Rosalia Rambles

Tag: Tau

  • Redundancy Review: Day 365, “One Year On”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning carousers and merrymakers, welcome to…

    Day 365

    …of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    A whole year has gone by since I started this series. What started out as something to act as daily writing practice has, for all intents and purposes, stayed exactly the same except for the fact it really is not daily anymore, except for when it is.

    Might be the energy drink in my system talking, but, I feel less pessimistic than I did yesterday anticipating this as an anniversary. Even took the time today to catch up with some old colleagues to see what they have been up to, which was nice to hear their voices again.

    Being upfront, I am someone who definitely does not network as much as they should: as a tech professional, as a writer, or as any of the labels I can ascribe to myself. I have a LinkedIn, but I feel anything I could write on my public page in any professional capacity would come off as performative more than anything else. I write the Redundancy Review, but I struggle to engage with other writers for fear of being disingenuous about their work.

    And well, I am a socially awkward fuck outside of all that. Even at meetups and conventions when it is quite clear I am surrounded by like-minded people who would be happy to talk for a little bit or accept compliments on their cool-ass cosplays, I find myself struggling to even approach them for a quick hello without my partner either acting as hype man, or starting the conversation for me for me to segue in.

    One of the many areas I have in the list of “things I need to improve about myself”, which is not to say I am not socially capable, more just… the initiation part is always the hardest – though I should get off this tangent now.

    It feels weird. Looking back on a year of events and activities resulting in a lot of ups and downs to find myself in a similar position to where I was when this series started out. 

    Out of a job, unsure of what I want to do with myself except writing as a hobby, and wondering what comes next.

    It was definitely a bit of a self-esteem boost when talking to my former colleagues and one of them saying that I should definitely be putting myself out there a bit more in terms of roles, and that I am capable for positions I have admittedly not been applying for.

    I think for the time being I will continue to vibe, letting nature take its course and seeing what appears. Anyway, having all this time for hobbies has been rather enjoyable, which brings us to yet another Warhammer Wednesday… the first consecutive Warhammer Wednesday no less. Even one where I will talk about a building project I have been doing.

    How unusual.

    What I have been working on this week has been a unit of T’au Empire Fire Warrior Breacher Team, one of the two ways you can build a box of Fire Warriors, as opposed to a Strike Team. Whilst I am aligning myself with the Farsight Enclaves and most likely running battlesuit spam more than anything else, it is probably a good idea to have a basic infantry unit ready to go for smaller games.

    Plus I found a great deal on an old “Start Collecting!” box on Vinted shortly before I got told I was being laid off, and they were included as part of it.

    For a bit of background, Fire Warriors are the bread-and-butter infantry of the T’au Empire, with the most notable iteration of them being what is called the “Strike Team” – wielding either pulse rifles or pulse carbines to unleash massive volleys of shots upon unsuspecting enemies who get close to the gun line. These were one of the main things I was scared of when facing T’au back in the day, as they could take out my squishy units from a distance with it not becoming much better on the charge, as being in closer range gave pulse rifles extra shots, leading to an overwatch that invariably did more damage than if I kept my distance.

    However, I am not one for a static gunline, and I would much rather my infantry be able to dish out good shooting whilst also being close to the enemy, meaning the “Breacher Team” with their pulse blasters feels like a more fitting choice.

    The sprue I am using comes with thirteen options for legs, though there are only ten bodies with which to build full models. 

    My main choices for legs were ones where they are either on one knee to take a shooting position, or bracing themselves on a “rear” leg to assume a standing but steady shooting position. They might not be a static gunline, but I love the dynamic posing that comes from crouching down or leaning back to absorb some of the recoil from the gun.

    Guy doing a reload has a relaxed posture, presumably further back in the gunline whilst his comrades coover him. The Shas’ui (leader) of the squad has his pulse blaster in his hands but is instead using a pistol, aimed slightly higher up to potentially interdict threats from above that might disrupt the gunline.

    Two models in the squad are using the legs that make it look like they are moving forward, but with both feet still on the ground. The remaining three sets of legs I did not use have more dynamic running poses with one foot being off the ground, which did not really align with how I wanted this squad to look.

    Especially with these two. When comparing them to the rest of the gunline which are crouching or leaning down, it feels as if they are a proper cohesive team. A sternguard holding position ready to engage any threats that appear whilst a vanguard advances forward, blasters at the ready to deal with whatever might appear from dark corners.

    Unrelated, I am not sponsored by Tamiya. I do however think it is the best plastic glue on the market both for securely gluing models together and for inhaling the sweet vapours of as you build.

    This has overall been a pretty fun kit to build, with a surprising amount of posing potential for static pairs of legs compared to the potential arrangements a team of Crisis suits could be put into. Painting procrastination will continue until morale improves.

    One year down, let us see what the next year shall bring together.

    Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope Wednesday has been kind to you. If not, the weekend is not too far away, and whatever you need to do to relax, I hope you are able to do it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 287-288, “Warhammer Wednesday”

    Redundancy Review: Day 287-288, “Warhammer Wednesday”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning commissars and ethereals, welcome to Day 287-288 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yes. I know.

    It is a goddamn miracle.

    I am writing an entry to the quote unquote “daily series” that does not have over the span of a week between posts. Praise God, Satan, Lathander – whichever deity you choose to follow in life, because Rosalia has chosen to ramble on non-consecutive days in the same week…

    …so of course I am going to be launching a weekly segment in this post similar to VTuesday because I am incapable of learning my lesson, but this is something I have had in the back of my mind since the start of the year, and I finally want to make it official.

    Wednesdays will now be “Warhammer Wednesday”…

    …Warnsdays?

    A slightly more catchy title may be in development.

    Throwing it back to my bingo card for the year, one of the squares I put down on it was “Get back into miniature painting”, which was essentially code for “Start exploring Warhammer again”, as the hobby was an important part of my formative years growing up and I want to see it with fresh eyes.

    Which leads us into the story for today, because I cannot really understate how important Warhammer was for my childhood when I spent damn near seven years playing it regularly before I fell to the dark side of Magic: the Gathering. It was even the first foray into fiction writing in my life when I wrote a short story for a local gaming event that had a writing contest.

    The contest was pitched as writing something on the day between games, but given I was an overachiever I came prepared with a two page story about a Dark Angels Interrogator Chaplain getting ambushed by some Warp Talons… think I might still have the certificate I won back then somewhere too.

    Pretty much every Saturday in my early-to-mid teens was spent playing Warhammer, initially 40k where an old friend first introduced me to it, which eventually shifted over to a period of playing Warhammer Fantasy for a period of time before it shifted back over to 40k up until I became the sole steward of the club and we started playing other games such as Star Realms, my actual legit favourite card game of all time.

    Oh yeah, that is a pretty important detail – this Saturday club was hosted in my local library and after a period of time I was the volunteer running the group, a task I was wholly unsuited for when I started but eventually it was just sort of being the mature/organised one in a group of friends more than anything else. It is what gave me a fierce defense of libraries as third spaces, as my local was essential to my personal development.

    Back at my parent’s place there are still tons of boxes filled with my old gear, often acquired through people not wanting their own old stuff and me picking it up at a cheaper price, or in one instance, just for a box of Maltesers. I should be reclaiming some of it soon to add to the collection, but my main joy in the hobby came from building more than anything, hence why painting is my goal as I was not the best at that back in the day.

    To that end, what caused my relapse?

    This battleforce box specifically, themed around the Farsight Enclaves of the T’au faction. I have always had a soft spot for the Farsight Enclaves as a faction, both for their bold red colour scheme and what they represent in going against the grain of an established society…

    …that said, I also hold a great deal of fear for T’au for how utterly dominant they were back in my day of playing seventh edition due to how much they owned the shooting phase and could deal with all sorts of threats.

    Or maybe I am just salty because I was a Dark Eldar player and got my shit handed to me on the regular due to the fact I used masochists riding in paper boats as my main fighting force.

    Regardless, I figured this would be a good start for getting myself back into building. Geometric shapes and flat panels would also make for easy painting practice once I finally got around to it.

    I will be covering the model I started with today, which is of the eponymous commander of the Enclaves himself, Farsight. For this model and the model I built after this I was initially using Citadel Plastic Glue, but I quickly switched to Tamiya Extra Thin Cement after remembering how utterly shit the bottles that Citadel glue comes in.

    Even with inferior glue, this was a fun build to attempt. Everything came together relatively easily, which is to be expected for a kit that did not come with many spare bits on the sprue – very few places to experiment with posing or alternative weapon options.

    There was something oddly therapeutic about getting to build a plastic model again, something that I spent so much of my younger years doing but now as a much different person, though still the same nerd at heart.

    Not too much to say beyond that, it was easy to follow the instructions with the numbers embossed onto the sprue and the model came together in a way I am very happy with.

    Later editions of Warhammer Wednesday should cover a bit more detail about how I wanted to put the model together, though progress photos for some later models are a little sparse, so hopefully how I have built them is enough of a story.

    Right, I have made something that came out not long after my last post, do I have the momentum again or is this another false start? Only one way to find out, and that is to keep moving forward. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you can engage in the hobbies that bring you the most joy, be they new or old, expensive or cheap.