Most players would save a CP reroll for the wound roll for something as critical as possibly bracketing a knight. And do we know that the other railguns are getting the ignore invulns rule? Could just be the Hammerhead.
I make it a 60% chance to get a wounding hit, or 72% with a CP for a hit re-roll. At that point you do 10-12 damage to almost any target in the game. That's an average of 8 wounds with the re-roll. Or for 1CP a sub munition shot gets you 8 mortal wounds to any unit with 11+ models.
Why does it ignore force fields? Magical warp-based damage immunities? Psychic barriers? I don't get it. It's like they had a bunch of ideas on how to make the Railgun better - What if it did D3+6 damage? What if it ignored Invul saves? What if it did 3 auto-MWs? - and decided that "All of them!" was the solution.
Red Corsair wrote: Sub-munitions is the best blast weapon in the game too. It doesn't even need to roll to hit and rolls a die for every model with no max. It caps at 8MW.... Oh no not a paltry 8! It gets through hit mods, cover, armor, invulns....
So it's kinda like Combat Attrition tests, ignoring most of the things that determine how casualties are caused?
I don't know how knights (chaos or imperial) are supposed to fight against this new scary weapon. Knights can't even hide because they are 24W.
At least it will be over mercifully quick. Instead of rolling a whole ton of hits and wounds, and saves to kill a knight. Now you basically just roll a few, and the knight player doesn't even get a save ... lol.
Voss wrote: They've never really grasped the idea that the entire edition (and all the books) needs to be treated as a whole and given constraints and limitations. Too often, the army books seem like a competition between egos, and one author has to 'surpass' the previous author, all at the expense of the game as a whole.
I don't think they've ever heard of design documents (or at least not doing them in advance).
I am reminded of the CSM designer notes for the new Codex in a white dwarf back in 4th? edition. It talked about how previous Possessed were a random roll to find out what mutation they had, including things like Infiltrate that didn't work if you bought them a Rhino and how this was unfun and bad so in the new Codex you payed points for their mutation so you knew what kind of Possessed you were getting when you started a game.
And the edition after that Possessed promptly went back to being random because 'random is fun'.
So no, there are no design documents, and if any exist no one bothers to read them. Codexes are entirely decided by the luck of the draw of which author they get and whether or not that particular person likes or hates playing an army.
Voss wrote: They've never really grasped the idea that the entire edition (and all the books) needs to be treated as a whole and given constraints and limitations. Too often, the army books seem like a competition between egos, and one author has to 'surpass' the previous author, all at the expense of the game as a whole.
I don't think they've ever heard of design documents (or at least not doing them in advance).
I am reminded of the CSM designer notes for the new Codex in a white dwarf back in 4th? edition. It talked about how previous Possessed were a random roll to find out what mutation they had, including things like Infiltrate that didn't work if you bought them a Rhino and how this was unfun and bad so in the new Codex you payed points for their mutation so you knew what kind of Possessed you were getting when you started a game.
And the edition after that Possessed promptly went back to being random because 'random is fun'.
So no, there are no design documents, and if any exist no one bothers to read them. Codexes are entirely decided by the luck of the draw of which author they get and whether or not that particular person likes or hates playing an army.
Welcome to 40k
Must've been 3.5. That's the only CSM codex I can think of that allowed you to pick the mutation you wanted for Possessed and pay points for them. All of the others, including 8th, have had some element randomness to them. Because Chaos = Random!
Fingers crossed the day the codex drops, the inevitable FAQ will update the profile again.
"Oops, that was a typo, we meant for it to be Damage D6+3. Our bad, we mixed the numbers by accident. Oh, and you only get 3MWs if you roll a 6 to wound"
If it's going to ignore invuls, it shouldn't reliably be doing 10+ wounds.
Actually, so far we've only seen the Warhammer Community post. It's entirely possible that the Codex won't need this FAQ and the WC article has it "wrong" just to drum up hype and sell some Hammerheads.
Even if my guess is right (which it probably isnt) D6+3 ignore invuls with a 6+ chance to do 3MWs is still way better than it currently is AND way better than most anti-tank shots.
So let's hope they just swapped the 6 and 3 by mistake. D3+6 is a really weird combo (very little swing with large set bonus). D6+3 seems more in line with other things (bigger swing value with modest set bonus)
H.B.M.C. wrote: Why does it ignore force fields? Magical warp-based damage immunities? Psychic barriers? I don't get it.
Suddenly the 40k universe is a more magical place, and the Tau have figured out that cold-wrought iron trumps all magical defenses. So just throwing a chunk of iron real hard solves everything. With a big enough meteor, they could close the Eye of Terror!
Ooo. The hinted even-more-better gun is going to spray all the witches with salt. It will auto-hit and disallow FnP and shrugging off mortal wounds in addition to no invulnerable saves and -6 AP.
Galef wrote: Fingers crossed the day the codex drops, the inevitable FAQ will update the profile again.
"Oops, that was a typo, we meant for it to be Damage D6+3. Our bad, we mixed the numbers by accident. Oh, and you only get 3MWs if you roll a 6 to wound"
If it's going to ignore invuls, it shouldn't reliably be doing 10+ wounds.
Actually, so far we've only seen the Warhammer Community post. It's entirely possible that the Codex won't need this FAQ and the WC article has it "wrong" just to drum up hype and sell some Hammerheads.
Even if my guess is right (which it probably isnt) D6+3 ignore invuls with a 6+ chance to do 3MWs is still way better than it currently is AND way better than most anti-tank shots.
So let's hope they just swapped the 6 and 3 by mistake. D3+6 is a really weird combo (very little swing with large set bonus). D6+3 seems more in line with other things (bigger swing value with modest set bonus)
-
They will definitely have to give into all the drukhari players that complained they lost a single raider before dousing the hammerhead in 8 of their 36 dark lances.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Why does it ignore force fields? Magical warp-based damage immunities? Psychic barriers? I don't get it.
Suddenly the 40k universe is a more magical place, and the Tau have figured out that cold-wrought iron trumps all magical defenses. So just throwing a chunk of iron real hard solves everything. With a big enough meteor, they could close the Eye of Terror!
Ooo. The hinted even-more-better gun is going to spray all the witches with salt. It will auto-hit and disallow FnP and shrugging off mortal wounds in addition to no invulnerable saves and -6 AP.
I'm reminded of the time Gav Thorpe wrote rules for WHFB vs. 40k, back when Armor Values were still a thing. In that setting, an Imperial Great Cannon was MUCH more effective at killing Land Raiders than a lascannon was.
They will definitely have to give into all the drukhari players that complained they lost a single raider before dousing the hammerhead in 8 of their 36 dark lances.
I guess my point is that the Rail gun, Dark Lance spam and the rumoured Fire Prism lance shot (d3+3 damage at AP-5 that also ignores invuls and can shoot twice), paints a VERY clear picture that GW is happy with the number of Knights it's sold. Because there is literally no point in every bringing Knights if there's a chance to get paired against T'au, Eldar, DE and I'm sure a few others.
Daemon Primarchs, Nid MCs and WraithKnights are equally laughable now (not saying any of those were competitive, just that they absolutely are not now).
It will be very interesting to see where this takes the meta. Big models can now be deleted with little to no counter play.
Infantry it is, I suppose
Simple. They will sell a million hammerhead gunships then nerf them in the next rules update. Then it will not have the ignore invuln ability or mortal wounds anymore. You guys haven’t figured out the formula yet? Sell models by giving them overpowered abilities. Eldar will be really OP for a while then once the models are sold they will get hit with the nerf bat
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't think the Hammerheads themselves will be durable enough to stand up to any sort of return fire, given how damned lethal 40k is.
They'll get a turn to make their mark, and that'll be it for them.
What return fire ? Tau can hide behind LOS blocking terrain, move, even advance, and count as stationary in turn 1-3. They will then kill everything what can hurt them. Any opponent will be tabled T2, or severly crippled. You cant even tie them up in melee anymore, they can fall back and shoot in turn 3-5.
What return fire ? Tau can hide behind LOS blocking terrain, move, even advance, and count as stationary in turn 1-3. They will then kill everything what can hurt them. Any opponent will be tabled T2, or severly crippled. You cant even tie them up in melee anymore, they can fall back and shoot in turn 3-5.
Once they shoot, they are in sight of the enemy. Besides, it's not like reserves aren't a thing anymore, far from it. Tau can't still destroy what's not on the table on their turn.
Doom and gloom from a couple rules and hypothetical scenarios never last long in front of actual games.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't think the Hammerheads themselves will be durable enough to stand up to any sort of return fire, given how damned lethal 40k is.
They'll get a turn to make their mark, and that'll be it for them.
What return fire ? Tau can hide behind LOS blocking terrain, move, even advance, and count as stationary in turn 1-3. They will then kill everything what can hurt them. Any opponent will be tabled T2, or severly crippled. You cant even tie them up in melee anymore, they can fall back and shoot in turn 3-5.
If tau advances counting as stationary and fall backs and shoots same game he's cheating,
Yeah cheaters generally tend to win. No surprise there.
I am bothered that this is a huge leap in damage dealing potential halfway through the edition when nothing else in any codex is even close to this.
Nonsense, tons of stuff can do this kind of damage just not typically in one single shot and only shot. A bunch of units can do more damage in CC than the hammerhead.
Tau being an army without any high damage melee units instead have so far one unpointed unit that is pretty fragile that can keep up with stuff like knights on damage output at range.
Save the salt for whatever broadsides become.
No, they really can't.
There is no unit that can achieve a damage potential like this without a SERIOUS points investment, AND such potential is dramatically slashed but -1 damage effects that are increasingly common in the game.
Doohicky wrote: So Basically Tau with a hammerhead can, with a single vehicle, destroy morty in two turns.
Tau bring some of these guys vs knights and it's not even a game is it?
It takes three Hammerheads to kill Morty in 2 turns, 80% of the time. It also takes three Hammerheads to kill a single Knight in a turn, ignoring hit and wound calcs. Given what's returning fire, the Knights almost certainly will trade up.
Unless you think 3 hammerheads will cost the same as 3 knights, which is the majority of a 2k army, I don't see trading up for anything. I suspect 3 hammerheads might cost 1 knight. Or even less.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't think the Hammerheads themselves will be durable enough to stand up to any sort of return fire, given how damned lethal 40k is.
They'll get a turn to make their mark, and that'll be it for them.
The game has been making it increasingly easy to reserve away it's damage punches, and I doubt Tau will be any different. They will get their shot off. And the other player has to hope they have something left to fight back.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't think the Hammerheads themselves will be durable enough to stand up to any sort of return fire, given how damned lethal 40k is.
They'll get a turn to make their mark, and that'll be it for them.
What return fire ? Tau can hide behind LOS blocking terrain, move, even advance, and count as stationary in turn 1-3. They will then kill everything what can hurt them. Any opponent will be tabled T2, or severly crippled. You cant even tie them up in melee anymore, they can fall back and shoot in turn 3-5.
You only get to use one of the philosophie thingys per game...
Nonetheless, T'au alpha strike could cripple a careless opponent into nothingness.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't think the Hammerheads themselves will be durable enough to stand up to any sort of return fire, given how damned lethal 40k is.
They'll get a turn to make their mark, and that'll be it for them.
What return fire ? Tau can hide behind LOS blocking terrain, move, even advance, and count as stationary in turn 1-3. They will then kill everything what can hurt them. Any opponent will be tabled T2, or severly crippled. You cant even tie them up in melee anymore, they can fall back and shoot in turn 3-5.
You only get to use one of the philosophie thingys per game...
Nonetheless, T'au alpha strike could cripple a careless opponent into nothingness.
Im pretty sure that in the new codex named characters will be able to use both philosophies, or that there will be a stratagem that allows a unit to use the other philosophy, when one has already been used. You will not be able to hide from tau, they have artillery, and they can move, advance, and shoot, counting as stationary.
I am bothered that this is a huge leap in damage dealing potential halfway through the edition when nothing else in any codex is even close to this.
Nonsense, tons of stuff can do this kind of damage just not typically in one single shot and only shot. A bunch of units can do more damage in CC than the hammerhead.
Tau being an army without any high damage melee units instead have so far one unpointed unit that is pretty fragile that can keep up with stuff like knights on damage output at range.
Save the salt for whatever broadsides become.
No, they really can't.
There is no unit that can achieve a damage potential like this without a SERIOUS points investment, AND such potential is dramatically slashed but -1 damage effects that are increasingly common in the game.
Just to add to this, not many of these super CC units are making it into combat first turn, and making it unscathed either. Especially against Tau.
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: People are really acting as if a Hammerhead will live longer than a single turn in 40k's most lethal edition huh
Depends how much terrain is on the board. You don't want to go first against Tau as they can just hide it behind terrain, and pop out to deal significant damage.
That's if you don't decide to forgo VP points first turn by advancing out, where they are still giving a major advantage to the Tau player who can advance out and start collecting VP's, just by the sheer intimidating presence of them.
Let's also not consider these in isolation, Tau units have always been great at murdering advancing troops. You decide to counter with infantry and they will pick them off with ease also.
The railgun is not the only big hitter getting a major update in the new Codex: T’au Empire – would you believe it isn’t even the strongest weapon in their arsenal?
There are heavy rail guns on the tigershark, and the twin rail gun on the floating bunker tower thing.
I think the issue many people have with the hammerhead is that unless it's points go up a bit it won't NEED to live past two turns. If you can get two turns of shooting with a hammerhead on some decent targets it will more than likely kill more points than it costs. Even if it barely breaks even it will still have been a massive fire magnet. Anyone facing Tau will be forced to deal with a Hammerhead ASAP, and that is time they aren't focusing on the rest of the army, which has its own value.
cuda1179 wrote: I think the issue many people have with the hammerhead is that unless it's points go up a bit it won't NEED to live past two turns. If you can get two turns of shooting with a hammerhead on some decent targets it will more than likely kill more points than it costs. Even if it barely breaks even it will still have been a massive fire magnet. Anyone facing Tau will be forced to deal with a Hammerhead ASAP, and that is time they aren't focusing on the rest of the army, which has its own value.
Better to wait the rest of the rules and the point cost, anyway.
The issue with people moaning about the preview is that they do it on a partial picture, as usual.
cuda1179 wrote: I think the issue many people have with the hammerhead is that unless it's points go up a bit it won't NEED to live past two turns. If you can get two turns of shooting with a hammerhead on some decent targets it will more than likely kill more points than it costs. Even if it barely breaks even it will still have been a massive fire magnet. Anyone facing Tau will be forced to deal with a Hammerhead ASAP, and that is time they aren't focusing on the rest of the army, which has its own value.
Better to wait the rest of the rules and the point cost, anyway.
The issue with people moaning about the preview is that they do it on a partial picture, as usual.
but don't we just get the usual multi-step procedure we see with all these broken units
1: Preview looks broken -"Oh its just part of the picture, you simply can't judge it on that - just wait and see
2: Rules come out in full: "Oh it will be fixed in the Codex - just wait and see"
3: Codex comes out: "Oh it will be fixed in the 2 week faqs - stop moaning and wait and see"
4: Faqs: "Oh its going to be fixed in time, stop moaning and wait and see"
Months go by....and new deadly weapons come as as bad or worse to counter this Op unit...
Oh, it's a new plateau. But one that's been long, long overdue given all the silly stuff like Ramshackle and AdMech Planes with a 1+ save and -1 damage, and now the Crusher Stampede.
It takes something like 123 Melta-shots on average to kill a Harridan these days, which equates to some 3000 points of Sisters. Assuming you don't get Hive Guarded first.
It's a new plateau, but a profile they should by FAQ slap on all lascannons, melta, mining lasers, etc.. to make the game playable again.
Voss wrote: I do like the idea that we can't judge a gun against all other guns in the game and realize that its an entirely new plateau.
No, no. Its just a partial picture.
Yeah, even in a best-case scenario where this unit is somehow balanced, we're still seeing the return of D-weapons, which were among the least-fun elements of 7th edition.
Voss wrote: I do like the idea that we can't judge a gun against all other guns in the game and realize that its an entirely new plateau.
No, no. Its just a partial picture.
Yeah, even in a best-case scenario where this unit is somehow balanced, we're still seeing the return of D-weapons, which were among the least-fun elements of 7th edition.
D-Weapons weren't the problem. Unkillable units like Screamer Stars, etc.. were the problem, which we've seen return in the shape of the Crusher Stampede, Ork Buggy spam, etc.. D-Weapons where an (undeniably clumsy) attempt to fix that issue in 7th.
You need to be able to kill stuff to have a game. If you can build armies that not every Codex can reliably kill quickly enough to still be relevant to the game scoring, you get 7th Edition.
Just what are these aircraft/ships here? They're not Tigersharks and they don't appear to match anything I can find.
Doesn't look like any Tau flyer I recognise. It kind of looks like the codex flyer without the drones in the wing but with a completely different back end.
vicia wrote: Remember the post also stated that this was not the strongest weapon. So what do think is?
Stormsurge is the incredibly obvious answer, once you remember that unit even exists :p
And specifically the pulse blast cannon (the titan shotgun that used to be 4 shots S-D when they anchored at short range).
I reckon the pulse driver will be more shots but not as big individually as the hammerhead railgun.
Sunny Side Up wrote: It takes something like 123 Melta-shots on average to kill a Harridan these days...
Lot of people bringing Harridans these days, hey?
I mean...
123 shots
123/2 hits (hitting on a 3+ with a -1 from Hard To Hit)
123/4 wounds
123/4 failed saves
861/8 damage, or 107 damage.
How do you get 123 Melta Shots needed to kill a Harridan? They have 34 Wounds. By my count, you need 10 failed saves (down to 6-7 in Melta Range) which is 10 wounds, 20 hits, and 40-60 shots, depending on BS.
I don't care about the maths, I just doubt that Harridans, and ancient FW kit that next to no one owns, is a real problem in 40k now. Bringing them up as an example is pretty silly.
Ordana wrote: People seem to believe they will work well in the new Crushing Swarm monster mash.
Yes I know, but, again, do we really think that's going to happen? It's a Harridan, FFS. Not exactly the most common thing in the world to have lying around.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't care about the maths, I just doubt that Harridans, and ancient FW kit that next to no one owns, is a real problem in 40k now. Bringing them up as an example is pretty silly.
Personally I'm waiting for the old Genestealer limousine to be used as an example.
Everyone is talking about the railgun but I'm waiting for the codex to say that the Tau are immune to psycker abilities. That is when the real fun starts.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't care about the maths, I just doubt that Harridans, and ancient FW kit that next to no one owns, is a real problem in 40k now. Bringing them up as an example is pretty silly.
Personally I'm waiting for the old Genestealer limousine to be used as an example.
Everyone is talking about the railgun but I'm waiting for the codex to say that the Tau are immune to psycker abilities. That is when the real fun starts.
Tau are almost psychic blanks, but not quite. Having a minor ability to shrug off wounds in the psychic phase would be okay with me. Something like what Custodes currently have. A 6+ fnp save in the psychic phase isn't much, but helps their infantry a bit.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I don't care about the maths, I just doubt that Harridans, and ancient FW kit that next to no one owns, is a real problem in 40k now. Bringing them up as an example is pretty silly.
Personally I'm waiting for the old Genestealer limousine to be used as an example.
Everyone is talking about the railgun but I'm waiting for the codex to say that the Tau are immune to psycker abilities. That is when the real fun starts.
Tau are almost psychic blanks, but not quite. Having a minor ability to shrug off wounds in the psychic phase would be okay with me. Something like what Custodes currently have. A 6+ fnp save in the psychic phase isn't much, but helps their infantry a bit.
From what I've read, T'au show up in the warp, just not very strongly. If a demon is looking to eat something. A Human's soul is like an all you can eat buffet, whereas the T'au's soul is a little snack. Barely worth the effort to eat.
But that shouldn't make them immune to psychic stuff. They do also already have a FNP though, so that's something.
Sunny Side Up wrote: It takes something like 123 Melta-shots on average to kill a Harridan these days...
Lot of people bringing Harridans these days, hey?
I mean...
123 shots
123/2 hits (hitting on a 3+ with a -1 from Hard To Hit)
123/4 wounds
123/4 failed saves
861/8 damage, or 107 damage.
How do you get 123 Melta Shots needed to kill a Harridan? They have 34 Wounds. By my count, you need 10 failed saves (down to 6-7 in Melta Range) which is 10 wounds, 20 hits, and 40-60 shots, depending on BS.
Add in 5++, -1dam per attack(so 2.5 long range, 4.5 at melta range) and 6+++.
123 shots, half miss, half fail to wound, 2/3 goes through save.
Though even at long range still seems to be something missing as I get around 42 wounds in at long range. Of course there could be something else I'm missing from the new supplement(or main tyranid codex).
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: People are really acting as if a Hammerhead will live longer than a single turn in 40k's most lethal edition huh
They will if the Tau have killed everything that can kill them.
No melee unit is reaching them in one turn, and, again, the game has a plethora of reserve tricks to prevent them from being alphaed (Like people used to do with eradicators when they were good enough to take).
This thing eats the meta choices for lunch. Raiders? Dead. Talos? Dead. Dreadnoughts? Dead.
And I suspect this super gun is the reason behind the absolute bonkers choice of perma transhuman on wave serpents that is rumored to be a thing. Cause the eldar rules writer went "What, there's something another writing is doing that can kill my precious Eldar? DENIED!"
cuda1179 wrote: I think the issue many people have with the hammerhead is that unless it's points go up a bit it won't NEED to live past two turns. If you can get two turns of shooting with a hammerhead on some decent targets it will more than likely kill more points than it costs. Even if it barely breaks even it will still have been a massive fire magnet. Anyone facing Tau will be forced to deal with a Hammerhead ASAP, and that is time they aren't focusing on the rest of the army, which has its own value.
What is more likely to happen, at least competitively, is that any good targets for a hammerhead simply disappear from meta lists. Now this does trash some armies out of the meta, custodes unable to use telemons is rough, marine competetive lists are living and dying on the back of their dreadnoughts, and even deldar use a mass of undercosted good stuff that will be absolutely massacred by this gun. But once these are all suppressed, the hammerhead has no place in a list, and will, itself, disappear for want of a target (Unless they made the stupid ass choice of making it simultaneously good at killing infantry). Which will inspire some real meta nerds to put back in the stuff it kills on a tournament to tournament basis since Tau won't have hammerheads because their targets all left the meta. Provided lesser tau shooting doesn't still trash tanks while trashing infantry too, which is the Riptide problem.
Like this gun is kinda overkill, the Tau might not need it at all to suppress armor.
What is going to suck for most players is that they aren't meta chasing tournament goers, and everyone that has added a tank or two to their fun army simply can't play against this. I worry about the drukhari problem of: Even in casual games the drukhari are too strong and almost all their options are good, so two casual lists will lead to a drukhari victory every time. But with the eldar rumors and this, maybe drukhari is actually where GW is shooting the meta to be, and sucks for every other book released without this power spike.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Oh, it's a new plateau. But one that's been long, long overdue given all the silly stuff like Ramshackle and AdMech Planes with a 1+ save and -1 damage, and now the Crusher Stampede.
It takes something like 123 Melta-shots on average to kill a Harridan these days, which equates to some 3000 points of Sisters. Assuming you don't get Hive Guarded first.
It's a new plateau, but a profile they should by FAQ slap on all lascannons, melta, mining lasers, etc.. to make the game playable again.
I mean, I am looking at a new book that's genius idea is that every weapon in it should be 2 damage. Whoops everything important is -1 damage.
Sunny Side Up wrote: It takes something like 123 Melta-shots on average to kill a Harridan these days...
Lot of people bringing Harridans these days, hey?
I mean, they might when every big nid bug is -1 damage. The cycle of GW introducing more rules to fix the problems of their old rules instead of just fixing their rules.
Ordana wrote: People seem to believe they will work well in the new Crushing Swarm monster mash.
Yes I know, but, again, do we really think that's going to happen? It's a Harridan, FFS. Not exactly the most common thing in the world to have lying around.
I play an army that GW expect you to invest in Forgeworld to be any good and, like, people are largely okay with that, so don't think GW won't push people to forgeworld up
tneva82 wrote: Gw wants people to go away from fw to more profitable plastic.
I'm sure the people IN forgeworld don't agree, considering that's their job. And, like, if this were true, then why does forgeworld keep expanding its range? There are, indeed, things forgeworld does that is more profitable for them then citadel plastics.
Sigh. Fw caters mostly to collectors. That's what it was designed. To sell to people who rather than spam op stuff max amount wants to buy one of each cool models regardless of rules.
Those won't buy 10 boxes of op goodness so having fewer kits reduces your purchases from those. Having wide range of kits meanwhile increases.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 0 resin you sell 5 kits.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 5 resin kit you sell 10 kits.
Plastic is too expensive to sell small quantities so having niche units to sell for collectors is not good. Plastic good for selling op stuff for op tryhards though. Resin meanwhile is cheap to do small quanties with less startup price but expensensive to do in large quantities(plastic machine does whole thing automatically. Resin involves manual casting work).
It's simple kinder garden level of logic. Only hard to understand for people for whom sole reason to buy model is level of op'ness of rules.
tneva82 wrote: Sigh. Fw caters mostly to collectors. That's what it was designed. To sell to people who rather than spam op stuff max amount wants to buy one of each cool models regardless of rules.
Those won't buy 10 boxes of op goodness so having fewer kits reduces your purchases from those. Having wide range of kits meanwhile increases.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 0 resin you sell 5 kits.
Have 5 op plastic kit and 5 resin kit you sell 10 kits.
Plastic is too expensive to sell small quantities so having niche units to sell for collectors is not good. Plastic good for selling op stuff for op tryhards though. Resin meanwhile is cheap to do small quanties with less startup price but expensensive to do in large quantities(plastic machine does whole thing automatically. Resin involves manual casting work).
It's simple kinder garden level of logic. Only hard to understand for people for whom sole reason to buy model is level of op'ness of rules.
So, have you NOT seen the number of people spamming Volkite Contemptors, or are you just being intentionally obtuse?
The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.
But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").
So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.
People are unnecessarily losing their minds over the hammerhead.
All of your models don't have to start on the table with strategic reserves alone.
It has a 72" range, but 9th is the most terrain dense edition.
It doesn't ignore LoS
All of it's damage is tied up one to hit roll with the following up so for to wound roll so it's "a lot of damage and ignores saves". There are a variety of 200pt and less units on the game that put out this same or more damage already, yes you get to roll some saves but due to weight of dice the average result is still you taking 10-12 wounds, which a HH with railgun is only going to do if it hits and wounds and you have no feel no pain type saves versus wounds and or mortal wounds.
Trimarius wrote: The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.
But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").
So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.
Yet again, I care little for how good it is at killing a Rhino. Lots of weapons do that well. I'm more interested in its ability to hurt Dreadknights, Daemon Primarchs, Hive Tyrants or anything else with a lot of wounds an an invul save.
People are very fearful whenever a pure shooty army gets a new codex. Rightfully so, as GW may accidentally create an army that can alpha strike you similar to Adeptus Mechanicus. Players do not want to lose on turn 1 and when you see a weapon profile like the railgun people start to believe that they have created a codex that has all the tools to alpha strike. I need more than just one weapon profile to hit the panic button, I need to see point cost.
I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.
We don't have a complete picture yet, the leaks/reveals to look out for are 9th edition FTGG, Tau Sept/FSE (2 previously strongest sub factions) and Riptides.
Nearly every Tau player has Riptides and most are probably built with Heavy Burst Cannons and they were an 8th edition staple. A common view is GW likes a good bit of churn between editions, what was good is now bad and what was bad is now good, so this should be one of the weaker weapons. But, if we see the new stats and they look good we know Fishy AdMech are here.
I think Mont'ka and airbusting fragmentation projectors are very scary. 2d6x9 str 4 ap 2 re-rolling 1 to wound ignoring line of sight, or the new flamers that can do something similar but auto-hit and they can auto-hit in combat. Who charges into 18d6+36 str 4 ap 1 hits? Then next turn they can shoot you with the flamers in combat. From what few rumors I know the railgun is the least of my concern.
Mr_Rose wrote: I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.
They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.
Mr_Rose wrote: I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.
They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.
Wasn't there a Relic Railgun that gave them 2 shots?
Trimarius wrote: The railgun only gets one shot, guys. 8/9 to hit (assuming the reroll isn't replacing the BS3 of the current tank), 5/6 to wound (assuming you're shooting a light target), d3+9 damage. That's great for killing transports and dreadnoughts, but that's still only a 74% chance to pop one. Which is a pretty good return if you're shooting a ~100 point raider, since you're making about 50% of your cost back each turn.
But four lascannon devs cost a relatively similar amount and average 7.26 damage (this is with a reroll 1s to hit, but not taking a cherub or signum into account), which is only slightly less. More if you pop both. Yeah, you lose some to invuls or -1 damage, but devs aren't really a hot commodity, are they?. Attack bikes or eradicators, the things people might actually take, are pumping out 6-8 melta shots a turn, and that's significantly more damage (and no contest at 12").
So the hammerhead has range on it's side, but it's not a new height in raw damage. It's just "good-ish" damage in a super lethal game, with a few tricks tacked on.
Yet again, I care little for how good it is at killing a Rhino. Lots of weapons do that well. I'm more interested in its ability to hurt Dreadknights, Daemon Primarchs, Hive Tyrants or anything else with a lot of wounds an an invul save.
A railgun does just under 4 damage to Morty. So five of them (750-1000 points, depending on if the cost increases) is required to off him in one go and they're still rocking somewhere in the 50% to 66% return. Almost exactly the same points/shot return against a Hive Tyrant, with an average of 8.15 damage (and a 1/4 chance to one shot it). A little better than bikes, but rather worse than eradicators in short range (and about even at 24") against the tyrant. Morty, with his -1Damage ability, is a worse target for the multi-shot folks, as you would imagine, but is still taking 3.1 or 4.9 damage from some eradicators.
Dreadknights are even worse targets for the railgun, as they're wounded on the same 2+ as the Tyrant, but have an extra wound (so no chance of a one shot kill) and a 5++ against the mortals.
Mr_Rose wrote: I would also need to know if hammerheads can be squadroned (i.e. multiple per slot) for peak spam efficiency, or if there’s any way to give them multiple shots per turn.
They can't squadron now and I don't see why that would change.
Same with multiple shots.
Wasn't there a Relic Railgun that gave them 2 shots?
There is yeah, forgot about that one. But have PA 'relics but not really' carried over to 9th codexes?
Let's look at the rest of the Tau codex before we jump to the conclusion this is op. I love the memes coming out from this though.
If this comes out and doesn't shake the meta. GW might come to the realisation that single shot high damage weapons on vehicles are too weak and accordingly buff all the rest of such vehicles, or lower their cost. I wouldn't mind further buffs or point reductions to Predator tanks, Land Raiders, CSM Daemon Engines, etc.
The problem is not that it might be OP, but that it is a big design change again
We got invulnerable saves to help with AP and mortal wounds to counter them
Now we have ignore invulnerable saves and will get something to counter that
Back to game design of 7th Edition and GW learned nothing from their past mistakes
kodos wrote: The problem is not that it might be OP, but that it is a big design change again
We got invulnerable saves to help with AP and mortal wounds to counter them
Now we have ignore invulnerable saves and will get something to counter that
Back to game design of 7th Edition and GW learned nothing from their past mistakes
The real issue is a bloat of special rules. Railgun is nothing new, it's the same design than V9 of 40k.
Kanluwen wrote: To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?
I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.
Kanluwen wrote: To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?
I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.
A psyker character.
As in an entire phase worth of things that Tau don't have...
Kanluwen wrote: To be fair?
If those books have other ways of doing it via Psyker abilities, Miracles, or whatever...do they need guns that do it for them?
I thin a gun being able to ignore from 72" range is a bit different to having to get a character model within 6" of the target.
A psyker character.
As in an entire phase worth of things that Tau don't have...
Neither do Drukhari, yet dark eldar have survived 3 nerfs with a 60+ percent winrate.
I love the argument that not having Psychic powers or Melee justifies an army needing to be 3x as lethal in the shooting phase to make up for it.
Most armies that have Psychic powers and Melee do very little actual damage in those phases compared to their shooting phase. Eldar and Marines for example will only have a couple Characters with powers, often just buffs or a damage spell or 2, and will almost Never have more Melee than Shooting (GK potentially being the exception)
The fact is, shooting is and always will be the most powerful phase in 40k. And T'au, not having melee or psychic powers, will always come with more passive buffs to said phase because of that.
So it is understandable that people would freak out when they see a powerful weapon like the Railgun than ignores just about all defenses their big important units have against shooting.
Especially when we know that won't be the only weapon like it, nor the most powerful one in their army.
At least it seems GW is moving in the right direction for single shot weapons that have always struggled to reliably damage the targets they were designed against. D6 damage was always too unreliable and I like that they are adding weapons like D3+3, etc.
D3+6 ignore invuls with 3MWs is just a bit...egregious.
I think D6+3 ignore invuls would have been more palatable, with D3 MWs
Literally nobody has said that psychic is a super damaging phase.
It's always been home to heavy buffs/debuffs...and it's effectively always been a requirement to have something to counterplay them. Tau don't have that.
I could understand the problem with the railgun if these things were squadroned or if the submunitions was in addition to instead of or whatever. As it stands? It's strong. There's no arguing that.
But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.
Kanluwen wrote: Literally nobody has said that psychic is a super damaging phase.
It's always been home to heavy buffs/debuffs...and it's effectively always been a requirement to have something to counterplay them. Tau don't have that.
I could understand the problem with the railgun if these things were squadroned or if the submunitions was in addition to instead of or whatever. As it stands? It's strong. There's no arguing that.
But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.
Every army is home to tons of buffs, and what, really, is the difference between casting a spell for a buff and shooting a markerlight for a buff?
Bork'an for ignore invulnerable stratagem as well.
Knight armies would be screwed. Hammerheads reliable 20-30 damage per turn, stormsurge gun potentially one shotting knight and if not at least 12 damage per turn reliably.
Even if it's not OP is such extreme rock paper scissor style game becoming healthy...
Apparently firewarriors are now mandatory 10 a unit. Great stuff seeing as the old kit had 12 of them in the box and no more MSU. Some changes are looking interesting, others are looking pretty meh. Many things becoming strats that used to be wargear is not something I'm looking forward to. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out though.
I never understood the obsession with FTGG from non Tau players. If the Tau player has literally everything bunched up, great! You win the objective game by default. If not, overwatch is so bad it hardly ever does everthing (I suppose 5+ is a little better when playing Tau sept, but who does that?). In all my years as playing tau I maybe had 1 instance where I actually killed stuff in overwatch. While it is yet another typically Tau thing being removed, I dont really mind it. Like I said, for me it never added that much value and all that it resulted in was a lot of headaches trying to keep units within 6" of each other, and some needless dice rolling when I got charged.
tneva82 wrote: Bork'an for ignore invulnerable stratagem as well.
Knight armies would be screwed. Hammerheads reliable 20-30 damage per turn, stormsurge gun potentially one shotting knight and if not at least 12 damage per turn reliably.
Even if it's not OP is such extreme rock paper scissor style game becoming healthy...
Yeah, experienced players will be able to handle this but I think it's really going to skew balance for casual / pickup games. Every so often someone is going to show up with 2-3 Hammerheads & Longstrike, and any opponent with knights / superheavies / daemon primarch will have the game decided by a few average turn 1 dice. Alternatively the Tau player will roll those few critical dice poorly, then get stomped.
Either way it looks like a recipe for feelsbad games.
Had a look through the thread wondering if Pulse Carbines have any changes besides the range increase? I thought they'd become Assault 3 which would justify them over the PR, but now that PRs are Ap-1 I can't find any info at all on why we'd take PCs instead.
Kanluwen wrote: But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.
It's a Heavy weapon on a vehicle, and no references to it I've seen have said it can't move and fire - any reason you think that might be the case, Kan?
It feels like Tau might struggle against Genestealer Cults given they can Vect Overwatch into oblivion, in the opposite way to how they're almost an auto win against Knights.
9th does seem to be having some issues that while the win rates in tournaments will probably balance out, that doesn't reflex that some match up combinations aren't balanced at all, which is not much fun.
tneva82 wrote: Knight armies would be screwed. Hammerheads reliable 20-30 damage per turn, stormsurge gun potentially one shotting knight and if not at least 12 damage per turn reliably.
Remember when in 7th edition, when Tau were broken beyond belief, even Tau Sue fanfiction known as War Zone Damocles: Kauyon/Mont'ka stated that Tau had problems with knights and were countered by them (well, until they somehow turned copy paste of Space Marine anti-air missile into a tank killer throwing a bucket of Str D shots because screw logic)? Even back then idea of Knights being outright smashed by TAU HULK would have been ridiculous. I'd have never imagined even a year ago GW would make something even more busted than 7th
Speaking of 7th, remember how the little Surge anchoring struts that should do jack thanks to their tiny size had not only benefit, but a drawback? And you had to carefully judge their deployment? Screw that, drawbacks are lame, just replace any xenos rule with a mountain of cheese (meanwhile, massive anchoring rigs on SM Stalker/Hunter tanks do nothing, because again, screw logic)
I also like the pile of gouda that is the new Tau plasma rifle. Something that for decades was explicitly stated to be worse than Imperial rifles (supposedly in the name of "safety" though it was heavily implied it was just Tau propaganda as they had no problems with stuff like Ion rifles frying users with dangerously radioactive power sources) is now more busted than Necron and Eldar technology combined. Screw logic and fluff, eh?
Oh, and as a side note, I like how designer made his pet Tau army literally swim in broken gak, then took one look, thought 'hmm, this might be a problem' and his solution was to give the Tau the only countermeasure to this crap in the entire game (namely the stratagem that turns their 47856673 damage weapons into D1 flashlights). And I really like fluff justification to this - apparently all you need to do to stop magical scrap bullets that make mockery of void shields, daemon primarch magic and necron technology is to quickly shoot it with a pistol mid flight. LOGIC!
Kanluwen wrote: But until we see if the Hammerhead can move and fire the railgun, until we see that it has Fly(it probably won't), until we see that it has a Grinding Advance or any number of factors I hesitate to call it the gamebreaking thing people are making it out to be.
It's a Heavy weapon on a vehicle, and no references to it I've seen have said it can't move and fire - any reason you think that might be the case, Kan?
Literally because I was speculating that it might have a rule baked into it...in a post made on January 2nd, aka over a week ago.
As a Chaos knights player, the Hammerhead's new railgun initially scared the crap out of me. Thinking about it further, 3 Hammerheads maxes out your Heavies in a Battalion, and means you aren't taking Broadsides. I think people might be slightly overreacting to a single-shot weapon.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: As a Chaos knights player, the Hammerhead's new railgun initially scared the crap out of me. Thinking about it further, 3 Hammerheads maxes out your Heavies in a Battalion, and means you aren't taking Broadsides. I think people might be slightly overreacting to a single-shot weapon.
Broadsides, Ghostkeels, and Riptides per the leak.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: As a Chaos knights player, the Hammerhead's new railgun initially scared the crap out of me. Thinking about it further, 3 Hammerheads maxes out your Heavies in a Battalion, and means you aren't taking Broadsides. I think people might be slightly overreacting to a single-shot weapon.
Or they take patrol for broadsides and unlock more commanders. Already common thing.
New article on Darkstrider says that's part of why he's "hated" is due to his "continued refusal of promotion has made him enemies within the T’au military leadership, for the Fire Caste values tradition and self-sacrifice above all else" because he'd rather stay on the field outside of a Battlesuit - yet there's the entire role of Fireblade/Shas'Nel who's whole point is that they're considered such skilled firewarriors that they also refuse Battlesuits and remain as Infantry where they're best, and while not as respected as Battlesuit pilots, according to lexicanum they're "still highly respected, not least because of their willingness to forgo prestige".
So Fireblades are a rank that Firewarriors who don't want to use Battlesuits and remain as infantry can take, and that's highly respected in part because of eschewing Battlesuits. Yet Darkstrider is bad for wanting that same thing but as a Pathfinder?
Mentlegen324 wrote: New article on Darkstrider says that's part of why he's "hated" is due to his "continued refusal of promotion has made him enemies within the T’au military leadership, for the Fire Caste values tradition and self-sacrifice above all else" because he'd rather stay on the field outside of a Battlesuit - yet there's the entire role of Fireblade/Shas'Nel who's whole point is that they're considered such skilled firewarriors that they also refuse Battlesuits and remain as Infantry where they're best, and while not as respected as Battlesuit pilots, according to lexicanum they're "still highly respected, not least because of their willingness to forgo prestige".
So Fireblades are a rank that Firewarriors who don't want to use Battlesuits and remain as infantry can take, and that's highly respected in part because of eschewing Battlesuits. Yet Darkstrider is bad for wanting that same thing but as a Pathfinder?
How could he be such an edgy rebel if his superiors were cool with him doing his thing?
Tau background has gone down the drain with the shift to super hero narratives. They might even be the prime example of the drop in writing quality with the old Farsight Enclaves book. You could see how the material up to a certain point was written in the old pseudo-historical style before everything got cranked up and increasing emphasis was put on Farsight's direct actions until he turned into Superman flying around planets and putting out fires all by himself. They couldn't even be bothered to retcon the old stuff so at least stylistically is was all in line.
What's one more instance of that level of background?
Mentlegen324 wrote: New article on Darkstrider says that's part of why he's "hated" is due to his "continued refusal of promotion has made him enemies within the T’au military leadership, for the Fire Caste values tradition and self-sacrifice above all else" because he'd rather stay on the field outside of a Battlesuit - yet there's the entire role of Fireblade/Shas'Nel who's whole point is that they're considered such skilled firewarriors that they also refuse Battlesuits and remain as Infantry where they're best, and while not as respected as Battlesuit pilots, according to lexicanum they're "still highly respected, not least because of their willingness to forgo prestige".
So Fireblades are a rank that Firewarriors who don't want to use Battlesuits and remain as infantry can take, and that's highly respected in part because of eschewing Battlesuits. Yet Darkstrider is bad for wanting that same thing but as a Pathfinder?
How could he be such an edgy rebel if his superiors were cool with him doing his thing?
Tau background has gone down the drain with the shift to super hero narratives. They might even be the prime example of the drop in writing quality with the old Farsight Enclaves book. You could see how the material up to a certain point was written in the old pseudo-historical style before everything got cranked up and increasing emphasis was put on Farsight's direct actions until he turned into Superman flying around planets and putting out fires all by himself. They couldn't even be bothered to retcon the old stuff so at least stylistically is was all in line.
What's one more instance of that level of background?
It's not the other stuff about him going off and doing his own thing and not listening to orders that's the problem;
The Tau have a unit who's whole theming is that they've decided not to go up in rank and use Battlesuits, and would prefer to stay in the field fighting alongside Infantry and thus don't go above Shas'El. It's a role that isn't treated with disdain, but is rather respected and said to be so for reasons including because they eschew a Battlesuit. It's fine for Fire Caste to refuse a promotion and the use of Battlesuits in order to stay as infantry, even getting their own set of special armour for it. Fireblades are less respected than Battlesuit pilots, but still respected for going down the path of a Fireblade.
The article says that Darkstrider is considered "hated" by many Tau, for reasons that include him deciding not to go up in rank and use Battlesuits and how he would prefer to stay in the field fighting alongside Infantry. The idea of a T'au not wanting to be promoted is apparently against tradition and something that has caused quite a few enemies because he's eschewed piloting a Battlesuit.
Fireblade; Fire Caste rank that's respected for refusing promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is fine and even gets them a special suit of armour.
Darkstrider; Fire Caste will hate a T'au for refusing a promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is not fine and against tradition.
Just comes across as poorly written and a mess.
What do you mean with the change in style with their lore though? I'm not sure what you mean with "old pseudo-historical style".
When I was reading the 8th codex, it seemed like Darkstrider was hated a lot more for ignoring orders and just kind of doing his own thing, and refusing to promote to a stealth suit was just part of that individual streak. For example he has a quote where he pretends he didnt hear an order
"We engaged and dedtroyed the enemy column in accordance with mission parameters. No. I received no such orders to disengage and fall back, Shas'o. Perhaps there was some form of atmospheric interference."
It also talks about him using a tone bordering on insubordination and just having little respect for the chain of command overall. Makes sense to me he'd have a lot of enemies in a society as homogenous as the Tau. It sounds like his superiors being angry over his refusal to be promoted to a battlesuit or stealth team is more about him being insubordinate in general and thats just something concrete they can point to in a report.
Yeah. I don't disagree with you. Welcome to the wonderful world of tomorrow.
Mentlegen324 wrote: What do you mean with the change in style with their lore though? I'm not sure what you mean with "old pseudo-historical style".
Broadly speaking, 2nd ed and 3rd ed style of codex writing was more like faux history concerned with the larger scale. Logistics mattered, commanders did commanding instead of meeting their counterparts on the field of battle to decide the outcome of a war in a duel, individual heroics were highlighted but did not tend to be the turning points in the grand scheme of things and it was generally acknowledged that armies won wars, not individual heroes. Tone was somewhat different depending on the faction that was focused on, with Sisters of Battle/the Ecclesiarchy being portrayed more as the inspirational figures moving the masses while Guard high command was sitting back in bunkers and doing big picture strategy that unit commanders put into action. But overall it was centered more around logistics and armies doing the heavy lifting than big bad commander dudes punching each other to decide the fate of a world.
5th ed to 7th ed saw a move away from that with ever more focus on the direct action of individuals to effect major changes to the point where now everything seems to revolve around named characters and you can accurately predict that every matchup of named character against named character ends in a variety of stalemate and some deus ex machina to explain the desired outcome. The first instance of this vibe I can think of is the Ork codex coming out towards the end of 4th ed that had named characters of a race previously noted to have an average life expectancy of 30 years to scoot all across the galaxy, inspire Waaaghs and lead Ork armies to victory before they move on to the next hotspot. Which, of course, made no sense at all, but was to me the first sign of GW's intention to make special characters pivotal to events the galaxy over instead of, as before, coming up with new characters that would do their thing in their war zone and not getting to travel anywhere else, by and large, because they were already busy where they were. Even then there were of course notable individuals that appeared in different locations, but it was a lot more restrained than, say, Guilliman these days putting out fires on both sides of the Rift and getting help to the Dark Imperium, no problem, in spite of the insistence in other places of the background writing that that part is cut off and desperately staving off doom.
In short, GW used to describe conflict in 40k more in terms of plausible military strategy with all that entails, and then gradually switched to super hero narratives placing pivotal changes in the hands of individual heroes.
MrMoustaffa wrote: When I was reading the 8th codex, it seemed like Darkstrider was hated a lot more for ignoring orders and just kind of doing his own thing, and refusing to promote to a stealth suit was just part of that individual streak. For example he has a quote where he pretends he didnt hear an order
"We engaged and dedtroyed the enemy column in accordance with mission parameters. No. I received no such orders to disengage and fall back, Shas'o. Perhaps there was some form of atmospheric interference."
It also talks about him using a tone bordering on insubordination and just having little respect for the chain of command overall. Makes sense to me he'd have a lot of enemies in a society as homogenous as the Tau. It sounds like his superiors being angry over his refusal to be promoted to a battlesuit or stealth team is more about him being insubordinate in general and thats just something concrete they can point to in a report.
Little bit more than that.
Remember that the Pathfinders are supposed to be a way for someone to basically be like the "ultimate exemplar of the Greater Good". You literally put your butt on the line to shine a "shoot this guy!" light so someone else gets the kill.
But Darkstrider has a kinda/sorta cult of personality around him. His insistence on remaining in command of Pathfinder groups has led some to think that he's not just in it for The Greater Good but also because it makes him continually look good.
drbored wrote: in before GW makes knights 25 wounds and gives them a ignore some damage mechanic, totally invalidating their recent 'one shot a knight' article.
That'd be nice, but us Chaos types are too busy hurting ourselves for it to matter.
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Geifer wrote: 5th ed to 7th ed saw a move away from that with ever more focus on the direct action of individuals to effect major changes to the point where now everything seems to revolve around named characters and you can accurately predict that every matchup of named character against named character ends in a variety of stalemate and some deus ex machina to explain the desired outcome.
You mean 6th to 7th edition, surely?
5th edition Space Marine book not only presented captains and chapter masters first and foremost as commanders, it stressed their leadership abilities, not being a moron frothing at the mouth with a hammer charging forward on jetpack like modern SMHQs do. It was also the edition which actually put the fluff into consideration when writing the game - not only best SM captain 'generalist' option was a relic blade, not any of the S8 bludgeoning bricks (disincentivizing you from charging forward at big threats), but it was also the edition which introduced honor guard, company/chapter champion, dedicated command squads, and other dudes whose job was explicitly allowing the commanders to actually lead when said bodyguards were doing all the melee, both in game and in fluff. I miss when GW had actually competent writers who cared about fluff experience
If there is one big mistake that ruined the 'commander' feel, I think it's GW decision to give blanket 2+ to hit to all characters during late 7th and beginning of 8th (especially such laughable cases as Tau and IG leaders who used to have 4+ to hit). If they kept 4+ as baseline, 3+ for elites like SM and other long lived races, and 2+ for a single stat of truly special individuals, there would be much less incentive to treat character models as a beatstick (and you wouldn't need such kludges as Core mechanic, because commanders using their own aura would just make them a little bit better, not 2+ rerollable jokes they turned into). But in the era of orkstodes and tau/eldar glorified conscripted street sweepers getting 2+ to hit for no reason and other absurd stat inflation, this milk had spilled a long time ago...
Daedalus81 wrote: Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon.
Are they penalized, really, when all their new weapons are equally broken? In fact, they do seem to be getting a big discount if you mix guns, even if the guns taken share the same general purpose (and are better than what specialized Tau guns used to be).
Say, new plasma rifle. From reddit leaks, you can 'mastercraft' it to 2x S8, AP-5 D3 shots that are ignoring ++ saves. Who cares about 1 less fusion gun when you have this gak? I like how it deletes termies/custodes/aggressors/other misc elites better than anything major galactic powers could make and is pretty much the best eraser of DG and TS models of all sizes in the game because your puny magics of two gods noted for durability can't match Sue powers, eh?
drbored wrote: in before GW makes knights 25 wounds and gives them a ignore some damage mechanic, totally invalidating their recent 'one shot a knight' article.
Really, at this point, W 55-60 knight would be just going to their relative durability from the beginning of 8th edition
Geifer wrote: 5th ed to 7th ed saw a move away from that with ever more focus on the direct action of individuals to effect major changes to the point where now everything seems to revolve around named characters and you can accurately predict that every matchup of named character against named character ends in a variety of stalemate and some deus ex machina to explain the desired outcome.
You mean 6th to 7th edition, surely?
5th edition Space Marine book not only presented captains and chapter masters first and foremost as commanders, it stressed their leadership abilities, not being a moron frothing at the mouth with a hammer charging forward on jetpack like modern SMHQs do. It was also the edition which actually put the fluff into consideration when writing the game - not only best SM captain 'generalist' option was a relic blade, not any of the S8 bludgeoning bricks (disincentivizing you from charging forward at big threats), but it was also the edition which introduced honor guard, company/chapter champion, dedicated command squads, and other dudes whose job was explicitly allowing the commanders to actually lead when said bodyguards were doing all the melee, both in game and in fluff. I miss when GW had actually competent writers who cared about fluff experience
If there is one big mistake that ruined the 'commander' feel, I think it's GW decision to give blanket 2+ to hit to all characters during late 7th and beginning of 8th (especially such laughable cases as Tau and IG leaders who used to have 4+ to hit). If they kept 4+ as baseline, 3+ for elites like SM and other long lived races, and 2+ for a single stat of truly special individuals, there would be much less incentive to treat character models as a beatstick (and you wouldn't need such kludges as Core mechanic, because commanders using their own aura would just make them a little bit better, not 2+ rerollable jokes they turned into). But in the era of orkstodes and tau/eldar glorified conscripted street sweepers getting 2+ to hit for no reason and other absurd stat inflation, this milk had spilled a long time ago...
Daedalus81 wrote: Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon.
Are they penalized, really, when all their new weapons are equally broken? In fact, they do seem to be getting a big discount if you mix guns, even if the guns taken share the same general purpose (and are better than what specialized Tau guns used to be).
Say, new plasma rifle. From reddit leaks, you can 'mastercraft' it to 2x S8, AP-5 D3 shots that are ignoring ++ saves. Who cares about 1 less fusion gun when you have this gak? I like how it deletes termies/custodes/aggressors/other misc elites better than anything major galactic powers could make and is pretty much the best eraser of DG and TS models of all sizes in the game because your puny magics of two gods noted for durability can't match Sue powers, eh?
drbored wrote: in before GW makes knights 25 wounds and gives them a ignore some damage mechanic, totally invalidating their recent 'one shot a knight' article.
Really, at this point, W 55-60 knight would be just going to their relative durability from the beginning of 8th edition
You're still really whining about Orks getting T5? You're kidding me right? I see you've never bothered to rebuttle anybody that's basically disproven your chicken little "the sky is falling" regarding T5 Ork boyz in the competitive meta but you keep your blinders on to keep complaining about them regardless. I'll commend your dedication to whinging, even if it's completely unjustified.
Also, you're joking if you're saying 5th ed Captains/Chapter Masters showed SM actually leading. Literally the only difference between a captain and a chapter master was that a Chapter Master had access to Orbital Bombardment (which was incredibly inaccurate and swingy since you couldn't use BS to reduce the scatter). All they ended up being were glorified beatsticks where everyone took a Bike captain to get unlock bikes as troops, mobility and baby T5 alongside a stormshield and relic blade. They never actually did anything for the unit they joined besides kill things, there were no buffs beyond just giving Ld10, which wasn't super important for SM anyways when they couldn't be swept in combat. If you wanted actual improvement, chaplains did a lot more with giving hit rerolls to the unit he joined, alongside Fearless. Librarians weren't great, but at least they had some utility. The only captains that did anything for the army was when certain special characters like Lysander and Shrike unlocked chapter tactics for the army, which in this case led to a serious case of being shoehorned into taking special characters for specific chapters, rather than having your own "Your Dudes" in the army. That's why there were all these conversions to begin with for SMHQ units, not because you were able to have a sandbox of HQ choices that meaningfully altered or buffed your army, but rather people needed "counts as" representations for these units because there was no other way besides taking these choices to reflect some of the other chapters meaningfully in the army. This then escalated really quickly with BA quickly being pretty much better versions of vanilla space marines, including cheaper missile devastators for some reason and better dreadnoughts and CC specific units through Death Company and assault marines as troops.
Frankly Irbis, given the hard on you have for marines and hatred for all things not power armour, have you tried just sticking to things like 30K? You clearly hate modern 40k, but I guess then you wouldn't have the attention you get from making such clearly rose-tinted recollections of "better times" if you didn't keep up with the updates to 9th edition.
Mentlegen324 wrote: Fireblade; Fire Caste rank that's respected for refusing promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is fine and even gets them a special suit of armour. Darkstrider; Fire Caste will hate a T'au for refusing a promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is not fine and against tradition.
Just comes across as poorly written and a mess.
And he's so good at being stealthy and resourceful that he beat a Vindicare assassin!
I heard that after that victory he started a clubhouse in his tree-house with a big "No Gue'Vesa Allowed!" sign on the front.
I suppose we should look on the bright side: At least he didn't beat an Avatar in single combat like most other special characters.
Mentlegen324 wrote: Fireblade; Fire Caste rank that's respected for refusing promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is fine and even gets them a special suit of armour.
Darkstrider; Fire Caste will hate a T'au for refusing a promotion and not wanting a Battlesuit. Idea is not fine and against tradition.
Just comes across as poorly written and a mess.
And he's so good at being stealthy and resourceful that he beat a Vindicare assassin!
I heard that after that victory he started a clubhouse in his tree-house with a big "No Gue'Vesa Allowed!" sign on the front.
I suppose we should look on the bright side: At least he didn't beat an Avatar in single combat like most other special characters.
Just imagine if there was say an imperial guard character who managed to accomplish a bunch of ludacris feats, like ambushing a mandrake, learning a Chaos language and getting away with it, or surviving being shot out of a plane, crawling across a kilometers long pipe, and killing a chaos lord with a bomb. You'd mock that character equally, right?
Just imagine if there was say an imperial guard character who managed to accomplish a bunch of ludacris feats, like ambushing a mandrake, learning a Chaos language and getting away with it, or surviving being shot out of a plane, crawling across a kilometers long pipe, and killing a chaos lord with a bomb. You'd mock that character equally, right?
To be fair, Mkoll is a one trick Deus Ex Machina that Abnett should have killed off a long time ago for dramatic reasons (or maybe already did, I haven't read all books yet). Apart from that, I think it is the quality of the narrative that is upsetting most people. The stuff in the Gaunt's Ghost books is far fetched, but at least grounded in their overall storylines. E.g. Mkoll suffered a lot during that climb up and almost slipped and died at multiple junctions, so the character earned the kill in a sense. Where as the GW publications in codexes are rather "My daddy is stronger than yours" school yard sort of stories. A quite good example is the whole BA and Necrons "brofist" incident. The codex entry was cringy at best, but the later on short story gave the setting merit. In that sense, I too wish they would take a little more effort in their story telling. But it seems like it is not going to happen anytime soon.
Oh and to spill some more oil into the above "Irbis overreached" (yet again) discussion:
IG Dex 3rd Edition: All senior officers have BS4 (hitting on 3s that means), Kell has BS5 (hitting on 2s), Regiments are defined by (limited) Doctrines that need to be bought by additional costs on units or that define if you can take a unit at all.
IG Dex 5th Edition: Everyone that is not basic line infantry has BS4 (even Sergeants and Astropaths), Marbo, Yarrik and all LCs have BS5. Some named officers confer some sort of ability to the army that is akin to a Stratagem these days, like Chenkov that brings back conscripts, this gives rise to the idea, that a Special Charater defines which Regiment you are playing.
IG Dex 8th (and current): Every senior officer has BS3+, Pask, Yarrick, LCs have BS2+, Astropaths are now BS6+ and Sergeants BS4+, so the shooting has actually become a bit worse than 3rd edition. Though Regiments are luckily now a matter of declaration and you get a free bonus, the Regiment now limits your selection of Special Characters.
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Fireblade additional hit for Pulse Weapons on 6s to hit 6" Aura
Commander rr 1s to hit 6" Aura
Invocations are single target 6" CORE unit
All Kroot WTs are Auras
3/6 Codex WTs are Aura/Select CORE unit within 9"
They want to indeed castle up with CORE units to get these
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Fireblade additional hit for Pulse Weapons on 6s to hit 6" Aura
Commander rr 1s to hit 6" Aura
Invocations are single target 6" CORE unit
All Kroot WTs are Auras
3/6 Codex WTs are Aura/Select CORE unit within 9"
They want to indeed castle up with CORE units to get these
You could grab any codex with 6" auras/buffs and say the same thing. Short range auras does not inherently suggest an army needs or wants to castle.
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Fireblade additional hit for Pulse Weapons on 6s to hit 6" Aura
Commander rr 1s to hit 6" Aura
Invocations are single target 6" CORE unit
All Kroot WTs are Auras
3/6 Codex WTs are Aura/Select CORE unit within 9"
They want to indeed castle up with CORE units to get these
You could grab any codex with 6" auras/buffs and say the same thing. Short range auras does not inherently suggest an army needs or wants to castle.
To an extent since the difference between hitting on 4s compared to 3s rerolling 1s with additional hits/AP is extremely potent when your units are very cheap pointwise per damage done.
Would you say that GSC is a castle up army due to every HQ having an aura buff? Nope because these buffs apply to specific units and/or are limited in their relative strenght + the tradeoff for castling up is just not worth it (and also being able to spread them over the board with few units/stratagems when needed makes castling even less relevant than what it's supposed to be)
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Fireblade additional hit for Pulse Weapons on 6s to hit 6" Aura
Commander rr 1s to hit 6" Aura
Invocations are single target 6" CORE unit
All Kroot WTs are Auras
3/6 Codex WTs are Aura/Select CORE unit within 9"
They want to indeed castle up with CORE units to get these
The ability to move a devilfish up and then disembark from it, and then have said devilfish project an aura of reroll 1s is definitely a way to play Tau without castling up.
KurtAngle2 wrote: Horrible codex gameplay wise, just pray and shoot whilst castling up trying to remove the opponent before it gets to you
I don't get that sense at all. They have seemingly competent Kroot to hold objectives. Battlesuits that are worth a damn, but are penalized for spamming a single weapon. Drones that have useful abilities and are part of the unit. Untargetable GKs for the back field.
With no FTGG or free Overwatch this is the least castle like T'au has ever been.
Fireblade additional hit for Pulse Weapons on 6s to hit 6" Aura
Commander rr 1s to hit 6" Aura
Invocations are single target 6" CORE unit
All Kroot WTs are Auras
3/6 Codex WTs are Aura/Select CORE unit within 9"
They want to indeed castle up with CORE units to get these
The ability to move a devilfish up and then disembark from it, and then have said devilfish project an aura of reroll 1s is definitely a way to play Tau without castling up.
That's aura only works for Strike Teams/Breachers and not every CORE
Geifer wrote: He's waiting for the new model to make it look more impressive.
I'm waiting for the Avatar Revenge Tour 2022, where his new mini goes around beating up all the people who beat him up before.
We need to get the Warhammer Community team in on this Stat! I can totally see the article where they do mock battles between the revamped Avatar and all those who Worfed him in the past.
The ability to move a devilfish up and then disembark from it, and then have said devilfish project an aura of reroll 1s is definitely a way to play Tau without castling up.
Just because you can doesn't mean it's good(nevermind best). DUCY?
A lot of the previewed stuff seems to imply theyre at least trying to get tau to be more mobile and aggressive, at least on the smaller suits. Between Montka, crisis commander allowing fall back shoot/charge, enforcer being -1 damage and provide crisis obsec, coldstar giving a 8" advance to a unit, the devilfish combos, loss of armywide overwatch, suits firing in combat, and the way markerlights work now, I feel theyre trying to make the army at least a bit more mobile.
Doesnt mean its guaranteed to work, but unless youre going Kauyon I dont really see anything screaming "castle" to me, and even there youre needing to play keep away.
The problem I see is these stupid smaller tables. Theres way too much stuff in a 2000pt game to play keep away on these tiny tables now. Orks can easily charge from 20 to 30 inches away for example, I dont see how Tau is going to outrun that while also keeping up pressure and taking objectives. We really need to go back to 4x6 tables in my opinion, or lower the size of the armies, but maybe Im alone in that point of view. Who knows, maybe tau can pull it off, but after playing my orks and my IG, Ive been on both sides of it and Im really not a fan of these smaller tables.
It does feel a lot more like 3rd-4th edition Tau and castling for old Tau was a death trap. You would get rolled up by 2-3 units getting into close combat.
Kinda looks like the same might happen with the new rules. Without FTGG, packing under a bunch of auras is probably good for T1 and a liability after that. Especially if you get hit by units with longer consolidation rules.
I'm puzzled by the custom tenets. Each has 4 traits and you must pick 2 from neighboring sectors...
So, A + anything, B+C or D+E?
It feels arbitrary just to be different. If the Sectors had real names and histories to them, it might feel a little better, but as is its just a fake feeling game mechanic.
Voss wrote: I'm puzzled by the custom tenets. Each has 4 traits and you must pick 2 from neighboring sectors...
So, A + anything, B+C or D+E?
It feels arbitrary just to be different. If the Sectors had real names and histories to them, it might feel a little better, but as is its just a fake feeling game mechanic.
I mean, that's how they all start? You fake it until it get's going.
Calling "Ultramarines" "Ultramarines" because that's a shade of blue and a cute in-joke didn't create any background or feeling at all. They just kept making gak up until it was there.
Voss wrote: I'm puzzled by the custom tenets. Each has 4 traits and you must pick 2 from neighboring sectors...
So, A + anything, B+C or D+E?
It feels arbitrary just to be different.
You pick a trait from Sector A with a choice of A1-A4 plus one from B with a choice of B1-B4, so you could do A3,B2 for example.
Right, I got that. The only real effect of the system is that the B & C traits are separated from the D & E traits. Presumably because there are powerful traits they don't want to combine, but at a glance, it seems really empty.
I mean, that's how they all start? You fake it until it get's going.
Calling "Ultramarines" "Ultramarines" because that's a shade of blue and a cute in-joke didn't create any background or feeling at all. They just kept making gak up until it was there.
Well, no. Ultramarines had a whole history and character all the way back (ironically as a brand new chapter that earned their place & planet for fighting off the Tyranids at MacCragge). And half-eldar librarians and other assorted things.
You don't literally start with 'Sector A' (or Chapter #6) in published materials.
MoD_Legion wrote: I never understood the obsession with FTGG from non Tau players. If the Tau player has literally everything bunched up, great! You win the objective game by default. If not, overwatch is so bad it hardly ever does everthing (I suppose 5+ is a little better when playing Tau sept, but who does that?). In all my years as playing tau I maybe had 1 instance where I actually killed stuff in overwatch. While it is yet another typically Tau thing being removed, I dont really mind it. Like I said, for me it never added that much value and all that it resulted in was a lot of headaches trying to keep units within 6" of each other, and some needless dice rolling when I got charged.
Because FTGG was one of the most broken rules in history
I remember in 8th playing against a guy who brought tons of units for FTGG overwatch shenanigans. He would sit on an objective and I would be unable to shift him with my ork melee army because his overwatch could literally tear through an entire unit of Ork boyz in a single overwatch. Hitting on 5s, 3 shots from firewarriors, re-rolling 1s....it was ridiculous. He averaged more than 30 dead Orkz an overwatch. Sorry, but the mechanic shouldn't allow for the removal of 200+ points So yeah, it can be horrible to play against.
Esmer wrote: Linking the Sept restrictions to the 5 spheres would have been a bit more characterful than calling them "sectors A through E"
but the spheres aren't necessarily close together. I think it reflects the idea that a fifth sphere sept is more influenced the third sphere sept that launched colony, and it's closest fourth sept trading partner, than another fifth sphere sept on the other side of the space.
Esmer wrote: Linking the Sept restrictions to the 5 spheres would have been a bit more characterful than calling them "sectors A through E"
but the spheres aren't necessarily close together. I think it reflects the idea that a fifth sphere sept is more influenced the third sphere sept that launched colony, and it's closest fourth sept trading partner, than another fifth sphere sept on the other side of the space.
In fact, the tau spheres of expansion (at least the first three) are actually closer to concentric circles, and there are some 2nd sphere colonies that are closer, physically, to T'au than colonies from the 1st sphere. I wouldn't be surprised if this mechanic started as a way of expressing the differences in attitude that spawned their respective Septs, but describing it in terms of sectors and location I think makes more sense, because the dudes over there who deal with orks all the time have different priorities than the one with the chaos uprisings amongst its gue'vessa laborers.
Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages. I am not complaining as this type of stuff happens but this thing has more cheese than a Waffle House Texas Melt. Giving Crisis suits who are toughness 5 -1 str if the weapon is not str 8 or higher will give them the durability of Lucius Admech when it first came out.
Now, something I will whine about is the change to the plasma rifle profile. This thing has always been rapid-fire, now that they have a codex where assault weapons are better for them they change it. That is simply codex creep, it just feels dirty. Let's change this weapon profile completely despite already having fusion blasters which originally had that role.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
A lot of the things are not rumors anymore. The -1 str example I gave is from this source. I am concerned about toughness 5 -1 str if you target the crisis suits armed with Airbursting fragmentation Projectors being buffed killing units regardless of line of sight and railguns making players pick up their models with no save. That is my prediction, if the rumors and released information that I have gathered is true then this is the best codex on release date. I have predicted these things before.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages. I am not complaining as this type of stuff happens but this thing has more cheese than a Waffle House Texas Melt. Giving Crisis suits who are toughness 5 -1 str if the weapon is not str 8 or higher will give them the durability of Lucius Admech when it first came out.
Now, something I will whine about is the change to the plasma rifle profile. This thing has always been rapid-fire, now that they have a codex where assault weapons are better for them they change it. That is simply codex creep, it just feels dirty. Let's change this weapon profile completely despite already having fusion blasters which originally had that role.
I think there is an additional rumour that the plasma rifle was going to be 3 shots dmg 1 but they changed it to 1 shot dmg 3 after playtesting revealed it was too good. They are way too similar to fusion blasters now, although that is quite good due to the points on suits for multiples.
I think GSC might be better though. It could be a DE/AdMech one two punch again with GSC being better but Tau being more hated.
Looking at the leaked rules, there do appear to be quite a few survivability/tanky options in the codex, Crisis/Stealth/Ghostkeel/Riptide/Stormsurge. Although, I can't tell if the Riptide is slightly overcosted compared to say an NDK or is it just meant to be more durable but less damaging. Drones inside squads feel like a fun way to mess with your opponent's target priority and efficiency. Fun for me, probably not for them.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
A lot of the things are not rumors anymore. The -1 str example I gave is from this source. I am concerned about toughness 5 -1 str if you target the crisis suits armed with Airbursting fragmentation Projectors being buffed killing units regardless of line of sight and railguns making players pick up their models with no save.
The -1 S is a weird example. It matters so little (only three strength values, and one doesn't matter much), and only shifts success by a pip.
If you fire a S7 weapon at a battlesuit, it becomes S6, and still wounds on a 3+. No effect
S6 becomes 5 and wounds on a 4+ rather than a 3+, fine, but... not amazing.
S5 becomes 4, and now wounds on 5+ rather than 4+
S4 becomes 3 and still wounds on 5+
S3 becomes 2, and now wounds on a 6+, but who was shooting you with lasguns and autoguns anyway?
For vehicles, its mostly the same (except S8 isn't even reduced), so really its S7 weapons now wound on a 5+ and S4 weapons go to 6+ for T7 vehicles. Slight defensive buff, but not really a huge deal.
Voss wrote: I'm puzzled by the custom tenets. Each has 4 traits and you must pick 2 from neighboring sectors...
So, A + anything, B+C or D+E?
It feels arbitrary just to be different.
You pick a trait from Sector A with a choice of A1-A4 plus one from B with a choice of B1-B4, so you could do A3,B2 for example.
Right, I got that. The only real effect of the system is that the B & C traits are separated from the D & E traits. Presumably because there are powerful traits they don't want to combine, but at a glance, it seems really empty.
Well, can't tell until I see the full list of that's what they did, but I got an idea why the system COULD be great.
If each sector has its own "type" of rules it basically locks out doubling down on two similar effects, or worst-overlapping ones, without needing to spesificly block each interactions.
So A got the generalist and role defying rules (like the one shown turning your suits into viable objective capppers)
B got zone control/objective related buffs
C who knows, maybe firepower
D got durability buffs that you really don't want combined with zone contol as they will get too hard to shift, nor with raw firepower that will just turn toxic
E covers mobility that would be abusive with extra firepower or zone control
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
Always makes me giggle every time when people claim can't make judgement before release when they are proven wrong every single time
GW games are easy to figure out. It's literally 1st grader level to figure out best army lists and we get enough data well before release.
25 years, 25 years book strength is been known ahead release.
Voss wrote: S6 becomes 5 and wounds on a 4+ rather than a 3+, fine, but... not amazing.
S5 becomes 4, and now wounds on 5+ rather than 4+
Which means that pretty much all good anti-infantry SM weapons, assault cannons, volkites, heavy bolters, light plasma incinerators, heavy flamers, flamestorms, frag cannons, gravitons, gatling cannons, etc, etc, are drastically reduced in effectiveness despite paying premium points for them. It's nothing, eh?
S3 becomes 2, and now wounds on a 6+, but who was shooting you with lasguns and autoguns anyway?
*cough* IG *cough* GSC *cough* Chaos humans. Tyranids, Demons and Admech also have lots of S3 on their troops and light infantry, but hey, reducing effectiveness of 6 whole armies by 50% is no big deal, eh?
For vehicles, its mostly the same (except S8 isn't even reduced), so really its S7 weapons now wound on a 5+ and S4 weapons go to 6+ for T7 vehicles. Slight defensive buff, but not really a huge deal.
Yup, invalidating plasma/autocannons/various missile pods is no big deal, eh? It's only a big chunk of SM heavy weapons, especially if you don't cherrypick broken gak from FW and play primaris, but who cares? I guess SM can fall back on their heavy laser destroyers--
Oh, wait, they didn't get the broken cheese mid edition direction change, so both are utterly useless agains Tau
Ditto with S4, it's only SM basic infantry profile, who cares if it's suddenly half as effective for no reason? Balanced!
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
Always makes me giggle every time when people claim can't make judgement before release when they are proven wrong every single time
GW games are easy to figure out. It's literally 1st grader level to figure out best army lists and we get enough data well before release.
25 years, 25 years book strength is been known ahead release.
You do have the listen to the standard series of satements every time
* we donlt know the full picture - ah ok so now we do - just wait
* We don;t know the points - ah ok so we do well - Just wait
* We don't know if it will be the same in published dex - just wait
* We don't know if it will be changed in the 2 week faq - just wait
* we don;t know if it will be changed in due course - just wait
* It will be changed in the next dec/ or other codexes will get the same - just wait.
5th edition Space Marine book not only presented captains and chapter masters first and foremost as commanders, it stressed their leadership abilities, not being a moron frothing at the mouth with a hammer charging forward on jetpack like modern SMHQs do. It was also the edition which actually put the fluff into consideration when writing the game - not only best SM captain 'generalist' option was a relic blade, not any of the S8 bludgeoning bricks (disincentivizing you from charging forward at big threats), but it was also the edition which introduced honor guard, company/chapter champion, dedicated command squads, and other dudes whose job was explicitly allowing the commanders to actually lead when said bodyguards were doing all the melee, both in game and in fluff. I miss when GW had actually competent writers who cared about fluff experience
If there is one big mistake that ruined the 'commander' feel, I think it's GW decision to give blanket 2+ to hit to all characters during late 7th and beginning of 8th (especially such laughable cases as Tau and IG leaders who used to have 4+ to hit). If they kept 4+ as baseline, 3+ for elites like SM and other long lived races, and 2+ for a single stat of truly special individuals, there would be much less incentive to treat character models as a beatstick (and you wouldn't need such kludges as Core mechanic, because commanders using their own aura would just make them a little bit better, not 2+ rerollable jokes they turned into). But in the era of orkstodes and tau/eldar glorified conscripted street sweepers getting 2+ to hit for no reason and other absurd stat inflation, this milk had spilled a long time ago...
Slightly off topic but I largely agree with your general point.
However, I think GW has long suffered from issues in that it never seems sure what to do with HQs. Stuff like Psykers are generally fine because they can meaningfully contribute to the battle without having to charge into melee. However, most other characters - especially the 'overall leader' type models (SP Captains, Archons, Autarchs, Chaos Lords etc.) don't have that ability. Nor even do many possess much in the way of mid-range weapons, so they can't even contribute to the battle from a distance. Indeed, most commanders are just presented with a whole rack of melee weapons and not a whole lot else. Granted, they have auras, but those are completely non-interactive and just not very interesting. With a psyker, you at least feel that they're doing something. Auras just mean a commander is sat on his big fat arse while everyone else does the actual work. I'm sure some will argue that's not a wholly unrealistic depiction of modern militaries but it doesn't exactly live up to 40k's artwork or general themes.
Even in 5th (which I agree got the philosophy right) clearly struggled with this issue because, short of a 1/game orbital bombardment for the SM Chapter Master, HQs were given nothing to do besides equipping a melee weapon and charging into melee like morons.
I would like to see more options for commanders taking on leadership rolls, rather than just being melee beaters. But I think it needs to be more interactive than just an aura - perhaps something like IG Orders or replacing auras and stratagems with a handful of command abilities, similar to AoS.
I also agree with you that it's not a good thing for so many units to be getting WS/BS2+. It's a shame because it could have been used to differentiate more between characters and factions (e.g. Eldar factions could have lower strength weapons but be more likely to land hits with them). Not to mention, as you say, differentiating commander-type HQs from pure beatsticks. Another opportunity missed, I fear.
I'm not convinced the buffs to guns and suits shooting into engagement range makes up at all for losing 'For the Greater Good' and 'Savior Protocols'. There are so many fast and/or melee rush armies in the meta that Tau are really dependent on getting first turn now. Instead of being able to tank an alpha strike with drones and FtGG.
Drones being part of the unit, and all troops now at min unit 10 is just going to cause more morale losses and vulnerability to Blast which was never a concern before.
Some of the best stratagems that were leaked are locked behind Septs.
Spamming Hammerheads isn't going to carry you into the top tables.
We needed more board control for the objectives game, but instead got more glass cannon.
Voss wrote: S6 becomes 5 and wounds on a 4+ rather than a 3+, fine, but... not amazing.
S5 becomes 4, and now wounds on 5+ rather than 4+
Which means that pretty much all good anti-infantry SM weapons, assault cannons, volkites, heavy bolters, light plasma incinerators, heavy flamers, flamestorms, frag cannons, gravitons, gatling cannons, etc, etc, are drastically reduced in effectiveness despite paying premium points for them. It's nothing, eh?
Fine, but not amazing. What's confusing about that? Why do you think that equates to 'nothing?' And why are you cherrypicking anti-infantry weapons against battlesuits as the thing to worry about?
S3 becomes 2, and now wounds on a 6+, but who was shooting you with lasguns and autoguns anyway?
*cough* IG *cough* GSC *cough* Chaos humans. Tyranids, Demons and Admech also have lots of S3 on their troops and light infantry, but hey, reducing effectiveness of 6 whole armies by 50% is no big deal, eh?
You're shooting those at... battlesuits? Not, say... firewarriors? Or drones? Or...
For vehicles, its mostly the same (except S8 isn't even reduced), so really its S7 weapons now wound on a 5+ and S4 weapons go to 6+ for T7 vehicles. Slight defensive buff, but not really a huge deal.
Yup, invalidating plasma/autocannons/various missile pods is no big deal, eh? It's only a big chunk of SM heavy weapons, especially if you don't cherrypick broken gak from FW and play primaris, but who cares? I guess SM can fall back on their heavy laser destroyers--
What? If you're shooting primaris plasma at tau vehicles, you overcharge and it goes to strength 8 and this defensive buff has literally no effect.
Ditto with S4, it's only SM basic infantry profile, who cares if it's suddenly half as effective for no reason? Balanced!
Against... tanks. Shoot them against literally anything else (including battlesuits where the strength reduction from 4 to 3 does not matter).
Fine, but not amazing. What's confusing about that? Why do you think that equates to 'nothing?' And why are you cherrypicking anti-infantry weapons against battlesuits as the thing to worry about?
Against... tanks. Shoot them against literally anything else (including battlesuits where the strength reduction from 4 to 3 does not matter).
But, then what would they have to complain about? Tbh one of the big problems of the smaller battlesuits has always been their survivability. Savior protocol got out of hand with the previous edition changes so its being largely removed. Yes this ability makes them more difficult to kill with 'small' arms fire, but leaves their vulnerability to dedicated AT fire, which is now massively increased because savior protocol will be very limited. It's also an ability you can only get with a custom sept and might mean the other sept trait you can choose is one of the weaker ones, so you might not even see it being played.
Well, with battlesuits, its specifically lasgun fire, which is a weird thing to complain about. Target selection is a skill in 40k, and this complicates it a little for very specific weapon strengths.
But the complaints read like Christmas is ruined because the 40k equivalent of button-mashing in Mortal Kombat is suddenly an even worse idea for specific guns.
I feel Tau will be competitive because the damage output seems nuts. And as I think say Buggy Lists/prenerf Ad Mech have demonstrated - if you have enough shooting, some times you go first and just delete people.
With that said, I'm not sure what the situation is with the flyers, which were important to both lists, and they have been universally limited even if they are good.
Tend to think there are going to be more concerning things than -1S on battlesuits and vehicles at S7 and below.
Its another nail in those S7 2 damage guns - but DG and Orks kind of started that party. Someone in GW clearly thinks its still late 2018.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
Always makes me giggle every time when people claim can't make judgement before release when they are proven wrong every single time
GW games are easy to figure out. It's literally 1st grader level to figure out best army lists and we get enough data well before release.
25 years, 25 years book strength is been known ahead release.
You can only make this claim, because you only remember the events that align with that. Assign a win percentage you think T'au will achieve right now and we'll grant plus or minus 2 percent from that target. Then we can check back after 6 weeks of tournaments with the book.
Do the same for GSC and Custodes while we're at it.
I think that tau is heading in better direction than before, the overwatch mechanic in 8th edition was super broken (my tau gunline shot down mortarion in one overwatch phase). It's a good thing that Hammerhead has now more potential, previously riptides were auto-include, because none of the other options were match for them. Consider comparing the old Hammerhead from 8th edition, to let's say, astra military leman russ, or eldar fireprism, which both have double shooting in their main gun,, the Hammerhead has only that one shot.
CKO wrote: Through rumors alone, this codex will easily reach the original Admech tournament winning percentages.
These sorts of takes make me giggle a little.
Ah yes, before the rest of the codex, the point values, and other limiting or balancing factors, stat changes, and other things, we're going to go ahead and rate this codex.
If this Codex is top tier, it'll be more because of codex creep more than because someone rated based on rumors that are as of yet proven.
Always makes me giggle every time when people claim can't make judgement before release when they are proven wrong every single time
GW games are easy to figure out. It's literally 1st grader level to figure out best army lists and we get enough data well before release.
25 years, 25 years book strength is been known ahead release.
You can only make this claim, because you only remember the events that align with that. Assign a win percentage you think T'au will achieve right now and we'll grant plus or minus 2 percent from that target. Then we can check back after 6 weeks of tournaments with the book.
Do the same for GSC and Custodes while we're at it.
If you think judging the power of a book is a matter of assigning a specific tournament win percentage, you're missing tneva's point. And, honestly, most of the game.
Voss wrote: If you think judging the power of a book is a matter of assigning a specific tournament win percentage, you're missing tneva's point. And, honestly, most of the game.
Why? The book is easy to figure out. If they can do better the DE then assign a percentage in that range. If not then better then which army?
Daedalus81 wrote: Why? The book is easy to figure out. If they can do better the DE then assign a percentage in that range. If not then better then which army?
I cannot give you percentages but I will do you one better I will tell you what I would take.
2-3 large squads of Crisis Suits with 2xAirbusting Frags and 1 flamer so the combo works like this with Mont'ka. You will have 12d6 str 4 ap 2 dmg 1 shots that ignore line sight re-roll 1's to hit due to a commander and re-roll 1's to wound due to Mont'ka. They increased the range of AFP's by 6 and the ap by 1 and with Mont'ka you can advance and not worry about your bs. As you have these two units constantly getting closer eventually you will be in charge range/flamer range. If you charge the crisis suits you will have to deal with their overwatch which will have 6d6+12 str 4 ap 1 flamer hits if the wording of Mont'ka works, or you will get to use the flamers offensively.
Add a coldstar commander to give the crisis units auto-advance of 8 inches, I think that is a 40-inch threat range with the crisis units. Sprinkle in 60 point Kroot troop squads who have pregame movement for objectives. I would take Bork'an for the extra 4 inches on the AFP and the -1 str under 7 ability for durability if you can not stay out of the line of sight, or Farsight Enclave if you want the extra bs. Three Hammerheads because railguns are the best weapon in the game. Sprinkle in some form of marker lights and you are done.
"Accordingly, the Mont’ka Tactical Philosophy rewards decisive action in the first three turns, allowing its warriors to rapidly advance into enemy lines and blaze away with powerful close-range firepower."[I]
You get to play this army just like they envision!
I would literally kill whatever enemy unit is closest each turn while destroying any vehicle equivalent with the railguns that dare to get in the line of sight of my hammerheads. Attacking while out of line of sight is easier as it is 6 models instead of 9 and if I can't hide the weapons are 24 inches and with the coldstar I can move them 16 inches (I think they may have increased their movement also not sure). I would probably take a plasma rifle/fusion blaster squad to help the hammerheads.
This is what I think non-tau players should expect to face in competitive settings.
Daedalus81 wrote: Why? The book is easy to figure out. If they can do better the DE then assign a percentage in that range. If not then better then which army?
I cannot give you percentages but I will do you one better I will tell you what I would take.
2-3 large squads of Crisis Suits with 2xAirbusting Frags and 1 flamer so the combo works like this with Mont'ka. You will have 12d6 str 4 ap 2 dmg 1 shots that ignore line sight re-roll 1's to hit due to a commander and re-roll 1's to wound due to Mont'ka. They increased the range of AFP's by 6 and the ap by 1 and with Mont'ka you can advance and not worry about your bs. As you have these two units constantly getting closer eventually you will be in charge range/flamer range. If you charge the crisis suits you will have to deal with their overwatch which will have 6d6+12 str 4 ap 1 flamer hits if the wording of Mont'ka works, or you will get to use the flamers offensively.
Add a coldstar commander to give the crisis units auto-advance of 8 inches, I think that is a 40-inch threat range with the crisis units. Sprinkle in 60 point Kroot troop squads who have pregame movement for objectives. I would take Bork'an for the extra 4 inches on the AFP and the -1 str under 7 ability for durability if you can not stay out of the line of sight, or Farsight Enclave if you want the extra bs. Three Hammerheads because railguns are the best weapon in the game. Sprinkle in some form of marker lights and you are done.
"Accordingly, the Mont’ka Tactical Philosophy rewards decisive action in the first three turns, allowing its warriors to rapidly advance into enemy lines and blaze away with powerful close-range firepower."[I]
You get to play this army just like they envision!
I would literally kill whatever enemy unit is closest each turn while destroying any vehicle equivalent with the railguns that dare to get in the line of sight of my hammerheads. Attacking while out of line of sight is easier as it is 6 models instead of 9 and if I can't hide the weapons are 24 inches and with the coldstar I can move them 16 inches (I think they may have increased their movement also not sure). I would probably take a plasma rifle/fusion blaster squad to help the hammerheads.
This is what I think non-tau players should expect to face in competitive settings.
That's actually a great dive into the book and I appreciate the time you took to noodle through the book. That's a far better take than "Longstrike and 3 Hammerheads in T'au Sept".
Any markerlights? It seems like your Hammerheads will be big whiff machines without any support or rerolls.
Ten Scarabs with full support will nearly pull a whole battlesuit squad off the table ( less if you put max iridium ). The battlesuits should kill a single scarab with the AFPs. Which is the thing about AFPs - they still need to hit ( even if I hate the dynamic of shooting out of LOS without penalty ). I'm sure you can play cagey and hide behind cover and target backfield units and ignore scary stuff to win on objectives.
Converting 85 point units of T5 wracks will also be an uphill battle.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see how things shape up.
Daedalus81 wrote: That's actually a great dive into the book and I appreciate the time you took to noodle through the book. That's a far better take than "Longstrike and 3 Hammerheads in T'au Sept".
Any marker lights? It seems like your Hammerheads will be big whiff machines without any support or rerolls.
Ten Scarabs with full support will nearly pull a whole battlesuit squad off the table ( less if you put max iridium ). The battlesuits should kill a single scarab with the AFPs. Which is the thing about AFPs - they still need to hit ( even if I hate the dynamic of shooting out of LOS without penalty ). I'm sure you can play cagey and hide behind cover and target backfield units and ignore scary stuff to win on objectives.
Converting 85 point units of T5 wracks will also be an uphill battle.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see how things shape up.
Thanks for the compliment, whenever I make a post I try to put some thought into it. The scary part about the Crisis Suit unit is that they get 1 support system for free! (or most of them are rumored to be free) I would give this unit either velocity trackers +1 to hit vs flyer units but most likely I will give them multi-tracker. Exploding 6's on units with 6+ models. That is correct a unit that puts out 42 shots a turn will have exploding sixes on big units. Remember it is a blast weapon also, so vs the wrack unit, it will be 72 exploding 6's str 4 shots bs 3 re-rolling 1's to hit and wound!
It's almost like having some kind of system of universal rules which can be referenced by multiple documents would be a good thing to avoid these kinds of situations as everyone would have the same rules text.
S3 becomes 2, and now wounds on a 6+, but who was shooting you with lasguns and autoguns anyway?
*cough* IG *cough* GSC *cough* Chaos humans. Tyranids, Demons and Admech also have lots of S3 on their troops and light infantry, but hey, reducing effectiveness of 6 whole armies by 50% is no big deal, eh?
You're shooting those at... battlesuits? Not, say... firewarriors? Or drones? Or...
I'm actually looking at a battlesuit centric list that uses suits for controlling objectives thanks to the other tenent that makes battlesuits count as 3/5 models. Having limited troops, mostly kroot to run skirmishing.
It looks like drones are now integrated back into the unit, so there's no separate targeting.
This makes it so the primary targets for infantry are going to be battlesuits, which are going to be able to shrug of shots a lot better. For stealthsuits, in addition to being hard to hit, it means that bolters are now going to be wounding on 5s, and lasguns are going to be wounding on 6s. Having them equipped with the beefed up burst cannons, they look like they could act as good infantry mulchers while getting Crisis suits into the right place.
A Town Called Malus wrote: You can still take separate units of drones as well, it's just that drones bought as wargear are back to being a part of the unit that bought them.
That's fair, but a bit of a wasted slot with the buff to Pathfinder markerlights. Depending if the Y'vahra gets moved, it could also be a good option as a fast attack slot to also make use of the defense boost for battlesuits, though I'm expecting to see heavier weapons used against the Riptide frames.
Piranhas also benefit from this, having basically the same benefit as Crisis suits. Normally you can take them down with medium to small arms fire, but with the tenent they require more focus fire to take down, further dividing your opponent's targeting.
The goal is to make it so your opponent has to make tough choices where their heavy weapons go, shooting at vehicles and heavy battlesuits, or direct them to the "infantry" battlesuits where they hit at full strength, but the limited shots are not as effective.
S3 becomes 2, and now wounds on a 6+, but who was shooting you with lasguns and autoguns anyway?
*cough* IG *cough* GSC *cough* Chaos humans. Tyranids, Demons and Admech also have lots of S3 on their troops and light infantry, but hey, reducing effectiveness of 6 whole armies by 50% is no big deal, eh?
You're shooting those at... battlesuits? Not, say... firewarriors? Or drones? Or...
I'm actually looking at a battlesuit centric list that uses suits for controlling objectives thanks to the other tenent that makes battlesuits count as 3/5 models. Having limited troops, mostly kroot to run skirmishing.
It looks like drones are now integrated back into the unit, so there's no separate targeting.
This makes it so the primary targets for infantry are going to be battlesuits, which are going to be able to shrug of shots a lot better. For stealthsuits, in addition to being hard to hit, it means that bolters are now going to be wounding on 5s, and lasguns are going to be wounding on 6s. Having them equipped with the beefed up burst cannons, they look like they could act as good infantry mulchers while getting Crisis suits into the right place.
Yeah, you're intentionally building a skew list. That's fine, provided you have enough points to actually accomplish anything.
I have my doubts that mitigating small arms is a worthwhile goal for an army list in 9th edition, but I guess you'll find out.
Ignore invulnerable save stratagem with the Borkan Sept! Seems that Borkan is becoming the obvious choice with the extra 4 inches and - 1 str to str 7 or lower attacks.
CKO wrote: Ignore invulnerable save stratagem with Borkan Septs! Seems that Sept is becoming the obvious choice.
Well, only if you run a big enough gun that isn't on a HH, which means Stormsurge and another detachment. Otherwise I don't think many guns are worth the 2CP spend to do that.
CKO wrote: Ignore invulnerable save stratagem with the Borkan Sept! Seems that Borkan is becoming the obvious choice with the extra 4 inches and - 1 str to str 7 or lower attacks.
Not sure.
Borkan is lovely, but can it compete with FSE?
Devilfish get a pre-game move of 9 inches? I am starting to get jealous! I can think of several armies who have to pay command points for something like that.
Mr_Rose wrote: The best part is that these aren’t the most impressive prototypes in the list by far. Plasma rifle that just ignores invulnerable saves? Yes please.
It's too expensive for what it does, you'd be better served with a second plasma rifle for half the points. Same outcome vs a 4++ (one passes, one is saved) but double outcome versus everything else.
Did someone manage to grab the info from the GMG games (apparently accidental) review? I saw it was online earlier but I've been travelling so I couldn't grab it.
Mandragola wrote: Did someone manage to grab the info from the GMG games (apparently accidental) review? I saw it was online earlier but I've been travelling so I couldn't grab it.
What kind of info? The pages were too blurry to be really worth screenshooting but ask away.
Edit, I should say I don’t recall much about stratagems; those never stick in my head even if I have them in front of me.
Is it common for Forge World kits to be sold on the GW website? Some Tau FW kits seem to have been chosen to be sold alongside the new releases on the GW site.
Voss wrote: I'm simultaneously surprised its so soon and also that it isn't already out.
I may not be invested in this release at all.
Eh. They said Tau would be the first codex of the New Year, prior to the GSC+Custodes books getting pushed back. January was also a Tau Empire coin for their in-store purchase gimmick.
This one was kinda hard to be too excited about, IMO. One single model(Darkstrider) and a new Combat Patrol just don't feel super exciting when there's all the hype over the Aeldari happening too.
The wording would be extremely weird if that were the case.
T’au Empire Forge World Kits
While you’re on the Games Workshop webstore picking up your new T’au Empire goodies, you’ll also be able to grab some advanced kits from Forge World! You can add the destructive firepower of the massive KX139 Ta’unar Supremacy Armour, bring death from above with the AX 1-0 Tigershark, and recruit additional battlesuits in the form of the XV107 and XV109 variants at the same time as you buy your new codex.
Admittedly it could be limited to UK or Warhammer Citadel or whatever but...that could be interesting.
It's almost like having some kind of system of universal rules which can be referenced by multiple documents would be a good thing to avoid these kinds of situations as everyone would have the same rules text.
You mean creating a list of universal special rules with standardized text and application that are commonly referenced on datasheets across the game? What a crazy concept.
I figure asking T’au players to care about the specific disposition of Ethereal models is about as effective as asking a farsight enclaver to listen to one…
Having now mostly watched the video I've got a few takes on it.
Fire warriors are going to be very different. They're in 10-man squads minimum, making them less good as action monkeys and objective sitters. On the other hand their guns are a bit better so now they'll fight more. Breachers in scouting devilfish with montka look pretty interesting, especially since there's a strat to jump out after the thing moves. You can really go places and you can put transports full of obsec troops (albeit paper ones) on objectives pretty much before the game starts.
Crisis suits look very respectable. I think a lot of people are going to be annoyed by the rule for suits and commanders that their weapons go up in price after the first one. I went to quite a bit of trouble to get four CIBs for a commander, for example, and now his guns alone would cost 80 points. You're soft-forced into giving suits a mixture of weapons as a result. Many of us will have built our suits with multiples of the same gun for very good reasons and now we'll want to change that.
On the other hand, being able to bring them in on turn 1 by deep strike is very powerful indeed. I think this is how Tau will go about taking the mid-board in games, which is something that they haven't been able to contest as well before now.
Hammerhead railguns are spectacular but I'm not sure they're actually the best guns in the book. Broadsides have spectacular firepower and can be protected by drones, so I think they'll be more common than hammerheads. And in general there are quite a lot of weapons that can chuck out D2 or 3 shots in high numbers. I think those will tend to be more effective in general than railguns.
Overall I'm looking forward to drawing up some lists and maybe getting these guys on the board. They look fun, and potentially extremely effective.
At least for the slot efficiency, the Kroot Carnivore's Kroot Pack ability looks interesting.
For each Kroot Carnivore unit in your detachment, you get a slotless Kroot Shaper (HQ), Krootox Riders (Elite) and Kroot Hounds (FA) unit.
While some of these units may be point traps, they at least won't crowd out more core T'au HQ/Elite/FA units.
It also gives you the option that if you have a spare 25 points to throw a Shaper/Krootox/Hounds unit.
Rihgu wrote: Does that mean you can't actually bring a full Kroot detachment, because their only HQ becomes slotless when you include their only troops unit?
Rihgu wrote: Does that mean you can't actually bring a full Kroot detachment, because their only HQ becomes slotless when you include their only troops unit?
edit: Actually, I guess you could bring a vanguard or outrider detachment and skip the carnivores. But where's the fun in that!
At least how it's written, it looks like it gives you the option, but you're not forced to make them slotless, so you could run a full Kroot army, especially since there are now three Kroot Warlord traits and a couple Kroot specific relics.
You'd still be more effective playing a T'au or mixed army, but it's nice to see the option to play Kroot like this.
Master of the Hunt (Aura): While a friendly KROOT unit is within 6”, when a model in that unit makes a ranged attack against an enemy unit within 12”, that enemy does not gain the benefits of cover.
Pack Leader (Aura): While a friendly KROOT unit is within 6”, roll an extra D6 for their charge rolls and discard one of the dice.
Nomadic Hunter (Aura): While a friendly KROOT unit is within 6”, each time a model in that unit makes a ranged attack, if that unit did not fall back this turn, it is treated as stationary.
H.B.M.C. wrote: So the Ethereal on Hover Board has never been available outside of bundles?
That's right, only finecrap/metal Ethereals so far; this guy started all the way back in 7E if iIrc, added on a discount bundle with a Piranha and some Pathfinders, then part of the SC!, now part of this wave. This guy is so undesired because how cheap you can get him that he has become conversion fodder. I wonder what the official price will be.
H.B.M.C. wrote: So the Ethereal on Hover Board has never been available outside of bundles?
That's right, only finecrap/metal Ethereals so far; this guy started all the way back in 7E if iIrc, added on a discount bundle with a Piranha and some Pathfinders, then part of the SC!, now part of this wave. This guy is so undesired because how cheap you can get him that he has become conversion fodder. I wonder what the official price will be.
Don't forget the Coalition Command box where he was bundled with the Commander.
So everyone in the Facebook groups seems to be having a fit over this.
Despite the entire book being leaked at some point they're still convinced that we're about to see a new model that GW's kept hidden from us all this time.
Well the original was posted by the official profile so it's legit in itself, but it's far, far more likely that we'll either see a supplement announcement or just a Black Library release.
Yeah, weirdly GW/WarCom have seem to have gone from acknowledging leaks/following them up with official confirmation (remember those "potato-cam" articles in the past where they revealed the previously blurry images that leaked out onto the web?) to just pretending they don't exist and that everything they share is new information.
I've been seeing mention about a Kroot leak/Kroot rumor posted around various social media channels, apparently something that Valrak leaked/revealed or whatever, but I can't find a source or content/context for what it is, assuming its not just stat/rules rumors from the Tau Codex itself. Some of the posts I've seen seem to imply that its a hint towards a Kroot Mercs book of some sort, but not sure if thats just people reading into something too much or if the rumor is actually about that.
Obviously could also be "we'll reveal a few strats and WL-traits, pretending the book hasn't leaked"
Almost like a huge(arguably the vast majority) number of players don't interact with gaming Discords/forums/Reddits and haven't seen the leaks and so this actually would be new info to them.
chaos0xomega wrote: I've been seeing mention about a Kroot leak/Kroot rumor posted around various social media channels, apparently something that Valrak leaked/revealed or whatever, but I can't find a source or content/context for what it is, assuming its not just stat/rules rumors from the Tau Codex itself. Some of the posts I've seen seem to imply that its a hint towards a Kroot Mercs book of some sort, but not sure if thats just people reading into something too much or if the rumor is actually about that.
The codex contains Kroot Warlord Traits so some people started musing on the practicality of an all-kroot list which is possible but not necessarily good, then some other people saw that without the original context and now we have kroot mercs codex rumours flying about.
chaos0xomega wrote: I've been seeing mention about a Kroot leak/Kroot rumor posted around various social media channels, apparently something that Valrak leaked/revealed or whatever, but I can't find a source or content/context for what it is, assuming its not just stat/rules rumors from the Tau Codex itself. Some of the posts I've seen seem to imply that its a hint towards a Kroot Mercs book of some sort, but not sure if thats just people reading into something too much or if the rumor is actually about that.
The codex contains Kroot Warlord Traits so some people started musing on the practicality of an all-kroot list which is possible but not necessarily good, then some other people saw that without the original context and now we have kroot mercs codex rumours flying about.
The rumors were out long before any of the Kroot Warlord traits were known.
The "kroot mercs codex" bit is the usual wild speculative thinking based upon someone's rumor of one thing(in this case, redone Kroot Carnivore Squad with Hounds and Krootox in the box) and another thing(Kroot Warlord Traits+Relics) and coming to a wild conclusion.
Obviously could also be "we'll reveal a few strats and WL-traits, pretending the book hasn't leaked"
Almost like a huge(arguably the vast majority) number of players don't interact with gaming Discords/forums/Reddits and haven't seen the leaks and so this actually would be new info to them.
Wouldn't that part of the community also not see GW's official online news? So, logically, the only people that see the online reveals are also the ones aware of the leaks.
Obviously could also be "we'll reveal a few strats and WL-traits, pretending the book hasn't leaked"
Almost like a huge(arguably the vast majority) number of players don't interact with gaming Discords/forums/Reddits and haven't seen the leaks and so this actually would be new info to them.
Wouldn't that part of the community also not see GW's official online news? So, logically, the only people that see the online reveals are also the ones aware of the leaks.
No, because nearly everyone interacts with Facebook and social media where this stuff is posted and so they are more likely to see official stuff. Your "logic" doesn't follow, just being on the internet does not automatically mean you're interacting with the niche parts of it and those leaks are on niche parts.
The leaders of a Kroot pack, known as Shapers, have received a long-deserved promotion to the HQ battlefield role. This means that you can now field Battle-forged armies composed entirely of Kroot units, while Shapers even get a choice of three bespoke Warlord Traits.
One minor question I have about kroot rules: Other than the Blackstone Fortress character, there are no rules for a Kroot Pistol, despite the fact that the models come with them. Would it be too much to ask that GW throw us a bone and allow kroot to have a pistol backup weapon like Space Marines and their bolter/bolt pistol combo? It would go a bit to making them more viable. If they get stuck in combat at least they can shoot a pistol once before dying.
I like that if you take a Carnivore unit you get dogs, the gorilla, and the leader without taking up detachment slots. Pretty neat. Also, all Kroot army winning a GT when?
Kroot do look good. So do a lot of things though. That ability to move pre-game is definitely a big deal but every devilish can also do it.
In general Tau won’t be anything like as fragile in melee as before. Suits can fire in melee and Kroot get a couple of proper attacks (and then die, leaving the enemy exposed to fire). You can make a couple of commanders into quite serious melee threats with the onager gauntlet and signature flamer. You obviously aren’t going to make a melee tau army any time soon but you do now have the option of melee in some cases.
Fergie0044 wrote: Can someone explain to me what's happening in that picture?
White Scars refuse to deploy models to weather Tau Alpha Strike. Kroots infiltrate to make White Scar deployment impossible. Tau player wins without White Scars models ever touching table.
Fergie0044 wrote: Can someone explain to me what's happening in that picture?
Player A failed to deploy any models at all, which was an option back then, because they wanted to hide off-board for the first turn and roll on from their table edge.
Then, as now, a unit in coherency is an impassable terrain feature for enemy movement so player K(root) deployed his infiltrators as shown - that edge of the board being Player A’s deployment zone.
Roll on turn 1 for Player K and the non-kroot might have done some stuff, no-one cares. The Kroot however stand resolute in the face of howling madmen charging them from the infinite darkness at the edge of reality and continue to block the board edge.
Player A’s turn one consists of the opponent pointing out the facts, the tournament judge concurring with Player K’s interpretation, admitting that they had no skimmers or outflankers of their own to counter this, then instantly losing because under the “tabling” rules in effect, if you ended a turn with no models on the board you lost regardless of other scenario details.
Thus a moment of history was made and one of the very first Warhammer memes was spawned.
Hmmm... you think Kroot can ride in Devilfish? Not that you would gain much by doing so as both have their own pre-game moves, but it would make an all Kroot army just a wee bit more feasible to have some vehicular support (even if its primarily armed with a burst cannon and I assume seeker missiles).
Fergie0044 wrote: Can someone explain to me what's happening in that picture?
Player A failed to deploy any models at all, which was an option back then, because they wanted to hide off-board for the first turn and roll on from their table edge.
Then, as now, a unit in coherency is an impassable terrain feature for enemy movement so player K(root) deployed his infiltrators as shown - that edge of the board being Player A’s deployment zone.
Roll on turn 1 for Player K and the non-kroot might have done some stuff, no-one cares. The Kroot however stand resolute in the face of howling madmen charging them from the infinite darkness at the edge of reality and continue to block the board edge.
Player A’s turn one consists of the opponent pointing out the facts, the tournament judge concurring with Player K’s interpretation, admitting that they had no skimmers or outflankers of their own to counter this, then instantly losing because under the “tabling” rules in effect, if you ended a turn with no models on the board you lost regardless of other scenario details.
Thus a moment of history was made and one of the very first Warhammer memes was spawned.
To add insult to injury, reportedly the White Scars player did that after the Tau player reminded him he had units that could Infiltrate.
That part isn't entirely surprising. Back in the day, far too many players were under the mistaken impression that infiltrators could not deploy in an opponents deployment zone, even though that rule did not exist anywhere at the time. I think (but am not certain) the "except in your opponents deployment zone" clause was a holdover from 3rd edition - either that or it was just a mistaken assumption because under normal circumstances you could never place infiltrators within your opponents deployment zone because the deployment of their own minis made that essentially impossible.
IIRC, thats actually what the White Scars player and the judge are checking on in this photo, trying to determine the legality of the kroot players deployment.
there was changes in general to scout and infiltrators a lot of players did not know until the end of the edition
another problem in this situation was that units with scout/infiltrator had not the option for a normal deployment, they either had to infiltrate or start from reserve
Gert wrote: . Also, all Kroot army winning a GT when?
When they can once again do this:
God I love seeing that photo. Remember when it was fresh, it never gets old... and shows that a gimmicky force (in this case the White Scars player) can come undone very easily.
Gotta say though… what’s up with Planet Bowling Green there? Are tournament terrain layouts still that terrible?
I mean, I’m not really surprised the guy wanted to deny at least one round of shooting on that table. Yikes.
Wow, I just found out about the alternating fusion blastor. Its a new prototype system. Pay 25 more points and your commander can shoot a beam in a line that if it hits, does S4 AP4 Damage D6+2 !!! All units in that line get hit.
Now, the beam is only 12 inches, but the Commander is pretty fast anyway right? This strikes me like a pretty neat Character Assasination gun. Ordinarily characters are protected by units with look out sir. But this beam gun ignores all that.
If you could line up 2 characters along with the unit protecting them in the beam's path. You could take out 2 characters if they have no invul or if they fail their invul. Not to mention the unit protecting them eats a D6+2 dmg shot too.
Seems pretty nifty if you design something with this upgrade in mind.
I think the 12" is too short and will make the beam practically useless. For that 25 points you could just stick a second fusion blaster on there and split fire to hit multiple units without needing to worry about super precise position to get enemies perfectly lined up.
stonehorse wrote: God I love seeing that photo. Remember when it was fresh, it never gets old... and shows that a gimmicky force (in this case the White Scars player) can come undone very easily.
Army composition on the WS side had next to 0 to do with the result. The decision to keep everything in reserve turn 1 was the sole deciding factor here. Along with Tau bringing alot of Infiltrators.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I think the 12" is too short and will make the beam practically useless. For that 25 points you could just stick a second fusion blaster on there and split fire to hit multiple units without needing to worry about super precise position to get enemies perfectly lined up.
It would be much, much better if the line was more like “Draw an imaginary straight line between the firing model and the nearest model in the target unit, then extend the line up to a maximum of 12” from the firing model. All units etc…” because then you could reasonably use it in close combat and still have an effect.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Wow, I just found out about the alternating fusion blastor. Its a new prototype system. Pay 25 more points and your commander can shoot a beam in a line that if it hits, does S4 AP4 Damage D6+2 !!! All units in that line get hit.
Now, the beam is only 12 inches, but the Commander is pretty fast anyway right? This strikes me like a pretty neat Character Assasination gun. Ordinarily characters are protected by units with look out sir. But this beam gun ignores all that.
If you could line up 2 characters along with the unit protecting them in the beam's path. You could take out 2 characters if they have no invul or if they fail their invul. Not to mention the unit protecting them eats a D6+2 dmg shot too.
Seems pretty nifty if you design something with this upgrade in mind.
If there is a unit protecting them in the path then surly you cannot target the 1 or 2 characters behind. Unless I missed something this gun doesnt ignore look out sir and couldn't Assasination them or even hit them.
EDIT: I guess it could work if there was a unit behind the enemy Character but given its 12" I am not sure how often that's going to happen. For me I would perfer 18" Fusion and move into half range for the damage boost.
Bork'an conveniently makes that 12" line into a 16" line and gives access to an Ignore Invulnerable Saves with One Weapon strat. That's a lot of hard-to-negate damage in a line.
Unusual Suspect wrote: Bork'an conveniently makes that 12" line into a 16" line and gives access to an Ignore Invulnerable Saves with One Weapon strat. That's a lot of hard-to-negate damage in a line.
Agreed. That looks like a scary combo. On a coldstar with precision of the hunter it would be a massive threat. You do still need there to. E something behind the target to shoot of course but zooming side to side might open up options.
Unusual Suspect wrote: Bork'an conveniently makes that 12" line into a 16" line and gives access to an Ignore Invulnerable Saves with One Weapon strat. That's a lot of hard-to-negate damage in a line.
Agreed. That looks like a scary combo. On a coldstar with precision of the hunter it would be a massive threat. You do still need there to. E something behind the target to shoot of course but zooming side to side might open up options.
Hey, it’s even thematic and fluffy; Bork’an being the experimentalist-tech faction, of course their prototypes are more effective.
… anyone know what Bork’an’s official colour scheme is?
Looks like they are also selling some limited edition framed artwork in bundle with all the new stuff (codex, dice, datacards) and some stuff probably nobody really needs (like the combat patrol), or an even bigger bundle with an additional box of pathfinders, crisissuits and a piranha. Looks like the scalpers arent interested though, still not sold out . For anybody wondering, the artwork is priced at 40 euro's, assuming nothing in the bundle was considered discounted by GW.
So, the notorious GMG review video is back and I noticed that the tidewall transport rules prevent cadre Fireblades from being transported. Does that seem like a mistake to anyone else?
Mr_Rose wrote: So, the notorious GMG review video is back and I noticed that the tidewall transport rules prevent cadre Fireblades from being transported. Does that seem like a mistake to anyone else?
Not sure about that, but one of the build-a-sept traits is "When you fall back with a unit, select one enemy unit in engagement range and roll a die. On a 2 to 3 they take a mortal wound, on a 6 they take d3 mortal wounds."
At present, I’m assuming, based on similar rules, that the base range should be 2-5 making it a simple typo. The telling question will be what’s written on the cards, assuming the custom septs are in there.
Unusual Suspect wrote: Bork'an conveniently makes that 12" line into a 16" line and gives access to an Ignore Invulnerable Saves with One Weapon strat. That's a lot of hard-to-negate damage in a line.
Agreed. That looks like a scary combo. On a coldstar with precision of the hunter it would be a massive threat. You do still need there to. E something behind the target to shoot of course but zooming side to side might open up options.
Hey, it’s even thematic and fluffy; Bork’an being the experimentalist-tech faction, of course their prototypes are more effective.
… anyone know what Bork’an’s official colour scheme is?
There's two official scemes:
If it's any more help, Duncan's old video on Bork'an uses the second one and the first one is labelled as "equipped for urban warfare", so could be their "official" cityfight alt scheme.
Looks like I kinda landed on Au’taal by coincidence myself. And that old Vior’la scheme looks much nicer than the current Studio issue… hmm.
Isn’t the important thing just the Sept tag colour though? Could change those easily enough.
It is more about the sept color more than anything else. After all, a sept is an entire solar system - they will have multiple uniforms for multiple enviroments. Unlike Space Marines, they don't have any sort of heraldic detachment to the color of their armor and are more like Cadians (or modern RL militaries for that matter), who wear a myriad different uniforms beyond the famous 8th Regiment.
When I first started Tau, I painted them Black and White (for no other reason than that I wanted an Imperial Stormtrooper look) and will probably field them as T'au'n with custom sept traits
Esmer wrote: It is more about the sept color more than anything else. After all, a sept is an entire solar system - they will have multiple uniforms for multiple enviroments. Unlike Space Marines, they don't have any sort of heraldic detachment to the color of their armor and are more like Cadians (or modern RL militaries for that matter), who wear a myriad different uniforms beyond the famous 8th Regiment.
Yup. For example:
Green camo Bork'an on the back of the Pathfinder box.
Edit: cool, I think that’s conclusive. On the other hand teal on red is gonna be a PITA to make legible.
Oh, am I seeing this right? They finally got around to describing what the barcodes mean in the lore section so now we can play spot the commander pretending to be a fire warrior…
Or possibly the fire warrior who painted extra rank stripes on his hat and is about to find out that the greater good insists he be sent into battle with four plasma rifles but “oops we can’t find your suit, sir, I’m sure you’ll figure it out…”
CKO wrote: With drones being 2 wounds and part of a unit does that mean you have to get through 24 wounds before you even get to a crisis suit?
Only shield drones have two wounds. Gun drones are 1 wound each. But yeah, if you're bringing six man crisis teams and spend the points to get the full shield drone allotment, there'll be a lot of meat to chew through first. They're also going to be close to 600pts for the unit.
After going throuth the custom traits, I conclude that Sector A "Calm under Pressure" and Sector D "Reinforced Armor" seems to be the most all-around mix between offensive and defensive boni unless for some unlikely reason you go light on battlesuit units. "Evasion Maneuvres" could also be good but only getting it for advanced units seems to high a trade-off - unless you pair it with Mont'ka. Hmm...
WTF, why is a Tau commander one of the best melee units in the game? Reroll hits, wounds, with S12, AP-4 and DM3. Why are actual melee armies not able to do this sort of damage output.
The guns are ridiculous but it can be justified to a certain extent, this cannot.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: WTF, why is a Tau commander one of the best melee units in the game? Reroll hits, wounds, with S12, AP-4 and DM3. Why are actual melee armies not able to do this sort of damage output.
The guns are ridiculous but it can be justified to a certain extent, this cannot.
That is about 66% of the total melee capability of the Tau in that one model right there. Onager gauntlet has been around since what, 5th edition, they just made it useful, vs the old single attack it had before.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: WTF, why is a Tau commander one of the best melee units in the game? Reroll hits, wounds, with S12, AP-4 and DM3. Why are actual melee armies not able to do this sort of damage output.
The guns are ridiculous but it can be justified to a certain extent, this cannot.
That is about 66% of the total melee capability of the Tau in that one model right there. Onager gauntlet has been around since what, 5th edition, they just made it useful, vs the old single attack it had before.
Indeed. GW seems absolutely 110% committed to Tau being a shooting army always and forever.
I'm honestly pretty shocked they didn't just remove the onager gauntlet from the game.
Anyway, yeah, this relic isn't going to be shaking up the meta.
Esmer wrote: It is more about the sept color more than anything else. After all, a sept is an entire solar system - they will have multiple uniforms for multiple enviroments. Unlike Space Marines, they don't have any sort of heraldic detachment to the color of their armor and are more like Cadians (or modern RL militaries for that matter), who wear a myriad different uniforms beyond the famous 8th Regiment.
Yup. For example:
I pity the poor sods who actually tried using Ceramite White for a basecoat.
I happened to make the mistake of checking out few Tau battle reports today..
Spoiler:
Tabletop Tactics: Tau destroy White Scars with ease
MWG Studios: Tau destroy Sisters of battle
SN Battle Reports: Tau destroy Blood Angels
winters SEO: Tau do not completely obliterate Death Guard. "Only" win
Trickster12 wrote: I happened to make the mistake of checking out few Tau battle reports today..
Spoiler:
Tabletop Tactics: Tau destroy White Scars with ease
MWG Studios: Tau destroy Sisters of battle
SN Battle Reports: Tau destroy Blood Angels
winters SEO: Tau do not completely obliterate Death Guard. "Only" win
Trickster12 wrote: I happened to make the mistake of checking out few Tau battle reports today..
Spoiler:
Tabletop Tactics: Tau destroy White Scars with ease
MWG Studios: Tau destroy Sisters of battle
SN Battle Reports: Tau destroy Blood Angels
winters SEO: Tau do not completely obliterate Death Guard. "Only" win
So, yea. Tau seems to be Tau again.
To be fair that TTT report featured an absolutely abysmal (if fluffy) primaris only white scars list, but on the flip side the Tau player kinda wasted about 500 points of units just goofing around and still won handily. His "OP" hammerhead killed FAR more of his own army when it exploded than his opponent's.
The crisis suits were far and away the stars of the show. They are really nasty now. Drop the riptide and hammerhead for more crisis suits and broadsides for some real power.
It does highlight just how much things have changed. A year ago people would have probably said that that white scars list was some WAAC cheese, but now it's just straight hot trash vs most 9th edition codexes.
I know the unit has been shelf warmer for several editions so rarely gets looked at but, what has been folks take on the updates to the Skyray? For 20 points less than an Ionhead and 10 less than a standard HH, you are getting a 72”, Heavy D3+1, S9 AP3 D2d3 main gun with RR to hit, against Aircraft a +2 to hit, RR to both hit and wound.
Possibly still edged out by Broadsides, but still an improvement over previous versions. And looks likes the best anti-air in the codex.
barnowl wrote: I know the unit has been shelf warmer for several editions so rarely gets looked at but, what has been folks take on the updates to the Skyray? For 20 points less than an Ionhead and 10 less than a standard HH, you are getting a 72”, Heavy D3+1, S9 AP3 D2d3 main gun with RR to hit, against Aircraft a +2 to hit, RR to both hit and wound.
Possibly still edged out by Broadsides, but still an improvement over previous versions. And looks likes the best anti-air in the codex.
You'll need a plan for it if you want to use the strat, but at 135 points they're reasonable. They're not going to win you a game solo, but keep them safe and they'll put in work over the course of several turns.
Overwhelming commentary around the Sky Ray that I've seen seems to be that its definitely a viable choice and could well be one of the stars of the codex.
Trickster12 wrote: I happened to make the mistake of checking out few Tau battle reports today..
Spoiler:
Tabletop Tactics: Tau destroy White Scars with ease
MWG Studios: Tau destroy Sisters of battle
SN Battle Reports: Tau destroy Blood Angels
winters SEO: Tau do not completely obliterate Death Guard. "Only" win
So, yea. Tau seems to be Tau again.
Man, that MWG game was brutal.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
barnowl wrote: I know the unit has been shelf warmer for several editions so rarely gets looked at but, what has been folks take on the updates to the Skyray? For 20 points less than an Ionhead and 10 less than a standard HH, you are getting a 72”, Heavy D3+1, S9 AP3 D2d3 main gun with RR to hit, against Aircraft a +2 to hit, RR to both hit and wound.
Possibly still edged out by Broadsides, but still an improvement over previous versions. And looks likes the best anti-air in the codex.
Also, they get a free markerlight action. Skyrays can markerlight and then move into position before the action completes. Just another fun addition.
Mr_Rose wrote: So, does the skyray have ammo limitations still, or are they saying that it has an internal magazine filling the transport bay now?
Nope, no ammo limitations for the seeker missile racks.
This was the first thing I checked as that has been a deal breaker on it for a while. Also getting a decent (4+) bs with out having to burn the ML is a huge improvement. Your still basicly just getting 6 shoots in practice, but all the weird jankiness of needing ML hits before it is even worth shooting is gone. AS mentioned you still get to take a ML action so get a nice 3+ to hit with the RR.
Am I reading things correctly, Crisis suits can take 3 weapons + 1 gimmick now? And the invln shield costs a meagre 5 points? Isn't that a bit of a no brainer?
is the change to the plasma rifle profile. This thing has always been rapid-fire, now that they have a codex where assault weapons are better for them they change it. That is simply codex creep, it just feels dirty. Let's change this weapon profile completely despite already having fusion blasters which originally had that role.
