The Bearded One's Tau Cadre

[The bearded one]

I had a recent little tournament. I used a fireblade, 12 and 6 firewarriors, 10 kroot, a riptide, 3 suits with loads of missilepods and the puretide chip, 2 suits brimming with plasmarifles, 2 broadsides with missilepods, 2 units of 5 pathfinders and a defence line with quadgun.

I lost a close game against enemy Tau with blood angel allies (his list was almost the same as my army, but no regular suits or aegis defence line) and for the cost he could fit in nearly two dozen marines and a rhino! Tsk. It'll surprise you how many marines you can spam if you set your mind to it. 50 marines is hard to shoot away, even with Tau.

Anyway, that first match was very close and tense. I had all my hard firepower at the end, except the two plasmarifle suits, but only 1 firewarrior on an objective. The unit of 12 with fireblade couldn't bring themselves to kill 3 marines in combat. I threw the riptide into hat combat as well, who killed 1 marine and then ran away.. while the firewarriors stayed to fight, and then got sweeped the next turn. Chicken riptide.. Anyway, that lost me too many troops so I lost on objectives, because the enemy still had a riptide, 3 firewarriors on his own objective, and 2 marines on another. Firepower is not everything, but I'm always too tempted by the prospect of a firestorm to invest more into troops than strictly necessary



The second game was rather.. unusual. The relic mission. I fought necrons, a lord, 30-40 warriors, 20 immortals, some crypteks and destroyers, and a ghost ark. By turn 3 more or less every necron was gunned down. I know how necrons work, and with such a ridiculously large supply of ap4 power I could easily destroy full units of warriors in one phase, without them having the chance to get back up. He was unlucky that when the plasmasuits blasted his immortals with the lord in the face with 5 or 6 plasmahits, his lord failed 3 3+ invulnerable saves and went down in one go, but by turn 4 the field was scoured anyway, so he'd have been unlikely to survive anyway.



The last game was against orks. A damnable unit of 11 lootas rolling 3 shots per model every turn. I shot them up quite well though. A unit of 5 nobs on bikes raced behind cover in the first turn (lost a model to my riptide's blast) and next turn was inches from my battleline. They got a full army of firepower in the face, then got the entire army again on overwatch and then (because they didnt make it due to the aegis line) they got shot up by everybody again! There was a battlewagon with 20 boyz hurtling towards me, but my missiles took it out from the side, and everything on the field was culled quite rapidly.



Nominated for best painted army, and got 4th place. I was there mostly for the fun of playing in a small tournament. I went with some members from the storeclub of my GW. Me and another even wore our club tshirts. We had a fun time, and I'm going there again in two weeks, with a clubmember (who's blue tau have been shown somewhere halfway in my blog) for a doubles tournament. I might finish my hammerhead with the hexagon pattern.

[The bearded one]

We went to another tourney (same place, same organiser) and had a good time. It was a doubles tournament, 900 points a person, so I allied myself with another Tau player. We had a riptide each, a hammerhead each (me with ion cannon, him with longstrike and railrifle), me 10 pathfinders, 10 firewarriors w/fireblade, 2 individual dual-plasma suits and 3 missilespamming suits, and him 10 kroot, 6 firewarriors, a broadside and aegis defence line, and a commander with drone controller and a unit 4 marker drones. For the tournament everyone counted as allies of convenience, so no sharing of buffs and powers.

Our first game was against dark eldar - eldar and after our first turn we left a bit of a vehicle graveyard behind. I think in the end there were about 7 or 8 destroyed vehicles.

Our second game was against friends playing eldar - space wolves, with a landraider! Luckily my ally was using a hammerhead with longstrike, so in turn 2 or 3 we managed to take it out. The game was fun, and at times quite tense. In turn 1 their opening salvo nearly killed one of my pathfinder units, but the last one managed to survive, depriving them of first blood. When their flyer came in on turn 2, our interceptor quadgun took off two hullpoints, and then in our turn 2 our kroot and 2 seperate deepstriking plasmasuits came in. We were pleased, about to fire our broadside to destroy the flyer and take first blood, but they used their quadgun and riddled one of my suits with holes (his fastshot exarch fired 5 shots and wounded 5 times, and the suit failed 4 saves. That's pretty dead ) Dang, they stole first blood! Those reserves were a fun bunch. The kroot didn't manage to kill the farseer with 20 rapidfire shots (his dark reaper unit around him was dead, so he couldn't pass on the wounds with look out sir) so my hammerhead's ion cannon took a potshot at the reapers, and scattered nearly the maximum distance straight at the kroot, hitting almost all of them! A couple kroot died after saves, but the template did manage to graze the farseer, who failed his save and got vaporised. Some good luck with the bad luck. In the end we managed to shoot their remaining troops from their objectives, and won quite substantially. A unit of dire avengers and their waveserpent did manage to kill my wounded riptide; my riptide has only died twice since I started using it; and twice to the same player!

We were high up in the scores after those two games, so we knew we'd have to play one of the hardcore tourney-player teams, and weren't particularly optimistic about our chances. In the end we faced necron - tau, with the tau having 2 riptides, 2 skyrays, a buffcommander attached to the riptide, and a bunch of kroot. The necrons had wraiths, a destroyer lord, 2 nightscythes with immortals, and an annihilation barge. They got first turn, and so many cover-ignoring weapons (the riptide, seeker missiles, smart missile systems) everything died really easily. Instagibbed suits, no chance to save the pathfinders, andsoforth. We still sort of managed to hold our own untill turn 3 (although our first turn was lovely, both novacharged riptide blasts scattering 8-9" off their skyray targets, either off the table or into the sparse open spots), and after that everything we had did nothing anymore. The enemy was bound to win for sure, -we kinda knew that at the beginning- but those last turns soured it a lot, as it should've been a closer score, as things that should've easily died turns before just didn't die. One of their riptides was down to 2 wounds, and we shot our own riptide's at it and wounded it repeatedly with str7 ap2 shots, but in the end it still had a wound. Our longstrike hammerhead hit and penetrated a skyray 4 or 5 times, only causing a single damaged weapon (the rest was jink-saved). My own riptide assaulted a skyray in the last turn, but the melta didn't even glance the side, the ion accelerator shots didn't either, and the smash attacks only took off 2 hullpoints. it was a rather sour ending.

However, I did finally finish my hammerhead, and I loved playing with it, and I am keen on using a skyray as well.

[The bearded one]

Some pictures from the tournament;

[The bearded one]

A sneak-peak on Farsight. I experimented with a white shield (all my shas'vre's and higher (and infantry shas'ui's) have white helmets (and the infantry white shoulderpads), but found the full surface being white a bit too much. It took away all the attention from the entire model, so to break up the large white surface I freehanded a couple extra lines on the shield. It reminds me a bit of that diplomacy drone on the first page of the Tau Codex.

[PossumCraft]

Love that Hammerhead, absolutely beautiful

[The bearded one]

I had a little 1750 40k tournament this weekend, and had 3 really enjoyable matches (two major wins and a minor loss, respectively), and the first and last games were incredibly exciting and tense, where the game turned around a couple times from turn to turn. Oddly enough I was too unlucky to score 'first blood' even once, even though I had first turn twice (and the time I didn't, my opponent did not score it in his first turn, but in the second), whereas I usually almost always grab first blood. Oh well.

I also won best painted army!

And I finished my whole army for this tournament, so pretty much everything is done for Throne of Skulls in 2 weeks.


1st game (Space marines with a knight)




2nd game (Droppod space marines)

[The bearded one]

3rd game (blood angels and Tau)




Army

[The bearded one]

I had an incredibly fun time at my second Throne of Skulls, with my club -the white scars - with whom I drove all the way from Rotterdam to Nottingham, by car. I won 3 out of 5 games, and literally lost the other 2 on a single diceroll (3+ and 4+ respectively). More importantly I had a great time, and got to play a pretty varied selection of opponents (dark angels, grey knights, eldar, tyranids, sisters of battle), and managed to avoid having to play most of the superheavies running around. I fought a superheavy flyer (AV 11 at that) but no warhounds or anything.

Most importantly of all, my army got nominated for best painted army, and my Riptide won the monstrous creature painting competition!!

[Cap'n Facebeard]

The highlighting and hex patterns are fantastic. You definitely deserve the awards!

[The bearded one]

Here's some pictures I plucked from Warhammer world's review of Throne of Skulls may 2014

All the nominees for Best Painted Army, including me. We're a brooding people, us artisans, so only Jes Bickham is smiling


And here's all of us, me and the gaming club that travelled all the way from the Netherlands by car to attend Throne of Skulls. The White Scars in our club shirts. We're madcaps, and we'll be back next year.

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Really good Tau.

[Anteater]

I really love your painting, it's awesome! Keep it up!

[The bearded one]

Some Tau news!

I've recently got to play a number of games with my Tau again, and having a great time (having your army in the cabinet at the local gaming store is really handy because you can just nab them out of the cabinet whenever you want to play), so I've gotten the urge again to paint up more Tau.

I'm currently in the process of getting a Y'vahra Riptide battlesuit, which is kinda like an awesome close-ranged fast attack riptide. I wanna try and build my Tau to get a bit closer to the enemy, so my opponents won't have to face a boring over the top gunline.

I'm also painting a new battlesuit commander. One with the 'fusion blades' from the Farsight enclaves signature systems, and a shield generator. I'm very happy with the result on the shield so far. It's made out of a drone top.

[bad dice]

Yea i did that 2 Personly i think the shields that come whit the model just are to small. Specialy if you want to give them a more melee feel. I like the broken antenna it give it a real combat used look.

[Asura Varuna]

This work is amazing. I'm inspired to add some extreme edge highlights to my Tau army. Keep up the good work.

[The bearded one]

Yesterday I had a little doubles-tournament in the local GW, and my Tau teamed up with the Nurgle Tau of a friend. 2 wins, and an 11 to 12 loss (so, sooooo close). We also won Best Painted Army

[The bearded one]

[duffybear1988]

Amazing stuff in both armies.

[The bearded one]

Building the R'varna Riptide! This kit is really cool, all the resin bits fit perfectly onto the plastic. In fact the portion that's supposed to be on top of the torso fits so nicely, it gave a pleasing loud 'click!' as it snapped into place. I could practically leave it on without glue.

After this one, I also have a Y'vahra Riptide to build.

[The bearded one]

There! He's built, and ready to blast something into oblivion!



The first riptide's arm broke off. I still have to repair it, and find a way to keep it sturdy. While building the R'varna I pinned it with bits of paperclips all over the place. Each ankle (notoriously prone to breaking) has 2 pins, going diagonally through the leg and into the feet. You might be able to spot one on the front foot. The armjoints are pinned, and the weapons are pinned to the shoulderpanels. Built for sturdiness!