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GW have released 40k Datasheets for the Vespids and the Aquillons: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/O4PRDfFd/bring-the-heroes-of-kill-team-hivestorm-to-warhammer-40000-with-free-datasheet-downloads/

Uh, yeah, exactly what it says on the tin. Woof?

Article Here Some very cool rules for the Suit enthusiasts in here and also something I hope they do more of across armies: That does mean that we're likely to see more datasheets disappear from the Tau codex as this is another 2 additional datasheets on top of the 4 we're getting from the Kroot boxset

WarCom Article. Big lizard is best lizard.

KY'VASH RECON CADRE PIRANHA SKIMMER TX4 'Piranha' Skimmer. Despite being an older design, the TX4 Piranha has remained in constant service within the T'au military since the time of the Second Sphere Expansion. A light, but combat-capable grav-speeder, it serves as an all-terrain scout and harasser, often in support of Stealthsuit and Pathfinder teams. Ky'Vash forces most often field the Piranha with a hull-mounted fusion blaster for tank-hunting, though it is unsuitable for targeting heavier vehicles such as Imperial Knights or main battle tanks. Pilots wear stripped-down fatigues, though retain a full helm and chest piece due to the open cabin. Piranha pilots are pulled from the same pool as Devilfish and Hammerhead-variants. The driver, a Shas'ui, also mans the primary armament, with the Shas'la co-pilot manages the twin drones and Piranha's comms and sensor suite. While the drones are capable of splitting from the main body of the craft for limited attack runs, the connection to the 'wings' allows for experienced pilots to perform sharp turns by manipulating the micro-grav engines within the two drones an tandem with the Piranha's primary anti-grav system. - So, there's a story to this one. I spent well over a month trying to settle on a colour and style for my camo, and finally settled on one displayed on a Piranha! It's fun to finally do one myself, and I think it's come together pretty well. The kit is showing its age, being pretty awkward in placed, especially the two pilots, but it was fun to put together anyway, assembled over Saturday and painted Sunday in a burst of Call to Arms-bolstered eagerness!

Right so in this entry the construction will be completed. First task here was to decide how to do the main gun. I know that in most circumstances I will want to take the Pulse Blastcannon, just because it is so damn powerful! However, I much prefer the look of the Pulse Driver Cannon, as it is longer and doesn't have so many pipes (I hate painting, and specifically highlighting, pipes). I eventually settled on building the rear section of the pulse driver cannon: Luckily, the way the front half of the weapons fit means I actually don't need to do any extra work to magnetise them or anything. They "clip" nicely in and out of the rear section so that I can have both options available to me, which will probably end up being the longer gun for display and the stubby Blastcannon for gaming: I decided to leave out the vent covers on the pulse driver cannon (above) because I plan to make some nice glowy plasma effects on the coils and I didn't want the vent covers to get in the way. Thanks for the posing suggestions. I went for a slight upward angle on the missile launchers to look like they are being aimed upwards to allow a trajectory towards long-range targets. For the main pose of the machine, I went with the suggestion to face the body right, but because I still wanted to give the sense of forward momentum, I angled the head to the left and the body slightly downwards. Because I've closed off the cockpit, I wanted the head to be more of the focus point for the model than it usually would be. I think this makes the model look more dynamic, but see what you think: Finally, I added the basing materials and left it resting on the Knight Castellan to keep it held in the right pose while the glue dries. Once dry, it will be ready for priming and getting started on the paint job! Edit: added photo of the primed model :)

Made some good progress on the Stormsurge today. Firstly, I built the weapon "arms": Decided to just go with the flamers as I like the look of them the best. I probably won't choose the frag projector and I hate painting burst cannons ... all the bits that should rotate freely, do so, so far. Might need to glue the flamers later though as they seem to droop a bit when the thing is upright. Main body section was next: I've not built the open cockpit with the crew, for reasons that are about to become clear. I have other plans for them later mwahahahah .... I left it til now to carry on the build as I was waiting for a special part to arrive, all the way from Spain... dada: Here we have a resin top cover which protects the cockpit! The one thing I don't like about this model is the open cockpit, as I just think - why???? This only took a few days to get here from www.thecustombit.com and is a perfect fit: Really pleased with this. Now. I need to choose a pose. To help me choose, I've built the heads and blu-tacked the pieces together and photographed them in a couple of different positions: 1: or 2: My son managed to sneak his part-painted knight into the photo lol! I'm currently leaning towards 1, because this thing is always nearer to position 2 in the GW photos, and I like to be different! Can't quite decide which to go with yet though, so I'll post the blog and see what you guys say, and take a break from the build for now to give me time to study the photos and make my mind up. Until next time...

OK. So it's time to do something about the last bunch of grey plastic sprues I have. Most of my leadweight is composed of built and primed or partially painted stuff, but I do have a bunch of T'au stuff still on sprues. This is, of course, the most exciting stuff, as it is the most like new stuff! In the photo below are two Crisis Battlesuits left over from my Start Collecting! box that my wife bought me for Christmas more than five years ago, a handful of pathfinders and the Stormsurge that I bought with money from selling my Eldar earlier this year. Of course, by far the most exciting model in this pile is the Stormsurge, and seeing as my son got a Knight Castellan for Christmas that is already built and partially painted, this had to be the first model to build. I wanted to do something interesting with the base, partly because it was so big and partly because my son said I had to! So... I had some spare bits from my guard so I thought I would use these to tie the model into another part of my collection. I'm using a 3D printed turret that came spare with some tanks I got cheap on eBay a few weeks before Christmas, and the one spare guardsman that didn't find a place in my army. I'm not going to bother doing any complicated chopping with the turret as I can cover some of it with gravel and/or sand to hide the slightly odd connection in the middle: First stop for the Stormsurge: leg assembly. Now... I knew the legs wouldn't fit right on the custom base if I built them exactly as per the instructions, as I wanted the thing to stand on the Leman Russ turret, so I removed the little tags that fit the notches to give them more freedom of movement. For example, that sticky-out squarish bit on the joint in the middle piece had to go. Partial leg assembly underway in seven sections: I did attempt to blu-tack the pieces together to test the positioning, but they kept falling apart and wouldn't hold, so just bit the bullet and put glue on every piece. I found this with my Ghostkeel previously - I just had to hold them together in a weird Gollum-esque fashion to get them to stay put how I wanted them until they were dry enough to hold. Ended up with this, which I think works OK: The Leman Russ turret has that nice flat bit behind the cupola which was perfect for the foot to stand on. Can't decide whether it is going to be sat back and pointing to the right (left as you look at the photo) or aiming over the bent knee and looking more like it is moving forwards to the left (right as you look at the photo). I will have to play about with it at a later stage (N.B. The other T'au in the photo belong to my son - just in case anyone thought I was fibbing about how much I have to paint!). Last step of this blog entry, I added the guardsman to the base. I was going to add the whole guy with the melta, but then I thought "no, I'm not going to give him such an easy shot right up at the Stormsurge's knackers (!!)," and decided to chop him up. There is a nice arm holding a helmet on the old command squad sprue, so I gave him a bare sergeant head as I wanted him to be obviously shouting in fear or generally freaking out. Unfortunately, I still needed to chop the original guy to pieces to get at his body as I don't have any torsos spare, which was a shame because other than that he was built with all new parts. A couple more bits from the command squad sprue and a spare lasgun from the heavy weapon sprue finished the model. I've got him running away from the wreck of the Leman Russ and dropping his lasgun in the process - I know, an offence definitely punishable by summary execution! And that's where I'm up to for today. Got to go and make a Sunday roast now!

I finished my first squad of the new army, and first models in over 6 years. Feels greater good. That leaves the rest of this Start Collecting box, the contents of a second one, a commander, a Devilfish and a Riptide.

Once a Cadian, Always a Cadian By Suspicious BLue Mind a.k.a. Riodan O'Duffy Art by Harri Osborn, Astra Militarum Portrait ‘Why didn’t you just shoot him?’ asked Commissar Rembault looking down at the prisoner. ‘Uh, we did shoot him ma’am,’ said Sergeant Demin scratching his forehead. ‘“Take no prisoners” is our company motto, right after “Cadia Stands!” But apparently, he just didn’t die.’ The dishevelled prisoner sat on the red sand with his arms bound in front of him. His xenos designed armour was a dark red colour; while his underbody suit was the same shade of red as the sand. His close cropped hair and scruffy beard were also red; and his age appeared to be somewhere in the vicinity of forty to forty-five years of age. Dried red blood covered the whole right side of his face and neck. An ample supply of red mud and sand finished off his attire. ‘Hmm, what’s your name soldier?’ asked the commissar getting down on her haunches. No reply. ‘Tabac stick?’ asked the commissar offering the prisoner one of the nicotine laced cylinders. ‘No ma’am. Don’t smoke,’ replied the prisoner. ‘Whoa, that’s the most he’s spoken since we captured him!’ exclaimed Demin. ‘I’ll ask again, what’s your name?’ said the commissar lighting the tabac stick for herself. ‘Sergeant First Class Rokken A. Tamaguchi. Ident number 456-789-22010,’ he replied looking at the commissar with his one good eye, the other having been glued shut by dried blood. ‘Unit sergeant?’ The prisoner took in a breath, coughed, and grunted out, ‘2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, of the 7th Mu’gulath Bay Regiment.’ ‘I guess it takes a commissar to get these traitors to talk uh, ma’am?’ said the sergeant. The prisoner turned and glared up at the sergeant with his one good eye. ‘Got a problem heretic? Want a boot up your arse?’ shouted Demin getting ready to kick the prisoner. ‘Hold on sergeant!’ shouted the commissar with the tabac stick still between her teeth. Getting up, she shooed away the small crowd of guardsmen who were gathered around the prisoner. Then pulling the sergeant aside she asked, ‘So, Sergeant tell me What-the-Throne is going on here?’ The sergeant straightened his back and looking off into the desert said, ‘There was a firefight. We over ran their position. Shot all the survivors, including the wounded. Then two hours later this heretic here…’ Demin pointed at the prisoner, ‘…Comes staggering out of the pile of dead bodies holding his head in his hands. He’s gibber jabbering away in that Blue-fish talk, “Tiki-tak ching-chang-chong oola-la-la!”. So we gave him a rifle butt to the stomach, bound his hands, and sat his traitorous backside on the ground.’ ‘Did you interrogate him?’ ‘We tried. But he just wouldn’t answer. So we gave up figuring he didn’t speak any Low Gothic.’ ‘Alright before we do anything else, let’s get him cleaned up and have the apothecary medic look at his wounds,’ said the commissar waving over the medic. ‘You said he was shot, does he still have any open wounds?’ ‘No, ma’am. He’s just got a one big old scratch that runs around the top of his head…’ answered Demin catching a helmet tossed to him by another guardsmen. ‘…Here’s his helmet. See the bolter round entered just left of centre; but then it was deflected around his head, and exited the same hole it made coming in. Bet he’s got a helluva headache right now!’ ‘Get me Lieutenant Mahin, and post a guard so that no one “accidentally” shoots the prisoner,’ said the commissar taking a long drag on the tabac stick. ‘He’s a curiosity. And I want to find out what’s his story is.’ ‘Yes ma’am.’ Astartes and Guardsmen, Inquisitors and Tech Priests, Soroitas and Voidsmen! Today in this dark hour where Papa Nurgle seems to have the whole world in his festering and putrid grasp; what is needed is good rip roaring story of heroism and daring-do! Therefore, I present to you the story of one Sergeant Rokk A. Tamaguchi and a platoon from the 1012th Cadian Regiment. I hope that this story will give you pleasure as you hunker down to wait out these grim-dark days. Here is the link to the complete story: Once a Cadiian, Always a Cadian You made view the story directly from DocDroid, but you'd probably enjoy it more, if you download the pdf file. Then you can read the story via you webrowser, Adobe Reader, or in Adobe Digital Editions. Then you can upload it to your iPad, Tablet, or Smart Phone! Note this is my first post on the premier website for Warhammer 40,000 fandom in the galaxy: The Bolter & Chainsword. And I hope that I will do all of you l credit here on the forum. Suspicious Blue Mind PS For our North American readers, I use UK spelling and grammar. So if something seems a "bit off", that's probably it. SBM

So I remembered I had this picture lounging around somewhere on my computer since last year. No highlighting because highlights are the devil.

Ok gents, like the title says, what to do with everyone’s favourite floating discs? I’m wondering, are they better used in a support role in units? Or formed into units of their own? How to equip them? Marker, Shield, or Gun? A lot of questions I know but I want to get the most out of them.