6th Edition Tau

Firstly i'd like to get the following out of the way; Much to my dispair the XV88 railguns have been reduced to a pitiful S8, i will admit to a little nerd rage over this on Saturday evening, but once i realised that 'what is taken is also given' i calmed down a bit. The XV88 suit had been a mainstay of my Tau lists since i started collecting Tau 7 years ago. i loved my XV88s, and they returned that love by reliably killing everything that they pointed at. But in return that are very cheap, still very killy and now can get skyfire. Was S10 AP1 overpowered on an infantry model? especially when you could potentially have 9 of them (and i did use lists with 9 broadsides), does that mean that infantry based Las cannons are over powered? Part of my frustration at the XV88 reconfiguration (i wont call it a nerf) comes from where i normally play 40K due to the <750 pts per game rule. There is usually 1 game type, its called "can you kill a landraider?". Before Saturday the answer was always yes. Now no so much so. I think the reasoning from GW is to improve the survivablilty of AV14, because being impervious to everything lower than S9 wasnt survivable enough evidently... Now i got that off my chest. The new Tau codex has brought the Tau inline with the other 6th edition codexes, and this is no bad thing. I have alway maintained that even the ancient codex the Tau were competative even in the 6th editon, even with the outrageous points costs and all else that went along with the codex. you could punish most opponants with lots of high strength low AP fire, in the right hands this was devastating. So in short not much has changed, its just removed most of the flaws. So in the right hands the Tau are now the annhilatory force they always should have been. The short bit; Tau still suck at hand to hand combat, so what, they should do, thats not what we use the Tau for. The Tau are now the perect tool to troll all of those space marine players who use outrageous special characters and landraiders in low point games. My personal favourite was a recent 750pt game against Kaldor Draigo, Castellen Crow and some (not many) paladins and purifiers. The result; a sound tabling by turn 3 for my erstwhile foe, for no loss. Multitrackers are now standard on crisis suits, i had a little chuckle at this. But the smile was wiped of my face quickly when i relised that targetting arrays no longer exsist. So my dreams of BS4 crisis suits have been cruelly crushed. But if i was going to start thinking enough about it, i would probably draw to the conclusion that the a Tau army with BS4 crisis suits would mean those suits would be self sufficient, and not reliant on the synergies the Tau are supposed to use. Fear not, now is the time of the markerlight (take as many markerlights as you can get in every list, you should have been doing this anyway) you can increase BS by +1 as many times as you like (my personal mission over the coming weeks is to get my firewarriors up to BS 10 in a game...) you can for 2 marker tokens remove cover, completely. Before i got too excited about this i realised the average cover save was 5+ and thats how many tokens you'd need to achieve that effect, gone to ground scouts with camo cloaks in bolstered ruins? especially those nasty objective sitters, they just became ineffective. that's enough for now. I still need to digest most of it and if i were to do a full analysis it would be rather extensive.

CCIE LAB equipment

Here is my CCIE equipment list, bear in mind its for all 3 CCIE's. Routers: ----------------------------------------------- 1x 2610 router (64MB ram, 32MB flash) 2x 2621 routers (64MB ram, 32MB flash) IOS:c2600-ik2s-mz.121-27b.bin ----------------------------------------------- 3x 2610XM routers (128MB ram, 32MB flash) 1x 2621XM router (128MB ram, 32MB flash) 1x 2651XM router (128MB ram, 32MB flash) IOS:c2600-adventerprisek9-mz.124-25a.bin ----------------------------------------------- 2x 3725 routers (256MB ram, 128MB flash) IOS:c3725-adventerprisek9-mz.124-25d.bin ----------------------------------------------- 2x 1841 routers (128MB ram, 128MB flash) IOS: ----------------------------------------------- 1x UC520 router (1024MB ram, 1024MB flash, PVDM2 32) IOS:uc500-advipservicesk9-mz.124-22.YB8.bin ----------------------------------------------- 2x 7204 VXR routers NPE-400(512MB ram, 64MB flash) IOS:c7200-adventerprisek9-mz.150-1.M5.bin ------------------------------------------------ Switches: ------------------------------------------------ 1x 3350-48 EMI IOS:c3550-ipservicesk9-mz.122-44.SE6.bin ------------------------------------------------ 1x 3550-24 PWR IOS:c3550-ipservicesk9-mz.122-44.SE6.bin ------------------------------------------------ 2x 3750-24 IOS:c3725-adventerprisek9-mz.124-25d.bin ------------------------------------------------

CCIE Preperation

Not really a WH40k blog but here goes... "So, its time to embark on my CCIE." Those are not words a man utters lightly. Out of the 3 CCIE's i will be chasing which one to start with? R+S, is a good candidate, obviously. Voice, this is a good candiate because 90% of my work is in this sphere. Service provider, i'd love to do this one first but its of the least practical benefit. Lets start with the CCIE everyone starts with. Routing and Switching. what do i need? 1. a plan (2 month, 6 month, 12 month and finally 18 month plan) 2. equipment 4. complete CCIE written 5. book travel and accom 6. book practical 7. contingency for retesting

Here are some examples of my work.


Hive Tyrant, work in progress as painted by my son.

Grey Knights Librarian Corbett, From my Grey Knights brotherhood. Converted from a Fine cast librarian, with parts from a grey Knights terminator plastic kit. I added the Tilt shield, warding stave and wrist mounted stormbolter.

Librarian Corbett again, this time from the back, i just recently started putting the heads of various daemons on the bases. Corbett has the head of a plague bearer on his base.

Librarian Corbett and Grand Master Favian, 2 formidable Hq choices for my grey Knights Brotherhood.

Brother Iago, resplendant with dual Twin-linked autocannons, psybolts included of course.

In the beginning...

Hello fellow humans,

This blog is dedicated to all things 40k, with a slant on modelling and painting, as these are my first loves, playing 40k comes second to me (probably because I am rubbish at it).

But first let me tell you about myself, I have been playing 40k for over 2/3rds of my life. I first fell in love with 40k when I was given roguetrader as a Christmas present, I have my uncle to thank for that, in fairness he thought it was some kind of comic annual, along the lines of 2000 AD (which I am still a fan of).

I am a massive geek, and I lap up every bit of sci fi I can get my hands on. I read\watch most things in the geek demographic (apart from doctor who, I can't seem to get away with that)so it seemed natural that I'd get into 40k.

I was never any good at painting as a child\teenager, which was in no small part due to the fact I have little or no artistic talent, I never undercoated and I had no technical skills to speak of. Things are a little different now, and I can do a good impression of a miniature painter, in no means perfect, I still have very long way to go...

Things that helped me improve over the years;

1. Undercoat your models, I cannot overstate this enough. Yes it expensive, but it's worth it. You will never regret buying undercoat. Undercoat gives a surface for the paint to adhere to, and it helps give contrast when dry brushing and highlighting.

2. Paints, get them all. No really. Foundations, colours, washes, even varnish. They last for ages, my favourite wash Gryphonne sepia, has lasted for 2 years now, and use it a lot, I refer to it as "the talent replacer" because of it versatility. Some spare change? Buy paint!

3. Dry brushing us your friend, no talent required, great results in no time at all, practice dry brushing, and learn to do It properly, my whole painting technique can be summed up as; dry bush, wash, highlight, wash, highlight again. Of these parts, dry brushing s the most important.

Next post will be some pictures, with examples.