Original Concept Tau
My original concept for a Tau force involved a great deal of tactical mobility, with some firepower as well. I planned to use a couple of more or less static firebases with Broadsides and FireWarriors as the base of the firepower. I then planned to use the mobility of Crisis Battlesuits and Piranhas to augment that firepower, allowing me to quickly alter the balance of power in an area of the battle. Being able to use 2/3 of my force against about 1/4 of the enemy would lead to quick, decisive combats and reduce the casualties that I would otherwise have lost. You can find a much lengthier discussion of my Original Concept Tau here.

Jumpy
After some initial experience playing with my new Tau units, I became enamored of the Jump, Shoot, Jump Mechanic, or JSJ. Most units have to be out from behind cover to attack the enemy, which means they can suffer return fire. With JSJ, you can be safely behind cover initially, jump out and shoot your target, then jump back safely behind cover again before your opponent can shoot. This means that only _very_ mobile units or those with indirect fire can shoot you. What's not to like? In the new concept that formed in my mind, I focused everything possible into JSJ or other methods that would keep my units almost completely safe from enemy fire. While this did cost me some firepower, I saw it as making up for it in terms of reducing my damage received to nearly zero. You can find a much lengthier discussion of my Jumpy Tau concept army here.

Here is a picture from the game where the Jumpy army concept really crystallized for me.

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Rain
Continuing along the same line of thinking as the concept behind Jumpy (which can be summed up by saying, "No Tagbacks!") I came up with the army concept of Rain. If JSJ is good, but it gets limited by the amount of terrain you have available, then being able to use more terrain is better. Hence the interest in longer range weaponry on JSJ models. After I played around with the concept for a little while, I realized just how much potential it had. Even though it doesn't do a huge amount of damage to power armor, it still does some and having a large number of mobile, twin-linked Autocannons means you wipe the floor with vehicles and do a pretty good number on light infantry as well. With the addition of some units that can damage power armor more reliably yet still stay safely out of sight, I became very excited about the Rain concept. You can find a much lengthier discussion of the Rain concept Tau army here.

Mobile Infantry
At about the time the Rain concept was forming in my head, there were a series of observations and discussions at Advanced Tau Tactica. The culmination of these discussions was the Mobile Infantry concept. Having firepower closer to a static gunline, but combined with some mobility and heavy survivability, Mobile Infantry takes the Tau in a new direction: aggressive maneuvering. Being able to move straight up the board in the face of the enemy and lay down serious firepower is something that is very appealing, particularly if you are used to more timid Tau that shrink away from the enemy or use their maneuvering to hide from the enemy. You can find a much lengthier discussion of my Mobile Infantry Tau concept army here.

Okay, so I've gone over each of the 4 divergent paths that I'd like to explore with my Tau. There are a couple of directions that I could take this. I could simply choose one and go that route, foregoing the rest. While that is the simplest solution, it would be very hard to pick one over the others. I have a great amount of interest and some emotional attachment to each of the armies and I think that if I did pick a single one, I would end up regretting it. In many ways this is something I wrestle with frequently, as I have far more concepts for armies than I have the time or money to actually do. Given the way that I've really felt a kinship with the Tau army as I've read and thought about them, I don't think I could really just do one army. This may end up something like my Tyranids, that have just continued to grow and evolve over time. While I don't want to invest as much time and money into the Tau as I have with the Tyranids (I can make at least 4 completly different Tyranid lists at over 1500 points each without re-using models.) I do think the Tau are an army that will stay with me and grow and change. That said, it'd be crazy to try to do 4 different armies at once! The sheer number of models would get to me and I'd never get any one of them complete.

One of the largest of my 4+ Tyranid armies.

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Instead of just choosing one army concept, I could pick one concept as the one that I will do first, with an eye toward doing the others once I've finished that one. The problem there again is that I want to try out my different options sooner rather than later. This may be something of a childish fantasy, but I'd like to be able to check out each of my concepts fairly quickly, rather than waiting for me to finish an entire army before I get to see what the next one is like.

My Helios Commander, who doesn't appear in _any_ of my army concepts!

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To build all 4 armies, I'd need 3 Commanders (2 toting Plasma Rifle and Missile Pod while the third is the highly protected O'Ninja with Shield Generator/Vectored retro thrusters/Plasma Rifle/Stim Injector.) I'd also need 24 Crisis battlesuits, 11 equipped with Plasma/Missile (FireKnife) and 13 equipped with Missile/Missile (Deathrain). I'd need 36 FireWarriors, with possibly some equipped with Carbines. To that, add 6 Piranhas, 3 Sniper Drone Teams and 9(!) Broadsides. That's a lot of stuff and a lot of money!

What I've got so far is 1 Commander that can act as a FireKnife and one with the wrong equipment. I've got 5 Crisis Suits equipped with Plasma and _Burst Cannon_ (hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time!) and 3 Piranhas and 2 Broadsides. Plus 12 FireWarriors. I've also recently assembled 9 more Crisis Battle suits, but they aren't equipped yet. That leaves me pretty far short of the goals I've listed above. At that rate, it'll take me years to finish these armies.

Well, that is sort of what I'll end up doing, but as I usually do, I've got a twist. I don't really want to collect 4 seperate Tau armies, and I also want to try out all the options fairly early on. Thus I plan all doing all 4 of them at the same time! Now, I know what you are thinking, "Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here!" It would be crazy to work on 4 armies at the same time. In fact, it would pretty much guarantee that I'd never finish any of them. That being said, I have a plan.

The first part of the plan involves the use of magnets to make the Crisis Battlesuits flexible so that I can use the same models for Fireknives and Deathrains, as well as subbing out a Fireknife commander for the O'Ninja. That by itself seriously cuts down on my requirements by 12 Crisis Suits. There's still a lot of work left to do, but I can squeeze my requirements even further without compromising the armies I want.

A Broadside with it's big gun.

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I'm also working on making some of my models be multiplatform models. Crisis suits and Broadsides are essentially the same, model-wise except that the Broadside exchanges the backpack and jets for a big gun. With mine, they don't even exchange the backpack, just the big gun. Through some creative use of magnets, I can set up some of my battlesuits to accept a big gun when necessary. I can also set up those same battlesuits to accept two smaller guns when I want to use them as Crisis Suits. That means that I need a total of 16 battlesuits that can act as Crisis suits or Broadsides as the case may call for. That neatly matches the various combinations of battlesuits in each of the 4 Divergent Paths. (The most intensive one, Rain, calls for 13 Deathrain-equipped battlesuits and 3 Broadsides, which comes to 16.)

I have recently picked up the models for the rest of the Crisis/Broadside Battlesuits and I'm getting them assembled. So what does that leave me with? I need 3 more Piranhas and 3 Sniper Drone Teams and 24 more FireWarriors. Since 2 of the 4 Divergent Paths require the Sniper Drone Teams, that will be my next purchase. The 3 extra Pirahnas are only required by 1 path (Original Concept) as are the 24 extra FireWarriors (Mobile Infantry,) so I can wait a little bit on them. The Sniper Drone Teams would allow me to fully field both the "Jumpy" and "Rain" variations on my Tau army. With the three Piranhas I could field my Original concept Tau, and with the extra 24 FireWarriors, I could field my Tau as Mobile Infantry.

While it's still going to be a lot of work, it's much more manageable now, and I think I can get it all done in a reasonable amount of time, which means I'll be able to play with it sooner. Which, after all, is what this is all about.

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