Magnetising Tau

A while back I put a couple of posts about my son's necron army. Well, he has now moved away from the necron, which to be fair we only his because I didn't want them and they were the only non imperial army I had. Recently however, he has been exploring the universe via the wonders of YouTube and the likes and has settled on the Tau as his faction of choice. He has the codex and a number of models, however, as I'm buying them I suggested that maybe making his models as versatile as possible might be the best option, hence I have now spent several nights magnetising some of his models. 

Basic model ready for weapons

First up we have a stealth suit. This is only one of two that I will have to do but the other model hasn't been built yet. I had to actually buy me magnets for this one as the ones I had were to big, being 3mm wide. The new 2mm wide magnets are just the right size for this job and seem to work perfectly, providing enough force to hold the weapons in place.

With melta gun thing

With burst cannon.

The model and weapon might look a bit patchy, but that because they have been primed by my son, ready for painting. While these are nice models, the more time I spend around them the more I really don't like them, the shape and proportions of them just don't look right to me (more so that most 40k things anyway)

The next model I have been playing with is the Ghostkeel. Now, I haven't magnetised everything here and I haven't quite finished. The main body is still in two bits, the legs and body and while I did look at magnetising them, I decided to go for a pin down the centre, which you can see pointing up from the top of the legs. This was due to the fact that there was already a small locating lug and hole there already. I've increased the size of the pin so that it's more stable and the body won't fall off now.

Bare body

Now the fitting of these weapons did not go as smoothly as the stealth suits. I initially fitted a magnet to the bare arm and matching magnets in the weapons, however when I fitted the weapons they were very unstable and the ion blaster just fell off at the slightest movement. So I had to go back and fit a second magnet to the arm and weapons, which was a little bit tricky because I hadn't really left enough room for a second magnet and also because the second magnet kept wanting to migrate towards the first magnet. I did however manage to figure a way of getting the magnets to stay in place but it wasn't pretty and it still took several attempts to get right.

Fusion blaster big gun

Ion gun

To be honest, there still not perfect but they are now stable. The ion blaster, being the bigger of the two is still a little unstable and if you do knock it, even slightly, it will fall off. 

Another shot of the model, not actually sitting on its centre pin properly, you can see it's slightly lop sided.

Fusion gun and a more upright body

One of the nice details of the model, unfortunately the door has a habit of dropping open when you move the model, hopefully a coat or two of paint will provide enough friction to keep it closed 

I still have another stealth suit and the shoulder weapons of the Ghostkeel to do before magnets are finished, but so far so good.
 

Latest balance update

 As seems fairly common at the moment, there has been a small break in postings on here. There are various reasons for this, firstly we've all been down with COVID, which put a bit of a dampener on the school holidays. Luckily none of use were badly affected, just cold like symptoms and tiredness. Secondly, and this one is entirely my fault, I've got back in to playing PUBG mobile again. This means that a lot of my free time has been taken up by messing around in games, rather than spending the time writing on here. I need to get back to writing on here more, as I have half a dozen or more posts sat in my draft folder ready to write, including my army group pictures that I said I would publish ages ago. Anyway, back to the main point of the posts, the new updates.

There have been a couple of key updates and a couple more less important by still worthwhile updates. I will note here that this is the first draft of the update and does not include the updates regarding the scions and "hammer of the Emperor". Talking of which, here it is;

Now there are actually two new updates in here but I'll deal with hammer of the Emperor first. This is a pretty significant update and a huge boost for the guard as it increases our wound pool quite a bit, by a third actually. Most of the time were hitting on 4's, so making 6's auto wound means a third of our shots are auto wounding, which is huge for things like lasguns with there puny S3 shots. There have been many time I have pummeled an enemy unit with shots, hitting significantly more than I had any right to, only to fail almost every 5+ wounding roll. For things like battle cannons it's less important but still very welcome. The main downside to this is that Militarum Tempestus units are excluded from the rule. The was some discussion about it to start with but GW very quickly came out and said, no, they aren't included in this rule. Good that they were quick with the update, bad they didn't included them. 

The second update on the list above it at the bottom and concerns infantry squads. They have gone up in points again, to a total of 60, from 55 (originally they were only 50 points) but, and it's a big but, all upgrades are now free. This means that for me pretty much every squad in every army has dropped points, in my Hjaltland LI it's a total of 80 points dropped from the list but it should have been closer to 120 as I haven't included the vox casters that are actually modelled on some of the guys in my points. I can see what will happen now though, there will be a flood of heavy and special weapons in to the squads, most likely plasma and lascannons or missile launchers plus plasma pistols and power swords on the sgts, because why not! This will make the fire power output increase and tied with the 6's auto wound could make infantry squads a force to content with!

The last change to this update brings is to artillery or indirect fire weapons. Now in the guard we like our artillery so the little addendum on the end here is very welcome.  This rule takes us back a few edition to the BS modifier for firing indirect, as well as adding to the targets saving throw but removing the guard from these restrictions is great and continues to give us an advantage in an area where we should quite rightly have an advantage. With the changes also added for power armour, this could have killed guard artillery almost completely. 

So these three changes, along with all the previous additions and changes mean that we are slowly crawling out from.our pit of despair and disappointment, which given the next bit of new we received just added to the nice little role the guard are on.

In addition to the balance update we got clarification on which supplements are still valid and which are not, I think in part spurred on by the saga with the leviathan supplement and the crusher stampede. Anyway, we now have confirmation that the psychic awakening book is still in effect, so scions still get there doctrines, relics, warlord traits and other bits and bobs and we still get to use tank aces and the like.

We also got confirmation that the Cadian supplement is still active. This is good because it's probably one of the key reasons we are able to hold our own as much as we can, which isn't very much at all but it's better then nothing. 

There is however a problem with all of this and it's the fact that with all these new rules and keeping the supplement going, it might be a while until we see our new codex. Now, we know that Knights are next followed by CSM, which will probably take us through to July time. Then there is just us and Daemons left, but that doesn't include the League's of Votann! So if you put them in before the guard, which is entirely possible, it could be September before we get a codex. However, there is something else that may give us a clue as to when we'll get our codex, baring in mind that 8ts only us and Daemons left why did they need to put "Valid until January 2023" on the supplement update? They are not going to be bringing any of this back in, so why did they need to say that? They maybe just trying to give us a time frame for when it will all disappear but some of it is supplements to current 9th edition codices and I assume will remain valid until a new codex comes out for those armies, which won't be by Jan 2023 and will therefore need a new update to remove the other items that are no longer valid, which is mostly guard stuff or stuff for codices we already know are coming out and so will be ammended when that happens. So why put Jan 2023? Is it because that's when the last codex that will effect this list will be released? And as such the latest that anything on this list will be updated is then? I really hope that it won't be that long until we get a new book but it really is starting to look that way!

Holiday plans

  So with being in stuck in the house for a week or more, I decided on a plan to get my Kill Zone Octarius terrain painted up. No this plan doesn't involve me painting much, one piece of terrain as it turns out, no, the plan involves getting the small people in the house to paint them. Now, the beauty of this plan is several fold. Firstly I don't have to paint the majority of them, secondly there is no wrong way to paint the terrain, so I don't have to worry about how its painted and lastly, it's keeping the kids entertained. 

We sprayed the terrain black with some cheap car spray paint, maybe not as completely as needed for main models but more than enough for basic terrain prices. 

The only issue was the uneven number of terrain pieces, so I've opted to paint up the oil storage, as it's the only odd piece and only singular type of terrain. 

In addition, we sprayed up two hellbrutes, one each for the kids to paint as well, again one each. The original one is for the young man and the modified one is for the young lady. 

I'll post up pictures when their finished with them but I'm taking a completely hands off approach so it will be interesting to see the results. That's if blogger eventually allows me to post this, as apparently it violated the guidelines, how I'm not sure but I'll keep trying to get this posted. 

Tasks completed

 So after 10 days on my “own” I have managed to get quite a few bits done, mostly the Quickshading and flocking of the remainder of my Imperial Guard forces. While this took several nights to get done, there were several dozen models to do after all, I didn’t actually take a single picture! Rather silly I know, I did mean to document my progress but once I got started I just carried on and by the time I had finished for the night I was too tired to think about taking pictures!

In addition to the guard forces I have also done the last of the completed kill teams, however I have not based them yet as I am still deciding on how to base them, either with green flock to match the rest of my models and enable them to field them as part of larger armies or base them to match my kill zones for the kill team boards. A couple of the teams are easy, as they don’t have full forces for 40k, such as the old school marine team and Gray Knights but the AdMech, Guard and Scions are a little harder to decide on. 

In addition to all this and a reason for the short post this week, is that I’m confined to barracks for the next seven to ten days, alongside my ten year old and three year old. We’re not sure the three year old has Covid or not (have you tried to test a three year old) but the snotty nose and cough would suggest he does. So far my wife and daughter have escaped. While I’m not to bad, I have got zero energy to do anything and generally feel rubbish and tired all do, the small two seem to just be carrying on as usual however! There will be some proper posts soon, with pictures but this is it for now.