Custom Broadside Dryfit ( XV-88s ver. ja )

this is my take on the tau broadside suits. the GW rail cannons are a p.o.s. all warped and shrunk in the most obscene form. shame on you gw. your most useful parts were only the head and backpack.

GW; a degenerate scale models company

I'm pretty pissed at gamesworkshop... their tau crisis suit designs and production models are possibly the most design flawed models I have ever attempted.

Firstly, lets start with the design aspect. I thought crisis suits were supposed to be piloted by a tau pilot inside. With the GW model, there is physically no way a tau can ever fit inside. If it were a suit of external armor systems, the tau pilot must have a stance as wide as a buffalo (nuts included) to fit into the suit's pelvis stance. In whats shown on the forgeworld site, a normal tau without armor looks more like a tall lanky disco junkie from the 70's afro, bell bottoms, how do they sit inside that god forsaken mecha suit? Also, there seems to be no torso movement at all. Can you imagine living life doing everyday things without being able to rotate your waist?

I think the tau suit idea is a good one... but like most imitators, the execution is an epic fail. Since the tau designers have proven that their IQ is roughly congruent with that of a cabbage, I hereby nominate my garden gnome eddy mcfuck to undertake the next tau codex' suit designs entirely. With all due respects, leave the robot designing to the Japanese.

Secondly, lets go over the quality of gw products, how many times have tank panels not lined up symmetrically with the corresponding sides? how many forgeworld doors have you bought that seem to suffer from more shrinkage than penis on a cold day if ice fishing? how many tau suit heads have dents on the smack middle of the top panel? (see picture, red circles marks the spot)

*my only suggestion to warhammer model enthusiasts is to buy a Bandai Gundam model, just build a master grade without even painting it to see the gap of comparison I am trying to illustrate.*

Now gw wants to charge $24.03 (nyc tax included) for this crappy model? how can I quantify this fact and have it make sense in the most marginal manner? Thats almost like saying Catholic priests do not molest underage boys and that the pope does not look like emperor palpatine... This makes me re-think all holy truths and everything else I've been taught...

Being calm now, I must say normally i never buy any fake goods as I believe people should get dues for what they put out on the market but this case is different... clearly we can see that even with the high premium gw is already charging, they still cannot afford a proper quality control team to oversee their products... and yet all nations rip on china for bad quality... I think from now on, I will only buy 1 box or unit of whatever I need, fix that up and just re-cast my own master molds into however many pieces I need. At least that will save me a lot of time than trying to make good something that's defective.

Tau Tanks

With 36 fire warriors, sniper drone team, 18 drones & 9 stealth suits done, the outstanding units are 10 crisis suits with an armada of tau tanks.

Since last week, camo and basic coloring for the 6 tau tanks are done. final posing and mods to the battle suits are also done awaiting basecoating in black.

The reason why the tau are partially red is because to be frugal, I bought all the tanks and the battle suits 2nd hand for a huge bargain. I guess the kid who put the models together did it in a rush. All of those pre-owned models were basically gut up into bits and pieces, filed down, reposed, joints modified and converted and then put back together in my style of assembly.

Being a huge gundam/mecha fan, my experiences with building and modeling tau has really allowed me to feel in my own element of talent whenever I work on these models. I want them to look like they jumped out of the appleseed universe. Lets hope it all works out.

How To Airbrush Tau Camouflage

Heres a simple how to on tau camo.

1. My tau are themed based on the sa'cea sept color pattern made up of pure shadow grey (darker tone) & a 50/50 mix of shadow grey & spacewolves grey. (lighter tone) I've decided that the darker tone will be the primary color where as the lighter tone will be the camo pattern. First Airbrush the lighter tone evenly over the target surface.

2. tape rows of masking tape onto a self healing cutting mat with the rows touching eachother forming a larger sheet surface. (see picture) then use a ruler and score out intercepting diagonal lines throughout the sheet until you have irregular angles.

3. Using the irregular shapes, tape them onto the target surface in the desired pattern.

4. airbrush an even layer of the primary color (darker tone)

Special remarks:

the reason why your masking isn't working can be 1 of the 3 reasons below:

a. your airbrush regulator needs to be pumping out less than 1 lbs of pressure. anything stronger will blow off the masking tape or cause the paints to seep in.

b. you need to be hitting the masking tape with the airbrush on the top or "face" surface. if you hit it from the sides. paint will build up between the edge of the tape and the unmasked surface. When you peel off the tape, the edges will look shit.

c. your masking tape probably has dust or dirst stuck to the edges. buy a new roll.

Sometimes its so hard to focus on a single army and not lose interest. Building, converting and painting all the pieces to have a playable array of strategic assets in your army is perhaps one of the hardest things I struggle to do. I dunno, I just find it hard to really concentrate with a single hobby.

Nonetheless within the 40k universe space wolves are cool but perhaps they are a more forgiving army? It sucks to win a game and have someone call you out for the army you are using. My basis is I build whatever I think looks cool in a collection.

Way before I knew how warhammer was played, I remember buying a pack of fire warriors when my younger brother at the time bought his starter set with (I think we space marines & dark eldar)? maybe 10 years ago...

Anyhow, I decided to airbrush my way through this endeavor. The fish in the center with camo is the test subject. The fishes were all first airbrushed with a 50/50 mix of shadow grey & space wolves grey. Then masked followed by a successive layer of shadow grey to create the urban camo shapes.

Cranking Ass Cans Out the Ass

How much does it suck to have to drop cash everytime you wanted a one-off component from a GW kit? Not anymore! I've decided to save up money and attempted to cast my own resin parts. In the close up shot, you can see the quality... not as bad as the worst of what I've bought from forgeworld.

13th Co. WIP

Just started works on 20 13th co. space wolves plus 1 converted wolf priest as besides the main names characters, space wolves hq are hard to come by in hkg.

Its gonna suck painting up so many guys. I dread this stage so much. I just wanna fast forward to the last 20% as that's when the sense of reward starts to settle in.