Zealot Miniatures

I wanted to add a little more character to my Tau army.  I looked around on the Internet and found a small after market bits dealer named Zealot Miniatures.  Zealot Miniatures is located somewhere on Great Britain.  I noticed on their website that they have created several alternate male and female heads for Tau infantry.  They also make Tau infantry arms which look like they have marker lights on them.  It took a few weeks for the bits to arrive, but I'm happy with my purchase.  The bits are cast well and contain no bubbles, but you can see noticeable amounts of flash near the seams.  The hands are a bit large and out of scale, but nothing a surgeons scalpel can't fix. 

Tau Army

I’m working on redoing my Tau army that has been sitting inside old boxes for seven years.  I began by dusting everything off and taking an inventory of what I had on hand.  I have 2 Ethereals, 12 Crises Suits, 12 Stealth Suits, 2 Devilfish, 1 Hammerhead, 30+ Fire Warriors, 30+ Kroot, 2 Forge World Marker Drones, 3 Forge World Air Caste, and scores of regular Drones.  The jewel of my old Tau army is a Barracuda Air superiority fighter.  It’s going to look great once I strip it, and find a new base for it.

With my inventory complete I submerged the infantry and Crisis Suits in Super Clean.  My Tau have been soaking in the stuff for a month.  I’m in no hurry to get them out of their bath.  I’m happy to know that they will be ready for stripping when I find the time. 

I purchased some reinforcements for my Tau a few weeks back.  I picked up a Riptide, Sun Shark, 3 Broadsides, some Pathfinders, Longstrike, Darkstrider, and a Fireblade.  To give my army a unique look, I purchased some aftermarket bits from Paulson Games and Zealot Miniatures.   I think these two forces mixed together will be a considerable army to fight with.  Now I have to work out the point values and pick out a paint scheme. 

Avatars

I have been thinking about rules on how to add an avatar of yourself into 40K.  Usually a gamer is represented by the HQ unit on the board, but what happens when your HQ is a named character?  I am using Vulkan He'stan as my HQ, and sadly I'm a poor substitute for Vulkan.  I decided to make an avatar of myself using some spare bits, and some special order bits from MaxMini, Anvil Industry, and Forgeworld.  I am running an Ultramarines army, and I wanted to keep with the Roman style that is seen in the Ultramarines miniature range. 

I decided to make my avatar a gladiator with two swords.  His helmet had to be easily identifiable as a myrmillo.  I wanted to get an over armored right arm, and an under armored left arm, but I wasn't able to find anything like that online, so I just got different shoulder pads instead.  Looking back I should have looked at the Dark Eldar range.  I also needed a range weapon for him, so I made sure to use the gauntlet bolter of the Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard.  Once I had all my parts together, I started assembly.  I reposed the miniature using some metal pins, and green stuff.  The base is made of cork, dipped in sand. 

As far as rules are concerned, I was thinking of having my avatar being worth 1 victory point.  The point is earned if he is captured, not killed.  You capture him using the Relic rules.  The catch is he can only be capture if his squad is destroyed, and he is killed (knocked unconscious). I would only use the avatar house rule if my opponent also had an avatar, this way the possible points earned in a game will not suffer. 

I was also think of making a vehicle pilot avatar.  A vehicle would be worth 5 victory points.  To earn the point you will first have to destroy the vehicle.  An objective marker would be placed where the vehicle was destroyed.  Then you use the objective rules to capture the downed pilot. 

Got the Malifaux bug.

Recently I've been putting together minis for Wyrd Miniature's Malifaux game.  Since I like the idea of the wild west, I chose Perdita Orgeta and her family for my crew.  Word got out that I was starting Malifaux and one of my buddies commissioned me to put together a Ten Thunders crew for him.  I've been able to put together the crews, now I just have to find the time to paint them.  To give the crews a little pop, I ordered some Secret Miniatures bases.  I believe they have some of the best resin bases on the market.  I cleaned up the miniatures, added green stuff where needed, and primed them using Walmart's Black Primer, and Krylon White Primer. 

Tomorrow's technology, today.

I was looking up the up coming movie Elysium staring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster (Hello Clarice), when I saw an add for the Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) by Lockheed Martain.  If there will ever be a power armor initiative in our time, this has to be it.  Terminator armor in Warhammer 40K had to begin somewhere, what if it started like this?