Warhammer 40,000 - Tau Empire Commander
We covered a bit of history in a previous blog post about my various Tau Commander models over the years.
The build wasn’t too bad, a bit fiddly and I left him in a few sub-assemblies to make access to the nooks and crannies easier. I also moved the missile pod from his shoulder to his arm and stuck a flamer to it, as the flamer didn’t look very good on his arm; it would have to be upside down otherwise.
To be honest, my paint scheme hasn’t really changed in the years I’ve been collecting Tau. It's just the paints that have as Games Workshop renamed or discontinued the colours that I used. When I first started it was a Chaos Black undercoat, a layer of Vermin Brown then Vomit Brown, with Midnight Blue as a secondary colour. Today, I used an Army Painter black primer (because Games Workshop rattle cans are no longer primers), a layer of XV-88 then Tau Light Ochre with Vallejo Night Blue as the secondary colour. It’s not a perfect match but it’s pretty close to the colours I used two decades ago. Of course, the other thing that’s changed is that I can crack out the airbrush to do the main armour colours. It gives a nice smooth finish, which is perfect for the armoured battlesuits. Additionally, after I had done the Tau Light Ochre layer I mixed what remained in the airbrush pot with a bit of Army Painter Skeleton Bone to give it a cheeky zenithal highlight. From there I ran a line of Nuln Oil into the breaks in the armour panels and highlighted the top edges with Skeleton Bone. And with that most of the model was done.
The next largest area was the black mechanical bits between the armour panels, most notably the exhausts on his back, the elbow joints and legs. For these, I didn’t want to do a pure black as it can end up looking rather flat so instead I used Corvus Black, which is actually a very dark grey. Using a dark grey like this means that I can wash it with Nuln Oil and you can more easily make out the difference when said wash settles in the recesses. Additionally, using the dark grey meant that the edge highlights of Mechanicus Standard Grey were a bit softer.
Originally, I had planned to paint his helmet/head with Rhinox Hide, as that’s what I use for all my other squad leader’s helmets, but as this guy is the big boss I wanted to do something a bit different. Back in the day, the colour scheme was that squad leaders and commanders had a pure white helmet. I decided against that as pure white can, like pure black, be a bit flat so I opted for a bone coloured helmet instead. Followed by a quick edge highlight with Ulthuan Grey made his helmet distinct without standing out like a sore thumb.
After that, it was all detailing, as mentioned above I used Vallejo Night Blue as a secondary colour so I used it, and Rhinox Hide and Skrag Brown, to pick out a few choice panels to break up all the Tau Light Ochre. All the lenses got a basecoat of Leadbelcher before a layer of Blood Angels Red contrast. I’m really loving using contrast paints over metallics and I’m finding more and more excuses to use them. Speaking of metallics, I used Retributor Armour to pick out the various “flat-head screws” on the model, particularly on his jump-pack. I don’t know exactly what these are but they feature prominently on the barrels of pulse rifles/carbines. And finally, I picked out the missile tips with Scarlet Red.
For the base, I used Citadel’s Armageddon Dust and Armageddon Dunes texture paints. Once they were dry I slapped on a few blobs of the Agrellan Badland crackle paint. It’s important to wait for the previous paints to dry otherwise the crackle paint will curl up at the edges and it will look terrible. Once the texture paints were dry I gave the whole base a couple of layers of thinned Zandri Dust so that everything matches. After that, I gave it a wash with Seraphim Sepia and drybrushed it with Tyrant Skull. Finally, I glued on a couple of Burnt Tufts from The Army Painter and painted the rim with XV-88.
And with that, Commander Warhawk was done. Overall, I’m very pleased with how he turned out although in the future I might swap his flying stand for a shorter one as at the moment he’s about twice as tall as a regular Crisis Battlesuit.