"Cheap substitute for Tau gun drones? (GW)" Topic

The Tau gun drones are an interesting troop but I am looking for a cheaper substitute for the models. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Ebbles Miniatures:

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make as many as you need, for much less than Tau prices.

Glue spare Pulse Rifles to the bottom of an unslotted round 25mm base.

I think the round bases wouldn't look to great. They'd look like you took round bases and glued parts to them. Even paint likely wouldn't be able to hide it.

But I think the basic idea is in the right direction. Some sort of disk like thing. Perhaps a saucer like space ship from some space fleet type game?

Those paper ones from Ebbles look cool. You'll probably want to scale back the pritning size though as they're really big for regular gun drones. Perhaps get a free/open source PDF creator like PDFcreator and reprint the files to a smaller page size, telling acrobat to shrink the page. Or perhaps ebbles stuff comes with images you can easily scale.

Gluing spare pulse weapons onto something probably would be best. What about cheap plastic space craft? Like the ones EM4 sells? Or the ones from ustoy.com?

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Here are some decorative head furniture nails someone made into UFOs:

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I'd just keep an eye on ebay. You get quite a few in the course of building a Tau army and they aren't terribly cost effective when making an army list.

Go to a fabric store and look at buttons. Find some with a nice size and shape. Dress them up with some washers and bits from your bits box. Add spare rifles or bolters from GW.

Buttons are a great idea. They'll have inset lines and ribs and things that could work really well. What about the top of a snap (sort of a metal or plastic domish looking thing) on top of a slightly wider button? Add some pulse carbines from the fire warriors box to the bottom.

I've been able to get Tau gun drones really cheap off Ebay, so I don't really know what to suggest as a cheaper alternative.

Superfigs have some Attack Drones and Defense Drones that could work as proxies, but they might not be any cheaper.

Though, even Ebay is 12.00 average for a set of 12? The potential is there that you could make 12 for 1.00.

On the cartons of orange juice sold in this part of the country, the pouring nozzle comes sealed by a round disc with a ring on it. Cut off the ring and you've got a plastic disc, reminiscent of the top of the USS Enterprise (TOS), about 1/2" in diameter. A few of those discs should meet your need.

If you can get them on ebay for $1 USD each I can't imagine that making them out of something else could possibly be cost effective.

Have you ever checked out some of teh stuff people have scratchbuilt with for making space ships (which is what a drone basically is)? Lentils? Cardboard box card. Buttons from fabric shop?

If you arm all your fire warriors with pulse rifles, you'll have a decent number of pulse carbines left over (or if you don't care you can use whatever). Shield drones can be made by just using a single cheap bead for the shield generator.

I once made a battery of ork big gunz for 40k out of pop bottle lids (they have wheel like texture, cereal box cardboard, an extra set of disposible chop sticks and the tubes from a few spent papermate pens. When i played a game with them, people asked me which manufacturer made them.

If you've got the time, you can build some amazing stuff that costs less than the paint that goes on it.

Hey thanks for all the answers and imagination! I didn't find any deals on EBay so I will hit the buttons and beads section of the local craft store. I don't collect Tau so I don't have extra pulse carbines lying around but the craft store will be a great help.
Away we go!

You can get a whole bag of 25 wood discs for 1.00 at Hobby Lobby.

They come in various sizes from .50 inches to 1"

You can buy pulse carbines as bits from various sellers, but they are pricey:

3 for $1 USD

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3 for $2.49 USD

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You could also just take a good look at them and try to approximate them with something.

I just found a template file to make these out of paper, card stock or plasticard.

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I built the devilfish 5 years ago. I was planning on making a platoon of them but it took a lot of time and fiddly work and I decided against it. I bet the drones would be faster.