Tau Colour Schemes

Warhammer Tau will return, but first I need your help to pick a colour scheme for my Tau army.

I sadly sold my last Tau army because I simply couldn't paint it fast enough and alter my army to keep up with the constantly changing Warhammer 40K tournament game.

So, like my Space Wolves army, my Tau will need to be basecoated, washed and drybrushed. Painting painstakingly perfect highlights was far too time consuming. I don't think the orange stripes were a good idea either, but I really enjoyed painting those.

I've come up with 4 possible colour schemes.

There's a poll on the right for you to vote -->

I'll explain my thoughts behind each of the colour schemes and why I like them, what's good about them and what's potentially bad about them.


Tau Colourscheme 1: District 9
I think we were all blown away by the battlesuit in District 9. What was more amazing was that it had orange stripes, much like my first Tau army. The colour is a dark grey military blue. Interestingly enough, Tael from The Advanced Tau Tactica has painted a number of Tau Firewarriors in a very similar colour scheme.

If I wanted to paint this army, I'd need to find a suitable base colour, mix my own highlight (probably the basecoat + Bleached Bone) and drybrush it on, then paint the stripes and other details later.

Darker coloured armies tend to look better drybrushed and I probably wouldn't need a wash for the extra shading.

Tau Colourscheme 2: Wee Men
Ever since the Wee Men blog painted this Hellhound, I've been a keen follower. He's currently doing a big batch of tanks where he spray undercoats them red, covers part of them in masking tape and sprays the rest beige for a camo effect, then applies Army Painter Medium, a kind of glaze that's like coating a model in Devlan Mud wash apparently. Once dry, then them gives them a quick drybrush highlight, painted the details and done. For someone like me who wishes they could do all their tanks in one big batch, this is very appealing. I'd have to do the same for my Battlesuits and Firewarriors, but I'd spray them beige, use Army Painter on them, then paint the red and other details afterwards.

I like the colour scheme, but the only thing putting me off is my lack of experience with Army Painter. I'll also need to borrow my parents garage as there's nowhere to do this messy stuff in my flat.

Tau Colourscheme 3: Dirty Desert
Don't be fooled, this is actually a very carefully painted model. But, there's a less careful way to achieve the same effect and that's with spray cans and washes. Back in 2006, when I used to write FIREBASE magazine, I sprayed up a Star Wars imperial shuttle for a scenario, then painted certain panels Scorched Brown, then painted the other small details and it looked surprisingly a lot like this Forgeworld Battlesuit.

This was achieved using 3 spray cans from Halfords. A brown, a beige and a lighter beige (like Bleached Bone. The brown was the basecoat, then the beige and lighter beige colours were carefully 'dusted' on from a distance.

The army would be extremely quick to paint if I went for this approach. I'd just have to use some washes to bring out certain details, like gaps in armour plates. I'd also be in big trouble if I made any serious mistakes in painting the details as it would be impossible to mimic the rough sprayed effect with a paintbrush.

Tau Colourscheme 4: Classic Warhammer Tau
Alternatively, I stick with my original colourscheme. The biggest problem with this is that painting the highlights carefully by hand took far too long. The other problem is that before the highlights the models looked very muddy due to my choice of colours. So naturally, I'm concerned that drybrushing won't pick out the details and make the paint scheme look very muddy indeed.

I think that this scheme is out of the question unless I paint everything neatly by hand, which caused problems as it took far, far too long. The long orange stripes really made the scheme work and these were incredibly time consuming to paint as well.