Tau: Shadowsun

Shadowsun is a rather impressive little metal miniature. Very detailed and heavily influenced by the Anime style- even more so than the rest of the Tau army, in my opinion. The only thing that stands out is the blocky barrel at the end of each fusion blaster. I think they'd look better if they had rounded edges. Converting/modifying would have been fairly easy. Option A would have been to simply sand down the edges. Option B would have been to clip off the blocky barrels entirely and build styrene strip/sheet/half-round replacements. Generally, I tend to skip these sorts of mods and regret them later. It saves time that way. If you have read my earlier posts, you'll see I have far too many unbuilt kits to take time for the fiddlies. Anyway, I wanted to run Shadowsun sooner rather than later, so she got a quick and dirty treatment.

Painting was very simple. Armory White primer, followed by successive, lightened washes of Asurmen Blue and Badab Black. Once I had sufficient depth of color, I went over the entire figure with a quick drybrush of Skull White. Then I cleaned up the edges and added highlights with several applications of thinned Skull White. Joints and other mechanical details were painted Chaos Black and highlighted with Fortress Grey. I used Tausept Ochre for the fusion cannons, highlighted with Bleached Bone. Gold parts, as with all my Tau, started with a mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold, was followed by Shining Gold, and finished with Burnished Gold highlights.

Shadowsun comes with a pair of shield drones (not pictured) and a command link drone. These were painted the same way as Shadowsun herself. Though Shadowsun comes with a slot base, she's molded to look like she is landing on (or leaping off) a piece of rubble. I added some medium and light ballast from Woodland Scenics to the base to flesh out the piece. Scorched Brown, Badab Black, and a Bleached Bone drybrushing finished off the groundwork. The fence post was painted with Graveyard Earth, washed with Badab Black, then highlighted with Kommando Khaki.

I like running Shadowsun, but she tends to be a one-trick pony. Sure, if you are lucky (and run a Positional Relay and Pathfinder Devilfish) you can get her in your opponent's rear and punk two vehicles on the turn she arrives, but not always. Deep striking can work out really well or really poorly. Even with an invulnerable save and multiple wounds, her ridiculously low toughness means she can be instantly killed by just about anything. Her three attached drones will provide ablative wounds, but it's still rarely enough. Of course, like any Tau, once she gets in to close combat... Ah, well.