So unless you live under a rock or you just don't care about Games Workshop games anymore, this past weekend marked the relaunch of the Tau Empire. Or at least it was supposed to be the relaunch of the Tau. And I say that because GW dropped the ball yet again... no real big surprise there cause they have been doing that bunch as of late.

"How did they drop the ball?" you ask.

Well thats simple... again unless you have been living under a rock you may already know that the Tau were completely sold out before the release date. Now logic would tell them that MAYBE since they produce their own miniatures in house that they should up production levels. But no... they decide to move ahead with their already way over crowded release schedule. Now I have been to every store in my town that still stocks the new GW stuff when it comes out and the supplies are very limited. In fact we picked up the only box of the new plastic Pathfinders in this city. At the last stop I asked my FLGS owner what was up with the lack of Tau and the story I got was that they dropped the ball on production. That they didn't think that the demand would be that high for what has been one of the best selling (non-space marine) army for 40k, and that they knew that the stuff was going to sell out and didn't think "Hey this is going to be huge... maybe we should bump the rest of the production schedule and think about getting more of the Tau stuff made so that we can cover our butts." But no... they just pushed Tau back to their earliest open spot on the schedule.

Now when GW asked about this their response was to have the stores tell people that they were having "production problems" and when they were pressed harder about when the items would be back in stock because the store had taken pre orders and didn't get the items to even take care of the pre orders GW came back with "it will be about 90 days until they can get the Tau back into production because they have other stuff coming out that they have to get produced." Now here is where I say that is BULLSHIT... and GW screwed up and that they should own up to their mistake and take care of the back orders and get ahead on that product line before you introduce another one. Don't punish the fans of the army because YOU screwed up on not producing not enough stuff for one of the best selling armies.

And the biggest thing that pisses me off about all of this... Remember the camo Tau I painted a couple of years back... I was going to buy Commander Farsight and repaint the camo Tau using the Farsight Enclave colors... BUT... unless you preordered the sculpt of Farsight from GW when the Preorder went up on their website you are not going to get one for a long while.

Now this is the info I was given when I pressed for more word on what the big deal was from several FLGS owners. According to the GW site things should not be back ordered for that long... but we will just have to wait and see...

Labels: News and Rants , Tau