I have collected about 1500 points of Tau now and want to get them painted up as quickly as possible. But still look great - on the table

Im thinking of a mainly grey colour scheme, and blue as a contrasting colour. Or maybe orange as the main secondary colour?

How would you go about batch painting these? Off the top of my head I might try:

* spray grey undercoat
* drybrush grey highlights
* black wash
* paint blue details
* highlight blue
* paint orange details (sparingly)
* highlight orange
* glue flock on base
* spray varnish
* glue static grass on base (lots of it!)

Hmm how may hours would that take to paint 1500 points?

As to how long it will take really depends on the number of figures you need to paint and the complexity of them.

1500 points of mechanised Tau would really not take that long as you have stacks of vehicles to paint which have broad areas that are easy to do.

All infantry based or a combo of infantry and suits would take a bit longer due to the detail.

If you go with what you have planned in your post, then it would not take that long. An efficient painter going for purely a table top standard should be able to knock that out in under a week of nights painting. Less if you are going to spend the time straight.

Go with the grey and orange, it is a fantastic combination of colours.

If you truly want to get them done as fast as possible, then you should do it assembly line, and for the whole army. This is the most boring way to paint the army, but it works if put your head down and do it.

Do every step on every model in your army at the same time, so undercoat everything at the same time, basecoat at the same time, highlights etc. This saves you a heap of time with opening and closing paints, washing brushes (should do this occassionally anyway). It is not fun at all, but maybe just do some characters inbetween the big parts of the project like the basecoating and after all of the highlights or something like that to keep motivation up.

Here's a link to my 1500 point tau speed painting project from a couple of years back:

http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?...=54488&st=0

Got the army completed in five days. Don't have a full army shot in the thread but you can see the finished product with a few of the models.

I followed a similar system to the one you've suggested. If it was done in the exact same fashion as me (but using your color scheme, with grey for the cloth, dark grey for the weapon) it would go as follows:

Spray black undercoat
Codex grey clothes
Codex grey/chaos black weapon
Mordian blue armor
Badab black wash everything
Macharius orange details

Best thing to do is divide the force into even chunks, and plan on completing a chunk each night.

Good luck with it, let me know if you want me to get a full army shot for proof

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I went for mecharius orange on the gun and shoulder/breastplate logos. And lime green for the little screw on the gun and the top of the shoulder logo.

I'm really happy with it, will post some photos up this weekend. I have started painting another 20 firewarriors, 3 stealthsuits and 4 drones. Got the spray grey / drybrush grey / wash black done in an hour and a half.

What I have added to the above list is to outline the lines on the gun and shoulder pad logo with watered down black paint. It looks great against the orange.

do it with one. and then multiply the time it took by how many figures you have.