Tau Reactor Terrain, custom tau building

Greetings.
This is my first post on WiP, and i have recently returned to modeling/gaming after a hiatus lasting over 12 years.

Since i got into 40k a few months back, ive chosen to go with a Tau army, as i instantly fell in love with their aesthetic, their backstory, and their tabletop tactics. So i decided to build some terrain to back up my 1200pt and growing army.

Now down to business:
I started with a dollar store gumball machine thats been hanging around since christmas. With the perfect tau shape and a removable clear dome, i couldnt resist.
Here is a pic of the gumball machine before the procedure (hope i do this correctly):




After a few days of planning, i had the basic idea for the building down. Here is a scan of the sketch from my notebook:



Pardon my crude drawing skills and manic scrawl.

I started by removing the dispenser aparatus from the gumball machine (saving the spring from inside). From there i fitted a length of pvc pipe in the hole left by the dispenser. I felt wasteful paying $1.20 for five feet of pvc when i only needed about 6 inches. The elbow joint cost around 30cents. If you use one of these elbows, be sure to file away the raised stamp left by the manufacturer. I filled out the rest of the dispenser gap with a thick piece of card and glued everything in place from inside the gumball machine. Where the vertical pipe meets the ground, i glued a 40mm figure base for a smooth transition to the ground.



Next, i added a door from an old TIE fighter toy. Although it is a couple mm shorter than a tau infantry unit, it is exactly the same size as the side doors on a devilfish, so argue with GW, not me. Also, the buildings rules will be objective based, and as such is not designed to be entered by troops. So at the end of the day the doors size is a non-sequitor. Certainly not worth the three sentences i just spent on it.
I digress...
The pipes were added using trusty old bendy straws, although i admit i spent about an hour trying to get the straws to bend to my liking. Curse you 50c discount straws!



As you may have decifered from my schematic, i want the dome to be partially visible when painted. That way i can place some science-y tau in there pressing buttons for perceptive generals to gaze at. This was tricky to execute. First, i used blue masking tape to cover a larger area than i wanted to make visible (careful to avoid bubbles). Then, i chose my favorite coffee cup to trace an appropriately sized circle onto the masking tape. The traced line was carefully cut using an exacto knife. afterwhich i peeled away the excess. I also added a vertical stripe leading down from the circle. This will facilitate two purposes: 1) when painted the negative space created by the window will resemble a tau symbol once the building is painted, and 2) it will allow me to employ a visible elevator traveling from the door to the control floor. The detail on the top bit was added by gluing sensor spine bitz, and an antennae i fashioned using the spring from inside the gumball machine and a plastic marble type thing (it is actually a dragonball, though i am not openly admitting to owning any dragonball toys...really). Check it out:



and here is detail of the antennae array:



The next step was to add the floor to the interior of the dome, so my diorama had a place to stand. This proved to be the crux of the build so far (other than waiting for barrule to restock essential elements). In my schematic i had originally planned for a 4 piece floor that would be inserted in sections. In the end i went a different route, as it proved difficult to get an accurate measurement on the inside of the dome at a specific spot. I accomplished the floor by cutting down the plastic top of a to-go container (chinese i think, mabey thai) until it fit where i wanted. Then i carefully added spots of superglue at regular intervals where the floor met the wall. I have yet to clean up the excess glue-pardon our appearance while we remodel.



After all this was done, i fashioned a base out of foamcard, careful to ensure that a 40mm base would fit comfortably on the sides and back of the building, and that a 28mm base would fit comfortably in front of the door. I then added a bicycle reflector angled as a solar panel. This has yet to be attached as the model awaits paint. If you look closely you can see it behind the crisis suit in the next pic, which is present for purposes of scale.



That about sums up my progress so far. Next on the list is to prime and paint the model itself, flock the base, and pray that someone in the barrule stockroom is reading this and decides to restock the control station i need. I have decided to try a textured spraypaint on the model that will look like stucco or white concrete. We shall see.
Later i will add the miniatures to the inside of the dome, as well as the figure riding the elevator shaft up to the main floor. For now tho, in the interest of both suspense and procrastination, i will end the post here.

Thanks for reading the entirety of my lengthy post. Hope you enjoyed reading as much as i have writing. Hope to share more in the future

Note to self: make run to dollar store.

Looks promising.

Typhoid Garry-i make no promises! j/k.
I am itching to get back to work on this, but the fates thwart me at every turn. Firstly, it has been raining here for a week, leaving me little chance to prime or paint the model. Secondly, there are items I require which are out of stock. Since i posted the above write up, i have initiated an email conversation with the people in charge over at barrule. Fingers crossed for good news.
TG, the dollar store is the win, and part of the completed writeup on this model will include a grand total for all parts. So far, the only thing i have spent more than 2 dollars on is the textured spraypaint i plan to use, and that rang in at a whopping 8 bucks. Hopefully the finished product will come in under 20$.
Thanks again for your interest TG.

subtle and original, great build so far, cant wait to see it painted, i will keep a close eye on this, kudos

cool idea. i have to check out my local dollar store for some curvy tau terrain pieces. after all, how can a greater knarloc sized-gumball dispenser not be for the greater good!

thanks guys. I want to be clear about one thing. I am assuming that this came from the dollar store. My wife gave this to me as a kind of stocking stuffer thing this past christmas, and she shops for that stuff at the dollar store. It is certainly dollar store quality. If your local dollar/quid shop doesnt have one of these, id say your next best bet would be to check out oriental trading or a similar catalog/online retailer.
In my search for more things tau shaped, i have discovered that the grocery store is an exceedingly good source. Today i saw a Pom bottle (a liter or so) that is definitely getting turned into a building of some sort as my next project. More on that as it develops.
btw, terrorbore, this is my first real scratchbuild for 40k (or any wargame, really), so your comment is much appreciated.

I don't know why every one keeps avoiding the obvious question but I'll go ahead and ask it. Will it still be dispensing Gumballs for the Greater Good? And if not...why not? Imagine the look on your opponents face when you get a treat out of your terrain piece. Great work though. I love the dollar store, It a great source of Gel Super Glue as well.

Well, Andy in Utah, any model within 4" of the reactor suffers from the "Whos gum is this?!?!" universal special rule. For the entirety of the player turn, models within 4" must roll 2d6, taking the lower number of the two as a result. This number is the maximum distance the model may move until the end of that player turn. Any units that go to ground while under the effects of "Whos gum is this?!?" special rule may never come back up; they are stuck. Also, any unit within line of sight of the reactor at the begining of the movement phase must take a morale check (to see if they have a quarter). If the morale check is failed, said unit must move their maximum distance toward the Reactor as if falling back. They will continue to do so until the unit regroups as normal.

And yes, it is for the greater good. That whole "sphere of expansion" thing came to aun'va one day while he was chomping bubbalicious. He blew a bubble and was like 'sphere...expanding-i like the sound of that...Hey, Farsight, wanna hear my idea?"
The rest is history.

In other, more real news, i bit the bullet and primed the model in the basement last night. Now i gotta mask anything that shouldnt look like concrete and try this textured spray. The test patch looks promising tho. More updates as they are worth writing about.

Now where's the pics of the rest of terrain I saw?

I will post them as soon as we see some pics of your defiler!

hay kids its tom servo
sorry i could not resist
besides i love MST3k

make that Tau Servo.
i also could not resist.

So its been a couple weeks since i updated this writeup. As such i thought i would give you a tiny update, since a tiny amount of work has been done. First of all, i primed the building, but am holding off on the stone texture paint because i now want it to match the other buildings im working on (in another thread). Ive also started texturing the base, but that is still in preliminary stages so dont be put off by the sloppy smattering of sand. The other big update is that i removed the masking, so you can now get a better idea of whats happening inside. I grew tired of waiting on the piece from barrule, so i decided to go in a different direction. I fashioned some kind of reactor core, which will be tended to by some cool robot drone models ive got lying about. The elevator idea didnt go to plan either, and right now im sketching up some kind of tubing to look like the innards of the buildings reactor system. More on that later. Below are the pics.

Primed building, front and sides:







Reactor Closeup:





Window Closeup:



Work will continue on this project in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Looking good... although I gotta say the reactor looks like a mechanical eye right now. The Tau see all!

Trust The Computer. The Computer is Your Friend.

I like the reactor thingy but something is missing... Might be the pipe thing... I don't see Tau with much pipes and stuff like that, but that is just me.

Neat! This tower is so sweet! Interested in where this will end!

Greets, Mr. Horse

So barrule must have read this and gotten keen to the fact that i am scratchbuilding parts lieu of their command console. Now that ive built the little reactor, im unsure whether or not to order it. I probably will though. If it hasnt gotten out of my mind yet then it probably wont.
The other news on this project is that i got some sweet lichen to do some vines growing up the side. First the structure itself needs paint.
That said, does anyone have any tips for drybrushing on a larger scale? I havent painted anything larger than a pirhana yet. Im trying to go for a bit of a weathered feel to this building. I was thinking either a sand colored drybrush or a veeeeeery light misting with some light earthtone spraypaint, to give it a dusted feel.
Looking forward to hearing your input.

This topic has been classified as Ultraviolet Clearance. Citizens of a lower clearance reading this document should report to the nearest Termination Centre immediately. The computer is your friend.

That silliness aside, I like this piece. As for large scale drybrushing, well, large brush. I do most of my terrain with a 1/2 inch flat brush from an art store. I'd tell you exactly what it is but its old and the words have worn off the handle.

Sorry for the delay. Im prepping a large tau army and time for my terrain projects has been marginal. I did get some progress on this and the other 2 buildings i have going in another thread. I decided to scrap the reactor core that built in my last post. Instead i am going to make the whole interior one room, with a Tau at a central control panel, which is a modified version of my original idea. Thanks to some sweet parts donated by Lucky No. 5, i was able to slap together the command console you see below.



The model is a devilfish commander, ive sliced up his arm a bit to get the pressing buttons effect. The console itself came generously from Lucky No. 5, who may or may not know its origin. I had to chop that up quite a bit as well to get the guy in there. The whole lot is glued to the bottom bit of a gumball machine globe. All told, it fits quite snugly into the bottom of the gumball machine's globe.



I plan to place him in the globe with his back facing the windowed portion. On the wall in front of him (opposite the window) will be some kind of display. Thats in the works. I didnt take shots of this whole setup fitted into the building, because the fit is very snug, and its hard to get out once in. I dont want to compromise the model in the meantime. Anyhow i cant glue it until this is painted, so why bother. I promise ill show you when its done.



meanwhile any ideas about a display on the back wall of the inside of the gumball globe would be welcomed. Ive considered scaning/shrinking some images of Tau space and expansion progress. You guys are so much more clever than i am so ill lend an ear to any ideas.

Thanks for keeping up.

The console and guy look good. I would recommend having him not face exactly away from the window, say facing 2 or 10 o'clock, (with the window at 6 o'clock).

Not sure why, but I think that would look better.

As for what to put on the displays, ships could work. Is this still supposed to be a reactor? If so some sort of magnetic bottle readout or flux stream display would work well. You could also be having it display a tactical map of a battle in progress, picture of a battlefield with little Tau and Imperial (or Eldar, or Necron, or 'nid, whatever) symbols representing units.

An incoming transmission from an ethereal, some sort of graph or chart showing energy output like a graphic equalizer, cut-away schematic of a crisis battlesuit or hammerhead. The galaxy with Tau space highlighted. A game of bejeweled or solitaire.

If your feeling REALLY ambitious, build it somehow so that the image can be changed somehow.

thanks for the brainstorm, nevermore. Youve made me realize that it would be really nice if i could do it so that the console isnt fixed, but can be rotated by some kinda outside control. That would allow me to line the entire wall inside the globe with readouts and junk. I will look into doing just that.

DUDE!!! Thats the Autobot matrix of leadership your messing with!

thats correct turbo. Nothing is sacred in the workshop.
Anyhow that piece has lost its place in this terrain model for now. Ill no doubt find a more fitting use for it sometime in the future though.

May it light the Tau's darkest hour... This is an awesome project and massive respect for the time and effort spent putting it together.