History of the Dead Tau Project

*Original Biel-Tan Craftworld Eldar Army

So I have fielded a number of questions lately about the Dead Tau Project. Several of these are along the lines of "Why do you hate the Tau so much?" Based on this and the feedback I have received as I explain the story, I thought it would be good to post a little history up on the blog. I will also use this as a little history about my GW gaming experience.

So we start by looking way back to May 2004. Here I was, a "normal" Table top role-player running a D&D game from my house. A couple friends of mine who were playing in the game invited me to a "Gaming Convention" called Games Day. I had heard of Games Workshop years before (2nd edition Screamer Killer Carnifex?) and based on their urging, figured what the hell. Games Day blew my mind! I knew I was not very artistic and also not terribly interested in painting, but holy shit this hobby was incredible.

*Swooping Hawks

So, over the next 6 months I began to poke around with the hobby. Trevor and his wife Jen started building their armies, Tau and Witch Hunters respectively. I was not convinced what I wanted to play, testing out Necrons, Tyranids, and Eldar. Toward the end of the 6 months I found myself playing Eldar more and more, in addition to drifting toward Craft World eldar, specifically Biel-Tan. Then came January 2005, when I found an Eldar Aspect army online (ebay) and bought it. This fit my needs (at the time) perfectly, with a full army mostly painted that I could play with. This is the army pictured above.

So, this started my term of playing Eldar. Nearly 100% of my games were against Trevor and Jen, so I got lots of experience with WH and Tau. In fact, the larger percentage of the games were against Trevors Tau. After a time the decision was made to retire the Eldar force and switch to Tyranids. I love my Eldar but it was the correct choice to make. This playing time happened after 4th edition rolled around.

*Scorpions - I never left home without them

Then the announcement was made that the Eldar would be coming out with new models and a new codex. This excited me and I loved the new model's being released. I made a decision to rebuild an Eldar force, and started buying models. Toward the end of 2007 I also started playing around with WHFB, with a Goblin army and a Dwarf army. After making a big push to put together a 2250 painted Dwarf army for a GT, I decided I embrace the entire hobby, painting and modeling customizations onto my Eldar army once I got underway.

Through 2007 I had been playing my Tyranids when playing 40K. I had modeled a unit of flying Warriors, and had the idea to build them as diorama's battling my daughters pink marines. With some help we modeled up some great scenes, which I really liked. This provided fantastic inspiration for customizations to my Eldar army.

*I loved my first Wraithlord. I even repainted him myself

Thus, starting January 2008 I started this blog and also started building my new Eldar force. The idea (look back at post #1) has stayed true, although my model choices have changed over the past 18 months.

So, do I hate Tau? Nope, not at all. Tau were my first regular opponent and I thought it would be fun to model up a theme of Eldar in combat with the Tau for my army. It seems to have worked well and I receive compliments often. Interspersed through this post are pictures of my original Eldar army. Painting was just ok, and I am much happier with my own painting and modeling. As a note, I recently resold this original army on Ebay. With luck, the new owner will become as excited as I am about the Eldar and will gain their own inspiration!

*Rangers - these were some of the best painted models in the army.

*My Multi-colored Falcons...