A Painter's Progress - Part 2 - Fire Warriors, Pathfinders and Crisis Suits

As you might have read here I've given myself a punishing task of painting 2,000pts of Tau, pretty much from scratch, in about six weeks. This is the army I'll be taking for Jolly Toys and whilst they only need to be three colours, I'd like to give a decent representation of the colour scheme I'm using. Part of me wishes I'd just resorted to basic three colours to give me a chance of getting them done but I'm pleased with the results so far. Needless to say I think my wife is getting pretty fed up of me painting pretty much every free minute I get so after Jolly Toys I'll probably have a bit of a cool off period before my next project.

Please bear in mind I'm only aiming for tabletop standard here and at some point in the future I'll come back to them and add some highlights, washes and more detail. To be honest, knowing what my attention span is like "at some point" probably means after I've painted my Dark Eldar for Blog Wars 3 and my/Matt's Orks for fun!

First off here's the first batch of crisis suits:

These are the "deathrain" variety that form the core of my anti-transport firepower. They'll make the most of their JSJ ability to keep at range but swoop in with flamers when they're hemmed in.

Next up is the first squad of fire warriors. I'm really pleased with how they look and I think the scheme suits them well.

Finally there's the pathfinders. One of the two six-man squads is made from the proper pathfinder models and the other is "converted" using the fire warrior kit. When the two are mixed together it isn't too obvious that there's a difference. I did think about extending the helmets on the converted ones but frankly my greenstuff skills aren't up to much:

So that's where I'm up to as of this morning. I've got the day off work today though so I'm going to hammer those paintbrushes and try and get the last suits done and make a big dent on the remaining fire warriors. Here's there story so far:

Painted:

• 4x Broadsides
• 1x Skyray
• 3x Devilfish
• 6x Gun Drones 
• 12 pathfinders
• 2 shield drones
• 9 fire warriors 
• 4 crisis suits

Still to paint:

• 18 fire warriors
• 6 crisis suits

Should be doable right?.... right?