Reaching the halfway point for a second time...

 o/

I love the look on this guy's face! Dunno what his little tri-corder thingy is telling him, but it's clearly not what he was wanting to read...

Whilst I've yet to physically peruse the new Tau codex, Battlescribe has updated and between that and reading the Goonhammer review linked in my last post, I needed to restructure my little army. 

That's what it is! He's just been notified that he's being saddled with five gue'vesa who just flunked their pathfinder qualifications. 

Strike, Breacher and Pathfinder teams all now come in at 10 models apiece. Thus the Gue'vesa Pathfinders from my last post will be folded in with the five carbine equipped fire warriors that I painted this week to meet the new squad size. 

Beware of Swine lurking in the underbrush.

I'll have to repaint my original Hogzillary (the only camouflaged member of the Fem Fa'Tau) as well as two Fem Fa'Tau breachers which will be taken (reluctantly) out of retirement and repainted. That still left me with only eight breachers, so I scrounged thru my bitz box and ordered what few parts that I didn't have to be able to assemble the last two needed to bring me up to 10. 

To justify the shipping costs which equaled the price of the bitz needed, I also ordered the MIA guardian drone bit to stick on an as yet unassembled gun drone (must've given mine to Hoss by mistake), as well as another support turret allowing the Fem Fa'Tau to keep theirs. 

The shas'ui used to be the Fem Fa'Tau's Darkstrider proxy. In homage to her past career, her hair ties were painted pink. 

Of course this leaves me bereft of Pathfinders, thus I ordered a squad of those (after checking and failing to find any in the local FLGSs). Previously I just used carbine equipped fire warriors sans-pauldrons as pathfinders, so this will be the first I've ever had both this particular kit and a recon drone! 

This week's batch. 

That said though, a few pathfinders in a not-painted-by-me color scheme are seen in the above linked support turret post. I'm thinking they came in via an eBay lot and summarily went off to Hoss. Honestly I don't recall ever seeing them till I went looking for that post. Most curious.

Anyways, despite painting another eight minis this week the sudden influx of new recruits means that I'm once again just reaching the halfway point in painting up all of my infantry (now clocking in at 72 models!). I'm still trying to crank thru all of the OD green troops before moving onto the Kroot. Odds are that once I stop painting all of the fire warriors and variations thereof, I won't want to go near this color scheme again for quite awhile!

I'm pretty sure that this is more than all of the minis that I painted during the entirety of the last year!

On to the next batch I go...

Tau Gue'vesa (Human Helpers) Pathfinders & more!

Happy Valen-Tau's day folks! 

I've designated this mini as squad Gue'vesa'ui sergeant since its my favorite mini out of the five.

I thought I'd share a bit more Tau love with my latest completed batch of minis. First up, my Heresy Labs KS Gue'vesa Pathfinder squad (looking back thru that KS's offerings, I ought to have gotten more than just five). They're really great models and if anything, even more detailed sculpts than the actual GW minis. 

The whole Pathfinders squad. 

From what I understand about the pathfinders in the new codex, using markerlights requires an action (of not moving) in the movement phase followed by hitting on a 3+ in the shooting phase...or something like that. 

Practicing retreating evasion tactics...

Thus far I've not bothered with the Actions game mechanic in my games of 40k, however markerlights are more or less the lynchpin that holds the Tau's ballistic onslaught together, so I'll have to figure it out! Otherwise I'm left with a mere 50/50 chance to hit under the best of circumstances for anyone other than an HQ model. 

Wait, why are the gue'vesa running towards us?

In addition to the pathfinders, I also completed another trio of Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles. You can never have enough of these bread and butter troops in an army, and these bring my painted compliment of them up to 8 (with three more in progress). 

Empty Circles = Unpainted

Half Circles = Half Painted

Full Circles = Fully Painted

Speaking of, I tallied up all of my Tau minis, folding in all of the unpainted Fem Fa'Tau from that now defunct army (the handful painted Fem Fa'Tau have taken up residence in my display case). 

To better keep track of my progress, I created the painting chart above. Currently, I'm sitting at about the halfway point between painted & unpainted and all within a month's time! How's that for  Squaduary? 

Another view. 

As you can see, my force is all but bereft of vehicles and heavy weaponry. I had given a good chunk of the Fem Fa'Tau (including all of the tanks) to my buddy Hoss. He'd always flirted with starting a Tau army but couldn't afford the initial buy in. He was also as close of a friend to My Beloved Wolfy as he was myself, thus they were given to him after her passing. In the interim, not being too fond of the current Tau rules, he was just waiting for the new codex to drop before getting started.

Sadly, this past Thursday we laid him to rest as well. Still can't quite wrap my head around it really, don't think any of us can. I told My Beloved Wolfy to go and find Hoss, show him the ropes and for them to keep each other company. His family is looking to sell his gaming collection to raise funds to cover the funeral costs, so I'm hoping to buy back my tanks. I think I have enough infantry for now though. 

Edit: In reading the Goonhammer review of the new codex, I see that fire warriors and pathfinders now come in squads of 10. As such, the in-progress pulse carbine strike team will be moved into the pathfinders or else the Gue'vesa will be moved to the carbine squad (either way demoting the mini in the first pic to a mere grunt) and I'll just buy pathfinders later on. I'll also have to repaint a 1-off Hogzilary to bring that squad up to 10, and the in-progress pulse rifle fire warriors will join the breachers (also, I will have to scrounge a few more off of eBay). 

FORWARD YOU FILTHY SWINE!

Harsh. Accurate, but still a bit harsh. 

This week I painted up my Dal'yth Tau's Cadre Fireblade & a squad of 8 'counts as' Strike Team Hogzilaries (yes, you pronounce that phonetically). The latter were cheap, 3D printed minis I got some ways back just because I found them amusing. With the simple addition of Tau pauldrons they blend in nicely looking like some sort of lesser known species that has been subsumed by the Tau empire. 

Their guns are of a blocky Tau-esque style, though they are a bit chunkier despite their puny dimensions compared to say pulse rifles and/or carbines. There were two doodads protruding far from the fronts of them which I trimmed down with varying levels of success (3D printed minis don't like to be converted it seems...).

With a barrel opening that large, it's almost like a blunderbuss!

I plan to use 'em as Standard 'FireWarriors' albeit it with vastly inferior weaponry, IG shotguns most likely. Points costs remain the same as is standard, chalked up once again to the price of proxies. Also of note are their inverted 25mm bases. These came with integral 20mm bases any any attempt to remove them resulted in broken legs. Gluing them on top of 25mm bases didn't look satisfactory to me, so instead I inverted the GW bases which works well enough if a bit odd in appearance. 

The one in front with pauldrons on both sides is the squad leader, which is called a Soo'ui! 

It isn't recorded (as far as the Imperium knows anyways) as to just when the Tau Empire took the small world of Scrofa into their possession. The indigenous Scrofan inhabitants (who collectively refer to themselves as just 'Hogs') were all too happy to provide troops to assist in the expansion of the Empire in exchange for improved technologies and security for their homeworld which had long been subjected to alien raids. 

Whilst the Tau's influence on the Hog's manufactured kit and weaponry are easy to see, they nonetheless stubbornly cling to their woefully inferior native weapons. This severely limits their battlefield utility, much to the Fire caste's collective annoyance. This 'issue' has mostly relegated them to 2nd line garrison and policing duties.

Indeed, some within the ranks of the Water caste have privately speculated that the insistence on fielding their weak armaments has little to do with pride. Rather by rendering themselves largely combat ineffective, they are instead successfully manipulating the Tau into limiting Scrofan casualties on far off deployments about which they care very little.

With only 4 fingers on their hands, how does a Tau flip off the Imperium? Asking for a friend...

As for the Cadre, he's stock aside from a hand swap. I bought him via eBay, missing his sheathed honor blade hand (for a 30% retail discount). I had this missing bit as I didn't use it on the Fem Fa'Tau's Cadre Fireblade. However after dry fitting it, I decided I still didn't like it. So I went with this hand instead. 

Showing off his pulse rifle with integral marker light.

I was pleased with the camo cloak even though in hindsight, it's not going to be too effective given how this army is based. 

The Cadre will serve as my army's 2nd in command after my as yet unassembled Crisis suit commander. He'll likely hang back with the Pathfinders and other rear area objective campers. As for the army as a whole, I have the XV8 commander backed up by 43 infantry models of various types. As they all currently stand, my army is half painted with another eight minis in progress!