Kill Team: Starter Set Tau

I only managed to get a hour or so over sunday to continue working on these, I finished the first “team” of fire warriors and managed to start on the breacher armed team.

The missile pod is mostly complete and I also managed to squeeze in a start on the drones.

I actually completed two fire warriors as part of my first test, I varied the paint order slightly after the first try going with the scheme below for the warrior in those pictures.

Hopefully the softer lighting helps convey the finished result better.

I’ve stared on the drones and the missile pod and will probably complete the remaining warriors in two batches of 4.

I’m also thinking of going with the black cloth first as that’s the step I had to patch up the most and it will be simpler to correct any mistakes on just the base-coat.

Quick intro

Armour – Apocathary White

I stared off with the Armour, this being the first contrast paint I’ve used I was quite impressed with the results, giving that nice off white effect. It went on well though at first was slightly tricky to notice the coat I quickly got used to it.

Weapon Orb – Nazdreg Yellow

I followed this up with the yellow orb in the weapon, was very impressed with the yellow effect for a single coat.

Icons – Blood Angels Red

I similarly followed this up with the red tau icons again the red came out great.

Cloth – Black Templar

Time for the tricky part, I somewhat regretted not started with the black and it was the most time consuming task, the effect is fantastic given how hard and time consuming painting black can be.

Base – Vallejo US Field Drab (70.873)

I finally tidied up the base with a coat of US Field Drab, basically the same as Citadel Steel Legion Drab

Here’s the finished result, I’ll follow up with some brighter shots in morning as these probably don’t do it justice.

Overall I was fairly impressed with the Contrast paints, with a few exceptions they all proved easy to use and give a good effect. Not the best paint job in the world but perfectly adequate as table ready and a lot better than a single coat in of solid color.

Given I find black and white quite hard colors (and yellow, I’m thinking of doing the space marines from the starter kit as Imperial Fists) to get good effects I think the results for the amount of effort are pretty impressive.

I may experiment down the line on ways to improve the overall look and I’ll perhaps change the painting order.

For now though I’ve got a day to try and get the rest of the squad finished, Oh and I guess I should base them too.

Tools

• Citadel Medium Layer Brush / Army Painter Standard Brush
• Citadel Paint Handle

Paints

• Citadel Contrast Paints
  • (Armour) Apocathary White
  • (Cloth) Black Templar
  • (Icons) Blood Angels Red
  • (Lenses) Aethermatic Blue
  • (Armour Patches) Space Wolves Grey
  • (Weapon Orb) Nazdreg Yellow
  • (Skin) Gryph-Charger Grey
• Citadel Grey Seer
• (Base) Vallejo US Field Drab (70.873)

I started off priming all the miniatures with Vallejo Grey Surface Primer (70.601) using an airbrush, priming and vehicles being about the limit of my airbrushing skills so far.

I’d considered purchasing a can of Citadel Grey Seer primer up but couldn’t justify the cost for a handful on miniatures, if the Tau force starts to expand I might pick on up.

This went pretty smoothly I also used the Citadel painting handle to make managing the miniatures a bit easier. I need to get better at cleaning the airbrush though as i had some trouble with the paint flow and the primer was drying pretty fast too.

Once these where dry I applied a thin coat of Citadel Grey Seer across them all using a brush.

Tools

• Citadel painting handle
• Airbrush (I used a cheap £10 one)
• Any large brush

Paints

• Vallejo Grey Surface Primer (70.601)
• Citadel Grey Seer