---

The Battle of Tsaragrad is Escalating

Sep 12th, 2022

After my yearly summertime hiatus from 40k, the arrival of fall and a new academic year brings the excitement of a new era for The Battle of Tsaragrad.

My brother—who also happens to be my closest and most steadfast Warhammer companion—and I have decided to embark on a new collaborative 40k enterprise starting this fall. Beginning in October, we will be running a small, casual escalation league for just the two of us!

Our escalation league will involve quarterly hobbying goals to keep each other motivated and making progress on building and painting our armies.

Every seasonal quarter will follow the same basic structure. Prior to the start of the quarter, each player will define a list of models from one faction as their goal for that quarter in our escalation league. Usually we will be targeting ~500 points per quarter, but there is no mandatory minimum points value to allow for flexibility as time for hobbying waxes and wanes over the course of the year.

As an added twist, we have agreed on a system to earn rewards based on how much progress we make towards these goals by the end of the quarter. This system can be summarized as follows:

1. Each player will meet the baseline measure of “successfully” completing the quarter if they finish building and priming all of the models from their quarterly goal. The purpose for this baseline is that we hope to play a game of 40k of increasing size at the end of each quarter with our steadily growing forces, even if those forces aren't fully painted.
2. In terms of painting: we will be rewarding each other by buying a 40k-related gift at the end of each quarter where the price of the gift corresponds roughly to 10% of the total points painted each quarter in US dollars. For example, if my brother successfully paints 400 points in the first quarter of our league, I will pick out a ~$40 hobby-related prize! We haven’t set any specific boundaries on what an appropriate prize would be for each quarter but have tossed around ideas including a cool character model, some hobbying supplies, third-party conversion bitz, a small squad or kit, or a new codex/supplement.
3. Finally, in order to motivate each other to make focused progress on one (or a handful) of factions towards getting full 2,000-point armies painted up, we will be each starting with just one faction (see below) and will “unlock” the ability to switch to a different faction / start a new army at the end of any quarter where we fully paint at least 500 points of models for our existing faction.

Speaking of starting factions, it's time to reveal another exciting development coming this fall: the outermost edges of the Tau's Fifth Sphere of Expansion have reached Volarius! The Il'Fannor cruisers of the Kor'shan Sept have entered orbit above Volarius and will soon be deploying Mantas full of brave Earth, Fire, and Water caste members to touch down on the planet in hopes of claiming it for The Greater Good.

After completing my first 500 points of Orks for Da Ironbullz back in July, I thought that now was an ideal time to pivot and begin exploring the second faction joining The Battle of Tsaragrad.

I'll have more details on the narrative and background of the Kor'shan Sept in a post early this fall, but for now I am excited to share some sneak peeks of a test Fire Warrior clad in (a draft version of) the Kor'shan Sept colors:

In terms of how this new Tau force fits with our escalation league, I decided to set my goals for 2022Q4 with a sampling of models that attracted me to start collecting Tau. I'm hoping to expand this army in subsequent quarters of our escalation league (likely trading off quarterly goals with Da Ironbullz), but this 1,000 point starting force will net me enough models to begin playing (small) games to get the feel for the Tau on the tabletop:

In total, this 1,000 point starting force will involve building & painting 42 models over the next three months, including:

• 21 standard 25mm infantry
• 7 Crisis-sized battlesuits
• 14 drone-sized models

It's an ambitious total, but one that I hope is reachable given that (1) I anticipate having much more hobby time this fall and (2) Tau models are relatively simple to build and paint (compared to Orks, at least!).

On the other hand, my brother will be using this opportunity to continue building out his prodigious collection Chaos-aligned forces. Motivated by the recent release of the daemons' 9^th edition codex, he will be aiming to complete 1,005 points of Khorne daemons, whose new super-invulnerable saves, deep striking shenanigans, and brutal melee will pose quite a tough matchup for the Tau of the Kor'shan Sept!

Here is my brother's goal for the fall quarter of 2022:

We’ll be kicking off the league on October 1, so expect to see some photos of works-in-progress sometime in October!