Hard SF Tau Auxiliaries

I got a box of plastic Tau the other day, as some the the designs have been really growing on me. While some it is a bit too much of a mish mash of manga styles, some other things have a great hard, military SF look. As a result I've been quite obsessed with the genre: anti-grav tanks, powered armour, but with a gritty realism. The box included some Stealth suits that remind a bit of Maschinen Krieger and Stargrunt II. 

I decided to get some of the new Albedo cat heads from Sally4th to make alternative Tau. I ordered bare heads and helmets. The helmet pack also includes heads with baret. Unfortunately I got more barets than the helmets I wanted, but still enough to make a good kill team.

In action with grav tank.

 

I remembered my old Grenadier Future Warriors that could work perfect as high tech humans allied to the alien Tau. I painted most of these Copplestone sculpts ages ago, around the turn of the century.

Standard troopers.

 Urban Camo 

Colonial Marines

Powered Armour, these are almost the same size as the Tau Stealth suits.

But also these Vor powered armour (or Power Armor in the USA) by Kevin Adams.

Powered armour troopers advancing Stargrunt style. It is said Stargrunt is a terrific game system and very realistic acording to veterans.

Zoat

I got some discounted and rare Reaper miniatures this week. Reaper's distribution was pretty crap in Europe untill recently and I have had some difficulty finding older figures.

Here's a rhino-centaur thing I painted up as a Zoat. The axe is made of an Eldar bone-blade of some sort. Basically because I didn't want to convert it. I suppose it must be a single rebel Zoat that got seperated from the Tyranid fleet.