So while I’m totally prepping a 40k combined Death Guard and Chaos Daemons force for Crusades, I also had a flash of wanting to play a slightly different army for a Crusade as well now that 9th edition is starting. And thus, thought it was time to return to my Tau.

I at least have some painted models to show off at the start for once–such as these two civilians (a doctor and a dock worker) that I painted up for story mission involvement. There was the real chance I’d lose the army amid the turbulence of the three years (they even were up for consignment at my local gaming store for a while), but like the patient hunting tactic of kauyon, the Tau have been waiting for their return even when away.

I’ll start with the force I built for Shadow War Armageddon, which was 3 years ago now when I did them. Just a team of Tau Pathfinders:

They have mohawks clearly because we were wishing for Necromunda at the time, saying Shadow War Armageddon felt similar. Hence the decision to do a squad with that motif.

The larger force they were added to is below, just a simple starter patrol that I had developed for some narrative games of 40k with my buddy Rico:

I still really am pleased with how smooth this look is. And I took notes on the paints I used then so I am back to replicating it today and looks the exact same.

These forces were featured in three of my favorite games of 40k I’ve ever played:

First Spark: https://chalkboardwar.com/2016/05/23/40k-first-spark/

Entrances: https://chalkboardwar.com/2016/06/01/40k-entrances/

Protest: https://chalkboardwar.com/2016/06/21/40k-protest/

And dunno, something just feels good about returning to them. I’ve added a couple more pieces to this army which I’ll share in their own post (retouching and painting a few that were in half progress to being added to this set). And picked up some more, so I can run both the Chaos and the Tau Crusades to my interest.