August 2005 - Who's the Boss?

Although not as active in terms of quantity as last month, this month has been more about quality. I have painted my Pathfinder’s Devilfish (in only 3 weeks mind you, I’m getting quicker!), assembled a second devilfish, started work on my Commander in his upgraded Crisis Battlesuit and prepared my Tau to enter a 1500pt tournament for the first weekend of September.

The Pathfinder’s Devilfish was a bit easier than the Hammerhead because I had the Hammerhead sitting next to my paint station so I could simply copy the colour and transfer placement on the Devilfish. The only thing I changed were the colours I painted the gun drones compared to the smart missile systems, just to be different.

While assembling the second Devilfish, I decided that I wanted it to have some seeker missiles as vehicle upgrades. With the Pathfinder’s Devilfish, I just chucked a seeker missile underneath the front wings like in the codex, but I wanted something different for this one. I dived into my Tau bits and came out with a couple of seeker missiles and a secondary weapon system pod and target array from a Hammerhead. I then basically held these pieces next to each other in various ways, using several quite uncomfortable yoga positions and snake charming music, until I came up with a combo that looked cool. I then stuck that on the hatch and the result came out tops pops.

Next on the “to paint list” is my Commander. I had already assembled a Forge World XV89 Battlesuit in a cool jumping pose but it didn’t feel quite right just whackin’ him on a flying stand. I had started basing my finished Tau with the new snow flock so I thought it would look bonza to have the Commander jumping off a big ice block (not a Billabong or Paddlepop). I was thinking about how to attach him and lo and behold, the cover of the Tau codex was sitting on my coffee table with a weird blue stream coming from the battlesuit’s plasma rifle. If I could get something close to that effect coming from the jets of the suit and connect it to the ice, I’d be in business. I discussed how I could get this done with some top modellers, George Damianos from Adelaide and Ado Kent and Bryan Cook from Sydney. They gave me some options to try and being a simple bloke, I went with the simplest way. I got some paperclips and bent them around a pencil to get a swirly look. I then pinned them to the battlesuit and a foam chunk for the ice block. I’ll paint them bright blue-white and then I’ll cover them in some sort of clear stuff like PVA or resin so it looks like a jet stream. That’s the plan anyway…

I also have a name for my commander thanks to my time spent at the Sydney Conflict event on Saturday 20th. I took my Tau along for people to have a look at and I was genuinely surprised at the amount of people who have been reading, they know all about what I’ve been doing. Weird. I was very honoured when I saw a young fella, Sebastian, with a Tau force with a colour scheme based on mine. I was also talking to a lot of hobbyists and one named James suggested a name for my commander, which I’ve taken up. Meet my boss, Shas’el Sa’mej’an. If you reverse it, it says na’jam’es, or “no James” J.

With only two games under my belt so far, I need to get gaming practice in. Lo and behold, the answer to my lack of battle has arrived in the form of the Emperor’s Legion Warhammer 40,000 tournament, run over two days, playing six games. It’s at Penrith, which is about a 20 minute drive from where I live. The only barrier to playing is that my army is not fully painted, but a quick call to the tournament organiser, Bails, and he let me know that as long as they’re undercoated, it’s fine. I won’t get many points for the painting element, but that’s fine. I’ve been told that sheep stations are a lot of work and I don’t really want to win one anyway…

So, you can have a look at the army list I’m taking by clicking on these words now, and I’ll let you know how it goes next month.