Kroot

What to say about the kroot... Well, do not be fooled by their appearance, they look like they could bite the head off an orc, but that is not the case. They are fragile and mediocre close combat fighters, at best. But they can be useful, as long as you know how to use them (and how to not use them).

The kroot has three strengths: They can infiltrate, get good cover in forests, and they are cheap. Remember that infiltrators also can outflank. Outflanking kroot can cause trouble for the enemy, and may even take out a vehicle if shooting at it's rear, or by assaulting it. They will not live long, but don't worry, they are cheap, remember? :-) 

Another way to use them is to let them dig in somewhere, preferably in a forest (maybe it's time to get some model trees?;-). From there they can harass the enemy and draw some fire, maybe even letting them go to ground to make them last longer. Watch out for flamers though, or they will easily get, well, toast... But don't worry, they are cheap, remember?

There is always that exception that confirms the rule, right? Above you can see two squads of kroot advancing on a unit of terminators. The whole thing ended up in a melee, and the kroot won...

Conversion: Darkstrider

Darkstrider is one of the new additions in the latest Tau Codex. With his Structural analyser, he will lower the Toughness value by one for his target, which also counts for his whole unit. Should be quite effective if you put him in the lead of a 12-man Fire warrior squad. You can also outflank with that squad, thanks to Darkstrider's special rule. A nice addition is that his unit may retreat D6 inches if charged. But make sure not to put him in the front row. Whit only a scout armour, he'll soon bite the dust.

Here I used a pathfinder officer (metal model), cut the head off and replaced it with a Fire warrior head. I also cut off the "ponytail", making him bald.

The Structural analyser is made from a battlesuit antenna and a piece of transparent plastic, which shows a little better on the second picture below.

I only used Darkstrider on one occasion yet (I find him a bit expensive). I used him to outflank together with a Fire warrior unit in a Devilfish troop carrier. Generally, it can be a good tactic to keep troops in transports in the reserve, since bringing them into the fight later in the game will increase their odds of survival. After all, they are the ones you want near the objectives at the end of the game. With Darkstrider's outflanking ability, you have a chance to get a troop unit close to an objective near the opponent's table edge, possibly getting a victory point for "Linebreaker" in the process.

Human helpers

I really like the idea of humans joining the Tau Empire. After all, Tau are the only good guys out there, right? The forces of the human imperium are not good, just read the stories, and Eldar are just evil killer pirates. The rest don't need commenting, I think...

The Tau call them Gue'vesa, which translates to human helpers. These humans come in squads of six to twelve, and they are equivalent to imperial guardsmen. They are quite useful, since you get a cheap troop unit to hold objectives (or use as cannon fodder, whichever you prefer). A good restriction is that you must have a fire warrior squad for each gue'vesa unit, and they may not be taken as your compulsory troops.


Now to the fun part: Building the gue'vesa models! I used the bodies of fire warriors since I wanted them to blend in with the rest of the army. Since most humans don't have hoofs, I had to do something about that. This came to my first attempt at using "green stuff" to make tiny boots for these little guys. Quite tricky, I must say, and the result - well, ok I guess.

The heads are from militia soldiers from Warhammer Fantasy, as well as some other ones that I don't know where they are from. Since all races ready to embrace the Greater Good are welcome, I also made a non-human gue'vesa soldier. With a head from a (non-GW) orc and some head tails made from green stuff, I think he became a very cool addition to the bunch!

Converting a Devilfish to a Hammerhead

This conversion project was especially successful. Since a Skyray comes with enough parts to build either a Skyray gunship, a Hammerhead tank or a Devilfish transport I thought that if you have a Skyray and a Devilfish, you should be able to construct one Hammerhead and one Skyray. And even better, you could have the option to run them both as Devilfishes. And so I did!

The result is shown below, first with both as Devilfishes, then with both as Hammerheads (note that I made a custom Hammerhead with long barrelled burst cannons instead of a Skyray, as shown in an earlier blog post).

The trickiest part was the front gun, since the Hammerhead/Skyray has some kind of sensor equipment instead. This was solved by sculpting some green stuff together with the use of those tiny but strong magnets, so that they became interchangeable. Since I only had one piece of sensor equipment, I made the second one out of the rear end of a burst cannon together with a battlesuit antenna.

Another fun detail is that I was lacking a top hatch for one of the vehicles. So I used something called "blue stuff" to make a mold of the hatch from the other vehicle, then used green stuff to make a copy of the hatch. You can hardly tell the difference! To use blue stuff, you put it in hot water for a couple of minutes, press something into it, and let it cool. Then you have a solid mold.

Campaign report part II

Defence of the ABGOD

Near one of our recruitment centres there was an old inoperable piece of war machinery. According to our Water caste negotiators, this object was of great affectional value to the local humans. They referred to it as the ABGOD, short for Ancient Big Gun of Doom. There were rumours that the Renegades were interested in plundering this machinery, using parts from it to repair their vehicles and weapons, or maybe even repair and use the gun itself. A task force was sent out to defend this object, to stop the Renegades from using it. Defending this object that was important to the locals would also be used in our propaganda for the Greater Good.

The battle was even at first, with our great Tau forces slowly gaining the upper hand. Our brave Firefly warrior dropped perfectly from the sky, stopping a squad of renegades from gaining control of a fortified watchtower with his twin-linked flamer. A squad of outflanking kroot took control of it instead. Commander Coldsun made a solo offensive during the whole battle, taking out a lot of infantry units with his special issue wargear. The airbursting fragmentation projector was proved a success, and should be made more widely available to our troops. Soon enough, the armoured vehicles of the renegade army could not withstand the pounding of our railguns. Their whole army was on the run, leaving a few burning wrecks behind.

New auxiliary recruits was now queuing at our recruitment centres, all for the Greater Good.