Themed buildings

Instead of buying terrain, I prefer to build my own out of plastic containers, paper, parts of toy cars, drinking straws and various pieces of junk I come across. Then I spray it black and throw some paint on it. The trick is to make them "themed", so that the buildings look good together. Below are some examples.

 

 A monument dedicated to some kind of snake god

 A power station...

 

A statue raised to honour a legendary hero

Conversion: Tetras

The Tetra is a fast skimmer used for reconnaissance (again from Imperial Armour vol. III). The model, well, I think I found a suitable one: The Hunter Killer 2000 Grav Bike, from the Void miniatures game.

The human pilots were converted to tau pilots by cutting off their noses and slicing a vertical line on their forehead. Painted blue they look ok, I think. The bike itself looks great, I skipped the minigun mounted under the "beak" (yes, maybe it resembles a duck...). The backside with the model is that it is metal. The paint scrapes off, and it tips over quite easily.

I have not attached any weapons on them yet. Pulse rifles and markerlights, that is. Maybe they are built into the front somehow...

Fast skimmers are nice, and with disruption pods they can increase their much needed jink save to up to 3+. They are great markerlight units, with 2 twin-linked shots each. There is most often room in the organization chart for them, since they are fast attack. I prefer to take two units with two Tetras each.

Conversion: Commander Farsight

My Farsight conversion is based on Shadowsun. I used the arms of a stealth suit, regular plasma rifle and shield generator, and an oversized sword from some Confrontation model (i think) that I had used to make a Blood Bowl player with (swords are not allowed in Blood Bowl...). Maybe the model is too small compared to the original Farsight model, and might therefore not be allowed in a tournament.

Farsight is one of the few Tau units that offers some close combat capabilities. With a sword that cuts through most armour he (or she in my case) delivers quite a punch. In a game against Space Marines, he/she slaughtered unit after unit of marines. After all the beating I had taken before then, that was a moment of joy! :-) So I believe that Farsight is a good and fun addition to any Tau army, even though you might not want to use him in every battle.

A cool unit to try is to give Farsight a bunch of bodyguards. It will probably end up in a very pricy unit, and you may regret it if it gets locked up in close combat, unable to bring down it's firepower on the enemy. Regardless, it is a fun unit to try! You can also try out adding a "support suit" to the unit. With a Command and Control Node and a Multi-spectrum Sensor Suite it will boost the other battlesuits shooting attacks, but only if it does not fire itself, so don't bother to spend too many points on weapons for this suit. Also, it's only really effective together with quite a number of battlesuits, and Farsight may take up to 7 bodyguards, so just go crazy with those suits!

It is also nice that Farsight doesn't scatter when Deep Striking, so combine the above with some target locks, and you can potentially take out quite a lot of the opposition in one spectacular blow! For the Greater Good, of course.

Broadsides

Inspired by a custom model I saw somewhere, I put the heavy rail rifles under the arms of the broadsides, instead of over the shoulders. The rifles connects to the arms by wires on one arm, while the other is covered by a shield generator. On the shoulders I put the smart missile system, but instead of the regular ones I used some kind of missile launcher from "skinnies" from the Starship Troopers miniatures game.

So, what to say about broadsides? Never leave home without them? Well, they sure were more powerful in the old rules, since the strength of the rifles has been reduced. But I think it's reasonable that the railgun on the Hammerhead tank is more powerful than the guns of the broadsides. I still really like them, and they have an unmatched ability to soak firepower, at least among the Tau ranks. AP 2 weapons may of course blow them away quickly, so it might be good idea to give them some shield drones, if you have the points to spare. Against mechanized opponents, target locks may be useful. With a little luck, you might take out several vehicles in one go! Also, do not forget the built-in multi-tracker that allows the broadsides to fire both the twin-linked railrifles and twin-linked smart missile system in the same turn.

"The Dogs of War"

Why settle for human helpers, when you can have human helpers best friend: The dog! Or dog people, more accurately, but what's the difference? Since the Tau don't keep pets (apart from drones), they have a hard time understanding the concept of keeping animals in your home (that I made up).

(Maybe I went a little too far with this conversion project...)

These guys are played as gue'vesa, i.e. human auxiliaries. The heads are from some kind of cyberdogs for the Starship Troopers miniatures game. The rest are fire warriors bodies, with modified weapons. Their feet (paws?) shows my attempt of using "green stuff". Tricky...

Campaign report part III

The lost bunker

Our intelligence reported the location of an underground bunker, near a small deserted mining village. When moving in to investigate, one of our scout force commander's vehicles was wrecked by incoming enemy fire. Apparently, the Renegades had also discovered the bunker, and was moving into the village.

A task force was quickly dispatched, lead by commander Coldsun, in an attempt to secure the village, take the bunker, and rescue the scout force commander. Two Devilfishes were lost in the fighting, along with some infantry and a Hammerhead railgun. One of the outflanking kroot squads really managed to stir things up among the enemy troops, slaughtering an infantry squad and a storm trooper squad, before running off under heavy fire. With some repairs, most of the other vehicles will soon be ready for action. Commander Firesun secured the village single handedly, after which the enemy started to pull back. One fire warrior squad entered the bunker, which exploded and caved in shortly after. The inside of the bunker remains unknown to us. All for the Greater Good.