And now for something completely different...

Before my fascination with Cygnar, I was enthralled by 40K's Tau Empire. Though not painted - or even completely assembled - I have at least an 1000 point Hunter Cadre, including a Forge World Great Knarloc and a pair of Remora Drones. In fact, I'm a moderator over on Advanced Tau Tactica, pretty much the paramount source for Tau tactics and strategies on intarweb.

Another moderator, SpartanTau, and I were promoted from the ranks at the same time. We've always had a "brothers in arms" approach toward the forums, especially because we're both college students. As this school year started to come to a close, ST suggested we do a Crisis Suit swap, in which our battlefield avatars entered an officer exchange program and temporarily joined the other moderator's cadre, à la TNG's "A Matter of Honor."

He immediately set about making a heavily converted, up-armored Crisis Suit, which is going to look freakin' awesome. I've always been a little more conservative in my model building, but I wanted to do conversion that was worthy of such an exchange. So, behold Shas'vre Lyi'ot:

The plan is to make several magnetized heads, allowing ST to switch out the Space Marine helmet for an army-specific trophy - all the better to taunt opponents with!

All thing said, the conversion was rather simple. I still need to greenstuff the left hand, to obscure the magnets, but that shouldn't be a problem. I had to cut apart both the the left arm and left leg, right at the knee/elbow joint. Tamiya Extra Thin Cement made the conversion possible because it melted the plastic, nicely glueing the parts together and obscuring any terrible plastic gashes I had created. And yep, that's a real Texan rock beneath his foot!

A Tale of Two Games

I started with the Tau a little over two years ago. I have roughly 1000 points of Tau, more if I equip my hunter cadre just right. But in all the time I've had them, I've only played a handful of games, the majority under the (incredibly awesome) 4th Edition Combat Patrol rules. I've constructed plenty, but have only one Piranha, two XV-15s, one Crisis Suit commander, and half a squad of Fire Warriors painted.

I guess my experience is really not that different from most peoples - walk into your local game store, and there's a good chance most of the armies won't be painted (white or black base-coating excluded), and may only be partially constructed. I could just suck it up and play... but the oppressive weight of so many unfinished models gets to you.

I think I lost my momentum early one, when I carefully and meticulously crafted my very first Fire Warrior team. So much effort and detail went into making that squad unique - a different pose here, a pointing hand there. And then I realized the squad made up just a fraction - and a small fraction! - of my total fighting force. There's just so much work to do to have a fully-functioning 1000-point cadre, and each little building block requires a (seemingly) disproportionate modeling effort compared to its point-cost and usefulness on the battlefield.

Last summer, about nine months back, I got introduced to Warmachine. I bought the rulebook and two blisters - the alternate Sorscha and the variant Journeyman Warcaster. I couldn't make up my mind between Khador and Cygnar, nor could I even bring myself to invest in a Warmachine army: I had a massive and unfinished Tau cadre, and the "local" Warmachine hangout was twenty minutes down the highway.

This all changed at the beginning of this year, when I discovered Asgard Games had just opened up. The location was right, and I knew the owners - Will and DJ - from the Rice Village Games Workshop. Warmachine is really popular at Asgard, so I went ahead and took the plunge.