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Tau Orca and Others

The Tau Orca is some big drop ship thing. But in those yellow Tau colours ... ugh! Plus, it's called an orca, right?

Well, leaving that aside for now, drop ship components:

• Listerine bottle
• second Listerine bottle ... it's a big ship
• butter tub for a nose
• creamer cap on top of orange juice cap for thrusters
• pill bottle lids to attach thrusters

Oh, yeah ... greeblies, too. After removing the necks, the two Listerine bottles glue together and the butter tub goes on the end. The pill bottle lids go on the sides. Since the interior of the child proof cap turns, the thrusters will turn. And add on some greeblies. Not too many, orcas are sleek killers.

The seam between the bottles gets caulked.

Then it gets reinforced on the under side. A cardboard strip fills the gap, and some wood skewers bridge the two bits together. This ended up being a strong connection.

And some more big bottle caps on the underside to be landing gear so it doesn't just lie on the ground. The ruler helps position and even the caps so the ship stands level on them.

The back end needs something other than the divot in the mouthwash bottle (you know ... those raised bits on the bottom of containers that allow them to hold less stuff but still look bigger). So I blacked in the edges so I can trace the edge easily through a piece of paper.

I think this bit of corrugated cardboard will do the trick.

Taking a break from the orca, these are Tau drones. I got a bunch of Tau vehicles cheap because they were missing their drones. I am thinking these bottlecap gaskets are rounded enough to work

This is how the drones fit in the vehicles.

The gaskets can be trimmed to fit in the same sockets as the drones.

And we can add these other little plastic bits from 'Clix flight bases to serve as the antenna.

But the bodies don't look right. There's not enough bulge in them. So, part of scratchbuilding is knowing when to go with Plan B.

Plan B is just making the bodies out of clay, attached to thin cardboard circles of the right diameter.

So the antennas look good, and some moderate thick card will make the basic Tau gun shape ... a rectangle.

And decorate them up to mach my other Tau forces.

Ochre is good for the infantry, but not the vehicles. They start with yellow.gold near the drone and spectrum away from there.

Speaking of colour ... orca colour scheme. Black with white under carriage.

And the thrusters go on after the paintjob. Green stuff in the middle with caulk around the edges.

And here's the whole happy family. I think it looks Tau enough and drop ship enough.