Basing Crisis Suits - Hobby update

The "finished" article

So it's NYE!
The end of 2013....

Just with technical paint & basecoat

Been a crazy year from Saville to Mandela, from Caledonian Uprising 2013 to Battlefield Birmingham...
I'll recap the year and make some plans for the upcoming year later in the week.
For now, it's a quick one as I feel NYE is all about friends.. the wife and I are off to spend the afternoon/night with friends but this morning I've been free to model to my little heart's content.
What have I been doing...?

I'm taking the Farsight Bomb to Caledonian Uprising on Jan 18/19th - just a few weeks away.
Now, I thought about a balanced list, then thought fuck it, let's have some crazy fun!
In order that I don't feel quite as much of a c....dick, I am putting effort into updating the army.

All the models are already painted, so it's a question of upgrading everything - adding detail, weathering and basing.

Hmmm...may need to zoom in!

Today I based my 7 bodyguard and Farsight - I mainly used cork board, plastic rod, space marine rhinos and drop pods... with some random other bits thrown in... weathering powders, the new GW Technical paints - the mars earth one and the oxidation one..

Looks decent, but lots more to do!

Whilst I waited for various bits to dry I took the opportunity to begin the tedious, yet rewarding, task of weathering via chipping the paint job on the first of 3 Skyrays.
It looks quite effective, however.. there is much more that still needs to be done.

I also tried out hairspray as an adhesive/fixer for the pigments/powders. This was risky as I did it after I had constructed, painted, weathered, powdered and washed the bases... It could have completely ballsed it up!

As it stands, it looks ok. I felt the hairspray was a little heavy for the powders and kinda blew it all away or melted it into the base.. I ended up reapplying the lightest (in colour I mean) layers of powder again whilst the hairspray was still damp to use as a glue.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the basing...I feel they add an extra layer of detail to the army and to the focus of it - the Bomb.

The drones all need something similar, but for now they will stay clear plastic flying bases. I'd like to rebuild a few of the crisis suits to make them look cooler - my Tau are all pretty god damn old now.. and were built when I hadn't developed my hobby skills - no magnets, no altered poses...some very ugly feet incongruously posed... However, the beauty of this list and this army is that I actually DON'T NEED to do ANYTHING! WHoot! It is ready and could rock up to the tournament tomorrow if needed.... I find this is actually a really nice way to enter a tournament... with no pressure to build or paint anything.
This leaves me with the freedom to dabble and play a little bit with what I feel like doing, rather than rushing the models and rocking 3 colour minimum...

Anyway, I'm signing off - 2013 you've been good. Keep it real peeps, have fun tonight but be safe and remember... don't be a fool, wrap your tool... write that down.