# Tau: Arctic or Urban?



## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

So I'm trying to decide how I should paint my Tau army, now that I've finally got a bit of time to start...
Shall it be Arctic? White (grey tone) armor plates, light grey fatigues, and turquoise squad markings?
or shall it be Urban? Light Grey and Dark Grey (blue tone) armor plates, mottled white and black fatigues, and bright (haven't decided color yet) squad markings?


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## Treewizard648 (Feb 4, 2009)

*artic tau*

(please note that some may appear models may be incomplete)

I have a Tau army with artic fatigues! 

What I did was I primed everything with chaos black, then for the armor I used Shadow grey, for the cloth I used black, and for some models without cloth I used black on some of the paneling. Then I drybrushed some space wolves grey all over my models, then some more light drybrushing but with skull white. 





















As for my tanks, I primed them Black, then I basecoated them with shadow grey, then I used a dry brush to "blot" space wolves grey and then skull white, last I "dusted" the tanks with skull white for the frosty look.


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## Crimson_Chin (Feb 20, 2009)

really clean arctic tau are probably my favorite color scheme, on any 40k army.

However, I think you should go with a different option. Alternating black and bright blue armor, with ice blue cloth. That's my vote. That's also how my tau are getting painted, when I decide to start collecting them.


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## Ste (Aug 28, 2008)

Artic looks great if done well. Urban can also looks gr8. a nice clean artic scheme will look good though  artic ftw


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## Treewizard648 (Feb 4, 2009)

Ste said:


> Artic looks great if done well. Urban can also looks gr8. a nice clean artic scheme will look good though  artic ftw


It looks good but it's not prototypical, everything gets "frosty" after being exposed to extremely low temperatures, such as those found in the Artic and the Antartic. Thats why I went with a frosty artic theme. 



Just explaining why my stuff is frosty.


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

Gonna wait til the 4th before i offer my thoughts on each, wanna hear ppl's thoughts without any interference from me (as i can get kind of aggressive with my opinions sometimes >.>). Just think both can look great.


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## asianavatar (Aug 20, 2007)

Everyone does urban. Go with arctic Tau, it is definitely something different.


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## xX2005SocialDXx (Jan 28, 2009)

Personally I would go with urban

I would of seen enough Tau Arctic in my life

Besides Urban is more of a challanging


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## Lord of Rebirth (Jun 7, 2008)

You could considering doing both or a composite. It's not very Tau in my mind to do hap hazard paint jobs on their vehicles but I could see them in extenuating circumstances taking a tank done in urban camo and spray painting more white and shading over the urban that only partly covers it but would obscure it better in the show. Either that or develop a camo style that can be done with different color palettes for both. Like if you used the common smokey three color look older US military vehicles had/have for forest but do it in greys and black for urban then white and lighter greys for snow and possibly set your army up so it looks like they are in field operations in a theater that has the snow fields but also some intense urban fighting.

With my Traitor Guard armour I'm mixing different styles and color palettes for snow field work and urban work as well as a sort of mix and I plan to have my more cityfight oriented tanks more urban camoed while tanks better suited for long range snow field battles will be snowier and then the general activity tanks will be camo schemes between the two or an urban camo that has been "white washed" to quickly make it better camouflaged in snow fields.


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## Shadowvast (Jun 11, 2008)

Artic FTW. Tau look excellent in a clean arctic scheme, and you dont see many out there because people are afraid of the snow flock. Go for it!!:goodpost:


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## ACoz (Oct 23, 2007)

I've seen more Urban than Arctic, so my vote is for Arctic....


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

we'll see on midnight 05/04-05/05


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## Initiate (Mar 25, 2007)

That is an amazing paintjob! I myself play cold themed space marines, but have not been able to get the same results, but your are by far the better. I say arctic!


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

lol pretty sure you're talking about Treewizard's work XD and i agree it does look pretty good, giving a dynamic terrain effect that you normally don't see


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

might be a bit of a jackass thing to do, but posting in here so it gets moved to the first page of the thread.

poll's closing at 11:59 May 4th and making decision on May 5th anyhow


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## lucius666 (Aug 16, 2008)

how bought urban with some snow and ice on the bases and shoulders of some of the troops and crisis suits and have some ice sycles hanging on the bottom side of ur hoover tanks


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## Warlord Imp (Mar 20, 2009)

My vote is for the ARCTIC...just because the light blues and whites are difficult to work with IMO...hahahaha!


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## Crimson_Chin (Feb 20, 2009)

lol lucius, you wrote hoover instead of hover. I had an instant mental image of someone opening a devilfish that was having engine trouble, and seeing rows of vacuum cleaners instead of a motor.


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## Treewizard648 (Feb 4, 2009)

Initiate said:


> That is an amazing paintjob! I myself play cold themed space marines, but have not been able to get the same results, but your are by far the better. I say arctic!



Thank you very much Initiate! Like I said, try my best to be as prototypical and dynamic with my models as possible, however what people don't realize is there is no "clean-artic feel" to anything, It would be like leaving the legs of I.G. normal yet they are trudging through a muddy base! It's just not realistic. 

Aside from that, Artic Tau FTW!


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

and the results are...
Arctic-31
Urban-24
so it's looking like i'll be doing clean arctic with some rubble/ruin basework then.
thanks for yall's opinions. I might write more later, but these 3 days i work 17hours a day. so it'll have to wait.


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