For this week's Miniature Monday, I am rather selfishly ignoring the possibilities presented by the new year to instead focus on an event that was important to me - the release of chapter 1,000 of
One Piece. How better to respond to the occasion than with the commander of my own pirate force from a faction inspired by Japan, and modern Japanese fiction in particular? Meet Shas'O Zingzi of the Rah'ray Pirates.
Assembling this model was a huge hassle. I wanted a feeling of movement, of action and speed - the Coldstar Battlesuit is ludicrously fast, able to move from one side of the board to the other in an instant, and in the lore sometimes dogfights starfighters during void battles. Getting it to hold such an awkward position was not easy, however. I had to re-pin the foot so many times that the underside of that 'toe' is almost entirely hollowed out. In the end, I used the thickest metal rod I could to pin it all the way up to the ankle joint. I equipped it with quad fusion blasters, but those would be awkwardly angled if equipped normally, so very early on I decided on the frankly ridiculous-looking arm it has now. Back then, I was thinking of posing it to be destroying something in mid-air - in fact, that was the original reason I purchased the Purple Sun of Xereus that became the foundation of last week's model, to be the blast. I decided that would be far too unwieldy, and do not regret the result. To round it out as a single-target monster, I added an Onager Gauntlet, a melee weapon that hits very hard but can only be used with one attack. To fit the mecha theme, what better than a rocket punch? I cut the middle from a Hunter-Killer Missile and filed it down to fit on the back of the arm, then added little flames from some kit or other to be the jets. Speaking of, the engine jets are the part of the model I spent the most time on and are least happy with. I shaved away at clear plastic flying model stands until the tips were suitably rounded, then slowly blended colour down their lengths. In the past I have made good use of foam to make exhaust fumes, but the Tau are far too clean for that, so this was my comparative solution.
For the painting scheme, I reversed the colours of the Crisis Battlesuits in the force, which I posted in a past Miniature Monday (back when it was on Discord, as I recall, so they should be within the spoiler of the first post in this thread). This was inspired by the video game
Dawn of War, in which the Tau commander similarly has a reversed primary colour to the rest of their army. All of my Tau have skulls on their pauldrons - supposedly trophies taken by their glorious leader, Aun'Rakam (also shown previously), though the Earth Caste contingent's 3D printer has been working overtime lately... Regardless, in order to work with the reversed scheme, I needed a skull that would look appealing and make sense in black - thus, I took a beast skull from the old Skeleton kit and altered the direction of the horns to create a Daemon skull.
Happy New Year!
