Writing: The Battle of the T'nar'o, Part 2

Continuing on from the previous entry, what follows is Part 2 of my short story, The Battle of the T'nar'o.

Here is a link to Part 1.

Writing: The Battle of the T'nar'o, Part 1

Back in 2010 I made several submissions to Black Library, including one short story and two novels, all depicting parts of a large scale war between the Imperium (featuring the Imperial Guard and Navy) and the Tau Empire.

Needless to say they were all rejected--if they weren't, trust me, I'd be blabbing about it.  

Yet, since they were rejected, that means I can post my submissions here.  So over the next several posts I intend to serialize my short story of a battle between Tau and Imperial forces, The Battle of the T'nar'o, and I will subsequently serialize the first three chapters of each of my novel submissions.   Only War chronicles with the political maneuverings that spark a massive war between the Imperium and the Tau, while The Charge of the Danoans focuses on a specific campaign in the early stages of the war.

Writing for Black Library

In the summer of 2010 I stumbled upon Black Library's page of submission guidelines.  Their submission window is annually from May 1st through July 31st.  I had a few ideas rumbling around in my head and decided to give it a go.

I must be patient...

With all the hype right now it's hard to not get excited about the Necrons.  The models are awesome and some of their new powers seem very scary.  It makes me want to drop everything and start yet another army... 

Tau Speculations and Wishlist

The latest rumors are that Tau Empire will receive an update in Q1-2 2012, so as a Tau player I'm eager to see what might be in the pipeline...

Medic!

When you get wounded on the battlefield, especially one as brutal as the 40k battlefield, you'd like to think that your side cares enough about you that they'll try to treat your wounds, and possibly even save your life.  The Space Marines have their Apothecaries, whose primary duty is to care for the chapter's geneseed, but also to treat injured Space Marines so they can fight again.  The Imperial Guard, in an attempt to maintain some humanity in the uncaring grinding death machine of the Imperium, have medics to treat their injured guardsmen.  Even orks, after a fashion, have their medics, known as painboyz.  Their treatments might be more dubious, but orks medics exist nonetheless.

But what about the other races?  There's no mention of medical personnel.  Now I wouldn't expect a race like the Necrons to have medics...  And being treated by a medic in the forces of Chaos or Dark Eldar might be considered a fate worse than death.  But there are two other races, for example Eldar and Tau, that you might expect care enough about their own troops to try to salvage them from lingering death on the battlefield.

So here's my Tau Medic.  Keeping my Fire Warriors alive to fight another day.

Inspired by Art

Every so often I see a picture in a Codex or White Dwarf and I think, "That's really cool. I want a model that looks like that," and I feel inspired to try to duplicate it.

This first one is of a Tau Commander, the art coming from the original Codex Tau (I believe the same picture is in the current Codex: Tau Empire as well. It required a minimum of converting--I just had to trim off the lower legs at the knee joint and reattach them to make them bend more.

I always thought that this picture of Commander Farsight looked pretty cool, so I felt inspired to duplicate it. This one also required a minimum of conversion, I think it was just bending the knee a bit like with the Tau Commander.

Next is an assault sergeant from the new Blood Angels Codex--I thought that the Blood Angels marine with the pair of Lightning Claws looked particularly cool. This one required some more converting. I used one Lightning Claw from the Space Wolves Grey Hunters set (generously donated by Badelaire), while the other is from the Space Marine Commander's box set. I had to chop them off at the elbows and rotate them to get the angles right.  To match the breastplate, I used a normal tactical marine breastplate and filed off the skull, replacing it with a blood drop from the Death Company sprue.  The pauldrons (er...shoulder pads) are from the Death Company sprue and the Sanguinary Guard sprues.  For the legs I hacked off the right leg at the hip, and replaced it with another assault marine right leg (so now both legs are the ones from the assault marine sprue that are more bent at the knee).  I'm still working on the conversion (I have to greenstuff some power cables), so this is still a work in progress.

This last one is a model that Badelaire did, based on the picture of a particularly mean looking nob in Codex Orks. The arms and lower legs are from the Warhammer Fantasy Black Orcs sprue, while the choppa is converted using normal Ork Boyz bitz. The rest of the bitz are standard ork nobz bits.

Rules for Shas'o Da'Eldi

HQ

Special Character:  Shas’O Da’Eldi

During the Plexus Nebulosa War, Shas’el Da’Eldi managed to lead the Tau to victory over the Imperial forces, minimizing losses to the Fire Warriors under his command by making use of large numbers of drones.  While the loss in drones was in some cases severe, Shas’el Da’Eldi countered criticism to this by pointing out that every lost drone was equivalent to a Fire Warrior’s life saved.  Later in the war, Shas'el Da'Eldi was elevated to Shas'o, and designed a custom battlesuit, the XV-100, suited to his combat style.

Da’Eldi abhors the unnecessary risking of Tau lives, believing that for the Greater Good, Tau Fire Warriors should use drones and other technology to fight battles wherever practical.  As such he commands his own hunter cadre consisting of nothing but drones (and himself). 

Shas’O Da’Eldi					200 Points
	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Shas’O Da’Eldi	4	5	5	4	4	3	4	10	2+/4+(I)

Special Character:  Shas’o Da’Eldi is a special character.  He may be used only in Tau Drone Armies, and must be its commander.  You may not select any additional equipment from the Armory. 

Equipment: XV-100 Battlesuit (Acute Senses, Relentless), Jetpack, Railgun, Airburst Fragmentation Projector, Command-Link Drone, Drone Controller, 2 Shield Drones, Ejection System, Shield Generator, Blacksun Filter, hard-wired Multi-tracker. 

Unit Type: Jump Infantry (Jetpack)

SPECIAL RULES:

Independent Character:  Except when accompanied by his personal drones, Shas’o Da’Eldi is an independent character (see the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook).

XV-100 Battlesuit:  This experimental battlesuit grants the user the Acute Senses and Relentless special rules, and counts as having a jetpack.  It grants the user a normal 2+ save.

Command-link drone:  Networked to the drones under his command, the command-link drone allows Shas’o Da’Eldi to better direct the battle.  Any Tau drone units within 18” may use his Leadership for any Morale or Pinning tests.

“Our brave fire warriors are all willing to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good when it is necessary.  But it does not serve the Greater Good for our warriors to die when their lives might be saved by our technology.  Using our technology in this way does not dishonor our courage; not using it dishonors our intelligence.”

-Shas’o Da’Eldi

Crisis Suit Conversion, Completed

Finished! Here it is, the XV-100 Battlesuit. I'm not sure if I should come up with another name for it, instead of "Crisis" (others being Broadside, Stealth, and Forgeworld's new "Hazard"). Any ideas?

The purpose of the suit is a command unit for a large force of drones, as well as a long range support unit for that force.  The suit has a additional armor protection, an extensive communication and sensor suite, with an integrated drone controller system.  The primary weapon is the railgun, with an Airburst Fragmentation System for close-in defense.  The suit is equipped with a larger jetpack to to handle the extra weight, and yet maintain the mobility of a standard XV-8 Crisis Suit.

I had been working on the high-lighting for a while (mainly extreme highlighting on the edge of the armor plates, etc.), and it seemed to be taking forever, and then, almost suddenly, I realized I was finished with most of the pieces.  I started assembling them all together, and before I knew it, it was practically done!

Currently the post that supports him is only 1/8" plastic tube, so he wobbles a little.  The weight of the rocks on the base help keep him from falling over, which would have been a real concern otherwise.  I may provide some additional support to the tube by filling it with a brass rod, or, if necessary replacing it entirely with something more sturdy.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided that I needed to varnish this guy.  I approached it with some trepidation, but decided to bite the bullet.  I took some pictures of him before I varnished him, just in case I ruined him I could point to the photos and say "Look at the model I made, before I destroyed him!"
Checking the weather before I sprayed him, the temperature was 66 degrees F and 35% humidity, so I had near ideal conditions.  So I went outside and gave him two light coats of Testors Dullcote.

The results were even better than I hoped!  The dullcote dulled the finish down a bit, reducing the annoying gloss that the Vallejo's paints had given it.  Another side effect of the original gloss finish was that the imperfections in the sculpting I had done really showed up.  The matte finish reduced that, so the finished product looks better than it really should.  But I'm not complaining!

Here's a close up of the armor plates around the hips.  It's hard to see, but the attachment points for the hip armor is a rectangular piece, parallel to the ground if the suit was standing up straight.  The anterior and lateral armor plates attach to that piece, angled off of it.  The lateral and anterior plates protect the hip joint, but they "float" above the leg, and don't touch it anywhere.

The white marks on the plates and on the chest above the Tau symbols is supposed to be markings on the suit itself (things like "Danger" and "No Step" etc., that you see on real world aircraft, etc)

In painting up the rail gun, I was partially inspired by the video game Fire Warrior, where one of the weapons you can get is a rail rifle (the coolest looking weapon in the game).  In the game, when you're holding the rail rifle, little charges of blue electricity crackle their way down the barrel of the weapon from the receiver to the muzzle and then starting at the receiver again.  Really cool.  I didn't think I could achieve an effect like that, so I decided instead to try to make it look like there was a glow inside the barrel that was being reflected by the edges.  I think the result came out ok...but hopefully I can do better next time.

Originally I was going to mount the Airburst Fragmentation Projector on the right shoulder, but after test fitting it a few times, it didn't look all that good, so I decided to scrap that idea. Instead, I drilled a pair of holes into the left arm. The left forearm of the model is very bulky, so I think a good argument could be made that the AFP is integrated directly into the forearm, rather than a separately mounted system.

The suit is really much larger than the standard Crisis Suit, which I first realized when I set them up next to each other.

And finally, an "action" shot, showing the two suits heading off to kick some butt.

In the end, I learned a lot in making this guy, not the least of which was building up my confidence in using both greenstuff and plasticard.  The other side of the coin, is that it just gives me more and more ideas for new projects!

Crisis Suit Conversion, Part Five

Next I decided to work on the base. Both to make it look more realistic and to give the base some heft, so as to help keep the model upright, I went outside and found a couple of rocks, which I then glued to the base.

Here's the base fully painted and, ready to go.

I also started painting the main body of the battlesuit. I decided to paint the body, wing, hip armor, and arms separately, because trying to paint it fully assembled would be really difficult.

A comment on the paint--the primary color for my Tau forces is Jade Green. This is a shade that GW made a long time ago, but then discontinued. I despaired what to do for my future Tau forces until I found out that Vallejo Game Color also makes a Jade Green, and it's an exact match. So now I just use Vallejo's paints instead... I've noticed two differences between the GW paint and the Vallejo paints. The Vallejo paints produce a glossier finish, and they also seem to rub off rather easily. So I'm thinking I may have to varnish this guy once I'm done. I'm a little nervous about something going wrong with the varnishing, but I think I'll have to bite the bullet. I picked up some Testors Dullcote, we'll have to see how it goes.

Crisis Suit Conversion: Part Four

The next thing I worked on is some extra armor plates, which would protect the hips of the battlesuit--The ball & socket joints where the legs connect to the torso of crisis suits are completely exposed, so adding armor to this section makes sense as an upgrade.

Tau Battlesuits, as is well known, are inspired by Anime depictions of mobile suits and other giant robots.  Being a fan of the Gundam series, I wanted to give this battlesuit a definite Gundam influence.  I particularly like the RX-93 Nu Gundam, as I think the Fin Funnels it has look pretty cool (the wing-like structure behind its left shoulder).

So I decided to duplicate the Fin Funnels and add them to my design.  For the Nu Gundam, the Fin Funnels detach from the main suit and act as drones that support the mobile suit.  Drones are definitely in character with the Tau, but the style of the Fin Funnels look nothing like Tau drones.  So for my battlesuit, rather than make them detachable and act as drones, I will assume that the "wing" shape that they form is a support system that is integral to the battlesuit itself.

I started construction on the funnels and assembled them...

...but after putting them next to the rest of the model, I realized that I made them way too big.

Back to the drawing board I made some that were much smaller and more manageable.

This looks much better...

Here's a shot of the rear of the fin funnels, with sundry parts strewn about my work table.

Here's a shot of the rear of the suit, with a plasticard piece of additional armor protecting the um...posterior of the suit.

And finally, with some of the sensor spines added onto the suit.  I trimmed off one spine on the left hand set of spines to provide an attachment point for the funnels (or wing, as I should start calling it).

Crisis Suit Conversion: Part Three

I started work on the arms next, the first being the shield arm. I wanted to both extend the arms, and alter the pose, so I needed to trim off the connector on the left forearm/shield, and make one that would be a socket joint for the ball on the end of the upper arm piece. 

After a lot of test fitting to get the right pose on the model, I glued the parts together.

Next was the right arm--again, in this case I had to trim the Broadside's arm to accommodate it holding the railgun like a rifle rather than the intended underslung method. I also had to greenstuff parts of it to fill in various gaps, and again lengthen the arm. Again more test fitting to ensure the proper pose, and then I glued it together.

And finally, the current state of the body, with legs attached and posed, the additional engines added, as well as the head.

Crisis Suit Conversion: Part Two

The next step on the legs is to put in spacers using some plastic tubing...

And then build it up with greenstuff.  The challenge is getting it to blend seamlessly with the original pieces, and that's always been something I've struggled with.  This time I tried sanding it a lot--and I think I was partially successful.  We'll have to see how it looks once I get to the painting stage.

Here's a picture of most of the various pieces laid out during construction...

And again, I've laid out the pieces in a vague representation of the final battlesuit.  Eventually I'm going to have to bite the bullet and start gluing some major pieces together.