Future Wars Update 004 - 'The Enemy'

Just finished off the first squad of the 'opposition' for my Future Wars project.

The First Interdiction Squad, Taranthra Assault Pattern, Kra'uul Earth Invasion Force. 2065AD

Obviously I'm using Tau for the 'Enemy' just because they fit the bill and they're figures I've already got.

Putting the Battleforce box set I treated myself to a couple of years ago to a good use, since it had been languishing in the cupboard since. I had bought it just because I'd wanted some of the Tau since they were first released but not got around to do anything with them.

My Future Wars project had been growing arms and tenticles and I had decided that I wanted to get some opposition for my humans, who would be suitably higher tech than the Human defenders but I wanted something I liked. It was a no brainer to use my Tau in the Cupboard.

The whole box set minus the tank is a suitably sized force to take on my Mechanized Infantry Assault Platoon (with Maneuver Support) and will supply three squads like the one here plus a command squad, an infiltration squad and a bit of heavy support in the way of the battlesuit. I may splash out and pick up a couple of the forge world Pathfinder Tetra's and Pirhana TX42's as I've got a couple of ideas for arial assault rules, but that's a bit of a way off.

Painting them up, I decided to go for a colour scheme, Manga-esque in theme, that was pretty much the opposite of the Humans, so a white and red scheme with a couple of bits of gold spot colour was what I went for.

I also had an experiment while painting them up by using the Army Painter paints entirely, to see how they faired. All in all the colours had good coverage, colour and could be mixed pretty well. I did note that the white was very transluscent however and took several coats to cover even a fairly thin wash of grey successfully. The Army Painter spray white undercoat was also a wee bit of a let down where the colour and coverage was good but came out pretty thickly even with a cautious spray and obliterated some of the detail on the figures (though admittedly it was a bit cold when I was using it).

The rest of the colours were generally pretty good though they all tended to either very thick consistancy (needing thinned before use) or pretty thin consistancy (and needing a couple of coats to get an even coverage). The small bottles of the various 'tones' I found quite useful thinned to make washes.

Probably due to the fact I was using paints I hadn't really used before, the Squad took a lot longer to paint than I had anticipated a 'mainly white' set of figures to paint. However, I've picked up some pointers and the others should be significantly quicker.

I've also gained a profound respect for the other painters out there who produce immaculate and incredibly sharply done Tau armies for 40K. 'Respect' to them big style, cause I know I spent ages going over and over trying to get the lines straight on the weapons etc that I thought I was going snow blind.

Next up on the Future Wars Project, more squads for the Humans.