For the Greater Good!

I know I know, I have been quiet of late.  It is summer time!  I do most of my blogging from work, and when I am home in the summer, it is hard to focus on sitting down just to type. I have so much work to do!

Case in point...

The Greater Good!

Tau Riptide

Tau Riptide with Fire Warrior

XV8 Battlesuit Commander

A few things.

First the riptide. I airbrushed the ocher basecoat. But it was too light. So I decided to give it a once over with Tau Light Ocher from the GW line and highlight up from there.  I painted the dark bits with Rinox Hide and began the meticulous duty of painting all of the amazing details on the model with TLO.  One of the saving graces I discovered were Pigma Micron 01 Archival Ink Pens.

This is the Sepia color, size 01.  It is the smallest they make in this color.  The tip fits perfectly into the grooves between the armor on the heavier Tau models like the Broadsides, Riptide and Fish.  It contains archival quality sepia ink!  Perfect for easily and quickly filling in the grooves.

Groove is in the heart!

This saves easily hours of time I would have spent line brushing all those grooves.  Love it!

So now it is a matter of finishing the detail coat with TLO, then a highlight of Ushabti Bone, then Screaming Skull.  More on that soon.

Success?  I have only played one game with this army, and it was a practice game vs Ordo Bob who is one of the higher profile Demon players in my area and has made a name for himself by destroying all comers and winning just about every local tournament around.  He is also a great guy and I consider him a friend.

The deployment was the long one with the wide corner to corner no man land.  Which meant he had to cross most of the table to get to me.  While it was a teaching game for my sake, he helped walk me through the Tau routine, but in the end, my army blew his demons off the table in three turns. It was truly shocking to have so much fire power. Especially considering that I am used to an army whose majority of fire power comes in the form of Bolt Pistols.

The tau are exceptional at taking down monstrous creatures. STR 5 pulse weapons can put down a lot of wounds that the MCs are not used to, forcing those 1s and better yet, are good at grounding flying monstrous creatures.  As they came into range, I would hit them with the pulse spam first to knock them down, then unload on them with the stronger more dangerous weapons.  He had Fateweaver and a few Flying Monstrous Demons and the Tau fire power ate them up. Granted, he failed a leadership test on a psychic power that should have given a squad of screamers a 2+ invul save for a round, which allowed me to punish him. But the true strength was the long range damage I could do. In the past, armies like the Demons could get away with fielding just a few cheap worthless troops because the rest of their army was so killy.

They would just hide the worthless troops on objectives and let the Elites do the job.

While the screamers would have wreaked havoc in my fire base, it didn't really matter because all he had for objective holders were 3 small squads of nurglings or some such.  Plague Bearers?  The objectives were in the open and they were sitting on them, but all of my smart missiles on my Devil Fish, plus concentrated Fire Warrior rapid fire was knocking them down.

This goes back to an old blog post I did some time ago. Some guys argued that I was just whining about the Blood Angels not having super effective troops, but it was true. The more powerful armies have cost effective, yet still EFFECTIVE troops. Melta Vets in Chimeras for example.  The Blood Angels have none of that, which was what kept them from being a truly top army in 5th edition. Sure I won a lot of games, but whenever I went up against one of the truly elite armies of 5th, it was a joke.  At best a massive struggle for me to eak out a marginal win, and at worst, I was tabled in 2 or 3 rounds.

Well that carries over to 6th Ed.  The Tau have truly effective troops.  While a FW squad with a Fish is a bit costly, it is a VERY effective unit.  It is mobile, and between the FWs and the Fish itself, can put down a blistering amount of fire power which is what 6th is all about. And just to compare to the BAs. For 210ish points I can get 10 assault marines.  For the same cost, I can get 12 FW in a fish, that would pretty much slaughter that RAS before they could ever get close.

Then comes the pure speed of the Tau. Had I not wiped out that screamer squad I would have tried to just bog it down with assault from my Broadsides and Riptide then moved out to claim or contest all of the objectives.  In one turn my Riptide and Suit Commander went from my corner to the middle of the table.

Any way, none of it really matters because it was just a practice game to demonstrate what my army is capable of, but demonstrate it did.  I love it!

Any way, The Tau are just what I needed to rejuvenate my interest in this game. GW's seemingly insane business practices coupled with my beloved Blood Angels being neutered in 6th edition had me reeling on the edge of retirement.

For the Greater Good!

Here is some video that will be available once Youtube finishes processing it.



Jawaballs