Monday, December 27, 2010

The Skaven Tau

The beginning of this project came to mind when looking throuogh DakkDakka and saw a picture of a converted skaven by Blackhand to be a guardsman. He had a krootrifle and was surprised when it was not a kroot but a guardsman. That gave me the idea...I love skaven models (Yay Isle of Blood), hate tau models...eureka!

However, where I live - near Little Rock (thats in Arkansas for the geographically challenged), both 40k and Fantasy are going rather strong. Especially after the release of 8th ed. Which I have yet to play but will.

So the challenge in this project is two fold.
1) Convert Skaven in to Tau, Kroot and Vespids.
2) Be able to use the models both for 40k and Fantasy.

Somethings of note:
1) When I make armies, I go for fluff and cool models first.
2) When I do this, no matter how bad it sounds, it almost always (90%) works beyond all expectations.
3) I am not that great of a painter. I have been in the hobby since 1994 but didnt seriously start painting til about 18 months ago and then only on and off.

So following those I planned out lots of different combinations and took a couple months just to plan out what I wanted. Then I found a lil online store called Micro Art Studio. They produced Nezumi heads. That have an asian theme. That are cool asian themed. And I must have them.

So I ordered th ashigaru hats. Looked through ebay for all sorts of bitz that I could not find from the Warstore. 13 days after I ordered, the heads came. No joke...how appropriate is that? Surely the Great Horned Rat was smiling on me.

And he was - a day later, MAS (Micro Art Studio) released the Nezumi Samurai heads. These were cool. These were awesomely cool. And I must have them.

Meanwhile, problems did occur. Did you know Skaven models and Tau models are not as easily compatible as say Humans and Elves? I know, shocker. I should have guessed. I didn't and lots of extra work ensued.

After lots of trial and error I was able to come up with some nice looking conversions, if I do not say so myself. I will place some in the next post!

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