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Thanks! I try not to buy smoke alarms based on how I think they'll eventually look as terrain, but I must admit I think about it. : )

Getting my army lists done this weekend -

Tau Defenders will be Codex Tau Empire, no vehicles, no Kroot, no Vespid, plus Kiff and Gauthi

Relief force will be Codex Imperial Guard (the edition before the one I-Walker uses, it doesn't have orders and is more basic, which seems appropriate), with a few units from Codex Catachans (which is what my IG were originally based on), plus the Gu'vessa human auxiliaries. Obviously it is not a jungle, so they won't benefit from those rules, but they are good close range fighters so I think it will work OK.

Gauthi will need points. That's these guys:

url=https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/999996-.html][/url]


WS 2 BS 2, S 3, T 4, I 4, A 1 W1 Ld 8, Stubborn, FNP 5+, no armor. Equipped with a spear (strike first in assault), or Pulse Rifle.

While I should post pictures of my Ogren beat down team I got a bit heretical and started a Tau project. You know, for the greater good? Only

Forgeworld, their is a hair in my Barracuda.....


Hope that's a beard hair, or at least chest hair. Though it is a beautiful kit.



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As a side note, not sure how the pilot is situated in this thin hull. Could be sitting or laying down.

I look forward to seeing how the Ogyrn turned out!

Barracuda, huh? The Tau may be able to contest the air after all!

I was thinking of scenarios, and the lack of Tau air transport kinda sucks.

I *have* vaguely considered scratch building something vaguely like a Manta. : )

Definitely hoping for beard/chest hair!

The Gauthi look cool, though I thought they were from a galaxy far far away... maybe they’re what the Tyranids are running away from?

 Briancj wrote:
I was thinking of scenarios, and the lack of Tau air transport kinda sucks.

Well the Barracuda could help with that however one of anything ( I know this well ) tends to just become a big target however the Barracuda rules for 7th Ed and previous editions are crazy good. It also seems like the Tau skimmers can operate at altitude, much like how Waveserpents can technically break orbit but isn't a flyer.


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gobert wrote:
Definitely hoping for beard/chest hair!

The Gauthi look cool, though I thought they were from a galaxy far far away... maybe they’re what the Tyranids are running away from?

Well as I said, it is a sexy kit.....
It's like a flap jack though.

Here's some stuff that got painted/built.

First I've finished cool yet very strange tau guy.







Next a Tau Ceremonial thing. Currently displaying a hologram of Shas'bo Lo'Mash, Road warden of the Pyrehia Heights, treacherously slain by Imperial crash survivors as he sought to render them aid. Alas for Lo'Mash!
Though some say his "individuality" was never popular with the high command...



And a... uh... tau water cooler? Pill bottle + transfers = instant tau terrain!



Sentinels. These were the funnest things I've painted in a while. Very satisfying.





The Armsmen. Wonderful figures. So many interesting details. I wish I'd started from a white base coat, but the chance to take advantage of the base red plastic was too tempting. : (











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All Insurgency's models, except the terrain of course.


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I-Walker and I got together to play some battle fleet gothic so we wouldn't embarrass ourself before the mighty Admiral Brian CJ next week. Knowing our ships and maybe some of the rules couldn't hurt. : ) The scenarios were set in the run up to the invasion and used mostly ships appearing in the space station assault.

Scorpion Nebula, T-28 Days. Tasked with neutralizing a Tau listening post to allow the fleet to get closer before detection, the Toujours L'Audace (Counts as Indolator - that's a change in the Order of Battle) and Bonhomme Deth O'Kay (Escort Carrier) hunt a Tau Messenger. Even if all they can do is drive it off, they will likely be passed off as simple pirates.





Their plan suffers a bit of bad luck - a Tau destroyer charged with delivering supplies arrives at the same moment. The two forces hunt each other through the clouds, each striving to deal a lethal blow. Bombers prove ineffective, but the tau can't seem to get a decisive hit.







Captain Jean Dan'gebwae finally destroys the Tau destroyer in a boarding action and the messenger is hunted down. Victory for the Imperium - the armada begins to slip through the nebula.

Thoughts: My Blast markers are nice, but a bit too large and too garish (I was going for "blossoms of fire"), so I think I will make some smaller more yellow ones to fill out the bulk of what's needed. Escorts have trouble killing other escorts it seems.

T-18 Days. The Scorpion Nebula was not, as it turned out, completely undefended. The kiff Hakkit Gouge was using it as a hunting ground, lured by generous Tau bounties for verified kills on imperial ships. Picking his moment he stalked advance elements of the Imperial fleet, the Armed transports Hostile, Hotspur, Hellion and Helios, escorted by cruisers Inflexible and Intolerable, the cobra squadron Grey Company, and the Bonhomme Deth'O'kay.





Hakkit (which translates in Kiff as "Master and God") Gouge launched assault boats, evading the imperium's exploratory torpedo salvos trying to flush him from the clouds with ease. His Kiff boarders blew the locks, swarmed aboard in a frothing horde of vampyric weasels and detonated the Hostile's drives almost before the crew could react. The 25th Diving Eagles companies would take no part in the second Taros war.

Emboldened, Gouge lunged from the cover of the denser dust clouds, pausing only to re-arm his Rider Boats. He tore through the center of the imperial fleet, destroying two Cobras with boarding attacks and damaging Intolerable before vanishing into the clouds again.



Turning almost leisurely after the Hotspur, he grapples the fleeing transport under cover of the clouds. All the convoy can do is flee at top speed and listen for the detonation of the ship... ...but this time the kiff are met by hastily armed and mustered Imperial guard veterans who not only repel the attack but counter attack onto the Hakkit Gouge (Kiff ships have no name but that of their captain), damaging it and causing the Hakkitt to reconsider and flee the battlefield in the usual Kiff fashion!



Victory to the Imperium! The battle could have changed the path of the invasion - except that Gouge didn't report what he'd learned until he negotiated more money.... ....just as the Quasimodo rammed its target and it was too late.

Thoughts: Ok, Dark Eldar (what the kiff count as) are pretty bad ass, though obviously you need to be super careful, and it probably helps to have nebulas to hide in. Boarding is super risky, and that +1 to the enemy from special orders hurts. Fighters have a really hard time intercepting anything at close range. The extra speed on the Armed Transports is REALLY helpful.

Nice work.

I would call the Tau with all the add-on bits their version of the trading cast (was that the Water Cast?).

Pill bottle + transfers = instant tau terrain...for the table top I hope it has sand inside it for weight or it will be knocked over and rolling away with a single errant dice.

Cheers,

CB

Water caste is a good call - although he is carrying a pile of guns... ...to sell? The water caste are shown with round hats, so that fits.

We played one more game - an episode where, at some point in the past, Orks attempted to storm the defense of Taros. The tau defenses were not handicaped as they will be in the big game, but it was pretty ugly. Two ork cruisers, a frigate, a ramship, and two heavy transports were destroyed without ever getting anywhere near the station, at the cost of a tau light cruiser and an escort. The Manta waves were brutal, though it was mostly the escorts getting behind the orks that really walloped them. Plus the Peacemaker Railguns of course.

Tons of great, creative stuff on here, as always. And an impressive level of output. This is one of my favorite projects on here because of the throwback to the Taros campaign, the old rules, the eclectic mix of models, the terrain, battle reports, unique scenarios. It’s all here. And it feels fun and spontaneous. Great hobby inspiration.

Glad you're enjoying it! It does sometimes feel like living the dream, miniatures wise. A dream that involves a lot of work of course, but that is kind of like "real" life. I'm looking forward to easing back a little, since a complicated scenario and getting up to speed on Battle Fleet Gothic have taxed me, I must admit.

The boards are 95% done.

















I'm a little bit in mixed mind on these. I've been working towards these games for months, years if you count the general concept, and now that I'm done I'm sad that I wasn't able to do some of the details and pull off some of the things I wanted to. On the other hand, these are most likely one offs, never to be used again, so I limited the time I would put into them for sanity's sake.


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In particularly, I wasn't able to capture the geography of Taros as closely as I wanted, which was kind of the whole point, especially since Brian has an amazing desert planet map, which I hope to play on some day. I screwed up the scale on the oceans, but it *REALLY* doesn't make sense to go back and fix it.

The space station also isn't quite what I was hoping for. : ( Didn't finish enough MFD walls and details to really pull that off.

good enough is better than best. I look forward to this!

--Brian

It still looks serviceable for mini games in space.

Pictures are uploaded from the last battle, details soon!

In the Meantime, I finished the desert riders.

Cool desert riders. Where’s the funky chicken, they’re riding, come from?

Very nice kestrel.

Cheers,

CB

Arriving Air caste!




This has become my new favorite model. All of its weapons and most importantly landing gear are magnetizable. It bugs me that often it's a choice of gear up or gear down on a kit. Awsome from a role playing perspective. Downside? How the heck does the pilot fit in that squished pancake hull. It's like an F1 race car. Tight fit.

Probably lying down, or tilted incredibly far back. They do have long necks...

The desert riders look really cool kestral. I'm also very curious where those mounts came from

Mount and riders are from Privateer Press - I forget what they're called - some kind of auxiliary scout. He certainly is an interesting beast!

Where do you store all this, all of this is amazing. Where are the camouflaged cultists from?

The camo dudes are Kif from an english company. They are a little small, nominally 25mm, but I figure alien fighters can be small. The station uses parts from a couple different terrain sets and some cardboard/posterboard I've reused or thrown away.

Good to see this project is still as original and cinematic as ever! The Privateer rider is really interesting. And the fleet battle over the continent looks awesome with the lakes and the wisps of cloud. I can always count on getting some inspiration when I visit.

I really like the low orbit battle over Taros, very nice visuals over the land and sea. Like Riddle of Steel said, it's cool with the clouds.

kestrel,

That is quite the battle within a battle.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks folks! I do like little touches like the whispy clouds. I just wish the oceans had laid flatter and I had gotten the scale right. Oh well!

These guys will have t make an appearance at some point.

p


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I didn't get the line up perfectly when I built shoe shine Sam cause I couldn't find this particular Inquisitor.

Here is the complete report for the Battle of Dawnwater's Edge:






The Tau Defenders brace for the attack, imperial forces muster. Inside the space station the Tau deploy near the central zone with good lines of fire to the imperial entry points. The most capable defenders, the broadsides, are deployed to the hanger due to the better lines of sight and the large number of fliers expected.



Sniper Drones - always wanted these, so I made them out of regular drones and bits of flying base. They are commanded by a stealth suit with no jump pack, which seemed like a reasonable stand in. I could see the Rinn Va using surplus older suits that way.



Aun' Mord Rinn's hologram inspires the troops.



Minotaurs and Admech




Euclidean Starstriders and their Swank Chrome Rides.









Kiff lurk out of line of sight from the hanger.

Above the planet, the fleets collide. Startstriders advanced in the north, Minotaurs in the south. The Imperium moved in cautiously, destroying everything in their path, but allowing the Tau to rack up victory points steadily. The space marines wiped out the ground installations as they encountered them. The Tau mostly were only able to delay the imperium, with two notable exceptions. Hakkit Gauge lunged in from the south pole, and was able to break through the Admech escorts and destroy their heavy transport, forcing 500 points of admech to take to their shuttles. He was eventually driven off by space marine escorts. Ground based Tau Mantas were able to break through and destroy an imperial transport over Tarrokeen. The heaviest Tau ship, the merchant Red Cloud, attempted an orbital slingshot to outflank the imperium, but was too slow to do much, and ran into the same escorts who had driven off Gouge, and was quickly forced to disengage. The Defender escorts did a good job slinging missiles across the board until they ran out of ordinance.




















Still, at this point the Tau were well ahead on points despite their losses in space, having giving up almost no VPs and racked up a number. The Imperium needed to close in with the station, and was forced to take chances.


The Strike cruiser closed in on the rotating space station and was forced to take a hit from the massive railguns, which crippled her and damaged her engines. None the less, the combined fire of the Imperial forces knocked down the shields on the station, allowing terminators to get aboard and stop the hemorrhage of VPs! One squad teleported into the Tractor dome where they ran into non other than Station Commander Vre. They would be destroyed in a furious fire fight, but not before denying the Tau crucial VPs.



The other squad attacked the hanger and were able to make use of the Tau bunker to surive the game with some fancy footwork (and apparent inability of the Tau Broadsides to kill their own fortification!)












First to get aboard the station for the Rogue Traders was Jean-Dan Gbwe of the Toujours L'Audace, who had, as usual, managed to come through the battle unscathed somehow slipped through to dock.




Ogryn Getting the job done.... They were the first Imperial Guard on board, and despite being pinned by sniper drones, shot up, and occasionally assaulted, they advanced into the heart of the station.



Doom on swift wings for our valiant defenders.... The Admech from the destroyed transport arrived before most of the Minotaurs, which is a quirk of the scenario that should probably be fixed.









The heroic station commander, on fire but still fighting! He managed to clear the central dome to pick up a VP, but this was the high water mark for the Tau, the last VP they would score. Despite Auxiliaries riding the beanstalk and being flung into the battle, the Imperial forces were too numerous and too good at fighting in close quarters for the Tau. The Imperium turned the Semper Vultis around and began to bombard Tarokeen picking up more VPs. The Tau had nothing left in space to fight them and could only fight for each sector and try to stay alive to contest and hold onto their VP lead. The broadsides would repulse multiple assaults and hold their position until... ...well, you can see the picture. : ) A bizzare fight for the command center would eventually involve a sentil, growlers, firewarriors and Minotaurs - who would eventually sweep the area clean. The Tau had been using it as a central fire point, though not with much effect.





















Auxiliaries storm out of the agricultural dome loading hatch to try to save the heroic Shas'o!











Human and tau fighting together to the bitter end for the greater good! Or just hiding in a broom closet to contest, depending on your perspective....







In the end, the Imperium edged out the Tau by a handful of VPs, capturing the fortress!

Final Thoughts: Well, that was certainly a thing! Thanks to the guys for playing this crazy scenario. It all worked out well and was a humdinger of a battle.

Tactically, I should have used the gravity slingshot to try to preserve a few tau ships for the late game. A fewer, heavier hitting units might have served me better in the station compared to the many small units I went with, but it is hard to say.

Design wise I'm not sure about the "kinder, gentler" version of the scenario I went with where units on destroyed ships could go into reserves. If I had it to do over, I'd probably have units on destroyed ships take some damage, and instead of Tau getting deepstriking reinforcements have them enter through hatches (Brain's suggestion). I'd also put some or all of the Tau reinforcements on ships that entered late in the game, to keep the BFG action going. For a shorter, tighter game I think it would have worked fine for the Tau to have no reinforcements at all and Imperial units on destroyed ships to be simply lost. I also wouldn't start the VP accumulation for tau until a bit later, say turn 3 if playing under those rules.