Band of the hand

I love my Tau army but I have had this issue since I first saw them, the retractable hands on the Crisis suits and GW not selling a decent looking one that didn't require me to do a ton of modifications to make it work. I have tried Space Marine powerfist and Necron hands but neither worked. Next I tried The Farsight model. But it only comes with one, metal, left hand and it is a $35 model. This will never work.

Thank you Ban Dai for making Gundam models in all different scales. I picked up a bunch of different models and after some trial and error I found a scale that worked. Even better both right and left and open and closed. The scale that worked is from their Fighting Action Kit series. This group is very simple with only about a 1/3rd the parts count of then normall 1/144 kits. Even then none of the normal detail is lost. The kits are also cheap. The ones I purchased were $6.50 each. With the number of usable parts in each kit being pretty high I think it is a very good deal. As my first pass over the kits I able to use the hands, weapons, backpacks, shoulder guards, heads and leg jets.

The only downside is most of the parts are single sided so I will have to do a little sculpting but no worries.

So next time you see these parts that will be on my Appleseed Landmates. Eventually I will call them done and get to cranking out the final design.

Photoshoot

I have been a little busy lately but did manage to get a little painting it. First up are the SMS units I re-purposed form a Gundam kit. I think they turned out great. The are big step up from the bubble ones that are standard. I originally had a targeting array on top and a spacer under them to allow them to sit square on the mounts and not hit the helmet but it just didn't look right. The lower angled mount looks menacing and fits the hunter aspect I was looking for.

I was using this piranha as a test model for the Shas'Vre Valsk ship. I tried falling back to an old technique for filling gaps with ca and baking soda instead of fighting with greenstuff. It turned out pretty well for a 10 minute job. I did have one issue with the build though, the dreaded fuzzy primer. I have a can of Velspar primer that I use for terrain because it fuzzes and give a little bit of texture that is great for adding a little depth to terrain features. Unfortunately I didn't check the can before spraying the model. Luckily I only sprayed the bottom so it didn't worry about stripping it and starting over. The effect also looks good and I may start using it on a few more ships.

Converting and Casting Parts

Besides railguns there is no more useful weapon in Tau armies other than the missile pod/smart missile system. It is the greatest all around weapon in the arsenal. It is also one of the more comical looking. The problem isn't big but something about the round domes of the rockets feels like the sculptor was overridden when the final mold was made. They also feel a little small when you look at other missile and rocket pods used in the game.

Getting over this for most users is pretty simple you just grab a guard or marine part and glue it on. This works but just feels a little off to me. So I went on the hunt for an alternative and think I found it with these. They are the perfect base I was thinking. A little hunting at my local hobby store and I was able to acquire the necessary kit.

The kit included open and closed versions of the weapon pods which is great. All that was left was to make a base mold and begin casting. The mold turned out surprisingly well and picked up all the details. Now I just need to make final modifications to make it look at home on my battlesuits. As they are now though they look pretty good. I am thinking about magnetizing the missile section so I can have them open or closed for a little variety.

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