Getting Ready for NOVA Open's Capital Palette

In a little over a week we'll be trekking from New England to the DC area for the 2015 Nova Open. I won't be playing in any events, except possibly some Age Of Sigmar games, but I'll trying to bring my A-game (or at least my B-game) to this years years Capital Palette.  Last year I completely dropped the ball with my prep work and ended up not submitting any entries, I really regret being so damn lazy after winning a Silver medal the previous year. I'm trying to make up for things this year so if you end up down there keep an eye for some of these models in the display cases.

I've been trying to refine the Iron Hands Legion Praetor I started a few months back. I added some more pronounced highlights as well as a few chapter and clan markings from the Forge World decal sheet. I also played with adding some shadows to the base for the first time, I like the effect but there's no way I'd be able to put that much work into a whole army.  Now he's looking a little meaner and more fitting of his stature in "The Iron Tenth". There are a couple small details left but I think I'm about ready to call this guy complete.

I've also done quite a bit of tedious work on some Tau Pathfinders that I've been working on for two plus years now. I probably over did the paint job considering their value on the battlefield but that's sort of my problem in general, I have a tough time taking short cuts of any kind when painting. I really went to town with some weathering pigments on their bases which I think are looking pretty sharp. Now I just need to finish the rest of this Tau army to the same standard.

Whoops, Tau Riptide...

As is to be expected with this hobby my focus was drawn from the Dreamforge Leviathan I've been working on to a Tau Riptide. After watching the Buypainted youtube tutorial for Riptide painting I just couldn't resist. I've had some Tau models semi-assembled (semi-painted in some cases) sitting on a shelf for some time now so I decided to get back on task and get an army's worth of models at least built and mounted on bases. I purchased the Riptide little over a week ago so I'm really happy with how fast it's been going together. I plan on getting this thing 90% done by the weekend so I can turn my attention to some of the new 40k Tempestus Scions.

Mr. Riptide is just held together with brass rod right now since I wanted to paint all his large components individually, but the details are almost wrapped up enough that I can glue everything together and get him attached to his base. I'm looking forward to fielding him with about 4 Firewarrior Squads and a pair of Hammerheads.

Check out my bonding knife, bro (Tau Fireblade)

Here are a few in-progress shots of the Tau Cadre Fireblade I plan to have him leading my upcoming Tau allied force. In terms of rules he's probably not as good as an Ethereal, but I've always loved the Firewarrior models and I think it'll be cool to have my small force led by the Tau master sergeant.

Perfect Storm: Part V Caveat Emptor... Starting to Build the Tau

As I mentioned earlier I got the vast majority of my new Tau army through trades on Bartertown. This has both pluses and minuses for the aspiring hobbyist. The biggest plus is that a patient trader can build up a very large army at very low cost, especially if they trade for older armies (see Tau last year before codex update rumors became widespread). The minus is that the condition of models is not always great.

While I pretty much always try to trade for models on sprue, sometimes you see a great deal for an assembled model. Unfortunately I often bite.. Then I start to cry upon receiving the model as I notice poor fits, random mold lines or just unfiled clipping scars. Superglue is your friend as it does snap apart allowing you to go back and remove mold lines, random tags sticking out or make the model sit tight. The Hammerhead below is an example of one undergoing surgery. I have literally had to rip the entire model apart and start over.

Then there is plastic glue. I love plastic glue for my vehicles, it helps make sure all of my joins are super solid and gap free. Unfortunately, when the model is poorly constructed, you're stuck. The gaps in the pirhanas where the sides meet the bottom are atrocious. Because it was constructed with plastic glue I can't snap it off and start over. Instead I have to gap fill. With too big of a gap for liquid green stuff I will be rolling green stuff until my fingers hurt.

The moral of the story: Caveat Emptor or Buyer Beware. Ask questions about model construction, ask to see lots of pictures. You can get great deals but understand the work involved.

Lastly a pic of where the models are now... Still some cleaning to do and need to magnetize the turrets, but I'm ready to start on the sniper drones and pathfinders next.

Perfect Storm: Part IV Deeper Dive Into Tau Strategy

In part II we took a preliminary look at the Tau codex and began assessing strengths and weaknesses and arrived at a few lessons to keep in mind for army construction. Now we need to look at how the units within the Tau codex address those strengths and weaknesses along with how they come together to address the broader lessons. In later posts we will go through the units in more detail, but for now we will continue to look at the broader picture.

Random Tau picture from my battle reports.

So with those lessons in mind, let's address them.


1. We will be able to deal with infantry, heavy infantry, and monstrous creatures at range.

With this established we will focus on the other lessons where we are weaker and assume that this will take care of itself. When we finish building the army we will go back and assess whether or not this is still true, but given the abundance of varied shooting throughout our codex we should be ok.

2. We have to make sure that we provide adequate firepower to deal with high AV vehicles, either through mobile melta delivery platfoms or the inclusion of high strength long range firepower.

Long time Tau players have always taken this for granted. The previous iteration of our railgun toting broadside provided a semi-mobile (with the addition of ASS) twin linked, very long range, very high strength very low AP platform. This unit allowed Tau generals to very capably remove any vehicles from the board. 

Today's iteration of the railgun toting broadside lost an insignificant (outside of maybe apocalypse) amount of range, the ability to move without snap shooting, and two points in strength bringing it down the same level as a Space Marine missile launcher.

The Tau codex is no longer the preeminent long range high AV destroying codex.

So how do we deal with high AV vehicles? We have three base options -

• We can overcharge an ion accelerator toting riptide and hope not to fail or get hot.
• We can bring railheads and with judicious use of markerlights (or longstrike) hope that we get a good pen roll.
• We can bring the game's best widely distributed melta, the fusion gun. With an 18" range we are in the sweet spot at 9". We can deliver this melta on pirhanas, crisis suits, stealth suits and riptides.

3. We have to invest in troop mobility either through high cost transports, large numbers of outflanking troops or allies.

This one hurts... Our APC is not in any way cheap and has no firepoints (we don't get special weapons anyway so no big deal). However, depending on the list we bring a devil fish or two can work. If we are running some hammerheads or broadsides and riptides we can provide a larger number of potential targets.

On the other hand we can also invest in dirt cheap kroot.With judicious use of cover these small units (plus a hound to get acute senses) can provide us pseudo mobility into our opponents deployment zone.

Finally, we are battle brothers with one of the most durable base troop units, the space marine, and one of the fastest in Eldar Guardian Jetbikes, depending on what the new codex does with them.

4. We have to be wary about over investing in strength 7 weaponry to the exclusion of a range of tools.

With a plethora of missiles and  ion weapons it is important for us to not neglect other tools. We already spoke about the need to bring some high-AV busting weapons, and we should also be careful to roll with some low AP weaponry to deal with 2+ save opponents. Yes, individually dual MP crisis suits, HYMP broadsides, ionheads, riptides with ion accelerators... all rock. But if we over invest we confine ourselves to too narrow of a tool set.

5. Because of the synergistic effects we enjoy from markerlights etc... We have to very carefully balance the inclusion of allies. While they can certainly balance some of our weaknesses, they also dilute the synergies. (Every non-Tau unit added is one less unit that can take advantage of those markerlights or supporting fire). 

This is one of the hardest choices to make. Allying in other armies helps shore up our weaknesses.

• Eldar and SMs provide psychic abilities.
• Eldar add some psychic defense (assumed pending codex details). 
• SM helps address some of our leadership issues.
• Both races allow for some counter-assault options.
• Both races provide additional troop options (as noted earlier)

However, every point we spend on allies dilutes the effectiveness of our special rules. If we can limit/neutralize blast damage then a well staggered defense position with supporting fire can have devastating impact on assaults. Additionally, our allies don't benefit from markerlights, making them less points efficient.

The Perfect Storm: Part III Choosing a color scheme

Unlike many of the other races in the 40k universe Tau do not have a fixed armor color scheme by sept. Instead each sept has different colored markings which you can see on the below picture of GW's painted Tau firewarriors -

These firewarriors are from the Tau sept and it is the white markings on the shoulderpads and guns that tell you. The rest of the armor is painted based on the camouflage scheme of the theater in which the force is engaged. Here the Tau have gone for a desert scheme.

I am now in the process of trying to determine what makes the most sense for my Tau army. I still have not decided on a sept but I am sure I can find a fluff background and marking that works once I have decided on the armor color. Where I am stuck is the armor color and therefore am asking for your help.

Here are my current three top themes. Please let me know your thoughts or even a whole new theme...

1. As most of the units have some aquatic theme I thought I would start there, and I think that the leopard sharks natural coloration would make for an excellent color scheme. My only concern is that grey is well grey and tends to blend into many city boards. While that is practical as an urban camouflage, it is less exciting for a game of toy soldiers...

2. Next up we have the race car inspired, white with stripes. This makes for a very attractive battlesuit and infantry color scheme, but does not allow for the same camouflage opportunities on the vehicles.

3. Finally we return to mother nature for a variety of lizard inspired earth tones.

So what do you think?

The Perfect Storm: Part II Initial Strategic Thoughts on the Tau

In today's piece we will begin our tactical review of the new Tau Codex. We will be looking through the codex to see what it tells us about how it needs to be played. For starters we will be looking broadly across the Tau for trends and opportunities. We will start here as it is important to understand the whole before before trying to put together the parts.

My old Tau army gearing up for an apocalypse game

  To start a few basic premises -

Strengths- 
1. Access to an abundance of strength 7 firepower across the entire FOC outside of troops.
2. Access to a significant amount of AP 2 and 3 firepower (including templates) across the entire FOC outside of troops.
3. Multiple cover denying options (markerlights, AFP, Smart missiles).
4. Unparalleled access to interceptor and skyfire.
5. Army wide buffs from ethereals, supporting fire and markerlights.
6. Troop options that easily wound most basic troops and have better than normal ability to wound high T opponents. (Only DE really rival us in this department)
7. Great mobility from JSJ units.

Weaknesses
 1. Assault phase with the majority of the army, and the entirety of the army when you're talking about combating a dedicated assault unit.
2. Pronounced lack of long range greater than strength 7 firepower (only hammerheads, railsides, and the occasional nova blast)
3. Access to cost efficient troop mobility.
4. Dependence on synergistic effects to maximize shooting or leadership.

No more massed strength 10 shooting, one of the biggest changes in the new codex

So what lessons can we take from this in building a list?
1. We will be able to deal with infantry, heavy infantry, and monstrous creatures at range.
2. We have to make sure that we provide adequate firepower to deal with high AV vehicles, either through mobile melta delivery platfoms or the inclusion of high strength long range firepower.
3. We have to invest in troop mobility either through high cost transports, large numbers of outflanking troops or allies.
4. We have to be wary about over investing in strength 7 weaponry to the exclusion of a range of tools.
5. Because of the synergistic effects we enjoy from markerlights etc... We have to very carefully balance the inclusion of allies. While they can certainly balance some of our weaknesses, they also dilute the synergies. (Every non-Tau unit added is one less unit that can take advantage of those markerlights or supporting fire).

We will apply these takeaways in a later post as we start looking at individual units and how they complement the overall army. However, Part III will focus on my new color scheme thoughts.

The Perfect Storm: Part I Acquiring My New Tau Army

Sometimes everything just comes together... Whenever a new codex is released I always promise myself I will resist the urge to buy new models and instead wait until I have read and digested the codex (and any subsequent FAQs). Somehow this always falls by the wayside as I get caught up in the excitement of the shiny. With the new Tau release a combination of luck and patience has resulted in the perfect storm and I find myself with all the models I want and nothing yet put together as I evaluate my options.

How did this play out? Well it starts with some dumb luck, fortuitous timing, GW's new accelerated release policy, some good friends in the know, and some hard earned experience in dealing with new releases...

As some of you may remember I traded away my old Tau army with grand intentions of a new color scheme and better conversions on my crisis suits. Bartertown was my friend as I was trading the DE and excess SM for an army that many folks no longer played.

I shortly thereafter received very early indications from those aforementioned friends that a new Tau codex would definitely be dropped in early 2013. So I went back to Bartertown with a vengeance, my strategy to maximize trading value was fivefold -

1. Pick up plastics on sprue (betting that GW wouldn't update a plastic kit)
2. Models that were weak in the old codex - Ethereals, Sniper Drones and Pathfinders (once folks found the tetra)
3. Assuming that battlesuits and drones would still be relevant.
4. Thinking that the ever present broadside would be nerfed.
5. And good old dumb luck, not one of the trades I tried to make for Vespids worked out. 

The strategy paid off and I found myself the proud owner of some 4000 pts worth of Tau that I acquired for about 45% of retail value (trading always goes in your favor when you are trading newer for older...).

At this point I was going to start building, but here GW's new release policy helped me out. My favorite GW armies have always been DA and Tau. So when GW decided to release both relatively close to another I put the Tau project on hold as I waited to complete my DA.

I also was painfully reminded to wait on buying the new shiny. Looking at the gorgeous Dark talon model that was billed as an air superiority fighter I decided I needed two so I could match up with the ludicrous flyer armies that kept popping up. Anyone that has read the DA rules can tell you what a horrendous mistake that was. I had acquired two overpriced flyers that worked better better as a mobile ground assault platforms in a codex that already contained all the mobile ground assault I needed. Never again would I buy a new model before reading the codex.

So now outside of converting up an Azrael and stripping a Sammael model I am done. Time to start the Tau...

I still need to buy some of the new plastics, which for the first time I waited on, and will talk about that in Part II when I start to dissect the codex.

Army of the Future part II

In reading Mad Mark's post about his Army of the Future, I was inspired to take the plunge and start mine as well. Although perhaps "Back to the Future" is a better title for me as I will be instead re-doing my Tau.

 The last stand of my red Tau? A great apocalypse game, which the Tau and Black Templar barely won... You can also see a masterful converted Ork warmachine from a monolith by my friend Thor in the foreground, and Ron's gorgeously painted landraider on the left.



 My motivation is not so much about having a competitive army as my existing Tau did quite well until the last year of 5th, and have been reborn in sixth. Rather it was that I had grown tired of the paint scheme and felt that my ability to convert and green stuff has grown since the army came to life four years ago. So now I start again...

 So where do I start? Well the proceeds from trading away my Dark Eldar have netted me a tremendous haul of used minis and plenty of sprues on BarterTown. My existing Tau are being stripped (resin or metal) or traded away (plastic). I am trying to procure some Imperial Guard and SM scouts to convert into human auxiliaries to add some variety to the firewarriors. Finally I have placed an order with Forgeworld for a couple more suits to spruce it all up.

More to come as I have lots of work to do. Some pics of the beginning...

 The desk - stripped pathfinders, some broadsides, more suits etc...

BIG box of sprues!

I love the smell of Simple Green in the morning...

Updating for 6th edition

With the advent of 6th edition I have taken some time to consider my 40k path going forward. In the wake of this I have come to several decisions, most of which stem from a single realization - I do not have the hobby or game time to field more than two primary armies.


I have today three full armies. The full armies are a DIY space marine chapter, a Tau sept, and a dark eldar kabal. The question therefore becomes "what do I keep?"

Well I have the most time and resources invested in my dark angel successor chapter of space marines. Frustrated with the Dark Angel codex and how it compared with the vanilla codex I started running them as Vanilla marines to make the bikes work properly. Then with each successive SM codex released I would add bits and pieces to allow me to run different iterations of lists I found interesting. Today this giant collection can be run as bike marines, a DOA blood angels list, MSU mech, Land Raider based rock army and every iteration in between. Thanks to the addition of a Fellblade this is now also my primary Apocalypse army.

My Tau are much smaller, somewhere around 2500 some points worth of Tau. They frankly also possess the worst paint job of any of my armies. However, they are the play style I enjoy the most, the models (specifically battlesuits) that I love to convert, and frankly given that they are less often played, the ones that I enjoy the most.

So the Dark Eldar, which also happen to be my most recent acquisition, are the ones left out in the cold. Goodbye to the time spent buying and assembling (and lazily getting someone to paint them). They are today being traded away on Bartertown (although if someone wants a pretty army cheap let me know).

My next decision was what to do with my old Daemonhunters force. I was at first excited by the prospect of the Gray Knights codex breathing new life into my old models, but all the band jumpers coupled with the lack of a challenge presented when playing Gray Knights, quickly bored me.

Sixth edition's addition of allies made me consider incorporating them into my other armies. However, I felt that it was too much of a fluff travesty to play them with my Tau. Even though I used multiple SM codices to play my marines I still thought of their fluff as members of the Dark Angel family and the distrust with which the DA view the inquisition soured me on that aspect as well. So they have to go as well.

So where do I end up? Well the picture below should give you some idea... Fleshing out my Tau and building a small Eldar force to ally with them. I also bought half of a Dark Vengeance box and will spiff up my marines. Sixth edition here I come.

Oh Tau what will I do with you

I lost a game with my Tau on Thursday. That makes two losses and one draw (and frankly pulled that out of my ass should of been a loss) in the three years that I have been playing them. Unfortunately this last loss and draw came back-to-back and on the heels of several wins that I barely managed.

After every game I tend to look back and try to figure out what I could have done better. As I thought through this latest loss I took into account some of the poorer tactical choices I made, my horrendous reserve rolling (reserved much of everything to minimize the alpha strike and instead had everything come in turn two so I could get hit nonetheless), and the stupid mistakes I made as I tried to salvage the game after an initial onslaught. What I felt most keenly was the lack of unit saturation on the table.

I also play marines (frankly not as well as my Tau) and at similar point levels I just have many more units and options on the table. What does this mean? Well in effect most every unit I field in a Marine army is capable of hurting both vehicles and infantry. I likewise just have a lot more units on the table. As I have been building my Dark Eldar army I also find that I am able to saturate the table with units which can do both. My Tau simply cannot do this my units as all somewhat specialized (outside of my battle suits which make competitive games possible) and I simply don't have as many of them.

This feeling of being overpowered on the table didn't come suddenly, more of a gradual increase in the level of difficulty and base tactics as more and more codices rollout with that challenge or neutralize the ability of Tau to be effective. First came the imperial guard with their ability to outshoot the Tau AND beat them in close combat. DOA blood angels came next forcing the inclusion of bubble wrap Kroot and the reintroduction of fireknife battle suits over deathrains to deal with FNP marines. Space Wolves and Dark Eldar didn't help either. Now I feel forced to play entirely defensive and castled up. I no longer have sufficient mobility to scoot away nor can I play enough hulls on the battlefield to offset the mass of vehicles my opponent lay out.

So what to do? I am loathe to play the same defensive game over and over and not looking forward to shelving them until a new codex. Would love to hear thoughts.

Tau Lists

As a result of the comments on my mathhammer post here are some examples of the Tau lists I've used.

My current Tau list (that all of the mathhammer is based on) is here.

And here is one of the old army lists I was fooling around with, and yes those are vespids, no they never worked well.  I made some nice counts-as jump pack firewarriors that I wanted to use.

Jump pack firewarriors (my counts-as vespids)

Finally, a reconstructed list I experimented with, trying to get all of the Crisis suits possible in a non-Farsight list.  I think I started using the Deathrain because I was trying to get all of the suits shooting at BS4 and applying the principal of bodies over upgrades.  Now I think that having drones in the squads helps them last longer and is worth doing.

The Tau of Mathhammer

In response to the post 40k Theory: It's All About The Numbers by Nikephoros I decided to do the same calculation for my Tau army list.

It was interesting to me because I had performed a similar calculation to compare the efficiency of various Crisis suit configurations at killing terminators (TEQ), marines (MEQ) and humans (GEQ).  For a while I'd been using the twin-linked missile pods with a targeting array (referred to as the "Deathrain" configuration by Tau players).  This gives 2 shots with a 36 inch range at BS4 and it's twin linked, so it's great for killing light transports.  With this configuration a squad of three suits would reliably hit with 5 out of 6 shots, however that also demonstrates it's weakness - low rate of fire.  Tau armys rely on the Crisis suits to do most of the killing for the army (foreshadowing) and Deathrains aren't very good at killing marines.  The other popular Crisis suit loadout is the Fireknife, it has a missile pod, plasma rifle and multitracker so it can shoot both in the same turn.  To figure out if the added low-AP shots from the plasma rifle was worth the higher points and lower BS3 I decided to whip out some mathhammer.  

My results are that a squad of three Deathrain suits (at BS4) should kill 1.5 MEQs to the Fireknife's 2 MEQs (which goes up to 3.3 MEQs in rapid fire range).  If you use markerlights to bring the Fireknife BS up to BS5 they should kill almost 3.5 MEQs at range.  

Whoa mathy, on to Nike's numbers... (Read the article and the 8 or so follow-ups to understand what this means)

Unit / DMS / DMCC / DRPG / DLRPG

3 Units of 3 Crisis Suits (w/ 1 HQ) / 11.39 / 2.33 / 22.97 / 0.00

12 Gun Drones (+3 SD CC) / 1.32 / 1.66 / 0.00 / 0.00

2 Devilfish / 0.66 / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00

1 Piranha / 0.55 / 0.00 / 3.03 / 1.92

12 Firewarriors / 2.64 / 1.33 / 0.00 / 0.00

10 Kroot / 1.65 / 2.50 / 0.00 / 0.00

13 Kroot, 2 Hounds / 2.15 / 3.75 / 0.00 / 0.00

8 Pathfinders (2 squads of 4) / 0.88 / 0.88  / 0.00 / 0.00

3 Broadsides / 4.40 / 1.00 / 11.00 / 6.60

2 Hammerheads / 3.15 / 0.00 / 5.50 / 3.30

Total  / 28.79 / 13.45 / 42.49 / 11.82

If the pathfinders use their markerlights to raise the Crisis suits to BS5 the numbers change to:

Total / 34.91 / 13.45 / 60.84 / 11.82

The numbers don't look too bad (except for CC), but Tau rely on the ability to kill the opposition at range and the proliferation of army's that either move fast and assault or deep strike make life very hard for the Tau player.  Also, any opponent who is experienced in playing Tau knows to kill the Crisis suits first, the numbers above show why that's so important.

The numbers are not bad at killing marines or mech, but pretty weak other than that.  Despite the reputation for long range killing power AV14 is still a problem because there are only so many railguns available (the answer is 9 maximum), and doing that limits the number of horde killing templates you can take.  That's why I started building marines.

Xenos Invasion (here come the Tau)

This post has been a long time coming.  Just over a year ago my brothers (the other contributors to this blog) conspired to get me into 40k.  I folded.

Shortly thereafter I bought a nearly complete Tau army from someone on craigslist.

A portion of the original army

Since that time I've been painting and modifying the army, and now it's nearly complete.  Part of my inspiration was due to my decision to attend the NOVA Open, last fall I moved nearby and it seemed crazy not to attend.  Here are the requisite army photos:

Prototype paint job on a Devilfish

My only Piranha

Jump-Pack Firewarriors (counts-as Vespids)

"Red" Kroot

More "Red" Kroot

Broadside getting upgraded to plasma rifles (Relentless!)

The requisite Firewarriors (I have 48 organized into 4 squads)

"Blue" Kroot

Devilfish work-in-progress

Magnetized Gun Drone (goes with the Piranha)

Devilfish

Gun Drone with battle damage

Hammerhead

So that's basically it.  Pardon the quality but these were mostly work-in-progress pictures.  Also, I realized I don't have many photos of the backbone of any Tau Army - Crisis Suits.  I have 15'ish, but currently use a Shas'El and 9 suits all equipped with plasma rifles, missile pods and multitrackers (aka the "Fireknife" configuration).

In the past I used twin-linked missile pods with targeting arrays (+1 BS), but found they didn't have what it takes to reliably take down power-armor, so in preparation for the NOVA Open I converted 9 into Fireknives - also the Broadsides got upgraded to plasma as well.  But I can cover my list later.

Which leads to...

Iron Hands

I think I'm going to try to finish my Iron Hands for the NOVA Open.

Iron Captain (counts-as Master of the Forge)

Iron Captain (counts-as Master of the Forge)

We'll see how far I get.