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Tau and Auxiliaries
So I needed to make up some Tau as a gift. Since it wasn't for "official" play in "sanctioned" 40K tourneys, I decided to see if I could capture the essence of Tau forces as a gift, and the throw in some conversions as Auxiliaries. And a couple of Ethereals, just to round things out.
So ... what makes a Tau a Tau? Well, I felt the two distinguishing
characterisics were the legs and the weapons. So, I went out to
Hoard o Bits and got some Fire Warrior
legs, Pathfinder legs, and a whole mess of weapons. I used a bunch
of miscelaneous torsos (and other torso like bits) for the bodies and
RoboGear helmets for the heads. After asking around, I found out that
the Pathfinders should only have the carbines (short guns) and the
Fire Warriors should only have the rifles (long guns). Also, the
Fire Warriors got some backpacks ... various tech bits from cutting
up MechWarriors.
This left me with a bunch of weapons. Fortunately, I also had a bunch
of generic bodies lying around (HorrorClix Insect Men ... the heads are
great for conversion and the remaining body is OK, if you can wait out
a use for a guy in generic clothing (lab scrubs). Also, I pulled a big
guy (HeroClix Professor Ivo) who was a cheap source of hairy hominid
heads. Once I arm these up with the leftover weapons and some random
style of head, they will fill in for one of the types of Auxiliaries
that the Tau have. Fundamentally different in form, but armed with Tau
tech; I think that fits the bill.
I went ahead and went with the classic yellow-ochre colour scheme.
Since I had some variation with some of the parts, I thought it would
be important to ground them in something very Tau-ish.
This Ethereal is just a Nick Fury figure with a little putty on the top of his head to make the cleft. The NCO's (yes, I know they aren't called NCO's by the Tau ... there's some class/rank name) are the same technique, using various other random bald heads I had lying around.
And here are the Auxiliaries. I went with a mix of savage and helmeted
heads and backed them up with giant toy frog feet (the heads have gone
elsewhere...). I ended up finishing them off with VOID Viridian shields.
All in all, not a bad generic alien race, and easily identified as Tau
affiliated through the armaments.
This Ethereal is a HeroClix Mandarin, with a head replacement and augmentation. I forgot to mention that I added cowls to the Ethereal figures (seemed the right thing to do) with thin cardboard and gave them Tim Barry sculpted weapons.
All in all, a pretty satisfying set. Of course, they won't stand up to inquiry based on close scrutiny. Actually ... they will. They aren't intended to be anything other that what they are. And they were only about $0.45 each by parts.