With the Wrecka Crew completed its time to move onto what's next, and since Call to Arms is still going on and I've got more kill teams to paint, its time for the Vespids! 

A few years ago I painted up the tau pathfinder kill team in a comic-book/cell-shaded style.

I was very happy with the results and love the way they look...unfortunately I don't particularly enjoy playing them so they rarely hit the table. As the new "season" of kill-team approaches and pathfinders are getting ready to be declassified I wanted a new team with a similar style, and wouldn't you know it I happen to have a Tau Auxiliary unit sitting on my shelf that seems like it would suit the style well. My 7 year old loves all things Pokemon right now, and so the Scyther/SliphCo theme came pretty easily. Tau have so many Pokeball looking icons stamped all over their equipment I'm surprised I haven't seen a deluge of these kinds of themes before. Admittedly I don't look to hard so it may be that I'm walking well tread ground on this one. 

Green was an airbrush built up in a few passes, off-white was a quick pass to get it blocked in, and since I'm really only using 3 other colors for the rest of the model getting the rest blocked in didn't take too long at all. Tried out a new white...it was terrible. If anyone has a white they'd recommend for use outside of an airbrush please let me know, because my search is still ongoing. 

After I got them blocked in I hit them with a thick gloss coat, because I decided I wanted to try and use a panel liner to "ink" the recess spaces. Not entirely sure how I feel about this step yet, on one hand I think it makes the recesses pop more, but it also looks sloppy up close, and I'm not sure how much it will clash with my lining work later...we will see I suppose! 

I've got two models to finish lining, then I'll need to go back and hit my missed spots, get the bases blocked in (was debating using different "tactical rocks" for them, but decided against it recently) and start my "chunky" highlights. Then they'll go live at my office desk for a week or two so I can line them out during breaks/lunch. Trying to move quickly on this one both because of Call to Arms and because I've got a lot of backlog to burn through before Kill-Team: Tombworld drops and fills it back up again