Tau - first impressions and army ideas

Hi folks,

Has been a while since my last post - apologies. Weddings, work and other projects have gotten the better of me. As the post title suggests, however, it is time for my Tau to get some TLC. 

My army

When I got back into collecting some 5 years ago, my first armies were BA and orks, as these were the armies I had during 2nd ed. A lot had changed in my 10-year hiatus and I was very intrigued by the Tau as one of the new races that had sprung up. After a while my collection was a decent size and so I set to playing with them. Sadly, I wasn't really that tactically adept with Tau, being new back into the game etc, and so they went in the cupboard after a while rarely to emerge again. However, I still loved the aesthetics of the army and the theme (they are kind of the good guys of 40k after all) and so am very pleased they have at long last got an update. 

So I got ahold of the new kits, codex, some spray paint and ebayed my old pathfinder and broadsides. Currently my army looks something like this:

5 XV8s

8 stealth

3 broadsides

1 riptide

1 sun/razorshark

3 piranhas

6 hammerhead chassis (with 3 railguns, 2 sky ray turrets)

17 pathfinders

32 fire warriors

14 kroot/5 hounds

About 30 various drones

aun'shi

This is quite a tidy collection and I'm very happy to leave it at that, save for maybe grabbing Shadowsun at some point as I like the fluff, model and rules. 

Current project schedule:

Assemble new kits: 80% complete

Spray army chaos black: 90% complete

Spray army desert yellow: 60% complete

Convert 2 firewarriors to fireblades, a tank commander to longstrike and 1 pathfinder to darkstrider.

Magnetise broadsides/flyers

So things are going pretty well all in all. I was hoping to do the whole army in army painter desert yellow spray for ease but the colour wasn't to my liking. No problem though, as it cuts out needing two coats of paint so i can go straight over it with tau light ochre, and in the meantime at least the army isn't all black basecoated. I will put up tutorials for the fireblades, darkstrider, longstrike and how to magnetise the riptide, broadside and sunshark (when I've worked out how) in the near future.

General Opinions on the release:

Overall very good. The codex is of the same high quality that the previous 6th ed ones have been. I think it's good that the army isn't drastically different from the old army, just with some tweaking here and there and mandatory new units. I would have liked a bit more flexibility in the list, such as all kroot or vespid allied contingent options (i.e. being able to field a small HQ and troop and one other as allies) but not at the expense of new Tau shinies, which is what we got. Suits as troops would have been a nice option but never mind. I also find Vetocks writing style to be somewhat basic at times when flicking through the fluff - Ward and Kelly seem to have the authority on that one.

The riptide is great both in terms of model and rules and I look forward to trying it out. The flyers suffer from a bit of the same identity crisis as the Dark Angel ones, in that the bomber seems able to do everything the fighter can just a bit better and the fighter seems a bit woeful at taking out enemy aircraft. This is less of a problem for Tau due to all the skyfire (poor DAs) but does make the flyer a somewhat redundant choice. Pathfinders are also great models and I warmed to the broadsides - side by side with the old ones there really is no comparison. 

One last note about the army in general. I think the holy trinity of jetpacks, markerlights and now supporting fire really make the Tau stand apart as a unique army in the 40k universe. More on Tau soon with some pics of the army progress. Cheers for reading.