For the Greater Good; Part 2. A Xenos Crusade Update by Medge

T'au'va Reader! 

Welcome back to "For the Greater Good", a Xenos on crusade project update. With 9th Edition now upon us I'm more excited than ever for Warhammer 40k and, despite all the new reinforcements my Blood Angels received, I've still been chipping away with the Tau Empire.

This month our Goal was to bring our Crusade forces up to 25 PL (based on the 8th Edition Power Levels). This meant a quiet month for me, with 20 PL already complete after my Commander and Battlesuits from month one. With the extra time I had available I started thinking about my Crusade narrative, and began fleshing out out the backstory for my Commander, O'Ashi, and his Strike Force.

Tsuko'shi Tio've; "The Moonfall Contingent"

The military organisation of the Tau is (fortunately) pretty well documented. Between the "Warzone: Damocles" books from 7th Edition, and the new Tau Codex there's a pretty well defined structure to the Tau military.

The Organisation of the Tau Military during the Damocles Campaign; taken from Kauyon, copyright Games Workshop 2015 

The organisation of the Tau Military in the Dy'aketh Campaign, taken from Codex: Tau Empire (8th Edition), Copyright Games Workshop 2018

Between the two books I had plenty of detail to build one of a number of different Tau Strike Forces. In terms of the narrative (see below) I've decided to craft a story around a Contingent (or Tio've); a large collection of different strike forces working together in a large theater of war.
Obviously a Contingent is a pretty big endeavor (far bigger than 50PL!!) and so I'll be kicking things off with O'Ashi's personal Hunger Cadre; a balanced force that allows me to field a number of different units. 

The great thing about the Hunter Cadre is that back in 7th edition it had well documented rules to make one!

The rules for making a Hunter Cadre Formation from 7th Edition. Remember when the game was this restrictive? Anyone miss it? Taken from Codex Tau Empire (7th Edition), Copyright Games Workshop 2015

If I really wanted to be strict I could use these rules to build my Cadre... but let's steer clear of that idea! They're more like guidelines anyway...

Whilst past and present Codex's and supplements offer me plenty of help with building a force, forging the narrative is something I needed to do on my own.

Readers of my last post will know I'm building my own Sept, known as the Bajing Sept. Below is a small bit of prose describing the Origins of my force.

The Bajing Sept is a lesser Sept founded during the Fifth Sphere Expansion. 

On the edges of the Nem'yar Atoll Tau colonists settled one of the habitable moons of the fourth planet in the Barolyr System. Settlement of the moon, henceforth known as Bajing, went largely unnoticed by the Imperial forces of the region.
The arrival of the Death Guard years earlier, followed by Genestealer Cultist epidemic spreading throughout the Chalnath Expanse, provided the perfect cover for Tau settlement, and shipment of material, supplies and colony ships was a surprisingly bloodless endeavor.

The Chalnath Expanse, artwork taken from Psychic Awakening; The Greater Good, copyright Games Workshop 2020

Once the colony had been established the Ethereal Council dictated the Bajing Fire Caste initiate a sweep and purge of the planets and moons of the system, looking for willing converts to T'au'va, or possible threats that needed to be removed. 

Shas'O Bajing Kasashi, also known as O'Ashi, commands the Tsuko'shi Tio've (the Moonfall Contingent), a Hunter Contingent responsible for securing the planet Bajing orbits. O'Ashi, like all good commanders, leads his forces from the front. His Hunter Cadre, The Three Moons, are currently campaigning across the arid plains of the planets largest major landmass; a dry dust-bowl infested with myriad Alien races unwilling to join T'au'va.

Regrettably, the planet shows evidence of the dreaded Y'he, a previously unencountered Ves'ron species, and the tall, lithe humanoids the Gue'vesa refer to as Aeledari.

With so many forces arrayed against him, O'Ashi has requested reinforcement from all neighboring moons and planets. The Bajing Sept's Ethereal Command have authorised this request, diverting all available resources into the Moonfall Contingent and strengthening O'Ashi's position on the planet.              

Reinforcements arrive; Strike Squad "Guardians of Enlightenment"

With the wordy bit out of the way it's time for the models; what I'm sure you've all been waiting for.

Regrettably, it's been a slow and underwhelming month for painting. 

This month I've put together a 10-man Fire Warrior Strike Squad with DS8 Tactical Support Turret. As you'll know from my month one post I'm giving all my units names to add to the narrative. As a medium/ long range support squad this squad are known as the "Guardians of Enlightenment"; a name with two meanings. Firstly, as loyal Tau citizens it's their duty to guard the way of T'au'va. Secondly, their pulse rifles afford them the range to provide support to their fellow Tau and non-Tau Auxiliaries fighting closer to the front, and it's their duty to provide the rear-guard and supporting fire to those in the vanguard.

I don't really like posting single-squad updates on the blog, always feels a little bit disappointing to only finish one thing. In fairness, my enthusiasm has been focused more on the Blood Angels this month (with Imdomitus and everything) so it's understandable the Tau suffered, but I also found it difficult to get motivated with the Fire Warriors.

I mentioned in month one that I found the Tau intimidating to paint, and the Fire Warriors certainly dial that anxiety up to 15! These particular models had formed the test pieces for a few other variant paint schemes I'd tried over the last few years, and I was (regrettably) lazy and didn't strip the old paint off before I started painting them...

As my first Fire Warriors squad I was a little unsure on how I was going to take my Battlesuit paint scheme and apply it to the Infantry, with each colour taking me far longer to paint than usual as I second (and third) guessed the tones and positioning of the colours.   

So not only did I start painting this squad a little unsure where colours were going, I was also painting over an existing scheme; a double whammy of rookie errors that made the whole painting process a real mental battle. 

Overall I'm okay with the scheme - I'm not sure the white on the trousers/ sleeves was a good choice (maybe a light grey would have been better), and the highlighting is atrocious, but the I'm pleased with the limited use of orange on the models, and the blue/ white armour and helms is looking good. 

Tabletop standard, but far from my best!

The Markings of a Warrior

With so little of the this blog post taken up with models I thought I'd share a little more insight into the marking I'm using on. 

As with many things for my Tau I'm keeping a little notebook full of notes and ideas, including the various markings I plan on using - you can already see a few edits have been made!

Consulting the Codex you'll see that the Tau use lines and dots as Squad, Cadre and Contingent marking, and I definitely plan on doing the same.

The first marking in my notes ("Moonfall over the city") is my Contingent marking, and will be present on every Tau unit in my army.

The Contingent/ Cadre marking appears on my commanders right shoulder and helm...

...it appears again on my Fire Warriors left shoulder pad...

...and on the left hand side of the XV8 Crisis Battlesuits chest piece

At the moment this is also acting as my Cadre Marking, but as I create new Cadre's (expect a stealth one at some point) I'll diversify the Cadre markings. It's likely that "Moonfall over the City" will become "Three Moons", and I'll make a new icon for the Contingent.

You'll notice my XV8 Battlesuit also has another identifying Icon on the right shoulder - this is his personal Squad marking "The Stone Which Halts The Rivers Flow".

My Fire Warriors also contain their own squad marking on the right shoulder pad

I watched a Warhammer TV twitch stream recently where Eddie (one of the presenters) said "a squad isn't finished until all the markings are on" - a philosophy I wholeheartedly agree with. 

I'll be making sure I add these little flourishes to all my models, and coming up with new icons/ badges to represent the awesome and heroic things they do throughout their careers.

My Commander already has a few unique icons himself - perhaps he'll do something I can attribute these markings to in the future!

The commander needs no squad markings, but I wanted to break up the solid blue armour with orange markings. Maybe these marks will come to represent honour markings for great deeds done over the course of his career

With that I think I'll sign off this post. 

9th Edition is finally in hand, so it's time to start planning things properly! The world is still far from normal so I'm unsure when the Tsuko'shi Tio've will take the fight to the enemy, but I'll be sure to document it here when it happens!

In the mean time we have our Month Three Objective; build up to 50PL.

I've got some more XV8's, Fire Warriors, Pathfinders, and some Characters ready to paint this month to get me over the line (this time starting from bare plastic!) so with luck I can find my enthusiasm again and bring the Tsuko'shi up to fighting strength!

Until next time - stay safe and happy hobby!

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