Friday night, fight night...

It was that time again... time for a brawl... time for a fight...

You can see my Tau deployed across the table, with Longstrike's hammerhead in the left corner, accompanied by 5 pathfinders and 2 broadsides with heavy rail rifles and 2 missile drones. Next to the building they are standing on is a devilfish with a unit of firewarriors inside. The riptide is smack in the middle of my deployment zone, ready to engage targets on either flank.

Occupying the Aegis defence line are two squads of firewarriors, the left-most is joined by the fireblade. Behind the bastion are the two crisis suits with dual missile pods.

Reserve forces are comprised of 10 Kroot with sniper rounds and a squad of Stealth suits.

Tau: State of the army

It's been a while since I posted a "State of the army" article. Last time was 4 months ago. I can't believe time goes as fast as it does.

I admit, the summer months were slow when it came to hobby-ing. More time is spent outdoors on other activities and going on vacation.

So, doing a quick calculation with the numbers I used in the last article, in June I had painted up about 460 pts worth of models. In the 4 months time since last article, I finished my Devilfish (+/-100 pts) and 2 gun drones (I'm not counting pts for those), 4 Kroot (28 pts) got painted and my Riptide was done yesterday (190 pts) giving me a grand total of 318 pts painted in 4 months... that doesn't sound like a lot, but considering the time I actually spent on painting these (Kroot needed a brand new painting scheme so I had to smik that and the Riptide is the first giant model I have done), I think that's quite alright.

Incidently, exactly 6 months have passed since I rebooted my Tau army (I started off on April 16th with Shas'la S'mik). So in 6 months time I painted 778 pts worth of models, which is not bad, considering my track record before this army ;)

After the break, a breakdown of the models I have, what is painted and what is planned... also... some army shots.

XV104... Finished Him!

You should read the title in the voice from Mortal Kombat:

Final pictures after the break!

XV104... basing

This guy needed some more work done on the base... which I did yesterday. However, I don't have any WIP shots, only glamour shots of the finished state... past the break!

XV104... Decalled!

You remember this guy, right?

Well, I decided to add some decals to the model, just to make it stand out some more.

XV104... III

Last picture of previous update, as per usual.

Yesterday I continued work on the model and I'm really enjoying the painting, so a pretty big update after the break!

XV104... part deux

This is where I left off... the washes needed to dry, so that's what happened and last saturday, I put in another hour or so of painting. Read all about it after the break!

XV104... need I say more?

I know this picture is obscure, but the astute observer immediately notices this is a Riptide (well duh).

As the background is most obviously my painting desk, this must mean the Riptide is on my painting desk... and what do people do at painting desks? Among other things, they paint!

So that must mean... *gasp* ...that I'm painting my Riptide!

Back from holidays and update!

As you can see here, I haven't been thinking about hobby-ing for about two weeks while I was at the Gorges du Verdon in France... well, that's actually a bit of a lie, as I've read about 4 Black Library books while I was there... enticing me to start some new armies:
(in no particular order)
- Eldar
- Pre-heresy Thousand Sons
- Flesh Tearers
- Ultramarines (gasp!)

They also prompted me to start again on my Dark Angels and Death Guard...

Ah the lure of new (and/or existing) armies...

I refuse to give in, so I'll continue work on my Tau, as you can see after the break!

Update you say?

You all remember this guy, right?


...


RIGHT?

Ok so, I did some more work on this concept Kroot dude and you can read all about it after the break...

Small update to Smik Kroot

Howdy folks.

You might remember this picture up here... it has the Kroot guy with the clashing colors for his clothing.

Anyway, I didn't like how the green and the purple worked together, so I decided to just paint his clothing brown, darker than his skin.

Update... yay!

Remember these guys?

Well, I decided to finish painting the one I like best, first and in the mean time, continue painting 2 gun drones that I started (what seems like) ages ago.

Tau: How they play - Part Deux

Last Friday was the second battle I played with Tau since I rebooted my army. Last time I wrote a post pondering what I did wrong and/or could do better. So today, let's take a look at the lessons I learned and what can still use some improvement.

Friday Night - Fight Night

Friday night was the second battle fought with my rebooted Tau Empire army.
Compared to last time, I brought along a Fireblade instead of a Crisis Commander as my warlord. This is a difference of about 120 points, which was well spent on extra Troops in the form of Firewarriors.

To accomodate another squad of Firewarriors, I left 3 of the stealth suits at home and as such, only took 3. This allows them to be more stealthy and less of an attention magnet. Apart from some changes in armament, those were the only major changes in my army list. So:
+ 20 Firewarriors and Fireblade
- 3 Stealth suits and Crisis Commander

Read on to find out how my list did against the same Tyranid list as last time... (both lists can be found in this post and its comments)

1500p Casual Tau army

And now for something completely different... (no painting progress this time)

On friday, I've got another battle planned with my Tau army. The usual approach to building an armylist for me is to start off with what I have (if I don't have enough models to fill the points value) and go from there, adding in a few proxies where necessary. (We decided on 1500pts)

This time will be no different...

SmiKroot

So I decided to paint my Kroot Carnivores next and I started experimenting for a color scheme.

It was not done... NOW it's done!

It looked done... but it didn't feel done...
And like I said in yesterday's post, I wanted to go back in and add some smaller markings, just to tie it all together. I also said I needed a break from painting... well, here's what I did yesterday...

Devilfish down!

Like usual, the above pic is where I left the model after the previous painting session.

I got a little bit of painting done this weekend, and because I couldn't resist, I also stuck together a pathfinder (of which I don't have picture proof).

Devilfish update!

This was the Devilfish before I did what I did last night...

The Devilfish is in the Details

After the previous update giving color to the fish, yesterday, I took back some of the color...