Customer: Calvin Tan

Project Outline: A team leader for a Tau Fire warrior squad. He's packing a Pulse Rifle, a Bonding Knife, a Drone Controller, and a Pulse Carbine slung on the shoulder.

I started with a bsic Fire Warrior armed with a Pulse Rifle and added a custom Markerlight to the top of the weapon.

I always liked the way the Pathfinder models have a link cable running from their helmets to their weapons, so I decided to replicate that with small piece of wire.

The customer wanted the model on an urban wasteland style base, so I built one from plasticard, styrene tubing and sand. One it's painted, it'll have some street markings on it to simulate broken pavement.

The customer aslo wanted a Bonding Knife and a Drone Controller for the team leader.

The Bonding Knife was easy enough as it comes right on the sprue. The Drone Controller was a bit trickier as I have to cut of the arm and shave down the hand holding the device, then I attached to the team leader's belt.

It's also a good idea to be able to swap a team leader's weapons if you want. Rather than building two different models, I figured the team leader would probably carry a backup weapon slung over his shoulder.

I toyed around with the idea of having the Pulse Carbine hanging from a shoulder strap. I even tried building one with some greenstuff.

In the end, it looked far better having the rifle 'clipped' on to the side of the backpack. I figure the Tau would have attachment points for various equipment on their armor anyway, being such a technologically advanced race.

Up next... painting

Here we have the Fire Warrior with his 'gang colors' on. The body armor is a base of Mechrite Red with a light edge highlight of BlooD Red to make it 'pop' a bit.

The fatigues are basecoated with Khemri Brown, washed with Badab Black, then highlighted again with Khemri Brown.

The urban base is a drybrush of Codex Grey over a black basecoat, followed by a light drybrush of Fortress Grey. I'll probably do a wash of Devlan Mud on the base, just to make it a bit dirtier.

The markings on the helmet are done in Dheneb Stone, as are the top and bottom edges of the shoulder pad.

All that's really left at this point is to do the lenses on the faceplate of the helmet, but I want to check with the customer first to see which color he wants for them.

Here he is from another angle. I think this shot shows off the thigh plates of the body armor nicely.

Here's the Fire Warrior all finished up.

I repeated the helmet markings on the Pulse Rifle and I went for blue eye lenses as well.

I gave the entire model a coat of dullcoat varnish to protect the paint.

After the dullcoat dried, I went back over the lenses with gloss varnish to give them some shine.

Here's a shot from the front showing the eye lenses.

At this point, the Fire Warrior is ready to ship.