Overpriced miniatures

No pictures yet because I haven't remembered to take them at the time, but I had a good 1750 point game of 40k this weekend with my Tau against a new opponent's Eldar. Lists on both sides might have been sub-optimal as most of mine had Eldar allies and most of his had Tau allies, and we wanted to avoid having the same faction on both sides. Both lists had a little bit of everything. Mine had 2 squads of 10 fire warriors, 2 squads of 12 kroot, a commander with Slow and Purposeful and defensive upgrades attached to a full squad of pathfinders, a squad of plasma-rifle broadsides, one skyray, one squad of 3 plasma rifle / missile pod crisis suits, 5 bare-bones stealth suits, and 2 souped up smart-missile devilfish. All 3 vehicles had disruption pods for the super-duper cover save, and flechette launchers to defend against assault. My opponent (I'm not naming him because I didn't ask permission first) had, roughly, a variety of mechanized cavalry, anchored by Eldrad Uthw

There are three rules in the current set for the Tau that I feel are dreadfully wrong, and I'm going to make a case for their change. I ask that you give my objections an honest hearing between now and whenever the next batch of FAQs is released. 1) Drones in challenges. Tau drones have always been a little weird as they are sort of separate models and sort of wargear, so I can understand some confusion. However, which one they are should be reasonably consistent, rather than the current ruleset which seems to be "whichever interpretation is least favorable to the Tau!" The current FAQ states that drones can not be used to strike blows or take wounds when their controller is in a challenge, and that's fine. They are treated as models in the unit in most other cases, such as drawing LOS to the unit, counting whether the unit is under-strength, whether it needs to take a morale check, etc. However, the rule also states that they can not count for moral s

The random rants and pictures from a guy who paints miniatures. Firestorm Armada (made by Spartan Games, UK); Hordes (Privateer Press, USA); Warhammer 40k (Games Workshop, UK); and anything else I end up adding. How did I get here? Well, once upon a time in college, I saw a couple of people playing this neat custom wargame: no squares, no hex grid, and not even the same pieces on each side! They let me "drive" one of the units for a game, and I had fun with it, but I was scared away by the horror stories of what the game cost so I never picked it up myself. Years later, my son was getting into Star Wars miniatures and I realized the economics of that one were even worse than what had scared me away earlier! The boxes of figures were randomized, so you didn't know for sure which ones you had bought until the transaction was final. This economic model seems to work well for the company that makes the minis because it's a fairly constant revenue stream; there are alway