Longtime readers will know that I bought a TON of Tau stuff when the line relaunched last April, and nearly a year later, I'm still plugging away! Of the original lot, I've painted two fire warrior teams, a stealth team, two piranha, a skyray/hammerhead combo, cadre fireblade, a pathfinder team, a riptide, and two crisis bodyguards for my non-existent commander.
Having sold Darkstrider on eBay, the only items I have left are my converted Ethereal and the two Broadsides. I was in a mech-y mood (having binged on TITANFALL lately) so I started my broadsides to bring the whole project into its final leg.
Seeing how well Dieter's turned out, I decided to start mine. I grabed the first box to discover that the cat had apparently decided to open the models before I did. Sadly, she did not assemble and prime the models inside.
These sprues are insane! Look at how tightly packed they are - have to give props to the GW engineering team. A little intimidating, but thankfully, the instructions were excellent. Unlike older sprues, every part is numbered and grouped together appropriately. Very helpful considering that I'm building two of these at the same time. This will be time consuming enough, and every bit helps.
With a few hours of work, I had created my sub-assemblies based upon undercoat and base coat color, and accessibility. I kinda dig how the legs look without the thigh armor - reminds me a of a Strider frame in TITANFALL. A sharp eye will notice that I straight-up ganked Deet's "Brute head" conversion.
Readers will also notice something fishy about the rail guns - I've chopped off the barrels! I've decided to follow a conversion started by K'tano on the Advanced Tau Tactica forums, and furthered by Deet to include magnetization.
I'll be honest here, and say that I think the HYMP variant in the box looks like shit. The large, goofy "boxing glove hands" are just too much. K'tano's hip-fired HYMP is much, much cooler. And "rule of cool" always wins. I've braced the alternate weapon loadouts with a strip of sheet styrene (plasticard), and will embed magnets in them for the next step - to allow interchangeability.
On a final note, I'd like to point out something, and you guys can tell me if I'm crazy; Look at the circled area in the image below, it almost looks like the suit's hands are missing. The arm simply ends at the wrist, and goes into the gun - and it's not like it's hidden inside the bulk of the weapon -that part of the model looks like it has a small indent for seating an additional part that would be the hand.
It certainly doesn't look like a detail modeled into the gun, given how specific all the other vents and nodes are. I double checked the images on the box, and the instructions, but it seems like this is the way it's built. Still, I can't help but think that something went wrong along the way, and parts were left off the sprues.
-trip
I'll tell you, I'd fill in the small gaps on the sides of the brute heads to blend the two halves together. I didn't do it, and it doesn't look awful, but I will definitely take the time next round. I've got some extra laser cut sheath parts if you want them for the rail gun joint.
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