All this week, we're painting Aeronautica Imperialis planes on the Warhammer YouTube channel. One of our painters, Nick Bayton – or “Kor’O Bay’ton” as he insists on being called now for some reason – is a seasoned Aeronautica Imperialis pilot and even ran the Warhammer Community Team office campaign. He’s recently fallen under the sway of the Greater Good and has been busy painting his latest squadron…
Nick: I absolutely love Aeronautica Imperialis and when the new T’au Air Caste aircraft landed (or rather took off) in Skies of Fire earlier this year, I knew I had to paint them. I had already completed my Ork and Imperial squadrons, and with lockdown in place in the UK, what better time to commit to painting a third?
I quickly decided to paint my squadron in the white colour scheme of the Vior’la Sept. This is the way Warhammer 40,000 T’au Empire models are painted for the front of the boxes, so I thought that would make them instantly recognisable. But how to do it?
I was lucky enough to interview the ‘Eavy Metal team’s Max Faleij and Connor Richardson about the painting of T’au Empire models shortly after the release of Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good earlier this year.* They revealed the super simple method they used to paint the Vior’la Sept colour scheme… so I flat out copied it!
Normally, when painting T’au Empire models, you can spend quite some time adding edge highlights onto panel lines, of which there are many on the wonderful Aeronautica Imperialis aircraft. But this method was all easy shades, using chipping for highlights, which made for much quicker painting.
I started off with a Corax White basecoat, and added shades of Baneblade Brown and Gorthor Brown, both mixed with Lahmian Medium to make washes from those colours, before adding chips to the white with pure Gorthor Brown. It really was that easy!
If you want to see exactly how to apply this colour scheme to your T’au Empire planes, check out this brand-new video we made for Warhammer TV.
As with my other Aeronautica Imperialis squadrons, I wanted to mount my T’au Air Caste planes on some really cool modelled bases to add some narrative flair. The models were predominantly white, and as my standard rule of thumb for bases is to provide contrast to the models, I decided to go for a dark, urban style.
First of all, I covered the standard Aeronautica Imperialis base with some filler, ensuring I left the altitude and speed gauges free and usable. Then I piled on some sand, cork, and cut-up pieces of sprue to make rubble. I added some small buildings from the Adeptus Titanicus terrain range for a bit of flavour, and to emphasise the urban feel. Next, I replaced the standard flying stands with some 6mm perspex rod, simply to add varying heights to my fleet and to make sure the bottom of the aircraft weren’t scraping the buildings!
I’ve already played my first game with my new fleet, against the mighty Rob Crouchley (Warhammer TV’s Aeronautica Imperialis expert), and I managed to pull off a cheeky win! The T’au Air Caste aircraft put out so much firepower that I was a little blown away (as were all of Rob’s planes). I can’t wait for my next sortie!
Thanks, Nick! You too can join the T’au Air Caste with the awesome range for Aeronautica Imperialis. Pick up your Barracudas, Tiger Sharks, and Tiger Shark AX-1-0s** and scramble to the skies!
* You can watch this interview in the Warhammer TV Twitch archive if you fancy finding out more about painting T’au Empire models.
** If you’re wondering what the difference between Tiger Sharks and Tiger Shark AX-1-0s is, the answer is that one kind has really big guns, and the other has really, really, really big guns.