Migration to Small Games and Painting My Tau Kill Team

I've always liked the look of Tau armies, especially the suit ones (not sure what they are all called).  I had already invested heavily in a Guard army to play 40k with and, given our games normally played at the 1500 point range, starting another army was just plain daunting, not to mention a kick in the wallet as well.  I fell out of playing large games of regular 40k for a number of reasons and started playing Space Hulk with a friend of mine.  The simple (but brutal) rule set and limited number of models was a huge appeal to me. 

After playing Space Hulk exclusively for a couple of years, my firend and I started experimenting with playing 40k with small teams.  We did that for a bit and then in 2016 (I believe) a Kill Team box set came out from GW.  This box had a force of Tau and a Space Marine Tactical Squad.  I bought the box only for the rules plus 10 Space Marines as I wanted to build a team of Imperial Fists.  I built the fists and continued to play our version of Kill Team mixed in with games of Space Hulk.

The Tau stayed in the box still on the sprues.


The beauty of Kill Team (whatever version) is that you can try out various armies without having to sink and overwhelming amount of time or money into it.

During one of our gaming sessions a few weeks back, I was commenting on how I have always liked the Tau army and it struck me that I still had that set in the box!  So boom, I built a team (and bought some stealth suits...they are so cool!) and built and primed them.  Then the block came in they sat on the table.  I wanted to go with a dark color like Khorne Red but my friend suggested going light as that seemed more of a fit to the fluff behind the Tau.  So we picked out some colors and I ran with it.

So here is the result and paints I used behind each stage:

Primed black with a grey for zenithal highlighting.  Not sure why I put the brush in this shot.

I primed black because I prime everything black and I was going to go with a dark base coat.  I could re-prime but my friend indicated a dry brush of a lighter color would work out too.  So I went with the dry brush approach.

After dry brushing.  A makeup brush is a great dry brush tool!

Base coating the armor.

Base coat of the uniform.  I forgot to take a shot with them at this stage with the paint I used in the shot.

Sepia and blue wash to complete the set.  The blue is from back when I was painting my son's Ultramarines!

Set of XV25 Stealth Battle Suits.

Suits plus drone completed.  A bit heavy on the blue wash so will try and tidy that up.

The suits are a reverse of the fire warrior scheme (again, my friend's suggestion...he's an artist while I fling paint at stuff and hope it turns out ok).

I literally finished 4 Tau (I had painted the test model last weekend), 3 suits and a drone in a day and a half.  Life distractions, procrastination (a lot), etc. make churning out squads of models a long process for me so this is a personal record. 

Lesson learned for me on this project. 

I assembled all the models first then went in to paint.  I normally don't do this but for some reason, I wanted the get them built to see how the pieces went together.  I can do Space Marines in my sleep but the Tau have so many tiny pieces and what goes where I had no clue.

That posed a problem in painting them, especially the chest area.  Not that it was a big deal but it bugs me when I can't get at a spot.  Even if no one else notices, I know it and it nags at me. So I recommend painting these guys in sections, then put them together.

A fun experience and now I have a cool Tau Kill Team which I got to use in our games yesterday.  I will post up some shots of our games later.