Tau
After playing my Tyranid swarm army, I wanted a much smaller army to play and paint, but I wanted something different from my old DeathWing army. After playing around with a lot of army ideas, I finally chose the Tau.

The Crisis suits in the army offered me unprecedented mobility for my army. My original interest in the Tau was sparked by an opponent to my Tyranids that used Crisis and Broadside BattleSuits extensively, so it makes sense. That mobility gave me surprising resiliency, since I could damage the enemy, often without fear of reprisal.

Here is a picture of Scott's army, themed around the Appleseed anime.

In addition to wanting a smaller army (less pieces to move around) and a more tactical army (The swarm was entirely about getting into CC fast and tarpitting the enemy,) I also wanted a better painted army. I've been trying to improve my painting a bit at a time over the years. I wanted to do more detail work and experiment with a new technique. On the other hand, I know how impatient I get when I'm building an army, so I couldn't consider doing that much work to a large army. I needed to keep it as small as possible.

The main thing that really drew me to the army was the Crisis Suits, so I knew I'd need as many of them as possible. Their mobility would allow me to concentrate a great deal of firepower exactly where I needed it. To give solid antivehicle firepower and keep with the mobile gunsuit theme, I added a bunch of Broadside suits as well. To add a little more firepower and mobility, I brought in a few Pirahna as well. FireWarriors were kind of a necessary afterthought. While they could hold my home objectives (this army was built in 4th edition) I did give them some Markerlights to help out the gunsuits.

My paint scheme for the Tau (based on the Bork'an Sept snow pattern) had more steps and more colors than any of my previous armies. I still wanted to make sure they were very "clean" in the painting, and I used bluelining to accent the figures. It was definitely a challenge to do, and combined with all my conversions (see below) the amount of work really tested my perseverance.

One of the things I liked about the Tau was their cool, high-tech look with rounded edges and fins. The standard Crisis Suits don't follow that look, however. They are very clunky and square and look more like Japanese Anime robots. I decided that I liked the look of the newer (XV25) stealth suits. In addition to looking better, they were also cheaper. After I bought a few, however, I realized that they were about 20% smaller than the standard Crisis Suits. I used some Apoxie Sculpt to make them taller and wider so that they were about the same size, but still had the look I was going for.

If you look closely, you can see the bands of Apoxie Sculpt I used under the feet and
between the torso and legs to make the suits taller, and also along the vertical split in
the torso to make it wider. I sculpted it into little rounded square blocks to make it blend
into the overall look better.

Broadsides have the same look as Crisis Suits, and I couldn't have that. In addition to making the XV25 suits look like Crisis Suits and Broadsides, I decided I wanted them to do double duty. While I could potentially field up to 15 Crisis Suits and 9 Broadsides, I really didn't want to have to have 24 of them, but I still wanted to have the option to field the max of either, plus a few extra. I decided to magnetize them, so that a number of them could be either a Crisis or a Broadside battlesuit. The magnetization also gives me the option of changing out weaponry, so I can adjust the loadout of my suits depending on what I need them to do.

Playing a very mobile army that revolves around shooting and staying _out_ of combat was a very welcome and interesting break from my Tyranids as well. It did pose an interesting issue: given that I generally moved forward during my movement phase and back during my assault phase, my batrep pictures looked extremely static. Since I didn't want to take a bunch of extra pictures, I just had to put up with it. When my army did move, however, it looked quite dramatic, as the bulk of my army could move 12" per turn.

I had designed my army around the idea of jumping out of cover, shooting the enemy, then jumping back into cover to avoid damage. I hadn't realized just how well it would work until I tried a few games. (It works way better under 4th edition rules than 5th, but it does still work.) I won some rather lopsided victories, but I noticed a problem. The portion of my army that could do the Jump-Shoot-Jump dance did it so well that the rest of the army was the only real target and often got creamed. I then started further minimizing the FireWarriors and hiding them in or behind terrain at extreme range. I actually added more Broadsides (to make them less vulnerable) but still kept them in cover at extreme range. (Having a 72" range weapon means never having to say you are sorry!)

A pic from a combat patrol tournament. I was facing a true Orky horde with my
few, proud Crisis battlesuits. True to their nature, they whittled the Orks down,
falling back laterally and eventually even getting behind the greenskins. His list
featured 60 models, mine had 10. Win for the Greater Good.

The army currently stands at a crossroads. The first choice is what to do with the FireWarriors. In 5th edition, they are the only ones in the army that can actually claim objectives. I can either use more FireWarriors and use them aggressively to claim objectives, or I can keep them minimized and protected while relying on my mobile firepower to wipe out my opponent's Troops choices. The second choice involves the loadout of said mobile firepower. With the increasing availability of cover saves, the heavy use of Plasma Weaponry and other low-AP weaponry may be less effective now than having high volume of fire. AP5 weaponry doesn't care about cover saves.

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