Those that read my review of Codex Tau Empire back in April will know that I was rather taken with the grey skinned bastards. So much so that I’m doing a little 1,000 point allies force to go with my two companies of Ultramarines. And those that read my review will also remember that I was rather taken with the Pathfinders. So it’s really little wonder then that I’ve got hold of a box and giving them the once over. For the greater good you understand…

Even before I read the Codex I was pleased when I heard that Pathfinders were going to be plastic as even when the Tau were first released the Pathfinders were a useful unit to have on the board, but the fact that they were metal and came in blisters of 3 and units of 6 meant that those that didn’t buy the big army box rather missed out. It was doubly true over the years metal models became increasingly expensive and the use of Pathfinders, especially with the introduction of railrifles, became more important.

The third iteration of the Codex has made at least one unit of Pathfinders a compulsory choice in all but name because they’re so damn good. Their options, especially the pulse accelerator drone (which increase pulse weapon range by 6″) means that although vulnerable in the open, they are a heavy hitting unit that can take on medium infantry as standard and then bring the pain on Terminators and the like with the handy addition of the aforementioned railrifles. To be fair the plastic models aren’t any cheaper than the metal ones were but you do get variety and lots of drones including the fooking massive recon drone. But more on that later.

So what’s in the box? Well two – which seems to be the norm these days – sprues that are crammed full of components.

I do have to hand it to the Games Workshop, although they’ve been pissing gamers off left, right and centre these last few months, they have really upped their game with getting the most out of the plastic. This arguably should make the models cheaper, but as I said – they piss people off. But I digress. The sprues are crammed with bits including some dudey pulse pistols, some pretty decent bare heads – at long bastard last – some spare pulse clips, bonding knives that don’t look lame and some other gubbins. Most importantly, you have enough bits to make a ten Tau squad armed with pulse carbines with bits enough to swap out three with railrifles or ionrifles or a combination of the two. So plenty of ptew ptew for your buck.

Although the fatigues on the legs are a little thin on detail and feel a bit more baggy than a recon unit would probably wear – and the poses are a bit shifty – the rest of the components are ace. The helmets have been refined and have improved comm aerials – just be careful trimming them free. All the weapons are crisp and the separate markerlights allows for the a degree of choice in how you build them. My small force doesn’t have them so the option of not sticking them on is good news for me. Although I suppose if you can be bothered and find magnets small enough you can make them removable.

Truth be told, the quality of the casting of the Pathfinders or the fidelity of the helmet antenna - especially compared to the Fire Warriors – or the quality of the weapons or the cool accessories, or the staggering lack of mould lines don’t steal the show. It’s the drones. They’re awesome. I mean. Awe. Some. The tits. The business. The dog hairy gonads. The recon drone is huge and may as well be Thunderbird 2 for all its whistles and bells including the pokeball grenade dispensers, a burst cannon and some nice detail. Plus the fact that you can mount it on a Devilfish is way cool.

But, importantly, it doesn’t feel like an after thought like accessories and ‘bonus’ often do. The only bummer is that, aside from the recon drone there’s only enough drone domes to make two drones. But if you’re not bothered about giving your fire warriors drones then you can make the set which does give your Pathfinders a pleasant amount of versatility.

The Pathfinder kit is one of the strongest unit boxes Games Workshop have done in a while. The arm poses coupled with enough accessories means that you’re knocking on the door of variety that the Space Marine tactical squad offers. Not quite mind you, but pretty close. But the sheer volume of cool shit makes up for it. And having the railrifles cast in lovely crisp plastic rather than metal just makes them as cool looking as the boltgun.

Throw in the fact that Pathfinders are frigging nails in the game and it’s pretty much an essential purchase if you’re collecting Tau. Unless you take a butt load of flyers, but that’s a story for another day.

Tau Pathfinders are available from Firestorm Games priced £18.

John Caboche of The First Expedition forum is running a Horus Heresy Weekender charity raffle to raise money for Swindon Children without a Diagnosis which is an extremely worthwhile and important cause to support. Because it’s for children for crying out loud.

The prize is a fully signed copy of the Imperial Truth. I shit thee not.

And all you have to do is bip over to the First Expedition donation page and pledge ten splendid shiny pounds. One (extremely) lucky winner will be drawn at random and win the book. But there’s also some brilliant consilation prizes too which are:

Two fully author signed and Forgeworld signed programmes donated by Black Library

A Horus Heresy Weekender backpack (donated by BL)

An event only Loyalist Legions Poster

An event only Traitor Legions Poster

So get over there, donate £10, bask in the warm glow of your beneficence and if you’re really lucky, you’ll get an awesome prize for your trouble.

As I chatted with Andrew and Jane my attention was drawn to a massive piece of plastic with a sign on it that said ‘Dreadball Arena available to pre-order’. I immediately turned to Neil of The Chaps who was patiently waiting for me to finish prattling. He too had spotted it and was wearing the same silly grin on his face that I had. I uttered one word:

‘Halves?’

Neil, having been gripped by Dreadball fever by playing games with me, had just spunked his last £50 on a set at the Mantic stand and so was just as excited at the prospect of (a) having our own Dreadball arena and (b) not having to pay for it until after pay-day.

So we placed our order and all we had to do was wait…

Last Thursday I got a text from my wife saying ‘You’ve had a MASSIVE box arrive in the post. What have you ordered NOW?!’ Needless to say I unperturbed by my wife’s scorn, being rather use to it by now, and hugely excited that the Arena had arrived in time for the game of Dreadball I had arranged with Neil the following night.

So, what do you get for your £25? Well…a lot of plastic… (Dreadball board and giant chocolate buttons not included)

The look of the thing is the perfect amount of sci-fi. The temptation would have been to do something overly complicated and a bit mental, but instead Amera has focussed on keeping it functional whilst still looking completely awesome. And the nice thing is that the detailing it does have means you can go as mental or not as you like with the paint job.

And speaking of paint jobs. As Neil and I got increasingly into the game we concluded that the only thing for it was to buy another arena and paint one up in my team colours – the Lark Industries Iron Men – and the other in his – the Halsey Tech Spartans. Needless to say there was much giddiness and searching on the interwebs for places that sold metallic spray paint.

I love how much excitement having the arena brings to the game. It just makes the game grander. Somehow more immersive and fun. I suspect the plastic is laced with magic.

It’s a solid bit of kit too. It’s vacuum formed plastic like all of Amera‘s stuff but the design and size means that you don’t feel like you have to be precious with it which is good, especially as were you to play a league it’d see a fair bit of use. The only thing to be careful of is choosing the correct spray. You’ll need something hard-wearing as lifting boards out and throwing dice against it will need to chipping otherwise. And, thinking about it, because of the material it’s made of, you can quite easily decorate it with LEDS or ambient lighting. Which would be way cool.

The tiers mean that you can put spare/dead models out-of-the-way as well as have you coach models looking eagerly on. As the range expands, or if you have particularly deep pockets, you can have you bleachers packed with crowds. Although if you look around you can probably find some models that suit.

My only grumble, and it’s not even a fault just more of an idea that we had during play, is that the arena could also do with being an aid to play in that middle of each side could have a recess to keep the deck of Dreadball cards and/or a tray to put your action tokens in as you use them. To be fair it would detract from the authenticity of the arena but it’d be very convenient.

I absolutely bloody love the arena. It’s a total non-essential but makes the game just better. You can’t help but get captivated by that stadium atmosphere. And amusingly enough my iPhone fit in the recess that’s meant to look like the Jumbovision which means that you can bust out some appropriate tunes whilst you play. It’s also light weight and easy to store whilst being tough enough to take the punishment of regular use. And considering all of that £25 is an absolute bargain.

Twenty-odd years later and to be honest, little has changed. The toys are just a bit more expensive and require assembly and painting.

Fatherhood has brought many challenges, and among them is having to keep to a much stricter personal spending limit for as long as we are a single-income family. I would never begrudge this state of affairs, but it certainly has made me aware of the importance off choosing what I spend my ‘pocket money’ on.

This might not have been so hard a few years ago, when I was only really aware of GW games, but now I am aware of other companies like Spartan, Privateer, Prodos, Mantic, Hawk, and so on. This means that there is a dizzying array of options to stun one into the paralysis of indecision, barely able to choose a game system, let alone an army (or perhaps that should be which army, first). I’m the kind of person who gets stressed if I feel I can’t do something ‘properly’ and this goes especially so with hobby projects so the prospect of juggling multiple army projects across multiple systems has always filled me with an irrational sense of horror. I’m also capable of getting irrationally resentful of the time it takes to build a fieldable army in some games, which is perhaps a sign that I need to relax and enjoy the collecting more.

That said, in times when I have had more disposable income I have managed to splurge hundreds on models that I never touched, so clearly a happy medium is the ideal.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the siren lure of 40k and Warhammer that never really goes away, even though it’s been years since I played either. If money was no object, I could probably slip back into the embrace of GW with only a few qualms, but the fact remains that you have to buy a great deal of pricey models to play those games. That said, it’s a lot harder to ignore the temptation now that the codices and army books for armies I might actually want to collect are being updated.

Skirmish games might be the way forward, but finding one that appeals is the key thing. One thing I have liked though is the new Warzone Resurrection game from Prodos, which I backed on Kickstarter, and in the next week or so I should be invited to select which new shiny things I want them to send to me. I’m 99% sure I’m going to get some of the Capitol faction. For a long while I was leaning toward Bauhaus, but Capitol won me over with models like the Orca walker, Terminator-esque Heavy Infantry and the Purple Shark jetbikes.

After clearing the decks, getting rid of a lot of unwanted stuff and letting the dust settle after some rather abortive attempts at getting back into the wargaming hobby. It’s good to find something I feel happy committing my money too and to have what could be the beginnings of a proper hobby project.

Spurred by this I’m also starting to seriously look at maybe doing some small forces for 40k and WFB – maybe starting at a Combat Patrol sort of size, and maybe only aiming at a 1000 points I can use for the occasional knockabout game. Something that size should be reasonably easy to collect even if I can only buy one box per month and/or set myself a ‘no new toys until what I have is painted’ rule. In addition to the box of unpainted Dystopian Wars ships somewhere in my spare room, it looks like I could have a goodly few projects. Which will mean it is important that I remember what i said in my last post about taking responsibility for making sure I get some enjoyment out of my hobby.

As it is/was a landmark I thought I’d write about something very important. The Chaps.

The Chaps, you see, are a big part of why I love my hobby so much. Whether it’s writing campaigns for them, getting them into new games or just having huge amounts of fun playing games and generally acting like complete children, you won’t find a finer bunch of…um…chaps anywhere else.

The Chaps and I meet once a month for games night. We try and meet up more than this but it’s usually in a pair or a three. games night brings us all together so we can catch up, cock about and play games the only way blokes can.

It’s something I look forward to immensely.There’s few things better than spending an evening with your 5 best mates, rolling fistfuls of dice eating far too many snacks, drinking far too much coke, staying out far too late on a school night and generally messing about.

They each bring different qualities to the group in terms of gaming experience, gaming preference, faction choice, insight, painting method, snacks etc. But they share the same desire to play a game, have a giggle and not take it too seriously. We’re long past the point of worrying where we buy our models from, as long as they look the part. We’re also beyond arguing over an eighth of an inch here or a whisker out of charge range there. We play to the spirit of the rules and always try to put the narrative first.

Basically we’re in it to have as much fun as possible, not field broken lists in an effort to beat the sweaty middle aged fat bastard that tends to appear at every Wargaming club in the world.

The other thing that never fails to amaze and humble me is their willingness to trust me. Not just when I talk about new games but when the group has grown. Lee has only been a part of of the group for about a year and a half, but the others trusted my judgement that he was a good guy and would fit with our dynamic. And equally when I introduced them to prospective Chap, Mat, a couple of weeks ago they were equally trusting of me but, more importantly, welcomed Mat and made him feel at home.

It sounds like a snobby, exclusive, club and I suppose, in some ways, it is. But for me it’s more than that. The Chaps are family and I’m very lucky to have them. If there’s anyone out there with a similar group of friends then they’ll know exactly what I mean. If you don’t: go find some awesome Chaps to game with and your wargaming will never be the same.

To that end, this post is dedicated to Ian, Neil, Jeremy & Lee. You’re all awesome and long may our shenanigans continue.

I started the project by quite impulsively buying the Commander Shas’o R’Alai model at Salute. At that point I hadn’t even written a list and wasn’t sure if I wanted crisis suits because I dislike the plastic models so much.

R’Alia however is just too cool not to use as a force Commander. I just love the look of the model. Aside from being a graduation to a more ‘grown up’ style, it just feels like it was intended for war. Granted, the submunitions rifle helps but still.

I also loved the fixed sensor ‘head’. Aside from looking far more menacing than the standard block heads I like the idea that the head is purely a design choice and not actually needed for the pilot to crump skulls and mang faces.

The other thing I love about the model is it kinda reminds me of the robots from Castle in the Sky. I dunno why. Maybe it’s the segmented gangliness. Maybe it’s the glowing read eye.

Although in Castle in the Sky the robot has a laser face. Which is something the Tau should maybe look into.

But anyway, the model is way cool. The design is a little like a Transformer in so much as it looks like it could change into a plane or something at a moment’s notice.

In terms of building the model, however, the coolness ends and is replaced, instead, by misery. The biggest problem with Forge World kits is usually Forge World themselves. They’ re such an excitable bunch of scallywags that they design kits without really thinking about the practicalities of cleaning or building them. Let me explain: to build the model you have to glue the feet, legs, hip joint and body all pretty much at the same time. This is very difficult. It is also made worse by the fact that the feet and the ankle joints don’t fit. At all.

So you’ll have to resort to the time-honoured method of slapping on slightly more glue than is needed and getting everything stuck together before the super glue sets. Needless to say it can result in the pose not being quite what you wanted so if you can, try blu-tacking it all together first, especially as the arms are no better. Although they’re very cleverly designed using a curve and pivot joint which allows quite a degree of poseability but still being straight forward to build.

The story is a similar one with the Shas’o R’myr’s suit which I bought as a unit leader. Although this bad boy is a conversion kit, using the back and feet of the standard crisis suit. The fit between the two torso halves is surprisingly good and does wonders to change the look of the crisis suit that I’m amazed at least a conversion kit wasn’t made available for the re-release of the Tau range.
I also love the head. Again, it’s just a more interesting look and the single aerial on the back makes the whole look sleeker and more menacing. Same for its load out really. Twin-linked plasma rifles and big boss of a shield is nothing to be sniffed at. But, again, the kits is let down by the over ambitiousness of the kit and the often non-existent QA at Forge World.

Aside from the legs coming in two parts hand having to stick to plastic feet, they also had to stick to a body made of two difference materials creating a socket that wasn’t completely flush. Needless to say it collapsed under its own weight more than once in the process of building it. But the icing on that particular turd flavoured cake was that one leg had been soon poorly cast that it was not just warped but transparent. I shit thee not you could see right through the entire joint piece. Granted this isn’t going to be an issue once the model is painted but the brittleness of the joint has got me treating the model with kid gloves. More so than I would normally with the shatter prone resin that Forge World uses.

It occurs to me that you’re almost better off building the models of they’re on flying stands so the pose is much easier to position. Although there’s every chance you’ll have every crisis suit looking like a not-gay Dean Cain taking to the skies on cable from the Adventures of Superman, complete with awkward bent leg.

The bottom line, however, is that the crisis suits from Forge World are immensely cool. So much cooler than the standard GW ones and  if I’m honest they’re worth the higher prices and the frustrating amount of cleaning and build time required. They’re even worth the truly reckless amount of wastage Forge World produces. The models just look ace. They look like they’re designed by a species surprisingly bothered about looking good whilst they kick your face in. Which is absolutely the way it should be.