I'm starting with Firewarriors for a number of reasons -
they're one of my three favourite Tau models of all time to start with, and
they'll be a major component of the finished force. Most importantly though, I
always start a tabletop army with some basic infantry units - because you can
bomb it, you can strafe it, you can cover it with poison, you can turn it into
smouldering glass, you can consume it with eldritch extra-dimensional energies,
but you don't own it unless your infantry is on it and the other side's isn't.
First, let's take another walk down memory lane.
This is the first Firewarrior team I ever owned, I think I
must have been 9 years old when I got them. I still remember having endless fun
putting them together over an afternoon. At the time I was still digesting the
shiny new 4th edition 40k rulebook (which still remains my favourite 40k BRB)
that I had gotten for Christmas the previous year, and I had recently started
exploring the Dark Millennium hobby section in more detail. Something that had
particularly caught my eye while going through it was the sections on Kill Team
(real Kill Team, with one player using a Kill Team and the other controlling
Brute Squads and more references to action movie tropes than you could shake a
machine gun at. Ahh those were the days) and Raid scenarios with sentries. In particular,
I was fascinated and immensely inspired by the various conversions of infantry
models showcased in the sections, and quickly decided to take a recurring
passage from the Kill Team section to heart and make every model in my new
Firewarrior team unique. Some were actually given specialised roles, while most
were simply just normal troopers, but I gave each one a distinct personality
even if it was only in my imagination. Much of them are now sadly lost to time,
but I still remember a few of the more specialised roles.
You may notice that there are two Firewarriors in the team
with white markings. The story behind this is that when I had finished
assembling the team I then stopped to decide which one of them should be the
team leader, using the only relevant and worthwhile metric there is to a 9 year
old - which one of them looked the coolest! I had of course been naturally
building up one in particular with an eye towards being the team leader, but
when it came time to decide I was torn between that one and the one immediately
next to it, who had ended up with an awesome action pose that I have never
quite been able to replicate, much to my frustration. In the end I decided to
settle the matter by simply painting both of them with white leadership markings,
making my first candidate the Shas'Ui team leader and the alternative choice
the team's second in command, a tradition that has carried over to all of my
Firewarrior teams ever since.
This Firewarrior team also marks one of my earliest experiments
with basing models. I had already read through the instructions in the 3rd
edition Tau codex on how the studio Tau models were based (which I've been
following for this new Tau army), but at the time it seemed rather complicated,
and required paints I didn't have, so instead I simply went through the more
basic method suggested by the Lord of The Rings Strategy Battle Game magazines
I had also been getting a steady supply of, got a bag of flock (back when GW
still sold bags of modelling flock) and began to apply it to the bases of my
Tau models. Since it was already green, I saw no reason why it would not yield
a passable version of the typical grassy field basing scheme commonly found.
The end result was less than spectacular - my child motor skills and perception
abilities proved insufficient for the task at hand, and the flock ended up
being applied very chaotically. Ultimately I deemed it such a disaster that I
avoided basing models at all until four years ago when I started my Wood Elf
army (and used the simple innovation of finishing bases separate to the models
to avoid getting any basing materials on feet and shins).
At the time I was (and still am, all things considered)
awfully proud of this Firewarrior team. Now let's see how their successors stack
up.
Firewarrior Team Kais (as if it was going to be called anything else given my love of the old Fire Warrior computer game) is my first new
Firewarrior team in over a decade, though it is also a homage to the previously
documented one and contains several throwbacks to it. Like the first team
before it, I've taken the idea of personalising and special roles to heart and
made the unit a sort of 'Kill Team lite', including several specialised
members. Some, like the tech specialist and honour guide, have been carried on
from the first team, while others, such as the demolitions expert and medic,
are entirely new. Almost no component swaps or kitbashing was used to make the team
- I am keeping conversion work in the army down to a minimum, because A) I
already think the models look fantastic as they are and don't really feel the
need to modify them too much, B) I'm looking at focusing more on getting the
most out of the model kits themselves and pushing them to their limits rather
than introducing lots of outside elements and C) it will make the major
conversions I actually do really stand out that much more.
Thus, the only component used in this unit from another kit
was the Shas'Ui's markerlight, taken from the new Pathfinder kit. I think most
of all, more than anything, my favourite part about the 2013 6th edition Tau
releases was the introduction of a readily available separate markerlight bit,
and I have obtained an entire box of Pathfinders purely to harvest for
markerlights for my team leaders (though other bits on it will be coming in
handy also). It is a testament to the flexibility of the old Firewarrior kit
that I was able to make all of the specialists that I wanted (5 in total) using
only the parts contained within it. Plus a little greenstuff and a piece of
sprue frame (and the ubiquitous florist's wire for the Shas'Ui's stylish
data-cables).
The team also carries on the tradition of a Team Second
painted with a white helmet and shoulder guard panel, now with an in-universe
justification as a deceptive countermeasure against enemy snipers. It also
allows me to split the team and field it as two units of 6 Firewarriors with
minimal fuss if I so wish (I can also conveniently make both teams Bonded by
simply including the honour guide in with the Second's group). Her pose is a
direct reference to the first team's Second, though not an exact copy (mostly
because I wanted that set of legs for another use), with the other major change
being a worn helmet, as I am moving to the old 3rd edition GW studio Tau army's
pattern of only one bare head per Firewarrior team. Even then all of the
infantry models will have a helmet somewhere on them, as what I've read
suggests that going into an active warzone without some kind of head protection
is widely regarded as a bad move.
Painting wise it's nothing that hasn't been already shown on
the test models, with the exception of the white panels on the Shas'Ui and his
second. I experimented with them after the thought suddenly occurred to me that
the erroneous colour choices listed in the 3rd edition codex's painting
instructions might have been a typing/publication error (as they say, never
attribute malice to what could simply be incompetence) and they really meant
Bleached Bone instead of Vomit Brown. Thus, I tried a 3:1 mix of Skull White
and Bleached Bone (that's White Scar and Ushabti Bone for you youngsters
reading this) for the main white colour and was tickled with the results, which
were much closer to the white on the studio models. The only question left
after this breakthrough was how to highlight it, for which I used a 3:1 mix of
White Scar and Screaming Skull followed by a final highlight of White Scar. The
Shas'Ui also has a simplified pattern of team-markings on his helmet and
shoulder guard, indicating his team is a 'tactical' Firewarrior Team armed with
a mixture of pulse rifles and pulse carbines.
This update was delayed for a long long time as painting the
team ran dangerously behind schedule. I had originally intended to get it
finished before the start of the month, and was confident I would by using a
production line painting method. The last army I worked on was a Wood Elf one
for Warhammer Fantasy, where an overall production line was impractical on the
plastic Glade Guard that formed the core of the army - units in Warhammer
Fantasy are tightly ranked, and thus all the models in them must fit
side-by-side, and since I was also working in sub-assemblies for maximum access
during painting this meant I had to go through an entire unit one model at a
time to make sure they all fit together when fully assembled (I tried keeping
unpainted ones together with blu-tack at first, but that proved to be of little
help as they kept falling apart or leaning over), and thus production line
painting was only used for metal units. Since 40k units act in loose formation,
this was not necessary, simplifying things considerably, however going through
the entire unit in a gigantic production line quickly proved exhausting, and
after two weeks I finally gave up and started working through it two models at
a time. The end result has left me almost a month behind my initial planned
schedule, and I fear the delays have meant that I will now never end up playing
a full game of 40k at a GW store (unless they relax their policies on using
older rules editions for games in there), as I will not use the coming 8th
edition rules - I have already heard enough about them to know that they are not
what I am looking for for 40k gaming.
Still, all in all it is a fine start to my Tau rearmament
program. Now to give them some backup...
