lists carry over to the larger ones (with one exception) so that I'm not spending too much money on models, as my wife is also getting into the hobby with me, and we need to buy her figures as well.
When I move from 500 points onto 1000, I make the biggest change. I took out the Fire Warriors and wrote up a Retaliation Cadre with my Commander, 3 additional Crisis Suits, 2 Broadsides and 1 Riptide. This way, I can have a full battlesuit force at 1000 points, and I really only needed to buy the Retaliation Cadre kit and one more Broadside kit.
I recently celebrated my birthday, and my friends decided to order the Retaliation Cadre kit which is a huge cost I don't have to afford (I'm exceptionally thankful for my friends!). All I need now is another Broadside kit and my 1000 point force is complete. However, I won't be buying that for a while, as my wife has to catch up to me, so that she's not being left out.
Back to my recent work. I give you, my Crisis Suits (see the first image)! I don't have any finished images of the 3 suits standing together, and my best one of them completed is in the first image, so enjoy. I did magnetise all of their weapons, and I did so in a rather intelligent way if I do say so myself!
So, as you can see, I added magnets to the arms. These magnets are 2mm in diameter, and 1mm in height. Now, I found the magnets to be great for hold strength, but they spin if there isn't a brace in place, and I tried to combat that by adding two magnets side by side on my Commander and his weapons, hoping that the strength of the magnets would stop the weapons from spinning and moving. That idea was unsuccessful. So this time I tried something new. I decided to cut off half of the mounting prism that is on the weapons, and replace the removed half with a magnet. What this would do is the magnet would hold to the other magnet on the arm, and the shape of the mounting square would hold it in place. This worked out to be extremely successful! I'll be using this method as much as I can from now on. Now, you'll notice that in the first picture, I didn't add magnets to the shoulders of my Crisis Suits, whereas I did on my Commander. I added magnets to the shoulder of my Commander thinking that I would paint and prepare all of the weapons and system that came with him. When my laziness kicked in, I only painted the Plasma Rifle, Cyclic Ion Blaster and the little antenna support system that came with him. I did end up adding magnets to all of the weapons and systems, I just haven't painted them. I didn't decide to go down this route with my Crisis Suits because I personally think that the support systems that come with him look a little silly on the suits. As a result, I only added magnets to the weapons of my Crisis Suits, resulting in some good looking battlesuits without too much clutter on them. I think they look fantastic! When I prepare my next 3 Crisis Suits, I'll be doing one in the same fashion, but two will be done differently as in my Retaliation Cadre, I have 2 Monats(lone suits without squadmates) with dual Missile Pods, so I'll be mounting those weapons onto their shoulders, as I feel that's a great place to put them, and I haven't seen anything like that before (a Crisis suit with nothing on their arms, and one Missile Pod on each shoulder).
It's good to be back on my blog, after remembering that I had it! I hope to keep it up to date with my return to the hobby, and I may consider posting battle reports, other projects and even my wife's hobby too!
Thanks for reading.
