Work in progress - New Tau Army

I thought I'd post some pics of my current project, a new Tau army. It's a follow up to the Battleforce I completed recently (that I keep on going on about...).

This will be a much larger project in terms of force size and modelling challenges.  The pictures show the 36 Fire Warriors I've assembled.  You'll notice that most of them don't have any arms yet. This is a deliberate strategy to keep the models as 'open' as possible during the painting process.



When the arms are glued on prior to painting it proves 'challenging' to base coat and detail those parts of the model that are behind the weapons and arms.

The cost of this strategy however, is that it does add to the workload somewhat since I need to prime, base coat, paint and then attach 72 arms and 36 shoulder pads.  There also risks, like getting glue on everything after I've painted it.  How will it go?  The honest answer is, I have no idea yet but I'll tell you as soon as I do...

The other more immediate modelling challenge facing me is the weather.  Here in London we've just had our first snow of the year which isn't unexpected of course.  Unfortunately, the thoroughly seasonal weather plays havoc with priming aerosols and frankly, I find priming tricky enough without the added complication of low temperature.  Very low temperatures can cause the priming spray to spatter, dry unevenly or run, none of which I want happening to my 3 Fire warrior squads. So what to do?

Luckily I recently invested in an airbrush, so I'm seriously considering applying an airbrush primer.  This will mean that I'm not affected by the outside temperature and I can stay indoors! Hurrah!  Hopefully problem solved... In the meantime here's some more pics...