Grey knight strike cruisers BFG

Today I finished painting a couple of striker cruisers for a friend of mine, hope he likes the pic heavy post:

Any improvements you may suggest?

Step by step for the base of my second riptide xv104

I have always belived that the base is a real important part of the models we work with, however my budget hasnt allowed me the pleasure of resin bases like those you will find on the net, that hasnt stopped me from trying my best, this time is no expection and I did a  base for my second riptide, a simpler one than the previous but a base I like a lot.

First I began by colecting the materials:

• a small stone, 
• slate pieces, 
• piece of resin mold overcast (from my Forge World Crisis Suit - not necesary)
• piece of styrofoam
•  some small resin pieces on the 40k basing kit,
• fine sand

and tools:

• PVA glue
• Super glue
• Hobby knife

Instructions:
I shaped the styrofoam in a more or less round disc and trimmed the edges into a wedge
Then glued the styrofoam at the center with PVA Glue and then used the pva to glue the rock, the resin and slate pieces, once they where placed I grabbed a spry can of paint and pressed the trigger on a small circle that melted the stirofoam and let it dry for a while, for a more specific how to you can check the +Teri Litorco  video on Terrain Part 1

After that I covered the surface of the base with PVA glue, I made sure to cover the styrofoam that remained after the melting process was completed, it is critical as it will prevent more melting.

 Next the sand, I just srpinkled a lot of it on the glue, after a while I turned on its side and tapped a bit (strong) so it the one that wasnt glued just falled off.

 When I was happy wit the result I let it dry for 24hrs to be sure all the PVA was properly dry and then sprayed black, for terrain I like the muted tones it gives, way better than other colors.

Painting

the last stage was the painting: I started by drybrushing scorched earth but any dark brown will do, after that I drybrushed vomit brown

 then I drybrushed graveyard earth  and finally a bit of bleached bone

I left the center of the crater mostly black and then I started to drybrush a dark grey on the stones and th ceter of the crater only, and started to pick some details like the spent cartridges with some brass and the chaos helmet, on the tubes I used screaming bell and astronomican grey on the concrete slabs, when that dried I used a wash of ogryn flesh on the slabs  and somo stones followed by a bit of devlan mud. I also  glued some static grass and painted some green here and there.

 while it dried I painted the gem on the cross at the base 

 to finish my base I painted the astronomican grey on the rim and followed with skull white which is the color code for my tau. So here is the end result wich will have a pretty  Riptide in the short term feature.

           Hope you like this brief step by step, until next time.

MAD TAU Suits list mussings

Hi every one, I have a deep love for Riptide, I love the model so much that even when I don’t have the money I got a second one, but after reading the new Data slate I must confess that a wild list has come to my mind, let’s see how many suits would fit not how good it would be:

First I would take the Farsight supplement as core for the following list:

Main Detachment

HQ the Riptide Commander

Troops: 2xCrisis suits (3 units each)

Elites 3 Riptides with the Earth caste equipment

Then is how much Riptide power we can fit no if it is a sane list

Heavy: 3 xv107

Data Slate:

1 Riptide

6 Broadsides

That is not including the Tau as Allied to add another riptide to avoid using the fire warriors

I’m not even caring to look the points on that list as I know first I would be broken just from the normal Riptides then the Data slate and to finish with the FW stuff, really nuts, but that list in a Third sphere expansion scenario would be so appropriated to fight endless tides of Guardsmen, more of a narrative than a competitive scenario.

What do you think?

Turning my XV81 into a full TAU HQ enabled one

This year I got a XV81 unit from Forge World, it is  a nice model that is not as different from the standard models and blends perfectly with the rest of the crisis units. Its only drawback is the fact that it doesn't mix as perfectly with the Air burst fragmentation launcher or the Cyclic Ion Blaster, more if you like have the metal ones. I struggled on how to implement it into my XV81 since I want it to be my HQ unit, in the end I decided to clip my weapons and attached magnets to the end so my model can be armed properly.  what do you think?

My Tau Crisis Suits

They have been around for  a while and I wanted to show them specially the ForgeWorld one but I have not been able to do it, so I took a few extra minutes to do an small showcase to see what do you think of them.

Doing some work on a XV81 part 3

Recently I got my hands on a Forge World Tau xv81 Crisis Suit, after looking all the parts I couldn’t resist and decided That some magnets should be used because to me the arms screamed for them.
But first when working with resin you got to be really careful with the dust that can be released, here you will see that even when I just used a hobby knife the dust appears in various pictures. THIS DUST IS DANGEROUS, use a mask to avoid breathing it.
After the last post we should be with something like the following picture that has been around since the first post on the series.


Today we well cover the arms and start by getting a magnet and we make sure there is a big enough hole for the magnet


when it is big enough I put the magnet  with some glue
next there is the turn of the weapons by drilling a magnetically aligned small magnet as you can see here  

after that  there is jut s matter of finishing the model.

and you have something like that:

I just scrapped a hole  where I could mount the mini in a flying base, what do you think?

After completing the model I can say you that the Forge World arms are so much easier to magnetize and swap weapons, I’m still struggling to have strong attachment on the regular models and here is easy cake.
I hope you liked the series and I want to hear from you.