Seven Samurai Tau

[paulson games]

On the ATT forum I'd been toying with the idea of basing a farsight styled list off the seven samurai story for quite a while. The basic idea is that the list would be made of 7 HQ suits each representing one of the 7 samurai, they would each be modelled a bit uniquely and armed representing the repective samruai. The rest of the list would likely be made up of non-Tau auxillary troops representing the farmers. (counts as Tau models)

I started on this model last night, needs a bit of greenstuff and a bit more cleaning and he'll be ready for paint. The fusion blaster arm is converted from the xv-9 dual burst cannon arm. Did a lot of chopping to get everything lined up as a simple barrel swap didn't look right.





The base isn't finalized yet, I had a bunch of dark age games bases laying aorund and the ice base was the first one I pulled out of the box. Not sure if I want to use a snow & ice base or if I want blasted rock or a dessert theme. I'm also still undecided about the paint scheme if I should do the whole HQ unit in one color or if each suit should have it's own color scheme to help individualize them more. Sadly seven samurai is in black and white so getting color patterns from there isn't very viable.

I'm still up in the air about colors so if you guys have comments on what you think would work best please feel free to post them.


The Shas'O/Farsight Model I put together about two months back:








Some other models I may end up using for the HQ:

[paulson games]

Here's concepts for Tau infantry, auxillary human troops would have a simular theme.





Here's a suit I was originally working on for a samurai themed broadside, tried several differant head configurations. May end up drafting it into the HQ squad or save it for a seperate squad.

[CMDante]

Very cool stuff here mate,

I love the concept for the Tau infantry, the samurai theme really suits them and the first two figs you have done look great. A small group of guys like the first one with the blades would look very cool protecting the etheral.

Not so keen on the "hats" on the crisis suits though, makes them look a bit too stocky and compact IMHO.

Cheers,

Dante

[mangozac]

As you know, I've never been a fan of the hat style crisis helmets either.

Everything is looking great but it will be tough coming up with more original concepts for the other of the seven suits.

[drmarco]

Loving the idea as both a (an?) homage to the movie, and a potential framework for an army, Paulson!

I am especially impressed with the ethereal conversion - one of your own?

Perhaps to make the auxillary a little more 'civilian' you could keep their armour more minimal, converting a more 'cloth augmented with signature tau equipment/plates'...while I love the sheer scope and diversity of your crisis suits, I think extra attention to the rank and file would be what would really make this army pop...

Can't wait to see where you go from here matey!

Marco

[potz]

I like that pics of samurai warrior... great job.

[paulson games]

The etheral conversion was based on the musashi figure from infinity, basically it was cut at the waist and I only used the hakama pant legs. Everything else replaced with fire warrior bits and the swords are from elder dire avengers.

The painted fire warrior is robed dark angel legs that were cut down significantly and dremeled to rework the detail that was lost when cutting it down.

At some point I will be doing some custom legs but my greenstuffing skills aren't quite up to a level I'm happy with when trying to do cloth details.

Now that I have acess to the XV-9 parts as well as the majority of the older FW models I can generate a pretty huge variety of crisis suits so I'll be re-examining the potential list. Moving away from a farsight list I could run 7 XV-9 suits as the samurai and they'd be considerably tougher to kill than the standard xv-8s.

It's not meant to be an overly competitive list, just a chance to show off some cool models and variety of suits.