An old Commander returns

[Hfran Morkai]

Hello!

 

T'au were my first game back in 4th when they were "Tau". Good old metal Pathfinders helped me obliterate some Space Marines and I was hooked on the universe. I can't recall why I stopped playing them but I'm seriously considering coming back to The Greater Good.

 

I haven't played a game of 40K since 5th as I've been mainly interested in the Heresy since it started getting model and rules.

 

I used to run Sa'cea before Septs got different rules and all that good stuff. I was mechanised with lots of Devilfish (made from Hammerheads for SMS), Pathfinders and Stealth Suits. I was inspired by the pictures from "Cities of Death" of rappelling teams from Devilfish.

 

I've got a Fire Warrior/Breacher team tucked away from an old edition of Kill Team and ordered Chalnath yesterday which will give me some of those nice plastic Pathfinders. I'm thinking I want to go mechanised and stealthy again (even considering Shadowsun as a "counts as").

 

I appreciate there's a new codex incoming so probably won't pick up too much until then (maybe a Start Collecting set or two and some Fish).

[Galron]

Hi, I have had Tau back burnered for years simply from having too many other projects. For me alot of those projects were for Bolt Action. Where while 40k seems to be losing artistry with paint schemes, Bolt Action appears to be raising the bar to where it seems the players are modelers and terrain makers who roll dice every once and awhile. Like you, my tau force in a box or two is mostly hammerhead chassis and Devilfish. For some reason I decided to dust off my tanks, opened up the FW Taros book, found a camo scheme that I could easily adapt many of the paints I already had sitting up on my desk and am using many of the same techniques from Bolt action model painting. May not win but by hell or high water, mine will look better than the other guy. 10 hours in on my first devilfish, havent even gotten to the weathering stage yet, but my future models wont take as long now that I have the camo pattern and colors down and a few other color issues that my last German Afrika Korps army didnt have like glowing engine nacelles.

 

Pathfinders I think will usually always be a good buy. Stealth teams are still great for playing the points and corners games. Currently I think playing objectives appears to be the best way to win rather than trying to table your opponent. Unlike 4th edition, giant squads of Crisis Suits seem to be envogue as opposed to old school where you could have 1-3 in a squad. No one uses specialized names anymore for their crisis suit configurations like "Death Rains" for missile pod suits and missile pod/plasma isnt the dominant suit build anymore. You tell even another Tau player you are shooting with the Death Rain team and they are going to look at you funny.

 

Ghost Keel, playing up the stealth aspect lost a bit of its shine when the negative to hit modifiers capped at -1, so no more marines needing a 5+ to hit them. But throw on a shield generator and some fusion guns and its still a great relatively tough unit to mess with the opponent. They have a special wargear relilc thing that doesnt allow opponents to deep strike within 12" of them too so if you have an area on the board you need to hold, heres the base guy to stick there.

 

Unfortunately our tanks are only ok. We lost their invul save wargear a while ago, drones cant block for them, the only buff they have is LongStrike which requires you to be playing Tau' sept and he gets targetted out pretty quickly. Devilfish are great although expensive and good for delivering those breacher teams with their pulse shotguns. You can still equip them as warfish with twin SMS instead of drones. Because they are so expensive though, you usually wont see more than one or two in a list. A fireblade is also a great cheap HQ if you already have your suit HQ filled and he will still fit in a devilfish with two 5 man breacher squads. Unfortunately assault deployment isnt a thing with devilfish so you wont be able to fly up and unload at point blank like the marines get to do with their battle taxi. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Galron

[elmo]

Welcome back to the Greater Good Hfran :)

 

Looking forward to seeing your work.