Welcome Back Commander

--XV8-Battlesuit-status: active--

--Ident passcode accepted. Welcome back, Shas'O Da'Anuk--

--Fusion reactor: online--

--Auxiliary systems: online--

--Sensors: online--

--Communications: online--

--Jetpack and maneuvering jets: online--

--Command and control systems: online. Synching with main command data network--

--Weapon - plasma rifle - input received. Status: online--

--Weapon - fusion blaster - input received. Status: online--

--Weapon - missile pod - input received. Status: online--

--Running final systems check. All systems online and functioning optimally. Tau'va-- 

Here he is, Shas'O'T'au Kais'ka'Eoro'Da'Anuk, Commander Kakapo (or Commander Nightwing if anyone from the Imperium is asking) himself, in the flesh. 

For much of my time with 40k my Tau army did not really have a commander as such. Partially this was due to the HQ section being by a fair margin the least crowded and interesting part of the Tau army. In an army of giant hover tanks bristling with laser-guided cruise missiles and electromagnetic death cannons, power-armoured commandos with invisibility devices and tooled-up infantry troops with badass-looking helmets, it can be hard to get excited over.. a Crisis Suit with a better stat-line and the extraterrestrial love-child of Gandalf and Jacinda Ardern. Don't get me wrong here, the love-child of Gandalf and Jacinda Ardern is a really cool concept that I am 100% down for, but it just lacks a certain visceral cinematic oomph that the giant hover tanks and invisibility commandos possess in abundance. 

But mostly it was because for a very long time I just did not get the HQ section in Warhammer 40,000 on a fundamental level. Before getting into Tabletop games my main experience with strategy battles was from RTS computer games, especially Starcraft and especially the various games in the Command & Conquer franchise, all of which put me the commander as a faceless amorphous god-like presence directing the battle from an omniscient vantage point far far away from the actual fighting. Whenever games like Starcraft handed me a special unique character unit, I would invariably leave them safely tucked into an out-of-the-way corner of my impregnable stronghold surrounded by a sea of defensive weapon emplacements while the actual combat was carried out entirely by wave after wave of regular troops. 

Given that tabletop wargames like Warhammer 40,000 appeared to be equivalent to analogue RTS video games to my 8 year old self, the logical conclusion I came to was that when playing this new 40k thing I would continue to be an invisible god-like presence commanding my little metal minions from somewhere else far far away from the battlefield on the tabletop. After all, it's a sci-fi game set in the future. The future has technology. In a world with long-range real time communications technology, why would you ever put the army's commander in harm's way when they can direct everything from a nice safe reinforced underground bunker thousands of kilometres away from the dangerous fighting? 

Before you comment with a lecture on how real-life military command and control structures work and how the kinds of high-end commanders directing everything from a reinforced underground bunker thousands of kilometres away from the battlefield are at a higher tier of the chain of command than what most 40k HQ units are actually modeling, remember that I was 8 years old at the time. Present Day Adult Me understands the difference between a Colonel directing a battalion on the ground and a Field Marshal directing a Front from a command centre where they can see the big picture across the entire theatre. 8-year-old Me Raised On C&C did not, and it honestly would have gone straight over my head if you had tried explaining it to me. 

Anyway, the upshot of this is that for a very long time I just could not fully understand the point of the HQ section in 40k armies, outside of Tyranids where it made perfect sense for the Hive Tyrant as a big final boss Hive Queen monster, and as a hypothetical place for lone special forces operatives with a gun that killed infantry instantly but did nothing to vehicles and hand-placed bombs that blew up buildings instantly (Command & Conquer background remember). And named Hero units that sit in the corner while the rest of the army fights because I lose the level if they die. The idea that they actually represented me as a player character in the universe was a completely alien concept. 

This meant that for some years my Tau army just did not have an HQ unit of any kind at all. When I finally did add one it was mostly because the game rules forced me to, and I went with an Ethereal because by this point my No Battlesuits policy had become a thing. That was how it was until around 2009 or so, when I noticed that the army rules in Codex: Tau Empire also forced me to take a Crisis Suit Commander. That finally drove me to go out and procure this guy: 

This was the first Shas'O to lead the army, and was the first HQ unit that I ever put real serious effort into. Having purchased him in 2009 he came as part of the shiny new Crisis Suit Commander box, which also included a blister of shiny new metal Special Issue gubbins and variant heads. The alternate head pieces never really caught on with me, for various reasons (one was too big and the other was too knobbly), but the Special Issue gear was another matter entirely. I had loved the look of the awesome metal Special Issue guns from the moment I first saw them advertised in White Dwarf, and the Special Issue support systems weren't too far behind them. So they were immediately glued into place without hesitation. There was also an element of convenience at work here - I still hadn't fully comprehended the subtleties of Battlesuit equipment combinations yet, so just loading the Commander down with all of the Special Issue guns and support systems he could carry was an excellent eliminator of choice that let me side-step the whole question of how to outfit my new Battlesuit; just pick the shiny wild fun experimental guns and call it a day. 

The only real question that remained was which fancy metal support system to go with, and I opted for the Command And Control Node largely because it was the only one that made sense to me. The tactics of Reserves were still too arcane for my primitive teenage brain to really grasp, and I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about a device that just sent information off the table, but an advanced AI-assisted transmission system that efficiently beamed my orders into a nice simple Leadership boost for everyone within 12" was much easier to comprehend. By the time I noticed that the Command And Control Node only affected Target Priority Tests which are not a thing in the 5th edition rules I was following at the time, it was already glued on and I did not really care too much. In the end it was a moot point anyway since there never ended up being anyone within 12" of the Commander in any of the three games I managed to play with the older army. But it was an AI-assisted communications system, and that's always going to be a handy thing for a commander to have regardless of what some stupid rulebook says. 

I was once asked if I ever ran a Super Prototype battlesuit with every single Special Issue wargear option piled onto the one model, but the website where it was asked burned down, so I never got to answer them in time there. But to answer the question, no I never did, but I did come close. For all the games this guy was used he was loaded down with as many extra Special Issue wargear items as I could get away with not modeling. Irridium armour was the first addon thrown in, because hey awesome a 2+ armour save like the Terminators get and the different hue of sandy ochre could comfortably pass as a new formula of armour plates (it helped that my 2+ save native Broadsides also had the same colour), but I also ended up throwing in a Stimulant Injector too because a medical healing juice dispenser seemed like the sort of small discrete thing that could easily be tucked into the interior compartment of a battlesuit without leaving any sign on the outside, and the Feel No Pain rule was nice to have too. Everything else either ate up a support system hardpoint - and I was all out of those - or required some extensive converting and/or kitbashing that I did not feel confident about, and at the time I was cautious around invisible wargear items. 

Aside from the weapons loadout, the first thing you might have noticed was the pose. When I was putting the model together I had the wild idea to model him literally walking off his base, a concept that I immediately thought was awesome and wild and meta and hadn't been done before and it was everything my brain had ever wanted to think about. 

Now, this was about a year or two before we covered the concept of a centre of gravity in school, so at no point did it ever occur to me what sort of effect putting the bulk of the model away from the base would have on the model's balance and ability to stand upright. After all, this thing was mostly plastic, and plastic is really light right? How bad could it possibly be? Again, the fact that the model had two very heavy metal guns shifted even further forward never registered once with me. What did register was that it looked so cool and meta that the model was literally stepping off its base and straight into battle. It was almost like something out of Toy Story! 

The result is evident from the pictures, and the model is incapable of standing upright on its own. There was a tactical rock - not a plastic one or anything, a real actual rock that I found outside - that was applied to the base as a counterweight and mostly solved the problem, but it was never permanently glued on and I have no idea where it went. 

The other noteworthy thing about this model is that it is the first model I've documented on here that belongs to the White Period of my Tau army. In 2006 I went home from one of the local GW stores with my first ever White Dwarf magazine, Issue #313(AU) covering the release of the Dwarf army book for 6th edition Warhammer. But what it also featured was a showcase of Australian model hobbyist Sebastian Stuart's legendary Tau army, and that very quickly became the biggest influence on my own Tau project. 

A lot of Sebastian's modeling techniques and conversions were beyond my means and hobby skills at the time, but one innovation that I readily adopted was the white undercoat. Sebastian's main Tau army (he has two) uses a colour scheme based off the GW Studio Tau army, and features a sandy ochre tone as its primary colour. Unlike the GW Studio Tau army, Sebastian's Tau were painted with a white undercoat rather than a black one, and the smooth even tone on the models impressed me so much that I immediately adopted a white undercoat for all my future Tau models. 

At the time I was very pleased with the results, which produced a sandy ochre colour that was much less orange and much more sandy looking, which is what I wanted at the time, though doubtless the application of brand new Tausept Ochre Citadel Foundation paint helped there. It quickly became my new standard, which persisted all the way until 2011 when I started shifting back to black undercoats for my Battlefleet Gothic ships because it was easier to just drybrush white over black than it was to wash black over white and then drybrush white over that. After that I learnt how shading and highlighting colours actually worked, and went back to black undercoats for everything for organic shading so I could avoid using washes. This left my white undercoats in a similar place to swing-wings on aircraft - an ingenious solution to the engineering challenges of the time that worked well, but was ultimately left behind once simpler technological alternatives caught up. 

Of course what did carry on was my scheme of colour-coded battlesuit accents. I came up with the concept of colour-coding my battlesuit teams based on battlefield role not long before I got this model, and it represents the first application of the scheme. Aside from some Broadsides that arrived shortly after this guy did, it was also the only application of the scheme until new Battlesuits started going into production in 2020. 

This Commander served me well during the brushfire wars of 2010 that represent the only 3 games when my old Tau army was ever deployed in anger, and was still in command in 2013 when the identity of my Tau army finally began to take shape from participating in online forum RP threads, which gave the backstory process a much needed shot in the arm by forcing me to actually think about what kind of character the Commander I was RPing was. The RP threads in turn combined with the limited tabletop history I had (with some embellishments) and some personal life details to form the nucleus of Da'Anuk's identity as a Shas'O with a solid decent if unspectacular performance record relegated to backwater postings along with his cadre after a particularly gruesome defeat, only to end up in the right place at the right time to serve with distinction in a key victory that put him and his forces back on the map just as the 3rd Sphere kicked off, getting his cadre rebuilt with Guards status and sent into a new wave of expansion and adventure that continues to the present. 

It is that era that is reflected in this new model. 

There are a lot of changes that have been done for this new incarnation of Da'Anuk. Perhaps the most immediately obvious one is that he now has some friends. In the past I never really bothered with Bodyguard teams, partially because of my generally cold attitude towards battlesuits on principle but also because for a long time I was very strongly influenced by online tactica articles about 40k. Now, the thing about online tactica articles for all tabletop wargames is that apart from a few exceptions the vast overwhelming majority of them are written by sour prudes who hate fun, which in the case of the ones for Tau in 40k meant that Bodyguard teams were usually dismissed as not worth it because of their points cost. But at the time I did not know that the tactica articles I was reading were written by fun-hating sour prudes, and points costs were something I never paid any attention to even when they were being talked about, so I tragically assumed that Bodyguard teams should be avoided because they were just not useful or interesting. 

This changed after 2013 or so when I began to grow more aware of just how much the online Warhammer community is systemically populated by Roald Dahl Children's Book Authority Figures, and how much those RDCBAFs colour and influence the content of a lot of online tacticas, and consequently began to filter them out and start thinking more about the stuff I wanted to take rather than what the internet wanted me to take. This lead me to radically reevaluate the value of a Bodyguard team, because two badass right-hand warriors watching out for danger as personal guards is awesome, and by this point I was starting to get a little envious of the colourful diverse command squads everyone else got to take for their HQ commanders and a Command Team of a Shas'O, some bodyguards and a couple of drones felt like a nice equivalent. 

So when the time came I gleefully put together a pair of bodyguards that would accompany my shiny new commander in the vast bulk of games going forward. Ko'Ta'Kir is the senior of the two, being Da'Anuk's right hand XO and the team leader of the bodyguard detail. It was only just last year that I actually noticed the "One bodyguard may be upgraded to a bodyguard team leader for +15 points" part of the unit entry that I can recall with Mandela Effect precision was never actually written, but I went ahead with painting one up as the team leader and XO anyway, complete with a set of green ID stripes to make it harder for marksmen to single out the real commander, and to let her act on the table as an independent Shas'El if necessary. She is also a Freebie, being built from a lone XV8 sprue I got as part of a giffle prize one year, making her an unofficial leader of the Free Company element of the army. O'ran'Nars, the other bodyguard, is just a regular Crisis Suit box I purchased the hard way, but he was also to my knowledge one of the last single Crisis Suit boxes sold. 

The bodyguards are shown in their planned default loadout (though like the other Crisis Suits their hardpoints are magnetised), first devised around 2014. The original plan for the weapons load was as a foil to Da'Anuk's suite of Special Issue gear. While the commander ran around with all the fancy experimental guns, his bodyguards would sport a grounded sensible package of proven reliable weaponry to take down any threats to their charge. That meant fusion blasters for knocking out tanks (and big gribblies), plasma rifles for frying power armour, and missile pods because that was the other most practical and reliable 'gun' available, and Da'Anuk's airbursting fragmentation launcher was deemed enough for dealing with swarms of light infantry so flamers were unnecessary (I was also feeling a little insecure about the level of medium range firepower at my disposal). 

Then I pivoted completely towards using Codex: Tau almost exclusively, and needed to come up with an alternative loadout for the commander that did not make use of stuff invented for Codex: Tau Empire. Thinking about it, the Shas'O has Ballistic Skill 5, which is very good. That meant I needed to make the most of it, which in turn meant: 

- I definitely wanted a missile pod. That BS 5 is just too good not to use for long-distance shooting. 

- I also definitely wanted a fusion blaster. That BS 5 is just too good not to use for reliably knocking out big targets. 

- But what about close-range shooting at infantry? That BS 5 is just too good not to use for reliably hitting with an AP2 plasma rifle to pick off Space Marines. 

So it was decided. For games using Codex: Tau my Commander would sport a missile pod, a fusion blaster and a plasma ri- wait a minute... 

As well as accidentally replicating the same weapons load as the bodyguards I also looked through Imperial Armour Volume 3 and noticed that I had also accidentally replicated the exact same weapons load used by Crisis Teams in Epic. And that was all the sign I needed to run with it. 

As well as a pair of bodyguards, Da'Anuk has also picked up a pair of shiny new Shield Drones, which represent the first fully metal components to appear in the army with their gloriously pointy shield generators and supersized aerials. The one on the right, 042, is also technically one of the first 40k models I ever owned, being built with the metal Shield Drone parts that came with the Stealthsuit Shas'Vre I got on my first ever GW visit when I was 8 (mated here to a stray giffle prize drone chassis). Like the commander they're assigned to, they feature advanced green optics instead of the standard red optics used by the rank and file, a feature to mark them out as specifically part of this unit along with their green ID sept markings. "You remember when I said I was going to make all this army's drones one communal pool? Aye Laihd!" 

Da'Anuk himself has also had a few modeling upgrades. The posing problem has been fixed, using the simple workaroud of switching from 'model walking off the base' to 'model walking onto the base', which is only slightly less cool and meta while being much more stable. The arms have also been pointed upwards to keep the model's centre of gravity as central as possible when heavy weapon components are fitted - it occurred to me that keeping them pointed downward would have probably kept the centre of gravity central and closer to the base, but I also wanted a bit more of a break from the older pose and the upwards arms look more dynamic and less simian. 

His Crisis Suit is also different to the rest of those in the army thus far, because it is a different make - where all the other battlesuits so far have been 2006 resculpts, this one was a 2001 original sculpt. Having decided I wanted as authentic a 3rd edition model as I could get for the Shas'O, I looked around and was fortunate enough to find a 2001 era Crisis Suit box going on eBay for a reasonable price (by eBay standards at least). The box turned out to be rather squashed, but the models within it were in great shape, and I was amazed to discover just how much of a glow-up the 2001 sculpt is over the later versions. Compared to the 2006 version, there are a few areas that are more detailed - most notably the ankles, which are less defined on the 2006 version in return for also being less fragile - and crucially the 2001 sculpt features much higher casting quality, with more seamless joins between parts and none of the 'pits' of sunken plastic that appear around the neck and jetpack hardpoints on the 2006 models and are notoriously irritating to fill in with greenstuff. 

But most dramatic of all is that he now has a choice of battlesuit head. Ever since I first got into the Tau I have always loved and admired the more symmetrical head antennae that the Farsight model has, even when I never really got that into Farsight the character, and for many years I longed to have a commander model with the same aerials, but without the Farsight Enclave logos, because for many years I was never fully comfortable with the asymmetry of the regular Crisis Suit head aerials. A couple of years ago I received a box of (mostly) Tau bitz as a reward for helping my friend out with a school fair stall they were running, and among the bitz contained were a set of metal Farsight model pieces including the two head aerials and the shield generator - only the Dawn Blade arm was missing. There was also a spare 2001 vintage Crisis Suit head. Since there was not enough pieces to make a complete Farsight model using a spare battlesuit kit, I decided it was a good chance to realise my childhood dream of a Tau commander with (almost) symmetrical head aerials. The catch however was that by this time the regular asymmetric aerials had grown on me and I now actually liked them a lot too, especially their mounting hubs that were more discrete than the giant earmuff-like disks the Farsight aerials sprouted from. So in classic Kakapo fashion I of course deadlocked on the decision and painted both head variants up, leaving them pinned to plug into the battlesuit body as I see fit. The Enclave logos were paved over with greenstuff and PVA glue in the process to produce a more Empire loyal look. 

Speaking of pins, unlike all the other Crisis Suits Da'Anuk's hardpoints are pinned rather than magnetised. This is so that they can accommodate the weight of big heavy metal components like these. 

While I am largely committed to using Codex: Tau in games wherever humanly possible, I ended up with a few metal special issue guns in a bitz bundle I received a few years back so two of them got painted up along with some special issue support systems, at the insistence of the Old Guard generals who argued that you never quite know when you might be in need of an AI-guided cluster bomb launcher or a quick-firing particle beam and demanded that the new commander model retain full special issue wargear compatibility before they agreed to lobby for funding for it. There is also a considerable chance I may end up putting them to use in the occasional game of late 4th edition 40k, because I am aware of at least one friend who is almost as passionate about the 4th edition Tyranid codex as I am about the 3rd edition Tau one, and since I have very few serious reservations about later 4th edition I am perfectly happy to oblige any taste for games with the 4th edition Tyranid book by pairing it against its natural 4th edition Tau adversary. 

This also meant that the Positional Relay I got with the first commander also finally received a coat of paint, because now I am Smort enough to know how 40k Reserves work and why it is valuable to always be able to have the Reserve you want most available on a 2+. But I also painted up a spare Command And Control Node too (again, the Old Guard generals demanded it), allowing me to completely replicate the old commander loadout if I wish. 

Even the base has had an overhaul. From the start of this revamp I knew I wanted a nice chunk of opposing wreckage on the base, and the bitz bags I had won at GW holiday events left me 3 choices. The first was the frontal plate of a Blood Angels Dreadnought - this was very tempting, but in the end I decided to save it for later use as an objective. The second was half a Carnifex head, which very nearly ended up going on the base because Tyranids do feature quite prominently in the army's backstory where their first major victory after being rebuilt was against Tyranids in a big cityfight, but I ultimately opted against it because it was from the newer Ballfex design and I like my Tyranids to be of the more menacing 3rd edition 2001 flavour. The final option was what I believe is the face plate from an Ork walker - now this had potential! The haphazard nature of Ork stuff means that parts from later models can often pass for 2000s items without too much trouble, Orks also feature prominently in this army's backstory (not least through the Wurrshuv's Revenge campaign from Advanced Tau Tactica) and most imporantly of all my main two prospective opponents for 3rd edition 40k games both have Ork armies. Conveniently, they also both have Ork armies that feature a lot of yellow, so deciding on a colour scheme for the debris was easy too, so I dutifully painted it up in dark metal and bright yellow and then attacked it with brown, grey and black drybrushes to create a scorched burn effect that I am utterly delighted with. 

All in all, this leaves me in a very exciting place. The most exciting part is that I no longer have to paint any more Battlesuits! Not for a long, long, long time at least. There will be more in the future, but the infernal things are such a massive drain on my time and joy that they have now plummeted straight to the bottom of my painting que, past even horses. This is unlikely to make painting them any less of a chore, but it will ensure that I at least have a bunch of interesting stuff to play games with in the mean time. 

And on that note, it also leaves me with not just my first 1000 points of new Tau army, but in fact my first 1100 points. 

HQ 

Shas'O'T'au Kais'Ka'Eoro'Da'Anuk: Shas'O in XV8 Crisis Battlesuit with plasma rifle, missile pod, fusion blaster, hard-wired multi-tracker, hard-wired blacksun filter, hard-wired drone controller and 2 Shield Drones - 162 pts 

Green Team: 2 Shas'vre Bodyguards in XV8 Crisis Battlesuits with hard-wired target lock, plasma rifle, fusion blaster and missile pod, Bonded - 188 pts 

Elites 

Gold Team: Shas'vre in XV8 Crisis Battlesuit with hard-wired blacksun filter, plasma rifle, fusion blaster and missile pod, 2 Shas'ui in XV8 Crisis Battlesuits with flamer, plasma rifle and fusion blaster, Bonded - 223 pts 

Troops 

Fire Warrior Team Kais: Shas'ui with pulse rifle, markerlight, hard-wired multi-tracker, photon grenades and EMP grenades, 4 Shas'la with pulse carbines, photon grenades and EMP grenades, 7 Shas'la with pulse rifles, photon grenades and EMP grenades, Bonded - 205 pts 

Fire Warrior Team Lar: Shas'ui with pulse carbine, markerlight, hard-wired multi-tracker, photon grenades and EMP grenades, 2 Shas'la with pulse carbines, photon grenades and EMP grenades, 9 Shas'la with pulse rifles, photon grenades and EMP grenades, Bonded - 205 pts 

Fast Attack 

Gun Drone Squadron: 8 Gun Drones - 96 pts 

Provisions 

Laura's Roadside Inn Breakfast Order: 15 Big Kiwi Breakfasts, 15 Vegan Hash Brown Feasts, 30 Tropical Delight Smoothies - 10 pts 

Golden Bakery Special Order: 15 Sausage Rolls, 15 Vegetable Pies, 5 Red Powerade bottles, 5 Blue Powerade bottles, 5 Mango Green G-Force bottles, 20 1.5 Litre Pump water bottles - 4 pts

King Coral Takeaways Special Order: 2 $40 Fish and Chip specials with extra crabsticks and extra potato fritters, 1 $30 Fish and Chip special with extra crabsticks and extra potato fritters, 4 1.5 litre bottles of Vanilla Coke, 4 1.5 litre bottles of Coca-Cola, 5 1.5 litre bottles of L&P, 5 Lime Thick Boy Shakes, 5 Strawberry Thick Boy Shakes, 5 Vanilla Thick Boy Shakes -  6 pts 

Lone Star Dairy Purchase: 30 Large Chocolate Fish, 5 Strawberry Coconut Shakes, 5 Lime Coconut Shakes, 5 Passionfruit Coconut Shakes - 1 pt

TOTAL: 1,079 pts

It is also conveniently exactly the full transport complement of a single Orca Dropship (except for the 2 Sheild Drones, but they can be strapped down where the Ethereal normally sits). 

Having looked through the archived files of the very first photos I ever took as a kid (using the family's very first ever digital camera no less), tragically few group shots of the old army have survived to the present. I have very vivid memories of taking an earlier one, but this one here is the oldest group shot I can find. 

According to the image tags, this picture was taken in early 2006, when I was 11, after I had been working on the Tau army for 4 years. 

And now, here are their successors, 17 years later. 

Now my army has a solid core of troops, first rate leadership, and wide range of units and weapons including infantry and jump infantry. With the main command and control structure in place it is time to start requisitioning some heavy equipment and get to grips with how the vehicle rules in 40k work...

Hell March

Something I've come to realise is that building a tabletop army is a lot like what I hear about raising a child - it involves lots of hard, tedious, thankless work, and by the end of it you want to smash something with a hammer, but there are those rare moments when you look at a finished unit that makes it all worth it in the end.

I had originally planned to update this thread last week, but never got a chance to. Having seen an opportunity to get at least a couple of games of not 8th in at stores before I'm prohibited (in GW stores at least - FLGSs may, perhaps, be slightly more flexible with using older rulesets), I've spent the last couple of weeks working like an Il-2 Shturmovik factory to get a legal force up and running.

This first meant a second troops choice, in this case my second Firewarrior team. I cannot stress just how much I love Firewarriors, and never want to see them change. For even longer than tabletop hobby, one of my favourite past-times has been Real Time Strategy computer games, and amongst them there is a special place in my heart for the Command and Conquer games (well, maybe not so much the more recent ones...), which were the first I ever played and remain some of my favourites to this day. A couple of years ago it occurred to me that this is an important part of my fondness for Firewarriors, as I can recognise their purpose instantly from those games - Firewarriors are the light infantry/rifle infantry/minigunners of the Tau, the basic soldier costing around $90-120 to make, and armed with a machine gun that's best against other infantry. They might be looked down upon, you might scoff at them, but when there's enough of them around they can chew through anything the enemy throws at them, and no matter what your plan is, whether you're conquering the entire map with the full tech tree or playing an infiltration mission where you have just a few guys and an engineer, they will always serve you well.

It's because of this that it always makes me sad when I see comments about wanting them to have stuff like organic special weapons.

Anyway, continuing the series on the proud and illustrious history of my armies, here is the second Firewarrior team of my first army.

While the first Firewarrior team was from a Firewarrior box, this one was included as part of the original 3rd edition Tau Battleforce, which I received as a Christmas present one year if memory serves. The 3rd edition Tau Battleforce was fantastic, and to this day is still the best one GW ever produced in my eyes. Not only did it provide you with a fully functioning army straight out of the box (and a fairly well-rounded one at that), it also provided you with something else that no other Tau army deal ever included - a set of Jungle Trees. I found the inclusion hilarious when I first looked at the back of the box in a GW store, giggling over the idea of this impressive list of formidable troops and weaponry followed by "And a set of Jungle Trees" which seemed like a classic case of Arson, Murder and Jaywalking humour, but to this day I still think it was a stroke of brilliance; not only would a new player buying the Battleforce get the nucleus of their new army, they would also get their first terrain piece. This alone is why I still consider the 3rd edition Battleforce boxes superior to all their equivalents released since.

As I already mentioned in the last post, my early experiments with basing ended up something of a disaster in my eyes, so I swore off basing models for a long time. This team comes from that period, and thus are glued straight onto unadorned bases. I thought I had included specialists in this team as well, but it seems that I either gave them totally new ones that I have since forgotten, or never applied the practice entirely this time around. Either way they still all retained their own individual personalities and characteristics, though many have been lost to the ages. It also represents a step up in painting, as I now started to experiment with actually painting the scanner displays and Tau Empire badges instead of simply leaving them black.

Together with the earlier team, this formed the core of my original Tau army, and served me well for many years. Now let's meet their successors.

Firewarrior team Lar represents the first painted Tau 40k models that I actually bought with my own money. The earlier Firewarriors that I've shown were all free of charge, as I won them as prizes in several giveaway raffles. There were several other units that I also won in this way, and these Free Men or 'Freebies' will be forming an elite core of my new Tau army. Thus, this new team represents the first mainline regular unit of the army, having come from a 6th edition Tau Empire Battleforce (which, though certainly a good deal, is still a pale shadow of what came before). Like Firewarrior team Kais, Firewarrior team Lar includes a full compliment of mission specialists, with the additional inclusion of a Designated Marksman (in Firewarrior team Kais the team's Scout is also the Designated Marksman, performing both roles). Again, conversion work was kept to a minimum, with the only real modifications (as opposed to just creative posing and assembly or crude greenstuff sculpting) being the inclusion of a markerlight and data-cables on the Shas'Ui and a spare helmet clipped to the Scout's backpack, created using the tried and tested method created by Sebastian Stuart and showcased both online and in White Dwarf #313 - incidentally the first White Dwarf magazine I ever owned, in case I never mentioned it before - with the only modification being to use a razor saw to remove the bulk of the head piece.

For the Shas'Ui I had originally planned to finally recreate the cool action pose I first created with the first team's Second so many years ago, after having finally cracked the secret behind it (a twist in the waist was the missing ingredient I had overlooked), but partway through assembling her I had a change of heart and instead decided to create an entirely new pose for her, which I suppose was only fitting given that this is a new army. It was an easy enough thing to do, with the only real change being to flip which way the pulse carbine was pointing. I find the end result just as impressive looking, and even cooler for being reminiscent of the Pathfinder artwork on pg. 2 of Codex: Tau which acted as some inspiration for it. The pose of original second team's Shas'Ui was recreated for Firewarrior team Lar's Team Second, positioning the two paired arms seperately. I think it ended up like that by accident in the original team (I remember I was trying to go for a generic action pose), but I decided to deliberately copy it this round after liking how it looked, with the arm positioning suggesting that he's reloading.

As much as I adore the Firewarrior models, I must admit that by this stage I was starting to get a bit sick of painting them. As I have learnt with working through over 64 Glade Guard models for my Wood Elves, even with amazing models you can still have too much of a good thing sometimes. Fortunately for me then, is that I won't need to paint up any more Firewarriors for the time being, as these two teams fulfil my minimum 2 troop requirements and minimum 1 Firewarrior team (which will always be a rule to me). But all armies need leaders, and so here is the first HQ choice of my new Tau army - my hard as nails Fireblade, Shas'nel'T'au Cal'Ka'Eoro.

While I always liked the idea of a Cadre Fireblade as an infantry leader for smaller scale low-cost games, I never liked the GW model as it was, especially its rather poorly sculpted face. Thus, over the years I began to work out a plan for how I would convert and modify the model to my own needs. The first step was to replace the bare head with a much cooler looking Firewarrior helmet, which also had the advantage of giving the model a communications aerial. Since the Firewarrior sprue doesn't come with any spare head antennas, I instead sourced one from one of the Pathfinder kits I obtained, and discovered to my delight that it was the perfect size once the extra bottom piece was snipped off. The size of the helmet meant I had to remove the back intake, which was unfortunate, but when you think about it it was a pretty silly feature anyway (either it was an intake, in which case it ran the risk of sucking the poor Shas'nel's hair into the backpack machinery, or it was an exhaust vent, in which case it would spew piping hot and possibly radioactive exhaust straight into the back of the unfortunate Shas'nel's head) so I suppose I can live without it. I experimented with simply reversing the vent instead, but ultimately it was still a poor fit, so it had to go. The new head also required a little bit of greenstuff work to the body to ensure a good seamless fit.

Interestingly, I decided to make use of a spare helmet left over from my earliest Firewarrior teams, as I loved the 'old meets new' symbolism it would produce. It was a shock to see how much lighter in colour GW plastic used to be.

The next step was the bonding knife, which I always thought looked dumb being waved around in the air. I decided to replace it with a grenade hand, to make it look like the Fireblade was throwing a photon grenade. This was much easier to achieve, as the knife hand is separate on the Fireblade sprue, so all I needed to do was saw off a spare grenade hand from a Firewarrior kit and glue it in place.

It was at this point that I added an old Firewarrior bonding knife to the back of the model, trimmed to fit with her cape. I am not fond of the chunky bonding knives on the newer Tau models, much preferring the elegant slender bonding knives in the original Firewarrior kit, and so I will be using those for all of the bonded infantry models in the army. I also noticed that the Fireblade model has no spare ammunition packs on it, which I thought was rather silly for a soldier, so I added a couple to her backpack as well, taken from the Pathfinder kit and cut up to fit. I also added some photon grenade packs to ensure that all of the wargear she's equipped with is represented on the model.

The next stage was the most ambitious, as I reposed her right leg. While I found the original Fireblade's pose to be adequate enough, I became increasingly enamoured with the idea of bending one leg down more to create more of an action pose, climbing forward to lead an attack or bracing against an obstacle in defence. So it was that I cut up and reassembled the model's leg, reconstructing gaps with greenstuff. I had originally planned on reposing her other leg instead, reasoning that it would be easier to do as that one was a separate component, but after seeing that the right leg was already more forward I felt changing it would look more natural instead. I also planned to build up the base more to accommodate this changed pose,  but was pleasantly surprised to find that the base would already fit if it was simply reversed.

The final changes were the addition of the ubiquitous markerlight data-cables and removing most of the Tau iconography from the model. While I can appreciate that Fireblades encompass a more spiritual side to Fire Caste tradition, I've never liked the Sigil Spam that's crept its way into the post-2010 Tau models. It always seemed to undermine their nature as pragmatists in my eyes, especially the chest logos that, as is often the case, just seem to scream out 'shoot me here'. So it was then that I carefully sliced off all of the Tau Empire logos on the Fireblade model except the shoulder guard badge, which should be more than enough to stir martial pride. Keen-eyed readers may also have noticed that I've been shaving off and greenstuffing over the Tau logos on the infantry markerlights for similar reasons (and because I like the more utilitarian unmarked look better).

I painted up Cal'Ka in much the same way as I had originally envisioned, with the main details distinguishing her from the regular Firewarrior colour scheme being the use of advanced green optics and green markings to show her status as a commander. The only real deviation from my original plan was with the cape. From the start I wanted it to be double sided, as I had grown to dislike the all-white cape on the GW studio model - I can understand it's a cultural thing, white being the (modern) sept colour of T'au, but again a giant sheet of bright white like that had a bit too much of a 'shoot me' feel to it for my tastes, so I instead settled on a compromise where the inside of the cape would be white while the outside would be a nice practical neutral tone. The difference came in the detail - I had originally intended to paint more green sept markings running along the edge of the cape's inside, but my attempt at layering white over a large scale didn't quite work out as well as I'd have liked, so I decided against further details out of fear it would make that side of the cape look too messy. The outside facing of the cape had the opposite problem - I had originally intended to paint a three-tone camouflage scheme on it, but I ended up being so pleased with how the olive drab base turned out that I didn't want to add anything more in case I spoiled it.

Despite all my years of planning, one thing I never gave much thought to was her base, and I was left somewhat unsure of how to handle the Tau details on it. In the end I decided to paint them up in the whites and reds of the new Vior'la GW studio scheme, drybrushing the main colours on to give a worn and tarnished appearance, as a subtle take-that to the new GW - clearly the new GW studio Tau have failed, and it's now up to my valiant Shas to mount a heroic rescue!

It wasn't until everything had dried and been varnished that I suddenly noticed the new pose now left the model unbalanced, with the lower barrel of the pulse rifle pushing her over to the side. Thinking fast, I came up with the elegant solution of simply gluing a spare 25mm round base to the underside of the scenic base, providing just the right amount of ground clearance and making the base look extra-special.

With a minimum legal army now up and running I have also taken it on its first couple of outings. The first was to a multi-player game at a friend's house (using one of my test models as a Fireblade proxy, as it was before I had finished painting Cal'Ka), which I sadly never took any pictures of because I only realised I had forgotten to bring my camera when I was on the train over to there. I ended up getting tabled in short order (mostly because one of the other players was packing an all-flying monstrous creature Tyranid list, and no-one else had any anti-air units), but I ended up winning the real victory when someone commented that my models were probably the best looking ones on the table.

The second outing was a foray to a FLGS nearby, which I triumphantly marched into on their late-night games day... only to find that the minimum points level for that night was 1000pts, which I don't even have half of. Thus I was left to simply spectate on the other games happening, although I did spy a rather nicely painted Sisters of Battle army in use. Since my models never left the transport case, I never took any photos here either (I was planning to do a quick shoot on an empty table once one of the games was finished, but they packed away all the scenery before I could so I decided to cut my losses and go home to enjoy some birthday chocolate).

One picture I do have, however, is the entire force so far all together, arranged in parade formation because it's the only way to fit them all onto my limited photography space.

There it is, the first core of my new Tau army, clocking in at just under 400 points with the 6th edition codex (if the Firewarriors are given EMP grenades).