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Hi guys, forum newbie here (so be nice).  I was wondering how easy it is to assemble a tau army since I'm thinking about changing from Chaos to tau.  I've looked at the models and they don't seem too bad except for their ankles which seem awfully thin and frail to support the rest of the model.  The firewarrior's models look like they won't have much of a problem but I'm concerned about the broadside and crisis suits.  Will the models keep breaking and do they need to be reinforced?  Also how easy is it to assemble the vehicles?

Your observation about the battlesuits is correct.  The ankles are very weak if you pose them standing- especially for the Broadsides as they are heavier.  But the suits are all posable so I usually make them kneeling on a piece of some terrain that I mount to their base or some other dynamic looking pose.  It also never hurts to put a pin through the foot and up into the leg.  You do have to drill carefully though, otherwise you will massacre the joint.

The vehicles go together pretty well in  my experience.  The fire warriors are fine- not difficult to assemble, but they are not very posable...

The Kroot are a bit of a pain in the a$$ though.  Mostly after they are assembled and you are playing them on the table.  The blades on their guns are always getting caught on things and tipping them over and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  But they are an attractive unit for the Tau so I use them extensively...

Don't be shy about starting a Tau force- they are fun to play and always a challenge.

Not as easy as Imperial Guard, Better than Space Marines (especially that Land Speeder kit..... bleh!)

Now to be more specific.....

The body of the Devilfish you need to really take your time, add ONE part at a time and let it dry sufficiently. Sometimes the upper and lower bodies get a bit twisted, and need some tape/clamping to hold it in place while it dries. Its not bad though, just need to be careful and take your time.

The bodies for the crisis suits also sometimes need some clamping to put together. The ankles are VERY weak, so I'd suggest using the clear rod or some music wire to support them even if you have their feet on the ground. Just put it in the hole in the back for the flying mount. I'd also suggest pinning the ball-joints for the arms, as they can break off in time. Same with the railguns on the shoulders of the Broadside. Using magnets, you can make the suits really slick to swap weapons/gear on the fly, pretty fun to do.

I agree fully with Beast on the figures, they all go together just fine. Kroot get stuck on everything, almost as bad as Dark Eldar in that regard.

Never done a Pirannha or the new stealth suits yet, can't comment on them.

There are only two points of note.

1. Weak Crisis suit ankles, as mentioned above. Its worth mentioning a third time, you MUST pin them. I got mine second hand, all the assembled Crisis suits broke at the ankles, every single one.

2. Devilfish rear seating/landing gear. There is nothing solid supporting the rear landing gear, it doesnt rest on something other than a piece of plastic glued on the underside. Unless you reinforce this the seaqt is liable to come undone and rattle around inside the tank. Not a problem if your rear door opens, but as it doesnt close properly and stay closed I glued mine.

In my experience, the actual weak point of the Crisis Suit ankle isn't the joint, but rather the short "rod" that connects the calf to the ball of the ankle. That rod tends to break off right at the ball. It's actually not that fragile, but it's certainly more fragile than most any other plastic model.

Some posters are suggesting pinning. I'm not sure how that would be accomplished exactly... But replacing the shaft of the ankle entirely with a piece of brass rod, drilling out the ball and calf to fit, would probably be a good bet, though I'm not sure it'd be necessary or worth your time.

I have a bunch of Crisis suits, and only a few have had any problems. Since I didn't feel like killing myself over it, I just let a tiny bit of liquid cement wick into the break in the ankle, and it was as good as new. Done carefully, this won't even effect the paint.

Oh... I almost forgot...

If we're talking about weak points in models, and we're talking about Tau, there's nothing weaker and more irritating than flying bases. This effects any skimmer army, and Tau have quite a few skimmers.

If you want to be prepared for the inevitable, I suggest this:

As you assemble the Devilfish/Hammerhead, locate the hole in the bottom of the hull where the flying base will insert. Glue a block of styrene right on top of this hole. A big solid block, deep, wide, and well anchored inside. With that in place, you can drill out the hole a little wider and deeper, and then use a much more rugged brass or aluminum rod, with a lot more surface area to lean on.

I wish I'd done that on my Falcons. I was able to retrofit it to my Tau skimmers because their turrets weren't glued on, so I could get inside the body from there, but not so with the Falcons.

Hmm I suck at drilling so I'm considering scavenging a firewarrior model for it's elbow and knees and use those instead and just not use the ball joints at all. Course I need to get some Tau first.....

Less than 1/4 of my FW have arms that actually lined up with the torsos when holding onto their guns. Vast majority of them have their left arm barely attached at an edge of the shoulder joint, with a massive gap in there just covered over by the shoulder pad. I posted on here and response was about 50/50 that FW arms don't line up or they line up totally fine (or there are some torsos that are different, etc).

So FW are 'easy' to put together but that gap is maddening for me, but I don't want to GS that many armpits in. Crisis suits are ok for me, easy to saw through the joints and repose from the static 'blerg' pose. I enjoy the plastic stealths too, look great and descent to assemble.

- Salvage

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm vastly insulting your intelligence, but is it possible that you mixed up some of the arm sets? I assembled a trio of FWs from a box I bought way back (part of an abortive Tau army), and they all fit perfectly.

I tried different combos of arms and torsos, and none of them worked out any better. IIRC only the 'gun held to the side' arm set actually fit together ...

I'm not insulted, just pretty confused. I mean, Tau were marketed at 12 year olds and under (as far as I could tell ) but my FW just wouldn't match up.

- Salvage

I think I had the same problems with the FW arms. I'm not sure I was careful enough to match the arms up correctly. I used to cut everything off the sprue at once, then assemble, which leads to pieces getting mixed up. Arms matching up arms is pretty important with a lot of GW models.

Yeah, all the FW arms are pairs - they fit fine if you match each left and right arm, otherwise you may have problems.

Note that with the new Tau Codex - they actually recut the Crisis Suit sprue slightly. The newer Crisis suits have thicker ankles, which makes the foot much more secure.

Instead of the ankle going:

]=0

with a small "post" between the ball and the calf - it is more like:

] 0

with the "post thickened to the width of the ball. You lose a fractional amount of posability in return for a MUCH sturdier ankle.

The new ankles were found primarily in the Broadside and Commander boxes initially, but newer basic crisis suit boxes should have it too, by now (it was an "eliminate the existing supply" thing.)

RE: Fire warriors

Yeah - you gotta keep the guns with their arms - or they NEVER line up. Otherswise though - I start by attaching the "gun arm" first - and then attach the other later - it seems to work better for me that way...

Something else to consider, check out the articles here http://www.tauonline.org/ .