A bit of background

As two of the other participants in ToFG are writing a bit of background for their armies. I thought it fitting that I do the same for my tau army, not to mention that it's entirely fluffy. So here is my attempt at creative writing.


O'Kunas watched carefully as the scenes of battle replayed on the viewer. As much as he told himself it was to gain tactical insight into his enemies, there was a slight sense of satisfaction in seeing the barbaric Orks and vermin Gue'la butchering each other in the ancient ruins of the previous human settlers of this planet. He wondered briefly what brought the humans back here after so long. Whatever it was they wouldn't succeed.
          There was a tense moment on the Tau stealth-ship when the Imperial Valkyrie had nearly crashed into the stealth shielded reconnaissance drone. However the humans remained ignorant of the Tau's presence.
         "Shas'O?" Enquired a respectful voice from the back of the command deck, "It seems the Gue'la and Orks are determined to kill each other. How do you wish to proceed?"
         "Their conflict will serve to sow confusion amongst the Gue'la forces, it will shadow our movements, allow us to strike hard and fast where they least expect it. Commander Shadowsun has ordered us to secure this planet within the next three months. We will succeed."
         O'Kunas turned to face his second "So El'Savon what news from the pathfinders teams to the south?"
         "They have engaged and destroyed a small Gue'la outpost, opening a small hole in the humans defensive grid. The Fio estimate that it will be several weeks before the Gue'la have the time and resources to rebuild."
          O'Kunas considered this for a few seconds. "That is our opportunity then, we will land a spearhead, take out whatever resistance remains. Our forces will then engage in hit and run attacks against both the Gue'la and Ork forces."
          "Would it not be more productive to allow our foes to destroy each other?"
          "I have considered this possibility, By my estimates both sides are fairly evenly matched, If we allow this conflict to continue we risk not being in the strongest position when their reinforcements arrive."
          "Very well Shas'O." Replied  El'Savon, He hesitated before asking his next question. "What of the marines? the ones that don't follow the humans corpse god?". 
          O'Kunas paused, the so called chaos marines presence was worrying. They were an unknown variable, their attacks seemed to lack any sort of military cohesion, appearing at random across the planet. How they had gotten onto the planet also remained a mystery. Their own ship was equipped with an advanced Cloaking Field and sensor technology which kept them hidden from the ork junker floating near the edge of the system and the Gue'la orbitals. However no sign of any chaos starship had been detected.
           "They are of no concern for the moment, we pursue our goals first. We force the humans to quit the planet, engaging and destroying the Orks as we encounter them. Once we have Established a strong military presence we deal with the chaos marines when their agenda becomes clear. El'Savon, you will lead the spearhead."
          "As you wish Shas'O, For the Tau'va"
          "For the Tau'va"

ToFG: No games and painting update

Well as you probably expected due to the lack of a battle report this weekend no gaming took place.
Have to head to the local GW see if I can get a game in there at some point.

Painting thus far this month hasn't really been going too well thus far. With the only day I have realy had off work been spent Christmas shopping. However in the little spare time I have had available. I have managed to assemble two devilfish, 12 firewarriors, 3 crisis suits and cleaned most of the mould marks off of the weapons and firewarriors. The Crisis suits have also had magnets glued into drilled recesses at certain points. All of these have also been undercoated and base coated. Hopefully when I start my holiday I'll be able to start painting proper.

Death Guard saturday

I have been having a look at the models I have available for this weekends game against death guard. After looking through the dex I think my best net against the plague marines are fireknife configured crisis suits. followed by an ion cannon armed hammerhead gunship.
so my list will consist of the following:
-ShasO plasma rifle, missile pod, multi traker, bonding knife, stimulant injector 127
-2xShas'ui plasma rifle, missile pod, drone controllers, 1 shield drones, 2 gun drones 154
-Shas'el cyclic ion blaster,missile pod,bonding knife, 2 gun drones 102
-2xShas'ui missile pod TL, fusion blaster, 110
-8 firewarriors teamleader, in fish with pods and multi tracker 185 (x2)
-Ion head,dis pods, multi tracker, burst cannons 130
total 993

I'm expecting the fireknifes to get one round of shooting in before they attract attention. The army is quite manoueverable and should cover 12" a turn quite easily. hopefully allowing me to deal wiith o.e elememt of the opposition at a time.

well thats the plan anyway. :-P

First ToFG game

This weekend should see my tau facing their first match. 1000 point game against my mates death guard.

I think to be fair to myself I am going to struggle in this game. With it taking on average 24 pulse rifle shots to kill a single plague marine. I am going to have to put my faith in fireknife crisis suits to get the job done. I think I may also have to get some path finders together to help with the to hit rolls.

Should be fun anyway.

ToFG: End of Month One

Well it has been a long old slog this month for ToFG, and I regret to say that at the end of the day.... I still couldn't find any sand to base the crisis suits with. So I'll leave whether my inability to but sand in the only weekend I've had off this month go against me.

Anyway, without further ado onto the photos:

Well now I let the judges decide my worth. Have at it guys

Firewarriors

Right then people, time for some more ToFG photos. This time as you can tell by the post heading, I will be showing some photos of my firewarriors.

Comment and constructive criticism more then welcome. Work on the battlesuits and drones continue. Hopefully be able to bring pictures of them on monday.

Magnetic Attraction..?

As some of you may know, for my ToFG army I'm constructing a Tau army. My original intention is to have magnets to hold weapons in place, due to the nauture of tau battlesuits and, when constructed, my ever evolving game-plan. I thought it would be nice to be able to switch the weapons.

Over the past few evenings I have constructed three battle suits each with 6 little magnets at strategic locations. This has proved a royale pain in the arse to do, the magnets are fidely and have a tendency to not stick to plastic with super glue. But an amazing ability to stick to me. Whats really annoying though is when you finally get one in place and then realise the polarity is wrong. Which has happened numerous times.

Oh well, least its done now, just got to paint the things (and four drones) in 5 days. Working 3 off them. 12 hour shifts. I'll guess a roughly 40% chance of it happening

ToFG month 2 painting list

For next month. I shall be painting.

2xdevilfish approx 200points
10xfirewarriors approx 120 points
3xcrisis suits approx 150 points
1xbroadside approx 90 points

List in on time was the easy bit. :-)

Apocalypse

Last saturday I had a 5000 point apocalypse game against Ginge. Black Templars and titans vs Imperial guard.

I had written my army list based around an anti tank force. Knowing Ginge owns quite a few baneblades and variants (about 6). I decided the heavy hitters have to come out:

My Army:

Reaver titan (bols variant rules)
Warhound titan

Helbretch
Terminator chaplain
2 x Landraider crusaders
2 x Rhinos
2 x Multimelta dreads in pods
Dreadnought
Terminator assault squad
Emperors champion
Terminator Squad with assault cannons/tankhunters

3 x 10 man crusader squads
predator annaliator.
damocles rhino
6 man crusader squad

Rules:

• Troops can only claim objectives
• Anything can contest
• Troops have to be above 50% to claim
• Can attempt to seize the initiative

Deployment:
After sorting out the deployment lines, the black templars won the roll for table edge and also bidded the lowest for deployment time.

We played on a 6'x6' table

After deploying most of my army, with the exception of the two drop podding dreads. Ginge announced that he would be playing a guard infantry horde list. Darn.

We used paint pots as objective markers. Lacking anything to use as an objective at this point

Ginge had 5 callidus assassins which he used to move my transports into difficult terrain. Knowing my luck with difficult terrain tests (I tend to roll a lot of ones when making them).

Ginges army was literally a forest of men.

Turn 1:

As expected the rearmost landraider immobilised itself on the first difficult terrain tests, effectively crippling its effectiveness for the rest of the game. The rest of the difficult terrain tests were made with no problems. The rest of my army advanced relatively slowly pouring fire into the guard defence lines (3+ cover save is annoying). the titans turbo lasers wiping a couple of squads from existence (I'm not sure about this but I think the turbo lasers remove the barricades but we forgot if that is the case).

The heavy firepower took a heavy toll on the guardsmen. it was like a drop in the ocean though

The guardsmens return fire wasn't as effective as ginge would like. The most effective shots immobilised 1 rhino and destroyed the second one. Of great amusement was the two primaris pyschers (spelling?) both rolling double 6 for their perils of the warp test, leading to them both promptly being shot by commissars. It's for their own good though :-P

Turn 2:

The templars steadily move forward hosing down waves of guardsmen

On my second turn my army moved forward hosing down swathes of guardsmen. The titans continued to pour fire into the massed ranks causing horrific casualties.

High note: Yarrick was cut down due to fearless wounds when his squad was massacred.

On the guard second turn numerous callidus assassins and psyker battle squads turn up. Ginges (admittedly brilliant) idea of using the PBS to reduce my leadership to 2 then hit me with the flamer template gun of the callidus (meaning 2s to kill). Combined with the callidus subsequent charge more or less wiped out one squad of templars and the terminators, the third smaller squad of templars luckily weren't effected by the PBS but were still charged by a callidus, the lone surviving marine and callidus spent the next three combat phases trading blows in an epic show of ineptitude on both parts. Yarrick stood up again and charged my 6 remaining marines from the other squad. Killing 3 of them.

Over the following turns the templars continued to waste guardsmen by the bucket load, while ginge was more surgically taking out anything I had left to claim objectives. The straken bomb was dropped off of the green valkyrie wiping out the remaining squad of black templars with the help of marbos demo charge. They were subsequently taken out by the reavers turbo laser.

On the final turn the heavy weapons squad near the dead valkyrie (green) claimed one objective, while the other valkyrie positioned itself to drop off the embarked convict squad in the event of another turn.

Looking at the remains of ginges' army; I valkyrie with penal troopers, 1 lascannon and a lone assassin. In comparison to my 2 dreads, drop pods, four terminators, (immobilised) landraider, predator annaliator, (immobilised) damocles rhino, and two titans. i was clearly in the stronger position.

Despite this ginge still lived to claim the objective.

All in all a good, and different, game. Congratulations to ginge for the win.

Shinier

Look what forgeworld have just released. Would buy some however the burst cannons put me off. Burst cannons and twin linked heavy flamer would be nice though.

Ooohhh ...Shiney..

Having recently received £20 of GW vouchers for my birthday from my lovely sister (thanks Caroline!) and with the other money I was given. I decided to take advantage of the Games-workshops on-line stores free delivery for this month.
To that effect I have ordered the following:
-1 Blister pack of pathfinders with rail rifles
-1 Devilfish transport
-1 squad of firewarriors
-1 Hammerhead

So can anyone guess what I'm going to be painting for the next month of tofg?

This leaves me with not an awful lot left to buy for my tau, the one danger I have is rumours of the new dex being around march time. Bet they release all the cool new models the month after we finish tofg. joy!

Decisions Decisions

Look what I got for my birthday. An amzing present from my lovely girlfriend. I get the feeling that this is going to have an unfortunate impact on this months painting however. That is until my girlfriend gets addicted and I can't get access to my xbox.

At least I managed to basecoat 11 firewarriors at the weekend, so all is not lost yet.

Tau Hammerhead

Well as promised here are some photos of my hammerhead gunship. This is nearly completed, a few minor details need to be added here and there but nothing major.

I decided to go for the 'speckled' camouflage effect as I prefer this method to the block/stripped effect.

After seeing the orange stripes on Adams (of warhammer tau) vehicles I though this would look striking next to the green camo. Certainly more so then the blue I originally tried.

 

The Railgun is held in place by a magnet to allow easy swapping of weapons. So if the Ion cannon is worth taking in the next codex I can.

Email blogging

Apparantly I can update my blog via email. Seems pretty cool to me. So
of I'm on the move I can update my blog via email. Be useful for
battle reports.

TOFG; So far this month

So far this month I must admit I haven't made any real progress on my painting. With a high priority project at work taking 13 hours of my day for the next 9 days at least. This trend looks set to continue.
I have however managed to basecoat my hammerhead, I'll try to get some photos up of it as work progresses, although it would probably work out better to do this with my devilfish.

So not looking good so far

Tale of Four gamers November painting list

So my 500 points worth of Tau for the November stage of TOFG consists of the following:

1. Crisis Commander
2. Two bodyguards
3. 10 Firewarriors
4. Hammerhead

I may, depending on time paint another 2 firewarriors to have a legal army and a couple of gun drones to additional firepower (read ablative wounds) for my suits.

I figure that with this selection in the first month I won't get bored of painting too many of one thing at any time. It will also force me to choose a colour scheme for the main components of my army; suits, vehicles and firewarriors.

My intention is to have variations of a theme for each different facet of the army, while keeping the same general colours on each, this will keep the army varied yet uniform. Also, it might help to test my painting skills.

See how it turns out eh?

In a competitive move and for something completely different my friend has decided on a tale of four gamers style competition.

Being as I have had boxes of Tau Stuff sitting unassembled and unloved in my cupboard for the last 12 months. I thought it was time to give a different army a go. Plus it'll also prove to some of my critics that I can paint colours other then black (templars).

This will also be a slight tactical challenge for me now. Given the Tau philosophy of war (play style) instead of charging towards the enemy shouting die at the top of my lungs, interactive warhammer, I'll now have to outmanoeuvre and outgun my opponent.

Here are the rules for the competition (I take no credit for writing them out as they are a direct copy and paste form This Blog )

"Here is a basic rundown with dates where they are known. Please get your 500 point starter lists to me by the 31st October.

Month 1 - 500 points by the 30th November. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Dec), 0 for unpainted.

Month 2 - 500 points by 31st December. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Jan), 0 for unpainted. Bonus 3 points available for getting a test game against someone (not necessarily a ToFG competitor, anyone will do. Get a couple of pics if possible.)

Month 3 - 500 points by 31st January. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Feb), 0 for unpainted. Also, will play a mini-league with each competitor playing each other competitor. League rankings will determine 5, 3, 2, and 1 points. This will take place late january (date TBC)... as such unpainted models from that months batch will be allowed (as it should take place before the deadline.) We will look to book the club for a Sunday to get the games in.

Month 4 - 500 points by 28th February. 5 points for on time, 3 points for late (7th Mar), 0 for unpainted. Bonus 2 points for modelling an objective marker. Further bonus 1 point for a further objective marker.

Month 5 - As much extra as you wish for Apoc. Legendary Units, Super Heavies, whatever you like. Deadline is the day of the apoc game, probably late March or early April (date TBC). There will be no points available for painting, but simply put if it isn't painted you can't use it. Any units dropped from earlier 500 point blocks can be put back in here. All forces will join our standing 2000 point armies. The sides will probably be Rich and I vs Chris and Ken (Chaos and Orks vs Guard and Tau makes most sense from a fluff point) but if anyone has any particular objections we can negotiate that later. Any difference in points will be covered by additional strategic assets for the poorer party. Scoring for this month will be 5 points for each person on the winning team. There will be an additional 5 points for the "Champion" of each team. This will be decided by completing a secret personal objective (so secret even their team mate isn't allowed to know!)

I believe these rules are as fair and clear as I can make them, but any questions either comment below or email/text me and we'll sort it out. I believe the armies will be the following, but feel free to correct me if you have a sudden change of heart.

Ginge - Orks
Chris - Imperial Guard
Me - Tau
Rich - Chaos Space Marines

Best of luck to all the competitors. And don't forget to have your first 500 point list to me by the 31st October."

Why So Serious

So just watched the Dark knight again, brilliant film. One of the few chances I’ve had to relax lately. So much work to do. With two people in my department and the one with the most experience on holiday. I now have to do a set of tests that I’ve never done before on a unit I don’t know that well.

Oh well, at least I get to come home and do report writing, Joy!!

Paintball

I spent today paintballing for my mates stag do. Was a fantastic day. Highlight of the day for me had to be winning the flag raising game within the first minute by sneaking up near the enemy base and raising the flag while they weren’t looking.

However things were a little onesided most of the time with our team being outnumbered near 2-1. we still won with 85-79 points despite the marshals giving copious bonus points to the opposition to keep things close.

Anyway got to go watch prison break now.

Compliance 3 Immunity

As anyone who uses this software for EMC testing knows it can be a royal pain in the arse to get up and running. from the writing of equipment drivers to the flowcharts of the EUT sequencer. Kudos to the people who wrote the software initially for making it so powerful and flexible. However it’s very flexibility can make it hard to use as even the most simple tasks such as monitoring a multi-meter can seem hard at first. So If anyone out there is struggling to get certain aspects of this software up and running they should contact teseq ;-P.

However, knowing that it can sometimes be time consuming to get some things up and running. I will be making anything I write freely available to anyone that wants it. Just leave a comment with an e-mail address.

My current list is:

• EUT Sequence for doing Mil-Std / DO160 modulation, selectable modulation. Dwell times entered in seconds. Note: the pulse modulation for Mil Std is achieved by reducing the drive level by 6dB then making the modulation depth of the square wave 99.9% using a marconi 2024 sig gen.
• Driver for stanford research DS345 function generator, currently just controlling the level and frequency of the sine wave, intended for use by me for CS101 style tests.
• User device driver for solartron 7150 plus for voltage measurements.
• User device driver for Kinetiq PPA power analyser to take Total KVA/ Voltage frequency / power factor and VRMS.

IQ Drop alert

Just had a mole removed from my forehead, not as painful as it sounds but just felt my IQ drop by a good ten points when it happened!

Kat makes it all better.

Impressions on the New Guard Codex

Well I managed to get my first taste of the new Imperial Guard codex today. Two games against my mate, both for the 2000 point value vs my black templars. First game was a Pitched battle set-up with a capture and control mission type. I managed to get the first turn with ginge failing to seize the initiative. My shooting in the first turn proved as devastating as always. My landraider crusader, terminator squad, predator annaliator and dreadnought succesfully immobilizing a chimera (Joy!!). The battle came to a bit of a standstill at the end of the fifth turn with ginge holding my objective and me on the cusp of holding his. With three terminators able to contest mine in the next turn and almost certainty of getting his (two difficult terrain tests of 4+ and a run move of four standing between me and minimum of a draw.

The terminators successfully made it within contesting distance of my objective gunning down a few guard then charging in to finish the rest of that squad off, leaving a lone man, an officer and a nearby squad in a chimera to try and shift three terminators in ginges following turns. Unfortunately my emporers champion and associated squad rolled a three for their difficult terrain test meaning they needed a 4" run to successfully claim ginges objective. Unfortunately my run moves were as lucky as my difficult terrain moves and i rolled a 1.

so My hopes rested on the terminators surviving two melta guns, 8 lasguns and a chimera turret. All three died to the lasguns. (it must be noted that my ability to roll ones at this point was much higher then 1 in six as the lasguns that saw off my terminators belonged to a squad who had been hit by a deathwind launcher earlier. Despite hitting the enitire squad, 5 ones on the 'to wound' roll didn't help). Needless to say the roll to see if there was a 7th turn was also a one.

All in all a close game. Lessons learned: First rank fire, second rank fire hurts. even lasguns can be painful now. Vanquishers aren't that painful. They still only have a guard BS and no template. Straken hurts. Marbo can be quite nasty. i need to leave more troops near my objective. One squad of templars isn't quite enough.

Speacial mention has to go to my assault squad, that killed 1 squad of conscripts (that charged them with rending), two vanquishers and a hydra. Note 7 marines gave their lives in the destruction of these vehicles.

Which brings me on to my second game.pitched battle once again, type annaliation. First game of annaliation i've played against guard. although by coincidence we both had 15 kill points. Ginge won the first turn this time his 2 vanquishers trying to take out my predator and failing miserably, Of especially nasty was his pyscher battle squad reducing my terminators leadership to 0 thenshooting at them with almost every other weapon at his disposal. Despite this the terminators took no casualties (thankfully as even one casualty would have seen them fleeing off the board unless i rolled a double 1) This painted a big target on the chimera they were cowering in.

I won this game with i think 13 kill points to ginges 6. Special note must go out to the 10 storm troopers that bravely deepstriked into the building loosing half their number to another outbreak of ones. Although the tactic paid off killing 4 marines to rapid fire leaving one marine alone, before being turned into crispy fried trooper by my dreadnoughts heavy flamer. Once again Stracken proved to be a thorn in my side finishing off 3 terminators in combat then followed by a course of three tactical marines, then delivering the coup de grace by tearing apart a dreadnought that had the ternacity to charge him.

Despite these set backs along my back line the bulk of my force was tearing apart ginge main army towards his deployment zone.

i have to note though the Sly Marbo is a must have in a guard army. A positive steal at his points. An demo charge lobbed out of nowhere at a high BS means something valulable just died. Then ignore him at your peril. with melta bombs a AP 2 sniper pistol and a poisoned weapon in combat means he could prove to be a continuos thorn in your side unless you dig him out and kill him. More then makes back his points guareenteed.