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 for Warhammer 40,000 9th Edition.
Part three of the series took a long time to come out; personal issues, lockdown-induced hobby burnout and a losing streak really stealing my enthusiasm for the Tau.
On the back of some pretty terrible performances I decided to step away from the Crusade format for a bit and take a week to reflect on the Tau; what I enjoyed, what I didn't, and what I wanted to do with the army.
Without having to worry about filling a Crusade roster or painting things up for games my mojo for painting returned, and I started working the my backlog and planning next steps...
Before I get into the Tau specifics I want to focus a little bit on the new Crusade format for gaming.
If you're not familiar with Crusade I suggest you hop over to the Warhammer Community site and read up on their Crusade articles, or head over to our project intro to find out about what we started doing.
Despite me already throwing in the towel, I've got to admit that I really enjoyed Crusade.
I lean more towards casual gaming over competitive, and so the relaxed Power Level style was pretty enjoyable.
I also really liked the RPG-esque power up mechanics. The Core rule book has a pretty wide pool of options for units (of various levels of competitiveness) all things considered, and this will only grow as the Codex's start coming out (we're already seeing that with Necrons and Space Marines)
The missions, while limited at 25PL, were still engaging and worked pretty well - especially on the smaller board. I wish the disposition of the rules was a little more "bottom heavy" (you only get three 25PL missions, but you get six 50PL, six 100PL, and three 150PL missons) but I guess there's more of a drive to get 50PL games in.
I really like the Battle Scars mechanics, and the idea that loses could be meaningful to your force.
HOWEVER...
There are, to my mind, some noticeable issues with the system.
Firstly - the resource you acquire though the games (RP) is functionally useless in the base game. You have a pretty limited number of ways of spending it, and since you can't accrue more than 5 I ended up spending it increasing my supply limit just because it was "use it or lose it"
Secondly - whilst the Battle Scars mechanics are cool...
(side note - I played the 25PL mission Assassinate, and my Coldstar Commander was the target. He was slain by the Drukahri and suffered a chest wound (-1W), which was SUPER thematic!)
...whilst Battle Scars are cool they're actually pretty rare (roll a 1 for a unit post game), and can be immediately cleansed for a single RP (which you likely have fully stockpiled... because there's nothing much else to spend it on)
It's a fine mechanic if you impose your own restrictions, but I'd like to see it applied a little more liberally.
And Thirdly, perhaps my biggest issue - it wasn't what I thought it would be.
This, clearly, isn't a GW-related issue! So let me explain.
Even with the previous two issues I have considered, I think Crusade is a great system for people wanting to play narrative gaming with armies they already own.
I went into the system expecting it to be a great escalation-style system - perfect for casual collecting play - and it just... isn't...
The requirements to lock-in all your units, Wargear and all, into your Supply Roster really restricts a new player from exploring their army.
If you want to change things up it'll either cost your RP to rebuild the unit, or you drop it and add something new in.
Now I know I've just said RP is a little useless, but it's uses will go up over time (and let's be honest... most of us WANT to spend it increasing our supply cap to get new units, or holding some back to recover a Battle Scar from a critical unit)
Now... for Tau this is EXTRA irritating because of the diversity of upgrades our Battlesuits can take. Wana swap that Advanced Targeting System for a Target Lock? 1 RP please! Want to try Velocity Tracker? 1 RP please! Hover Drone for the Ethereal.... yous see where I'm going with this...
I weirdly think it's a system that would benefit from a good Games Master, and a set of players agreeing on a battleground and loose narrative first, rather than as a "collect-and-play" format
Anyway... mini-rant over! Back to the collecting...
The Gloves are off and the Brushes are out
With the necessity of filing out a Crusade roster and painting-to-game no longer a concern I was free to paint my way through my backlog.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this is previous posts, but my Tau collection is pretty eclectic.
I've wanted to play Tau since... forever! I've picked up a few of the "Bundle Boxes" to build, but never got round to painting
If I'm remembering right, over the years I've picked up...
Two Start Collecting Tau:
Your standard starting place, offering 3 Battlesuits, 10 Fire Warriors and an Ethereal each
The Infiltration Cadre - Burning Dawn Box:
A lucky find after it had been discontinued, the box contained an Ethereal, 10 Pathfinders, 3 Stealth Suits and a Piranha
The Rapid Insertion Force:
Christmas 2017's Tau Faction bundle and my present to myself, this box provided 6 Stealth Suits, 3 Crisis Battlesuits, a Ghostkeel and a Coldstar/ Enforcer Commander
Finally, I'd picked up a Riptide off fellow Warlord Neil - a relic of one of his former projects he hadn't passed on yet.
Up to this point I'd done a fair job whittling that backlog down, and focused on painting up the rest through September.
First up were the final elements of my Stealth Cadre; a Ghostkeel and 6 Stealth Suits
Both sets of models were painted up using the same ethereal scheme as the first Stealth Suits from update 3; a drybrush heavy technique that had them completed in no time!
I was a little unsure how the Ghostkeel would take the scheme if I'm honest; the model is so much bigger than the standard stealth suits I thought it wouldn't work! But I'm impressed with the result, and more impressed with how striking these Stealth units look next to the whole collection.
Up next were my remaining five Pathfinders
As with the five I'd already painted, these five wear the desert camo pattern of the scout/ vanguard elements of my Contingent.
Something you can see a bit clearer here is the single splash of colour on the right knee pad's of the units. Rather than displaying their rank on their helmet antenna my Vanguard units display it on their knee pads.
It seemed to make more sense (to me at least) for the infiltrating/ camouflaged elements to not have bright colours on their helms/ upper torso to avoid giving away their position.
The knee seems easier to hide, and allowed me to add those little touches that really make a unit pop!
With the Pathfinders and Stealth elements complete I only had one unit left to paint; my last squad of Crisis Battlesuits.
The paint scheme I've chosen for all my battlesuits has two components; a drybursh heavy element for the weapons and leg/ arm joints, and a classic "'Eavy Metal"-style layering/highlighting element for the armour.
I'm still working out the best order to apply the paint for the battlesuits, and with this unit I completed the "messier" drybrushing element before applying any blue... big mistake!
Whilst painting the blue I kept getting bits of colour on the grey, making mistakes and getting really frustrated.
In the end I just forced myself to get them finished, taking 30-60 mins before work and over lunch to push through in bite-sized steps.
Fortunately the finished project looked great, and reminded me why Crisis Suits are so cool.
With the crisis suits finished I can happily say I've completed Wave 1 of my Tau collection, and successfully bashed one backlog!
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| The full collection. Regrettably I can't make this any bigger without killing the blog, but head over to my Instagram to see it! |
Wave 2 - Whats coming next?
With Tau wave 1 complete I can look forward to what the force is missing, and what I think I'll need going forward.
From what I've been able to see of the 9th Edition objectives are key, so getting some durable units in transports on those objectives is priority number 1.
That makes a Devilfish priority number 1, and more troops priority number 2!
Looking at the available Tau troop options, I'm definitely drawn to the Breachers over the Strike Team.
The 5" range band for the Pulse Blasters is fantastic for clearing models off objectives, and can be augmented with both the "Pulse Onslaught" to triple the effective range, or to the "Point-blank Volley" stratagem to give them some bite in combat.
They also benefit more from the MV36 Guardian drone than the Strike Team (gaining a 5+ invulnerable save instead of a 6+).
Breachers just seem to offer more offensive and defensive strength in the mid-board than Strike teams.
With two 5-man Breacher squads already assembled all I really needed was a pair of Devilfish, and a 10-man Fire Warrior box to up my collection to the next level.
What I ended up doing instead was pick up a third Start Collecting and a single Devilfish; I reasoned with myself that I needed a second Ethereal on foot to provide some Elemental strength to my Fire Warriors, and Crisis Suits were cool!
The Fire Warriors were built up as Breachers - 10 in total with no Shas'ui so they can fill out the units I already own.
As a final treat to myself I picked up a XV88 Broadside Battlesuit.
An absolutely iconic model, the Broadside just screams Tau. Whilst I know the high-yield missile pod is the better of the two weapon options I couldn't resist the building the Heavy Rail Rifle first. I'm hoping get get this guy a buddy or two and run them with the Magna Rail Rifle prototype weapon from Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good.
They may be a heavy points investment but they're ruin anything the look at!
(as a fortunate side note - the model can easily be build in sub assemblies that clip in and off, so I can run the rail rifle and magnetise the missile pods at a later date.
That's it for this update!
Having cleared out a my Tau backlog I've done a good job stockpiling some more! This time though I'm building in a direction, focusing on the units I know I'll need to challenge in games, rather than just buying odds and sods.
I'm already planning wave 3... but that's a topic for the next update!
Until next time - stay safe and happy hobby!
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