Bringing the T'au'va to Life
The bachelor party gaming weekend seems to be becoming a bit of a trend in our gaming group. Last year, Jacen threw a phenomenal game for me and I wanted to do something special for his. He wanted to do a more low key affair, so I kept the game simple, but with a twist: he’d run a glorious image of the T’au god.
The T’au what??
T’au are a non-psychic race, but there are psychic species in the Empire, including humans. When other members of the T’au Empire began worshipping the ideals of the Greater Good as a religion, this manifested in the Warp and created the T’au’va, the Goddess of the Greater Good.
Other warp entities have avatars and greater daemons as their champions, so why not the T’au’va? She’s described as a multi-armed goddess with a blank face, so I used that as my starting point.
Converting the Avatar
I looked at a lot of third party models trying to find something suitable, but after polling a few people, Dexcessa/Synessa from the Age of Sigmar Hedonites of Slaanesh range was suggested. Although it’s a very recognisable model, it is not in the 40k range, so I hoped it wouldn’t be easily placed by most 40k players.
I built it in sub assemblies, leaving the fin and robes off. I mixed the arms from both build options, clipping the batons down to be sword handles and pinning T’au-ish swords from Red Dog Minis.
Then came the head. I’d never sculpted much; the most I’d done was extending a cloak or gap filling. I found Modern Synthesises intro videos very helpful, and carefully sculpted over most of the upper half of the face. Though the face is meant to be blank, I inserted a female olfactory organ, to add another T’au marker.
The ethereal-style robes were made using thin strips of painters tape, covered with a few layers of thinned down PVA glue (a tip Peachy shared on his podcast interview, link below). Originally these were much longer, extending to the miniatures feet, but they didn’t look right. I also added a second layer to the sash, and put a few creases in the vestments.
Painting the Goddess’s Champion
Having never painted T’au, I followed a few guides pretty closely. Jacen’s army is the classic ochre T’au Sept, so I wanted those colours to feature heavily. The fin is painted following a Games Workshop YouTube guide, except Two Thin Coats Battle Mud Wash instead of Agrax Earthshade, and only in the recesses (I’ve begun pivoting away from GW washes since they moved to a glossy formula).
The skin was painted following the Warhammer+ guide for T’au skin. The white robes were based with Vallejo Heavy Blue Grey, recess shaded with Two Thin Coats Oblivion Black Wash, layered with Vallejo Ghost Grey, and a final highlight of Vallejo White. In the case of the sash and vestments, the greys and white were layered and edge highlighted (with Heavy Blue-grey glazed into the shadows), whereas the back, folded robes were dry brushed instead.
The metal was based with Citadel’s Leadbelcher or Balthasar Gold, washed with Two Thin Coats Oblivion Black wash, and highlighted with Metal N’ Alchemy Speed Metal.
The base is meant to represent the warp and was textured with Vallejo Thick Mud and based Citadel Abaddon Black. From there, I dry brushed various colours, starting with darker shades and going up, keeping the successive layers lighter and trying to keep previous layers showing through for a rainbow kaleidoscope of different colours. This is how I do my webway bases for my Drukhari, but I used more colours here.
Hitting the table
The Avatar didn’t come alone: her sidekick, EV-7, is a lost drone that has flew the warp, collecting weapons from various septs. Greg built and painted the warp-touched drown, creating a really cool warp effect.
The avatar and drone were a surprise, and we introduced them to Jacen by playing a Zone Mortalis game where his T’au cleared an underground facility, investigating a warp anomaly and encountering Tyranids and Necrons. Once defeating the Psychophage in the final room, we revealed the new models.
The next game was a four player free for all, as the T’au defended the facility from converging Marines, Necrons and Tyranids. We allowed Jacen to swap a unit in his army for the new models and gave them some fun rules, which I’ve linked below.
As the Avatar of the T’au’va is of similar size to the Yncarne, I started with that stat line and melee weapons (originally these were hitting on 2+ but afterwards agreed they should hit on 3s). I didn’t give the Avatar a ranged weapon, which felt a little odd, but I figured the Goddess’s Champion wouldn’t be slinging psychic smites across the battlefield. The Avatar could use the Greater Good ability multiple times, spotting for multiple units (similarly, I had originally had her spotting for three units, but Jacen insisted we tune it down after the first turn: “It’s spotting for my whole army!”). Finally, there’s a multi-use ability, where the T’au player selects one of multiple abilities, which can’t be repeated. These are based on 9th edition Ethereal invocations, with wording updated to 10th. EV-7 we ran as a whole squad of drones.
I haven’t pointed the models out, but they could be run in the 250-325 point range.
Painting for Friends
It’s safe to say that Jacen was blown away by the gift of Avatar and Drone. Though it was a lot of work, converting and painting a model outside of my established armies was a lot of fun and I really pushed myself to try different techniques. If you haven’t painted a model as a gift, give it a try! And if you have, drop us a line at contactus@wrongsideofthemaelstrom.com and let us know how it went.