The Tau were my first 40K Army, picked up by accident rather than through any prior planning.  At the time I opened Wizbangs in 2001, I had many customers that collected 40K armies, but none really knew how to play.  So, I set out learning the game so that I could teach them and then created a ladder campaign to drum up participation.

 

I based the campaign on scenarios drawn from Che Guevera's revolution in Cuba (which I was reading at the time) and became so enthralled with the challenge of the missions that I HAD to participate myself.  The Tau army had just been released and I fully stocked it figuring some one would be interested.  None were.  Therefore, rather than letting it collect dust on the shelves, I purchased the Tau to use as my own army.

 

My friend and partner, Josh Lyons went to work assembling and painting a unit of Fire Warriors.  At the time, we discussed the best paint scheme and opted for a Star Wars-like white uniform that resembled the Storm Troopers of the Emperor.  Those original Fire Warriors are not presented here, since they were part of Josh's collection (and he never sold them off).  My models were all purchased and painted following his paint scheme for the initial unit of Fire Warriors.

 

The entire lot was sold off on EBay shortly after Wizbangs closed as I had picked up a collection of Tyranids for a bargain price and opted to sit on those for possible future use.  This collection was completed and sold during the 2001-2003 timeframe.

 

The Ethereal seemed to add no strategic value to the unit at the time, but I liked the model and envisioned him becoming some kind of Chaos Sorcerer for a Fantasy army long after his retirement.  In the end, he was sold off with the collection.

 

My Commander in a Battle Suit, however, was a fixture in the army.  In my early days of developing weapons configurations, I opted to pin all of the weapons to make them interchangable on the battle suits.  I have since discovered the use of Rare Earth magnets, which make for a better fit and ease of changing out weapons. 

 

The Plasma Rifle was the weapon of choice against Space Marines, of which, I often faced Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and Necrons (what I call Undead Space Marines).

 

View from the rear showing some of the weapons options.

 

My favorite unit in the army was the Stealth Warriors.  I envisioned these suits shimmering with defractive energy, so I painted them in a transitional blue (light at the heads going dark to the feet).  I followed this by lining out as many plates and angles as possible, believing the emphasis on the angles would reflect radar and other visual technologies.  Lastly, I layered multiple coats of high gloss varnish on them.  This unit of 3 were more of a nuisance unit than tactically significant, although I often equipped them with a lot of gun drones.  When I sold them, the buyer wanted 6 more just like them, so I had to purchase more models and duplicate the scheme some 3 years later.

 

Gun drones sporting the over-all color scheme of the force.

 

Although we never got around to introducing Forge World additions, like these Heavy Gun drones, I was prepared to field them in our second campaign that never came to fruition.

 

Here are 3 Crisis Suits displaying the Storm Trooper scheme and pinned weapons options.  I introduced some varying colors to the different plates as a form of "scientific camouflage" on the models.  The unit leader has the red should pad and red feet.

 

The Tiger Shark transport for the Fire Warriors squad.  This was the extent of mechanization for my Tau army.  I went through the trouble of hinging all the doors so they could open and close and painted the interior, only to realize that the rules gave no reason for such options.  Thus, future vehicles had their hatches glued shut.

 

Probably due to the amount of urban fighting that we were playing, I never mechanized my force and belatedly completed a Hammerhead tank to support my army.  Most fire support came from this pair of Broadside Battle Suits.  Since they were a support unit, I chose to paint them in a "navy grey" to represent their coming from a different organization.  I didn't like the flimsy way the railguns were mounted to their shoulders, so I went for a more "Battle Tech" configuration and mounted them in place of their arms.  The rocket pods went on the shoulders where the railguns would have been.

 

Rear view showing how I had to cut off the arms, the tails of the railguns and mounted them.

 

With so much urban warfare taking place and most of my opponents aspiring to get engaged at close quarters, Kroot became a necessity.  With over 40 models, about half of my total force was made up of Kroot warriors, hounds and Shapers.  These were mounted on heavy washers to keep them from tipping over on the battlefield.