Miniature Monday 1/23/17

Let's try something a bit different in terms of title.  I took a few weeks off because the cat was being extremely 'helpful' during the cold and rainy weather.  So no painting was really done.

But I did work on some miniatures this past week.  I found I had a modest force of Tau miniatures hiding in boxes.  That plus the Fire Warrior kit from the Kill Team boxed set and a trio of Stealth Suits meant I actually have something I can actually play with.

XV89 Crisis Suit

But taking the lessons learned from prior attempts to collect a Tau army, the Crisis suits will all be carefully fitted out with magnets for their hardpoints.  These are 1/8" long  by 1/16" diameter rare earth magnets, which fit neatly into the slots that are on a typical Tau battle suit.  The first recipient of this methodology is the XV89 Crisis Suit that was lurking unfinished in my boxes of stuff.  Those plasma rifles and missile pods are held in place by carefully mounted magnets.

Like all resin models (whether manufactured by Games Workshop or another company entirely), the XV89 needed putty work to smooth out the most glaring problems.  The plasma rifles had to have a bad mold line shift filled on the top visible part and then the panel lines re-cut in.  I used gray stuff for that because it is a much stiffer putty and more resistant to having fingerprints accidentally pressed into it.  He came with a 60mm base, but he's really too small for it.  By the same token, the 40mm that this generation of plastic Crisis suits came with is too small.  So he is on a 50mm base like contemporary plastic Crisis Suits are.

XV88-2 Broadside

Then there's this guy.  The Forgeworld-produced XV88-2 Broadside Suit, designed in the then popular 'gunslinger' kitbash that many Tau players did when the Broadsides were Metal + Plastic kits.  That meant mounting the metal rail guns on the arms instead of the back, and moving the missile pods or plasma rifles to the back.  It was fairly popular back in 2005-06 when I was actively collecting Tau for the first time.  Forgeworld took to the idea and produced this entirely resin kit, providing a 60mm base with it.  I've gone and mounted this guy on a 50mm, as 60mm is too big and the 40mm the original Broadsides came with are too small.

They no longer produce it as of this writing, and Games Workshop proper has produced a much larger plastic Broadside kit with the weapons mounted in a similar way.  I have a total of three XV88-2 models including this one, two of which are unassembled.  They might remain unassembled, as this one thing took me eight freaking hours to assemble, including the relatively minor fixes I had to do.  Though I have to admit the primary problem was likely my super glue not curing in a timely fashion.  In the end I had to use super glue combined with green stuff to get everything staying together.  The arms have three points they have to mount to the body with; the elbows, the stabilizer system support, and the ammo feed.  The ammo feed was ultimately left off on mine because there was no way I was going to get all three parts lined up and remain sane.

One of the problems I've been coming to grips with is how to paint my armies without feeling overwhelmed.  The only thing I've come up with that sounds remotely sane is to write 500 point army lists and then focus on painting just that 500 point army list.  The Tau and Ultramarins are going to be the first benefactors of this methodology.  Especially the Ultramarines since I have hundreds of models to work with.

The other issue is that I have a sort of a housing crisis going on for my miniatures.  That is to say that I have more miniatures than I have safe storage for.  It is slowly being solved with the purchase of storage cases and foam, but it is an ongoing process.