T'au Va fellow hobbyists! And Welcome Back to "For the Greater Good" - a hobby blog following my journey as I collect and learn the Tau Empire in the new Crusade format for Warhammer 40,000 9th Edition.
It's been a looong time since I last posted anything - part 2 of this series was way back at the beginning of August!
It's been a busy and chaotic few months, with both real life and hobby related issues draining me of a lot of my motivation. I've stumbled through snatching time here and there to paint, trying to keep any hobby going. Fortunately things have turned a bit of a corner - I hit a big milestone with the Tau and am starting to get a little more of my mojo back.
There's been a bit too much going on to wrap it all up into a single blog post, so I'll tackle August-September below and follow up with September-October next time!
August - A heavy painting month!
When we last caught up at the end of July I'd painted about 25 of the 50PL I'd planned to take for our Crusade Games. 9th Edition had just landed, and I was riding a wave of enthusiasm cracking on with painting.
August saw me paint a slew of new models, including a Cadre Fireblade, an Ethereal, two 5-man squads of Breachers, a second squad of Crisis Suits and a Piranha - rounding out the full 50PL.
Whilst painting the main body of the army (the Fire Warriors and Battlesuits) I was thinking a lot about how the force would come together, and how it would work "in the lore", as it were.
The Tau are often described as a pragmatic force that value life and honour above all else. Whilst the Greater Good does preach the necessity of self-sacrifice, it doesn't encourage fool-hearty last stands or wasting lives needlessly.
The Tau are also well known for practicing well documented and choreographed hunting manouvers, many of which lifted from the pages of Puretides treaties on War.
Considering both of these caveats I decided to base my forces around two branches; an Infiltration Cadre consisting (at the moment) of Tau wearing the camouflage colours of the Pathfinders, and the main Hunter Cadres, wearing the ceremonial blue of the Moonfall Contingent.
In lore terms, I see the Infiltration Cadre utilising hit-and-run tactics to harass and provoke the enemy. The Hunter Cadre, standing resplendent in their deep blue armour, are obvious targets out on the plains and bear the weight of the enemies fury.
When the enemy commit in force to a fight the full Contingent reveals itself, catching their foe in a withering crossfire - the perfect Kauyon.
In hobby terms, the variety in armour colours helps break up the monotony of painting only blue, and offers me an alternative scheme for running multiple detachments (should I so wish!)
September - Dice rolled and passion fades
September was a pretty disastrous month for me.
With two birthdays in our little group, Lockdown/ Covid restrictions easing off, and a few weeks of great weather, we took the opportunity to play a handful of Crusade games and really kick off our tale.
Thanks to my handy Crusade Journal I know exactly how badly these games went...
I manages to get 9 25-40 PL games in in the space of 10 days; two weekends of full gaming in the Garden really enabling me to catch up on six months without gaming.
Hindsight is 20:20, and looking back... that was too many games after so long a drought.
The Tau are a difficult army to make work at the best of times, and particularly challenging in smaller games. Over the course of the first 5 game I went 2W/3L, getting completely tabled in all loses.
My only wins came at the expense of Tom's Necrons; my Burst Cannon Crisis Suits making short work of his Necron Warriors.
After losing so many games in such a spectacular fashion I was feeling pretty low about the army. I new I'd misplayed those early games, I was still learning after all, and whilst I'd discovered a few nice tricks and strats to use I was still really struggling.
As a bit of a band-aid for my ailing force I decided to paint up a few new units; a squad of Stealth Suits, an XV104 Riptide Battlesuit and a bunch of Drones (Shield and Markerlight)
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Why waste the life of a Tau when you can send a drone? Savior Protocols are crazy powerful...
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A well known strength of the Tau, the Riptide battlesuit is a workhorse that will carry any game it plays in. XV104 "Fury" ready for deployment
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Just an empty photo here... no invisible stealth suits. XV25 Stealth Team "Wraiths" reporting in.
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As with the Pathfinders, I chose to paint the Stealth Team in a modified paint scheme. This time I opted for the classic ethereal/ ghostly colour to represent their engaged stealth fields. This was mostly done with drybrushes, and helped me save a lot of time when painting!
The Riptide, on the other hand, was painted in the blue and orange of the Hunter Cadre; it's larger panels giving me the opportunity to add a bit more freehand to the force.
In game, the Riptide did exactly as expected - whatever it shot it deleted. The combination of 3+ Invulnerable save and 6 S9 AP-3 D3 shots just saw it carry a game.But it felt... cheesy.
As devastating as it was, taking an 15PL Riptide in a 25PL game wasn't something I wanted to do... and rather than being a band-aid to fix the army the Riptide just eroded a little more of my enjoyment for the force.
By the end of my 9 games I finished 3/9 - all wins against the Necron army, with heavy loses coming against the Tyranids and Aeledari (both Craftworld and Drukari).
Objectively, a 33% win streak at 25PL with a brand new army wasn't too bad. I'd learned a lot about the force, and was very aware that 25PL was not representative of the force as a whole.
But I'd started to really resent a lot of the options I'd taken and units in the force.
5-man Breacher were too damn squishy and died way too easy
Crisis Suits were absolutely not worth the 9PL I paid for them - 4+ Ballistic Skill and 18" range weapons were just asking for a counter charge, especially against the fast moving Drukari and Tyranid monsters
Markerlight reliance for re-rolls is fine, but no markerlight in the force hits on better than a 5+ outside the Fireblade, making them pretty unreliable
I was pretty unhappy with how the Crusade was going and wasn't sure what my best options were for the Tau going forwards. It was about this time one of my pets got really, really ill too - and the next 4-6 weeks would see nearly twice-weekly vet appointments.
Rather than waste energy stressing about hobby I decided to take a bit of a mental reset on the whole thing and step away from the Crusade. I threw in the towel, short term, and decided to rethink and re-strategise.
There is no shame in retreat after all - live to fight another day!
Down but not out
Overall this hasn't been the most upbeat of updates, but that's sometimes the way things go. I wasn't enjoying the Tau the way I was playing them, and that's not surprising given how I was approaching project.
Whilst my fellow Warlords were all starting new armies too, they were buying and building cool pieces they wanted for their army/ collection... whereas I was painting up backlog pieces I'd collected over the years. My unit choices were eclectic and disjointed, and weren't really fit for the way 9th Edition wanted me to play.
By mid September I was definitely down... but I was not out.
Stepping away from the Crusade took the pressure off, and allowed me to focus on resetting my mental state on the Tau. I took stock on the current meta, of how 9th plays and what it's asking. I pushed through on painting odd's and sod's from the backlog and started planning my next steps.
But that's a topic for the next update!
Until next time - stay safe and happy hobby!
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