T'au Fire Warrior

I recently dusted-off an old Fire Warrior that had been languishing with the rest of my half-finished T'au collection in the attic, & painted it.  Right from the start of collecting T'au back in the early 2000s, I was certain that I wanted a turquoise-armoured force (I loved the turquoise skies from the box art of the desert-coloured T'au), but with my more limited painting skills back then, my models always ended up looking toy-like instead of grimdark.

Granted, T'au are one of the slightly less grimdark factions in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, but I want mine looking gritty.  I think I've finally achieved it, by keeping a limited palette based around GW Hawk Turquoise, mixed to varying degrees with black & grey.

I really like the muted tones that have resulted, which I think strikes a balance between 'popping' visually on the tabletop, but also being plausible as an urban scheme (I have previously attempted various urban camo & even Berlin Brigade-style block-camo on T'au, but couldn't make it work).

I think I'd go so far as to say this may be the best Warhammer 40,000 figure painting I've ever done - it's certainly not up there with the incredible work seen on many other blogs & in White Dwarf, but I'm really happy with it - I even tried zenithal highlighting for the first time.

I'm planning to try out the Black Ops rules with a few T'au & Imperial Guard miniatures at some point.

28 Dice Later game: Fatal Collision

Frances & I recently tried the tweaked rules that I'd been working on for 15mm zombie apocalypse skirmishes.  These are essentially Osprey Wargames Black Ops by Guy Bowers, but with a few changes to suit the setting of a modern-day UK caught-up in a terrifying zombie pandemic.  This initial trial scenario was of my own devising, & as it was for testing the basics like card activation & turn structure, it didn't make use of the main feature of Black Ops that attracted me - that of the stealth rules.  I call my tweaked zombie survival version of these rules 28 Dice Later...

For this scenario, set during the initial hours of the apocalypse, I played the Infected, & Frances played the Uninfected.  In this setting, freshly-infected victims are known as 'Ragers' (28 Days Later-style zombies), while injured or decaying victims are known as 'Shamblers' & 'Crawlers' depending on their state (classic Romero-style zombies).

The story was that a speeding 4x4 had crashed into a tree in a narrow country lane.  Farmer Giles Scrumpy & his sheepdog Patch had got out of their tractor to help, & he had called an ambulance, as well his wife Rosie back at the farm to tell her about the collision.  The driver was badly injured, with a suspicious neck wound, while a passenger who had not been wearing a seat belt appeared to have been thrown through the windscreen & bisected (gruesomely, only their legs remained inside the 4x4).