Mecha, Mecha Everywhere

I'm back from my Christmas break, but about to head out for another week to take Gir (my girlfriend's online persona) up to the mountains. We were going to go skiing, but considering the climate, we're likely just going to relax in the very nice cabin we've rented. Plus side - I can get models put together and/or painted!

Speaking of models - holy crap! My gift to myself was essentially a Retaliation Cadre: Riptide, three Broadside suits, and a pair of Commanders (this was before I saw Mont'ka with the Retaliation as a core choice). I already had a trio of Crisis suits from another package. Then Gir went and got me a Stormsurge, and her brother got me some new Firewarriors. So, lots and lots of plastic to go through.

I'm still not sure if I want to go Kauyon or Mont'ka. Mont'ka (Burning Blade Contingent) is more effective at killing Death Stars than Kauyon, assuming Kauyon (Hunter Contingent) only gives +1 BS and allows sharing of Marker Light tokens. However, Kauyon is more flexible - I can have +1 BS applied against multiple units; Mont'ka is purely against one unit a turn.

If I go Kauyon, I'm looking at a Hunter Cadre with a Retaliation Cadre as Aux. This will have max troop choices, but minimum troops per choice: 2x five man breachers in devilfish and 4x five man strikers for back field control.

If I got Mont'ka, then I'm not sure. I'll be taking the Retaliation Cadre as my core, but I am unsure as to the Aux. I'm considering an Infiltration Cadre, or possibly an OSC. We'll see. Maybe I'll still take a Hunter Cadre and tweak the formations a bit.

Direction of the Army

I've been slowly building up my force, but haven't really done any painting yet. Part of that is that the weather has been crap for priming, but part of it is also that I haven't settled on a color scheme.

Originally I was looking at something like this:

I wanted to do a primarily black / white scheme with a touch of blue to liven things up. At the time I was putting this scheme together, you didn't really see a lot of white armor tau - it was mostly shades of grey, red, or ochre. Now, of course, with the recent drop of the new 2015 Tau Codex with Kauyon and Mont'ka campaign books, white armor is in vogue and we'll probably see a lot of it on the table. I don't like following the pack (otherwise I'd have just gone with the straightforward ochre color scheme), so I've decided to set aside the white armor.

What to paint, though? I've decided that I'm going to have some fun and paint my Tau Hokie colors after my alma mater Virginia Tech. That's maroon (#660000) and burnt orange (#FF6600). The closest citadel colors to that are Doombull Brown (#630808) and Fire Dragon Bright Orange (#FF7B00).

The question is what to use for the armor plates and what to use for the body suit. I can go with a bold look and make the orange the armor plate color:

Or, I can go for a more subdued look with the armor plates being maroon:

I think I'm going to go with the maroon armor, since by convention the vehicles and suits are the same color as the firewarrior armor plates, and I don't want to blind my opponent (or myself) with a bright orange army.

I wish I was a good enough painter that I could free-hand the VT shield:

I think that would look pretty bad-ass on the chest piece decoration (instead of a sept symbol) and would be a more subtle nod to the university than a glaring stylized "VT" everywhere.

I still want to go with the winter basing theme, so snow either way. The last couple of years in Blacksburg have been relatively heavy in snow (for the area, anyway), and I think it'll look better than the standard boring green base.

Back from the dead

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that it is very hard to build a 40k army with no money. Hence the silence during 6th edition - I was working on my degree, so I had a student's budget.

All that's done now! I have my degree, a nice job with good pay, and a low cost of living. My goal now is to get a 2000 pt Tau army up and running. It's going to be a relatively long process, but my plan is to build the list first, then start building up the models incrementally.

As I finish units, I'll post them here, and I'll also be trying to make up battle reports when possible.

Holy Mother of Enfilade

So in browsing through the Codex (which is all I have at the moment - sad Tau), I noticed our friends the Broadside suits. Back when I played Tau (4th ed, iirc, been a while), these suckers were premier anti-armor. Those twin-linked rail guns hit at S10 AP1 just like the Hammerhead's cannon. Now ... not so much - the rail gun they mount is toned down to S8 AP1. Still capable of popping vehicles, but with the new vehicle rules they're less useful. Twin linked means that even without markerlight support they'll be hitting most of the time. The problem is in the damaging. Against AV 14 they need to roll a 6 on a d6 ... about a 17% chance. That's just to glance. They can't penetrate. Against more normal values of AV12 and AV13, they need 5+ or 4+, 33% chance and 50% chance, respectively. To glance. Most vehicles will have between 2 or 3 hull points and so will need 2-3 glancing hits. That means that a full team of Broadsides will most often not take out an enemy vehicle in one salvo.

Ok, so they're no longer our premier anti-armor option. What are they good for then?

Funny you should ask. You can swap that TL rail gun for TL high yield missile pods (S7, AP4, Heavy 4). This swap is free. That's four S7 shots headed to the target, per suit. Not enough for you? Each suit can take two missile drones that have the same weapon profile but are Assault 2. Keeping track? That's eight S7 shots (re-rolling misses thanks to twin-linked) headed down range. Oh, and if you want to add insult to injury, the default Smart Missile System (SMS) tosses another four missiles out at a range of 6" shorter than the previous weapons, but also Homing (no LoS needed) and ignoring cover. They're only S5 AP5, but extra shots are extra shots.

Let's do the math: 12 shots per suit, times 3 suits in a full squad, equals 36 ... lemme spell that out - thirty-freaking-six shots going down range at 30". For 267 points. This squad has the potential to wipe out terminator squads purely on volume of fire forcing failed saves.

Keep in mind that a full 24 of those shots are S7. They can't touch AV14, but anything less ... hoo boy. Without markerlight support statistically half will hit. That's twelve hits. Of those, statistically 1/6 of those will glance AV13. That's two hull points.

With markerlight support? Greater Good forfend. 5/6 of the shots will hit (statistically), meaning a total of twenty (20) hits from the S7 weapons. Statistically 3 will glance AV13, possibly wrecking the vehicle unless it happens to have a full 4 HP.

What about a squad of marines? 24 S7 shots and 12 S5 shots is a lot of saves to make on a ten-man squad. No markerlight: 12 hits, 10 wounds, 6 casualties from the S7 shots. 6 hits, 3 wounds, 50/50 chance of a casualty from the S5.
With markerlight: 20 hits, 16 wounds, 6 casualties from the S7 shots. 10 hits, 6 wounds, 2 casualties.

Deadly without markerlight, but abject lethality with it.


For just over 10% of your 2k budget, I'd say this squad is a "must-have".

[edit: Added paragraphs about using missiles as anti-armor]
[edit: My math sucked - I was counting saves as casualties in analysis; fixed]

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Firesupport!

I previously mentioned an interesting tactic revolving around using my Devilfish APCs as mobile cover. This will, no doubt, infuriate your opponent no end and as such is usually not recommended for friendly play due to the relative cheese level.

Ok, so we don't necessarily want to go that route. What else can we use the 'fish for besides transport, then?

Mobile fire support. For 10pts I can swap the gun drones out for twin-linked smart missiles. Gun drones carry twin-linked Pulse Carbines. Lemme show you a comparison:

Gun Drones (2): 18", S5, AP5, Assault 2, Pinning
Smart Missile: 30", S5, AP5, Heavy 4, Homing, Ignores Cover

Going from assault to heavy makes it a little harder to use, but not by much. Essentially the same number of shots fired (2x2 vs 1x4). Range is an extra foot, which helps compensate for the heavy. Homing is a special rule that means I don't need LoS to target these babies. Ignores Cover means just that - no cover save for you! On the other hand, the drones can detach from the 'fish; the missiles can't.

Still, for 10 points, that's pretty good in my opinion.

On top of that, for an additional 16 points you can mount two Seeker missiles. These babies are fun:

Seeker Missle: 72", S8, AP 3, Heavy 1, One Use Only

Ok, Heavy 1 and One Use Only are painful, but 72" range is nice - you've basically got range on the whole board with a 'fish who should be up with your troops. However, that generally isn't how you'll use this. One of the uses for Target Acquired (yay markerlights!) to fire off a free Seeker Missile. Shot in this way, the missile doesn't count against the max number of weapons that can be fired at full BS, and resolves at BS 5. Oh, and Ignores Cover.

If you decide to go this route, you want to make sure you have plenty of Markerlight support. In fact, that's a general thing to do anyway in my opinion. In this case we want markerlights in our infantry so our Fire Teams will need to upgrade to a Shas'ui with Markerlight and Target Lock. This gives the team a marker light that can fire independent of the squad. You might consider taking Markerlight drones, but keep in mind that the Transport capacity of the 'fish is only 12.


[EDIT: I was an idiot and was swapping the pulse cannon instead of the gun drones. This has been fixed]

Where Oh Where Can My Baby Be ...

I had, at one point, a Tau battle force box floating around somewhere from 4th ed. It has since disappeared. I doubt I'd be able to salvage the whole box anyway since I had at one point been working on it, but it'd be nice to be able to get something out of it. Getting this army off the ground is going to be expensive enough as it is.

Lemme break down the costs I'm staring at:

Battle Force Box: $120
Full blend for primary color (White): $22.20
Full blend for secondary color
    (Grey, Blue/Black, or Black, haven't decided): $18.50
Full Blend for tertiary color (Blue): $22.20
-------------------------------------------------
Paint cost so far: ~$60.

Add in metals: $18.50
Add in secondary leather/cloth: $18:50
Add in textured base paint (mountain snow): $3.70

-------------------------------------------------
Total cost for paints: $99.90 - call it $100 since it'll definitely be that after taxes.

Also need brushes - brush set runs $60.15 from Citadel. Probably can find something cheaper, but GW is kind of like Apple - things run better when you keep it all the same product line.

Ok, just about done. What else? Mm. I have an X-acto knife, and I can pick up a clipper tool from Home Depot for cheap. Glue, need glue. GW Glue for plastic runs ... $6.60. I'd probably get the thin version with the applicator nozzle for convenience. I can get Gorilla Superglue (which bonds to metal as well as plastic) for $5.97 from Home Depot ... yeah, let's do that.

Oh! Let's not forget the main book and Codex. Don't want or need the base set since I have no interest in marines (regular or chaos variety):

40k Rule Book: $74.25, $64.95 on Amazon.
Tau Codex: $49.50, no real discount (new release).

Ok, tallied up thats:

$120 for the Battle Force.
$100 for paints.
$60 for brushes.
$65 for main book.
$50 for Codex.
$6 for glue.

$401 for a 500 point army.

Now, I could easily drop the cost of the paints from ~$100 if I took short cuts and didn't do a full five or six step set up for each color. The thing is, I've been cutting corners for a long time and I'd like to do this right. If I kept to three steps only (base, color, highlight) for the primary three colors and even less for the alternative/metal colors I could probably drop that down to about $50 for the paints. Still, that'd be $350 for a 500pt army. 40k is NOT a cheap hobby.

Under Cover of Fish

One of the interesting things that the Tau are capable of to great effect is using their Devilfish APCs as mobile cover. This is thanks to a few things, but the core mechanic is available to every army: Flat Out Move.

The basic strategy, assuming you have your 'fish in front of your fire team, is to move the 'fish off to one side. You then move your fire team (or don't, as you like). Shooting phase you shoot with your fire team, Flat Out Move your 'fish back in front of the team.

Now, as stated, any army can do this. What makes the Tau good at it is a combination of factors. First, the 'fish is a Skimmer and so has the Jink special rule which gives it a 5+ cover save. Tau have access to a piece of vehicle wargear called Disruption Pods which increase a vehicle's cover save to be one better. A 'fish with this has an unmodified 4+ cover save out in the open. When moving flat out, Jink's cover save goes down to 4+, which gives the Distortion Pod 'fish a 3+ cover save. A tank with what amounts to Space Marine armor save is nice.

Add to this some nice defensive gear such as a Flechette Discharger (a number of S4 AP- hits against an assaulting unit equal to the number of models in base to base contact) and a Point Defense Targeting System (allows it to Overwatch with weapons of S5 or less) and you have what amounts to a mobile bunker.

Now, while this is an effective tactic it can be considered an extremely cheesy tactic analogous to the old Rhino slide. I do not recommend using this tactic in friendly games and use discretion when using it in pickup games. Competitive play - have at!


I cannot take credit for this, as I first came across it thanks to this article at Advanced Tau Tactica (includes pictures): http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=18706