So I was challenged to write a Tau codex. (an army I don't play) So now is your chance to let it out a say your wishlist and why your codex sucks. So what's wrong with the Tau, the absences of melee characters, no psychic defense? Or what's good and should stay. Let's hear it!

Most of the stuff could simply just be cheaper in my opinion, stealth suits, firewarriors, and the like.

Except vespids, they need a desperate re-tooling.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Most of the stuff could simply just be cheaper in my opinion, stealth suits, firewarriors, and the like.

Except vespids, they need a desperate re-tooling.

+1

Give the kroot some type of good armor save....for a price though.

BS3 for a shooty army....

Marker lights not assault

Pathfinders must take fish

Hammer Railgun not TL

Broadside not 5++ T5

Remove Kroot woodcraft and give them stealth or something -.-

Special weapons for more than just the Crisis Suits (maybe Drone attachments, like Wolf Guard or Crypteks).

Better internal balance. Why would you take a Skyray Gunship when the Hammerhead is clearly better? Why would you take half of the Crisis Suit or vehicle upgrades, when they're clearly not worth it (or have no effect at all)?

Something to make the army unique...nearly every army has its own special rules. Maybe something akin to Stand-and-Shoot (WHFB) or the ability to retreat/fall back a bit when charged. The latter would make a good deal of fluff sense. My suggestions are definitely just wish-listing, but Tau could definitely use a few special rules.

Perhaps some kind of dreadnought-esque mech would be nice...and very fitting for the Tau.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Most of the stuff could simply just be cheaper in my opinion, stealth suits, firewarriors, and the like.

Except vespids, they need a desperate re-tooling.

Here is what I have been working on. Kind of bringing them up along the lines of the Tyranid Shrike

VESPID STINGWING SQUAD .......................................................... 28 POINTS PER MODEL

WS BS S T W I A LD Sv
Stingwing 5 3 4 4 1 3 2 8 5+

Composition:
• 5-10 vespid stingwings
Unit Type:
• Jump Infantry
Wargear:
• Kroot Carapace
• Wings
• Neutron blaster
• Plasma grenades
OPTIONS:
• One model in the squad may replace it's Neutron blaster with:
- Caustic Cannon .......................................................................................... 20 points per model
• The whole squad may take:
- Envenomed Weapons ...................................................................................5 points per model
- EMP grenades .............................................................................................. 2 points per model
- Predator Hides .............................................................................................. 3 points per model

Caustic Cannon: Range Strength AP Type
Template X 3 Assault 1, Poisoned (4+)

Predator Hide will be a Kroot armor add-on that will grant stealth USR


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LunaHound wrote:BS3 for a shooty army....

Marker lights not assault

Pathfinders must take fish

Hammer Railgun not TL

Broadside not 5++ T5

Remove Kroot woodcraft and give them stealth or something -.-

Well I'm making Kroot BS 3 base and Tau BS 4 base, with a legendary that will be BS 6

I got an idea like the IG have a legendary tank commander Tau will have a Tank Pilot with BS 5

I'm making all the suits walkers so crisis will be front armor value 12 and Broadsides will be front armor value 13

I'm working on not only Tau Pathfinders but also Kroot Pathfinders

Kroot will be brought up along the lines of a Tyrand Termagant, I mean come on a Ripper has a 6+

Kroot will form sort of a IG Platoon so each Kroot look powerful on paper but in CC each group will buff the others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Siphen wrote:

Better internal balance. Why would you take a Skyray Gunship when the Hammerhead is clearly better? Why would you take half of the Crisis Suit or vehicle upgrades, when they're clearly not worth it (or have no effect at all)?

Range Strength AP Type
60” 9 2 Heavy 1, Blast, Lance

How about that missile, that missile will be uniquely Skyray.

I'm also working on a Kroot god, this will be comparable to the Tyranid Deathleaper.

Army-wide BS4. There's no reason the premier shooting army should be generally BS3.

Infinite Seeker Missiles and markerlights cheaper on FW Shas'uis. Fixed the "Fire Warriors lack means to tank-hunt" problem without breaking the "no organic special weapons" fluff.

Points cut 20% across the board.

Give Kroot something akin to a Bonding Knife.

Change Ethereals so they don't make your army objectively worse for taking them.

Cerebrium wrote:Army-wide BS4. There's no reason the premier shooting army should be generally BS3.

I don't know the codex, but it may be to do with game balance. At least when the codex was not outdated.

Stealth suits cost to much. And vespid need to be re-done completley. AND The Tau need much better HQ options.

Generally, commanders work fine. They could fix the ethereal, but I can't see many more options.

Really, if the points for everything in the current book were cut by ~20%, it would be pretty good again.

- Firewarriors need to be worthwhile taking (beyond required minimum-number units to hold objective)

- Markerlights and Seeker Missiles need less clunky mechanics (rolling twice or more for a "single" shot of some kind is bad game-design).

- Ethereals should be a worthwhile HQ for people to consider

- More Special Characters showing off the rich Tau background

- Rules the bring Tau-warfare-fluff (e.g. things like Mont'ka and Kauyon) to the table in some shape or form would be much appreciated

- "internal balance" of HS in particular (e.g. stuff like Sniper Teams, etc,... should be a viable alternative).

- Some "5th Edition-style" meta-rules as they fit Tau (e.g., stuff like manipulating reserve rolls, steal-initiative rolls, terrain/battlefield-condition manipulation, deployment-manipulation, incl. deep strike variants, etc..).

Here is a few ideas to give Ethereals a little more tactical punch, what do you guys think?

Psychic Barrier: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, place a Small Blast template anywhere completely within 12” from the Ethereal and more than 1” away from any enemy models. The template is Impassable Terrain, and remains on the battlefield unit the start of your next Movement phase.
Force Shroud: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, the Ethereal and any unit he is with receive a 5+ invulnerable save until the start of your next Movement phase.
Nullify: This psychic power is used at the start of your Shooting phase. If successful, all enemy units within 18” of the Ethereal must re-roll successful invulnerable saves for the remainder of the player turn.
Summon: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, all friendly units that use the Deep Strike special rule this turn scatter only D6” instead of the normal 2D6”.

broodstar wrote:Here is a few ideas to give Ethereals a little more tactical punch, what do you guys think?

Psychic Barrier: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, place a Small Blast template anywhere completely within 12” from the Ethereal and more than 1” away from any enemy models. The template is Impassable Terrain, and remains on the battlefield unit the start of your next Movement phase.
Force Shroud: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, the Ethereal and any unit he is with receive a 5+ invulnerable save until the start of your next Movement phase.
Nullify: This psychic power is used at the start of your Shooting phase. If successful, all enemy units within 18” of the Ethereal must re-roll successful invulnerable saves for the remainder of the player turn.
Summon: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, all friendly units that use the Deep Strike special rule this turn scatter only D6” instead of the normal 2D6”.

Having read your all your idea's so far...Just go back to reading the complaints rather than trying to fix them.

Because it's quite obvious you don't even know the basic fluff for Tau at all, namely that they have no psykers, no mind abilities, such a low warp presence that basic telepathic thought from a powerful psyker is nothing more to listening to static for them!

But giving them psychic powers means you have to change how tau are as a race, I thought they had no psykers? No presence in the warp? If you want a psyker, create a new allied race (kroot, stingwings, and bob they psyker and his buddies) kind of thing. That'd work better wouldn't it, rather than changing the whole tau race?

I'd like to see the Ethereal bring some psy-defence.

I don't think Psy is what Ethereals are about.

They are more a (mysteriously appeared,) gene-engineered ruling caste for the Tau. They might have a sort of "synapse" effect on nearby Tau (Fearless, FnP even, something along those lines). As a design-rule, they should probably boost "foot armies" more whereas Suit-HQ synch better with Suit-heavy armies.

Psy defense may or may not be a good inclusion for the Tau, but I wouldn't run it via the Ethereals. As with most things, Tau would likely use a technological solution. Perhaps a "psych-out" drone or something along those lines. The inspiration would be met (very, very roughly) more along the line of the anti-psy stuff found on the new Necron Spyders, less along the lines of SM Librarians.

Either way, I doubt psy or anti-psy is the first priority of redesigning the Tau dex.

The Tau fake Codex had some nice ideas: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/423040.page

And add some new interesting units/races, e.g. the Orca-based Gunship.

As for Tau shooting, an idea raised some time ago that I liked alot was a default "Tau Tactical Network". E.g:

Tau Tactical Network (TTN): Tau coordinate their armies using a sophisticated tactical network. Tau units with a tactical network link can use the network to instantly access target information, strategic information of the battlefield, etc.. . Something along those lines.

Game effect: All Tau units with a TTN gain +1 BS and can re-roll the distance they see under Nightfighting rules. The rules apply as long as their is at least one model with a TTN in the unit. They do not stack.

Units with TTN would be: All Tau Vehicles and Crisis Suits (making them BS4 by default) as well as all drones. Thus, as long as their is at least one drone (or Crisis-suit-wearing character) in a FW unit (Pathfinders, whatever), they would have BS4. Inducted aliens would likely be unable to access the TTN.

broodstar wrote:
Psychic Barrier: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, place a Small Blast template anywhere completely within 12” from the Ethereal and more than 1” away from any enemy models. The template is Impassable Terrain, and remains on the battlefield unit the start of your next Movement phase.
Force Shroud: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, the Ethereal and any unit he is with receive a 5+ invulnerable save until the start of your next Movement phase.
Nullify: This psychic power is used at the start of your Shooting phase. If successful, all enemy units within 18” of the Ethereal must re-roll successful invulnerable saves for the remainder of the player turn.
Summon: This psychic power is used at the start of your Movement phase. If successful, all friendly units that use the Deep Strike special rule this turn scatter only D6” instead of the normal 2D6”.

Doh! The relationship between the Tau Empire and the Blue Star Alliance is rather... unwelcoming since the Unification Wars. So i don't know if an Etheral can attend on the Blue Star Alliance Academy of Psyscience . On another note: seeing the psychic powers of my codex popping up in another thread was surprising. But it made my day, thank you !

On the problems with the Tau, they are actually pretty OK. Thier biggest problem is tactical inflexibility and some overpriced/underpowered units/wargear. You can pretty much fix the codex by giving a free power boost to everything in the codex. Like making Markerlights an auto-hit non-shooting ability.

There were also some early rumours in the summer last year. I quit eliked the rumoured changes to the HH-Railgun

New Alien allies
All metal sets to plastic (Pathfinder, Krootox, Vespids)
Possible new tank
Changes to Hammerhead Railgun rules. Essentially draws a line across table hitting everything in line. Multiple pen through vehicles, only stopped by a glancing hit.
Changes to markerlights. Point system. 1 Markerlight point = + 1BS, 2 Markerlight points = reroll to wound/hit 3 = Difficult Terrain test (blinded by the lights?). Cannot be stacked. So cant have reroll to wound and reroll to hit at 4 points.
Battle Suits. A plug and play system. Essentially streamlined. Pick two guns and a skill or two skills a gun. New models might have interchangeable arms similar to Killa Kans....

Markerlights are one of the few truly good things in the current book. Make them assault instead of heavy, and just keep them as they are, they'd still be good.

Stealthsuits need re-doing or moving to another slot, their not worth giving up the slot for a crisis suit atm.

I'd say they should be elites, but need a more focused purpose. At the moment, they have S5AP5 (something the Tau really don't need more of) and meltaguns. Either give them all something that isn't S5AP5 or all meltaguns, Fire Dragon-style.

Farsight making Crisis Suits troops?

Not only do the Fire Warriors need to be cheaper, they also need more options. Invent some weapon upgrades options - perhaps a "heavy weapons drone" that can follow the squad around - to give them the capability to serve as a platform for anti-mech, anti-MEQ, or anti-TEQ fire. Right now about the only thing Fire Warriors are good for is killing GEQs and holding objectives, and when that's your only Troop choice, in a game where Troop choices are necessary... that's a problem.

Similarly, the Tau need more Troop choices. Having only Fire Warriors and Kroot severely limits the army's flexibility.

In the same vein of making stuff up from scratch, the Tau need more markerlight platforms, of markerlighting is going to be a theme for the army. If Stealth teams were cheapened until Stealth Marker Teams were an option, that would help. It would also help Pathfinders if markerlights were Assault rather than Heavy. I'd also say we need at least one more reliable method of getting markerlights on the table - something like the Forgeworld Tau Tetra (it's a two-man skimmer bike that sports a Heavy 4 markerlight), perhaps?

And we need more Elites choices. We have two. Two! It's pitiful.

Flipping through the codex backwards ('cause I'm weird like that...):

* Sky Rays need to be cheaper and/or pack more punch.
* Hammerheads need to be much cheaper. Compare them in price and utility to the IG tanks.
* Sniper Drone teams need either Relentless, Infiltrate, or both. As it stands, they are very hard to use. What's the point of a sniper unit that can't move and fire (to get closer to the action) and has to start in your backfield? Pretty much every other sniper unit in the game at least has Infiltrate, and we're supposed to have the most mobile army.
* Piranha's need to be much cheaper or much better.
* Devlifish need to be much better AND much cheaper. Compare them to the IG's Chimera. We pay more for a vehicle that's easier to kill, can't be shot out of, and has worse weapons... and all we get is "skimmer." Not a fair trade.

However, the problem is also with our upgrades. Specifically, a lot of them no longer apply to the game or are worded such that they might not actually do anything.

Regarding sniper drones, the controller shouldn't move, but the drones themselves should be able to move and fire.

Heavy weapon gun drones would be fantastic too.

Add Tetras to the actual codex. Although then Piranhas would be even less used.

No codex-wide BS3.

Instead, more access to markerlights, markerlights becoming assault, and Pathfinders being able to split markerlight fire between units in the same way as Long Fangs can split fire.

Cheaper FWs (8pts would be fine in my opinion), cheaper Devilfish (it can't move flat out, it doesn't have decent weaponry unless it spends a bomb on it, no fire points... the only thing it's got going for it is front armour 12), cheaper Stealthsuits.

Either a Kroot Psyker (yes, they exist) HQ, or some form of Psychic Defense, like a Warp Disruptor that also affects Deep-Strikers. No psychic powers being used, just application of technology that disrupts the warp in the immediate area, and draws the gaze of Chaos to an otherwise ignored race, increasing the enemies that the Tau make and incorporating them more into 40k - being on the edge of the Galaxy and ignored by a lot of other races isn't good for a 40k race, Chaos especially.

Crisis and Broadside Battlesuits becoming T5, or getting a hefty points reduction; when you pay upwards of 70pts for a two-wound model with only a 3+ armour save and only T4, something is wrong. Paladins are 55pts and get a 5++ and 2+ save; Meganobz are 40pts and get the 2+ save; Chaos Terminators lack the second wound, but get a 2+ and a 5++ for 30pts, loyalists for 40. Hell, Obliterators are 75pts for a whole host of weapons, SnP (essentially relentless), and a 2+ 5++ in addition to the 2 wounds.

Broadsides get the 2+, but are still only T4, not relentless unless they take a 10pt upgrade, and don't have an invul unless they instead take a 20pt generator, a shield drone or two, or the team leader alone takes the drones. After all that, you've spent significantly more than anything else of a comparable statline.

Kroot need Stealth and possibly Move through Cover; woodcraft is useless in a game where woods are rare commodities.

Vespid need a complete overhaul. First things first, are they assaulty or shooty? Because they currently don't have a clue.

Skyrays need a reason to be in Heavy Support. Leman Russes can be taken in squadrons, why not Skyrays? It'd make more sense, missile gunships would suit squadron-based warfare quite well, it might also give people a reason to take them if you could take 2 in 1 slot instead of taking up a hammerhead or broadside slot.

A Warp Disruptor module would be cool. Even something like "Any unit attempting to deep strike within x" (I'd suggest 24") must scatter on 3d6, choosing the highest".

Not totally debilitating, but makes DSing (which is the bane of Tau) much riskier.

Marker lights need to be assult and rules stay the same. Stealtn suits should have access to all crisis suite weapons not just fusion and burst cannon. Drone sqauds need to be troops. And every thing should be cheaper.

Cerebrium wrote:Army-wide BS4. There's no reason the premier shooting army should be generally BS3.

Infinite Seeker Missiles and markerlights cheaper on FW Shas'uis. Fixed the "Fire Warriors lack means to tank-hunt" problem without breaking the "no organic special weapons" fluff.

Points cut 20% across the board.

Give Kroot something akin to a Bonding Knife.

Change Ethereals so they don't make your army objectively worse for taking them.

Why would the Tau have a BS4? They have no reason for a completely normal alien specis with no unique qualities in terms of skill with a weapon to be equel with a genetically engineered warrior with the sole purpose to improve their aiming ability.

What impression of a Fire Warrior do you feel of them? That they are equal to highly trained soldiers living in a war like society and as such they are very good shots (Cadians, Krieg, etc...) or they are equal to warriors who have been genetically enhanced to be the perfect killing machine? A Tau warrior fresh out of basic should probably not be equal to a enhanced person designed with the sole purpose to kill or soldier from a war like society with a decade or so combat experience under his belt.
It should be a BS 3. However Im approaching this from a fluff standpoint, from a crunch/gameplay stand up *shrugs*


Besides the request for a higher BS for the Firewarrior, I agree with a lot of these.

No way should they be BS4. the premier shooting army are a range of short lived bad eyesighted creatures who have already used technology to boost their shooting abilty to BS3.

No way should it ever be BS4

Galdos wrote:

Cerebrium wrote:Army-wide BS4. There's no reason the premier shooting army should be generally BS3.

Infinite Seeker Missiles and markerlights cheaper on FW Shas'uis. Fixed the "Fire Warriors lack means to tank-hunt" problem without breaking the "no organic special weapons" fluff.

Points cut 20% across the board.

Give Kroot something akin to a Bonding Knife.

Change Ethereals so they don't make your army objectively worse for taking them.

Why would the Tau have a BS4? They have no reason for a completely normal alien specis with no unique qualities in terms of skill with a weapon to be equel with a genetically engineered warrior with the sole purpose to improve their aiming ability.

What impression of a Fire Warrior do you feel of them? That they are equal to highly trained soldiers living in a war like society and as such they are very good shots (Cadians, Krieg, etc...) or they are equal to warriors who have been genetically enhanced to be the perfect killing machine? A Tau warrior fresh out of basic should probably not be equal to a enhanced person designed with the sole purpose to kill or soldier from a war like society with a decade or so combat experience under his belt.
It should be a BS 3. However Im approaching this from a fluff standpoint, from a crunch/gameplay stand up *shrugs*


Besides the request for a higher BS for the Firewarrior, I agree with a lot of these.

Remember, Fire warriors just like cadians are trained from youth to be soldiers: they traijn from birth because by birth right (plight?) you must be a soldier, if a gaurdsman who survived a few battles can have bs4 than so can soldiers who have been training their entirelife while being aided by the tactical aim systems in their distinctive helmet.

Juniperius wrote:
Remember, Fire warriors just like cadians are trained from youth to be soldiers: they traijn from birth because by birth right (plight?) you must be a soldier, if a gaurdsman who survived a few battles can have bs4 than so can soldiers who have been training their entirelife while being aided by the tactical aim systems in their distinctive helmet.

But Fire Warriors have a much shorter life span. From birth training only means 4 or 5 years for them.

@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

Now that you make your point like that, i must abdicate and agree, however i think that fire warrior veterans should be an option so i wouldn't have to buy a target (ethereal) to have bs4 fire warriors.
I just think that vets shouldn't have bs4 too, but i'll savour that for another discussion.

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

Thats what I was trying to say, thank you

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

Because Tau largely work with better-than-BS3 mechanics already. But they do so with a rather clunky mechanic called "markerlights" which requires unnecessary die-rolls that slow the game down and needlessly dublicates an existing mechanic for measuring accuracy with ranged weapons, namely BS.

Need some random fluff-line to keep the nerds happy? Well, something like "Tau make extensive use of markerlights and similar targeting technology: Game Effect, BS4".

Each 40K faction has their own fluff schtick. Marines get 4 stats because they are "bio-engineered": IG Veterans get 4 stats because they are "battle-hardend". Eldar get 4 stats becaus they are "old and Elves": Nids get 4 stats because they are "specialized organisms": Necrons get 4 stats because.. well, robots. Tau get 4 stats because of .. probably technology. If that doesn't float your boat, give em BS 4 because they are close with the goddess of luck. Or because they have subconcious access to precognition seeing where their enemies will be. Or whatever. It's just fluff. The point is to get rid of clunky parallel mechanics and use the base-stateline for the same effect. Fluff can be adapted to fit.

^ But Markerlights aren't for BS increasing purposes only. They can decrease cover, reduce Ld for pinning and call down Seeker Missiles. So if you take out Markerlights for better BS, you need to replace its other functions with other army/game mechanics... And then, what was the whole point of taking out markerlights?

AtoMaki wrote:^ But Markerlights aren't for BS increasing purposes only. They can decrease cover, reduce Ld for pinning and call down Seeker Missiles. So if you take out Markerlights for better BS, you need to replace its other functions with other army/game mechanics... And then, what was the whole point of taking out markerlights?

You don't. You up Tau to BS4 so they have the basic functionality of a shooty army. You then use the markerlights to develop a lean, clean mechanic that provides added bonuses, such as removing an opponents cover save for example. There is a difference players to jump through extra-loops just to get the "basic workings" of a shooty army in place, or to provide them with a unique, fluffy treat that can enhance their units over and above "the norm" to provide some unique tricks (e.g. Orders for IG, Psychic Powers for Eldar, Chapter Tactics for Marines, perhaps Markerlights for Tau).

But you already used up the markerlights to justify the BS4. And i also cannot see the point to sacrifice the BS increasing ability for some medicore effect (+1 BS) when i could have much better (BS 5) with the original markerlight.

Lets see:

Cheaper stuff all over the codex
Markerlights changed to assault
A few new models, more aliens basically and 1-2 new tau stuffs
Battlesuit HQ's are mostly fine, could have the ability to take different suit types rather than just xv8's, if taken with stealth suit makes stealth suits troops
Ethereals need hardwired shield generators and the ability to take honor guard fire warriors as troops, BS 4 fire warriors
Kroot HQ, nuff said
Vespid HQ, fun idea, or stupid fat bug? Makes vespids troops
New alien HQ, whatever it would be, Makes them troops.

Note: all "Makes X troops could become allows 0-1 of a unit to be troops"

Elites: Battlesuits are doing their thing, this slot needs 2-3 more options though

Troops: Being able to take human auxillerys might be fun, otherwise see above regarding troops

Fast attack: Pathfinders, required unit, don't need to take the devilfish, the required unit of pathfinders is a fast attack unit that doesn't take a slot. Pathfinders have BS 4, it's easy to shoot a laser.

Vespid need rending and need the ability where they don't roll for any terrain stuff but dangerous terrain tests.

Heavy support: Biggest issue with tau codex, broadsides are ok. Hammerhead railguns need ordinance, their submunition needs barrage. Skyrays need 1-2 more different kinds of missiles they can fire, missiles need to reload every round, either with a roll of automatically. Sniper teams need to move to troops slot.

Oh, and a failsafe drone. Please. A single drone that does the same gak as the failesafe device in the codex, allowing me to have the last laugh, for the greater good.

AtoMaki wrote:But you already used up the markerlights to justify the BS4. And i also cannot see the point to sacrifice the BS increasing ability for some medicore effect (+1 BS) when i could have much better (BS 5) with the original markerlight.

No. I used markerslights as an example that any piece of fluff can easily justify BS4. Yes, if you use markerlights for that, you'd have to use/invent something other for "fun stuff" like, for example, removing cover savers. If you use something other than markerlights for BS4 (say.. targeting mechanisms, personal target locks, etc..) you can still use "markerlights" for somethings else. But that's just nitpicking fluff terms, which should be the focus of solid rules-and-army-design.

Zweischneid wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

Because Tau largely work with better-than-BS3 mechanics already. But they do so with a rather clunky mechanic called "markerlights" which requires unnecessary die-rolls that slow the game down and needlessly dublicates an existing mechanic for measuring accuracy with ranged weapons, namely BS.

Honestly, if they're slowing the game down that much than you need to speed things up in general. Markerlights are fine.

Need some random fluff-line to keep the nerds happy? Well, something like "Tau make extensive use of markerlights and similar targeting technology: Game Effect, BS4".

That's already the line used to give them BS3. Fire Warriors aren't guardsmen in better armour, they have terrible depth perception and see things differently from other races, their technology is what has allowed them to counteract this, and Targeting Arrays, the likes of which can currently only be installed in battlesuits and vehicles due to size, weight, and complexity, are the only things able to add any sort of increased efficiency.

Each 40K faction has their own fluff schtick. Marines get 4 stats because they are "bio-engineered": IG Veterans get 4 stats because they are "battle-hardend". Eldar get 4 stats becaus they are "old and Elves": Nids get 4 stats because they are "specialized organisms": Necrons get 4 stats because.. well, robots. Tau get 4 stats because of .. probably technology. If that doesn't float your boat, give em BS 4 because they are close with the goddess of luck. Or because they have subconcious access to precognition seeing where their enemies will be. Or whatever. It's just fluff. The point is to get rid of clunky parallel mechanics and use the base-stateline for the same effect. Fluff can be adapted to fit.

None of that is a reason to give basic FWs BS4. Battle hardened veterans and specialised troops get BS4, and that is true in every codex; Eldar get it through HQs and Aspect Warriors because they are specialised and highly experienced veterans; Marines get it for the same reason; IG only get it on Veterans and other experienced models; Nids only get it on Doom, -Thropes, Hive Guard, and Tyranid Primes, because they are all specialised, the first three specialised in ranged and psychic warfare, the Prime specialised to be an all-round warrior; DEldar get it for the same reason as Eldar; Necrons because they're the most advanced civillisation in the game; what is wrong about that? Why do basic Fire Warrior troops get BS4? They are basic troops not veterans or specialised units, Gaunts, Guardians, Guardsmen, SM Scouts, all get BS3, what makes Fire Warriors so much better? Nothing.

AtoMaki wrote:
Doh! The relationship between the Tau Empire and the Blue Star Alliance is rather... unwelcoming since the Unification Wars. So i don't know if an Etheral can attend on the Blue Star Alliance Academy of Psyscience . On another note: seeing the psychic powers of my codex popping up in another thread was surprising. But it made my day, thank you !

Actually while reaching the Ethereal, I came across this guy, which reminded me of the Halo prophets.





And then while waiting for people to reply, I came across your Blue Star Alliance Codex and thought most predominantly the spell that blocks movement was F'ing brilliant.

broodstar wrote:
And then while waiting for people to reply, I came across your Blue Star Alliance Codex and thought most predominantly the spell that blocks movement was F'ing brilliant.

Heh, and i see you liked other stuff in that codex as well (walkers, caustic weapons, lance disruptors).

Current fluff be damned when considering justification for stats and abilities. If Necrons can go from mindless killing robots to robots with personalities and individual goals the Tau can transform into any thing that will allow them to compete competitivly with any of the OTT power Codexs that have been released recently.

At some point my Tau army is going to have to fight against BA, SW, GK and the next yet to be released Matt Ward codex. it would be nice if we had an even chance of winning against them.

However, you probably should not change the feel of the codex. Tau do it in the shooting stage. Our army is not a horde army. A 1500 point army should have somewhere between 40-60 models including vehicles. 3+ and 2+ saves found on only the strongest elements and regardless of how killy Firewarriors are made out to be they need to be able to hold objectives. You can't win without that.

AtoMaki wrote:
Heh, and i see you liked other stuff in that codex as well (walkers, caustic weapons, lance disruptors).

There are a few things, most of it I didn't.

I don't understand why crisis suits only bring you up to that of the tactical marine. I think IG should be a swarm shooting army where as Tau are an elite shooting army. Tau aren't really that good outside their suit but it's their technology that makes them powerful.

We can write into the story that with the Gorgon's assault on Sha'draig: the Tau were pushed to their limit, amazing technologies were discovered in Kor'O'Vanan's plight to defend that colony. In that fight the Ethereals learned (not though teaching) some powers, these powers came accidentally in response to a need. The veterans of Sha'draig brought back with them, the new weaponry.

I also liked your Savage Monstrosity, were you thinking of like some Kroot Elephant? I'd like to see just like Blood Angel can write an all Death Company list, Tau should be able to write and all Kroot list.

I think based off of your caustic weapons, Kroot should understand poison at almost an instinctive level. Kroot should be really similar to the Tyranid, Almost all the Tyranid stains can be bred to have venom, however it's only the Tyranid Venomthrope that carries the most potent strain of venom.

broodstar wrote:
There are a few things, most of it I didn't.

Would you mind to share your thoughts about the 'dex in its topic?

And before you begin to write your own Tau fandex, i strongly recommend to check out the other fandexes first. Chrisrawr's Tau fandex should be your no.1 read (it is somewhere on the 1st page on the Proposed Rules). Oh, and of course don't forget to dig up all kind of Tau material (like Forgeworld units) that can be found on the internet.

LunaHound wrote:

Remove Kroot woodcraft and give them stealth or something -.-

No.

Give them stealth too, that'd be cool, but don't take away my 2+ G2G in woods cover save.

20 models with 2+...


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I also liked your Savage Monstrosity, were you thinking of like some Kroot Elephant? I'd like to see just like Blood Angel can write an all Death Company list, Tau should be able to write and all Kroot list.

There's already a kroot mercs unofficial codex, written by GW authors.

Make an all Kroot or all ally army possible.

Make everything cheaper.

FW at BS4.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:
FW at BS4.

Funny to see people say one thing and another group of people say the exact opposite somewhere else (Can be seen on any topic that has opinions)

Some of the things I've always wanted to see are drones attached to vehicles being able to detach and engage a unit trying to assault the vehicle.

And a Broadside upgrade that removes the SMS in place of a deployable shield. If you decide to deploy the shield then you gain +1T and gain a 5+ invul save.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Make an all Kroot or all ally army possible.

Make everything cheaper.

FW at BS4.

Make them cheaper, but also make them better too! /sarcasm

People simply aren't creative enough with their buffing of fire warriors. BS4 is such a boring uncreative "fix" that it doesn't really fix anything.

I propose that instead of fixing the tau's BS. They should fix Markerlights. Something like this for example.

Firewarrior Shas'ui (or whatever they call them) markerlights. On each shooting phase pick one of the following.
Fire warriors hit on 3+
Cover saves taken against this unit are at -1.
Wounds this unit deals count as pinning.

Now you have markerlights that don't suck as they are a passive effect that buffs the unit. No more rolling to hit or needing to stand still to use them. The tau maintain their "fluffy" BS3 but have a guaranteed work around. And you can have a few options depending on what you are firing on.

Trying to kill a few gaunts in terrain before they reach your line? Rapid fire into them and remove some of that cover save to ensure the kill. A unit with a save your guns don't pierce? Throw those pinning checks on them.

The way to make fire warriors work is not to just give them BS4 and call it a day. But to give them tools that allow them to do their job. Fixing markerlights would go a lot further than just buffing their BS.

I would allow bs 4 firewarriors if all standard guardsmen got bs 4 ad well. Its only fair. Fluff wise tau have horrible eyesight. So they have machines to make them bs 3, instead of bs 2. So if they magically get +1bs, so should guardsmen...

Isn't the whole thing about Tau having "horrible" eyesight from an old stand alone xenobiology book of some sorts? I never remember hearing about anywhere except from there. And it didn't say they had horrible eye sight, just poor depth perception. It does actually make a difference, since the poor depth perception would have a bigger impact on CC than it would shooting at a target from a distance.

Also, stop comparing guard to Tau. Guard get a crap ton of special weapons in their troop choices, where Tau get none. Guard have huge numbers on their side so it'd be insane to give them BS4 on the standard unit. Tau can't take Firewarrior blobs, so it doesn't have as big of an effect.

And I agree that Firewarriors shouldn't get BS4 starting off. It's annoying, but it won't fix their bigger downfalls like not having special weapons and having no real role other than objective holding.

And also, as previously stated, fluff means nothing. C'tan went from being Star eating invisible space wizards and got turned into enslaved toe nail clippings of the Gods to be used as the Necrons see fit.

Problem is that Firewarriors are just used as minimum-units of 6, no upgrades, hide in a Fish. And even that just so that because you have to take them. Making FWs cheaper just means people will pay less for those minimum-units of 6 and spend their points elsewhere.

FWs need BS4. And then, on top, they need some tricks to leverage that BS4 with some extra punch that makes them worthwhile taking and a viable alternative for investing points in, even if it means less points for crisis suits, hammerheads, broadsides, whatever. If that means ret-conning that fluff about eyesight, which was only made to justify the BS3 Tau under the old game design in the first place, so be it. Tau were fine with BS3 in 3rd Edition. In 6th, they wont. Rules will need to be changed. Fluff will need to be changed.

BS4 is not the "basics" of a shooting army. BS4 is a boring way to try to "fix" something that isnt an issue right now.

Firewarriors are not amazing shooters, they are well trained with some tech enhancements - BS3. thats it.

They do not "need" BS4. It makes naff all difference to the utility of a FW team.

Actually one thing in thinking of to buff Tau infantry (although I do think Tau should be a mech army) is to buff the heavy weapons.

When I think of the Rail Rifle I think of the Barrett M82.



So picture this story, A Tau Fire Warrior sees some marines coming toward their base. The Tau sighs and flips the marines off, then gets behind this rifle that is so big it can be confused for a cannon. He fires and the bullet goes screaming down range. The bullet goes through people and building, it doesn't care what is in the way. That one shot kills 3 marines and hits the Rhino in the engine which causes it to blow up.

nosferatu1001 wrote:BS4 is not the "basics" of a shooting army. BS4 is a boring way to try to "fix" something that isnt an issue right now.

Firewarriors are not amazing shooters, they are well trained with some tech enhancements - BS3. thats it.

They do not "need" BS4. It makes naff all difference to the utility of a FW team.

It is an issue. Namely, that people don't buy FW's more than they have to and hide them in a Fish. The design goal nees to be that A) people consider spending points on FWs a sensible alternative to mech and other things (otherwise one might as well remove them from the Codex entirely) and B) provide them with an incentive to disembark them from the Fish within rapid-fire distance of, say, 10 Assault Marines and open fire.

Of course there are other ways. You could beef up the FW to stand up to the inevitable counter-charge of those Assault Marines even if they do little damage to them in shooting.Or you could give Fish Fire-Points like Chimeras. Or whatever. But those strike me as unfluffy solutions. The "fluffy" solution would be to up their shooting so that it is good enough to be worthwhile risking them in the open in the heat of the battle as fairly fragile, low LD, no HtH troops that they are. For that, their shooting needs to be fairly amazing. Better by far, most likely, than, say, Grey Knights, Grey Hunters or Necron Immortals would be my guess, because those units compensate with massively more resiliance and, usually, far better special weapon access.

BS4, with Tau being largely a shooty army, seems a good start. Hell, BS5 or BS6 as basic Tau stat wouldn't necessarily be bad game design either. Neither would be sufficient. Both would be a step in the right direction.


Also, the spread of Markerlights, special and basic weapon across multiple FoC is one of the reasons Tau scale so badly these days. On comparions, a Space Marine player buying a Tac Squad with a Razor can target as many 3 different targets (or concentrate fire on on). To provide the equivalent of basic infantry and special weapon fire at the same accuracy, the Tau player must dedicate as much as three different units from different FoC-slots. Pathfinders to up the accuracy, Crisis Suits to add a smattering of plasma/melta-etcc and FWs for basic fire for example. That just doesn't cut it against 5th edition armies, especially in games over 1500 points where FoC-constraints start to become the bigger issue for Tau than point-contraints. The Space Marine player could beat the Tau simply by Target Saturation, even if FW's were only 1 point each and Pulse Rifles Str. 10.

Tau need to become more FoC-efficient more than they need to become more point-efficient.

For one thing, fluff should never be a major point when making rules. Just saying.

Fire warriors should stay BS 3, because if you increase the BS and keep marker lights the same, then they would have BS 5 (plus other effects the mark lights have). FW also come in larger squads that units than already have BS4. plus it's incredibly lazy (the same reason why I also disapprove of FWs getting special/heavy weapons) Suits and pathfinders should have BsS4 because they are vets, but almost because they're elites you pay a lot for and come in smaller squads and such don't get as much of a massive boost.

I think that a better way to solve it would to allow better access to markers lights and change the way units use them.

Edit: Oh and, just saying this as a precaution, people who say tau need to be better in melee are not going to be taken serious

People dont take FW because theyre only BS3, BS4 wouldnt do anything to fix why people dont take FW. So not only do you have something that belies belief (that a 6yr old poor depth perception creature is as good a shooter as a space marine - or, in your mind, should be better than a captain or as good as a GKGM) but it also would not make any difference whatsoever to the likelihood of people taking non minimum sized units for scoring.

It is also a boring way to not-fix the issue.

Oh, and with 12 FW firing at 10 marines 6 still come and beat you up, even with BS5. You still die like, well, Tau and you have killed an extra 2 marines.

I think I said in every post that BS alone will not fix the issue. And of course BS4 is a rather plain change. That is the point.

But upping BS avoides the redundant rule design where you have "flashy" and "fun" rules like markerlights that, ultimately, just dublicate what could have easily been done with a much more simpler mechanic that already exists for determining accuracy with ranged weapons: Ballistic Skill. Which, as in the current codex where markerlights do just that 90% of the time, is simply bad game design.

You up Ballistic Skill to get a good basis. You add "flavour and fun and ulitility" over and above BS4 or 5 with fluffy rules like markerlights, Mont'ka, whatever.

And, as has been pointed out - a shooty army does not NEED BS4 to function perfectly well. You're picking the wrong aspect to try to fix

It isnt redundant rule design, it makes you make a choice between better BS, reduction in cover (which is where i mostly see markerlights being reduced - reducing SMF / smoke cover saves to pop transports) and leadership (very useful) and requires some elements of synergy between units.
The big issue is ML availability and maneuverability, and tactical flexibility in the FW squads. I'm not sure they shoudl be so flexible, given they are modelled on their progenitor (well, uplift) race of Eldar where you focus on one ability to the exclusion of others, but a couple of melta's would make people see them in a different light. I just dont think its a good change, given the way Eldar are supposed to be organised, to have yet another SM clone.

Better BS is neither desirable from a background and, quite frankly, sense perspective, but its also just such a dull way to try to fix it, given even with BS5 i still wouldnt take FW. You dont start with something that wont help and then tack something on afterwards.

Tau should not be the "premier shooting army" because each model has a high BS as a base.

Well, from the "sense" perspective we evidently disagree. I think it makes perfect sense.

From a "background" perspective it likewise makes perfect sense if you stop trying to impose a "IG/Space Marine" logic on the Tau.

Different armies follow a different schtick in how they "rise" above average.

IG do so through "combat experience and veteran status"
Space Marines through "genetically advanced physicality"
Eldar through "experience of age and ritualized combat tradition"
Tau through "technological progress that covers their physical limitations (and lack of experience)"

One isn't "better" or more plausible than the other. It's just fluff. And it would further set Tau apart from their Alien allies (who have less access to "Tau Technology" in the "technology-based" logic of the Tau Codex and hence lower BS):

And I know that markerlights ought to represent a tactical choice. That is the problem. They don't. Statistically (if applied to FWs), it is nearly always the best option to raise BS to 4 above all other. Hence, the need to move this "bad internal balance" out of the markerlight sub-system and straight into the statline, which (to say it for the nth time) hasn't yet "fixed" Tau but just recreated the (still-subpar) performance of current Tau FW, but with a far more streamlined system that "liberates" the markerlight system to be used to actually make FW a sexy option to choose for your army.

And yes, there might be other options to make FW's more attractive. Base 4 attack perhaps? Fearless and T5? Whatever. But working with the shooting side of things appears to be the most fitting.

Trouble is basic infantry in 40k, just in general, aren't very effective at killing things. How many armies do you see taking basic guard without their heavy/specials? Thats where most of the killing is done. Since crisis suits have most of the kit then it makes the Tau fire warriors superfluous. I still use them, two squads with a pathfinder squad in tow. It is good. But...

Its far too expensive points wise-nearly 500+ points

Its easy to target the pathfinders and cause the squads to flee on shooting casualties

Very few armies take mass troops to make it effective (at least at my gaming club where cost is a factor you usually only face 30 or so models at 1500pts and thats guard) so you have a great anti-horde formation but one that is rarely effective. Unless you're lucky like me and kill 10 terminators and a chaplain in one turn of shooting with them.

I think that Tau FW should probably stay BS3 (maybe with a vet squad in elite and crisis/stealth suits BS4) but that they should create a form of force organization like the guard platoon where you can attach unmounted pathfinders/heavy drone squads to the firewarriors unit. You could even make attached drone squads with racks of seeker missiles/missile pods that could be hid behind cover and the Shas-ui can then designate them to let that squad shoot across the map. This would cut the amount of force organization slots taken up. They would also need a price cut to maybe 8 or 9pts a model. Possibly stay 10 if they got their defensive grenades for free.

Crisis suits need to be cheaper (esp the weapons) and BS4. Paying 90pts for a plasma rifle and meltagun totting soldier is outrageous.

Kroot have chameloen skin so should just gain the stealth ability and become able to infiltrate anywhere. They should also get frag grenades (on the actual models no less) and maybe a 'feral leap' ability that counts as furious charge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Zweischneid wrote:Well, from the "sense" perspective we evidently disagree. I think it makes perfect sense.

From a "background" perspective it likewise makes perfect sense if you stop trying to impose a "IG/Space Marine" logic on the Tau.

Different armies follow a different schtick in how they "rise" above average.

IG do so through "combat experience and veteran status"
Space Marines through "genetically advanced physicality"
Eldar through "experience of age and ritualized combat tradition"
Tau through "technological progress that covers their physical limitations (and lack of experience)"

.

That doesn't make any sense. Tau are themed a 'young' race but have been fighting the Imperium for several centuries. A Tau may only live 40 years, but all of those are at the peak of youth and a guardsman starts to become old and infirm by that age. Whereas a Tau will simply die of old age quite suddenly without a long period of aging. They have plenty of time to become veterens, which simply means you are a survivor of several battles that might have killed you so 25-30 age range. Also Eldar have some of the best technology out there, even their armour is designed to offer no impediment to their speed hence they all have fleet.They do not 'lack experience' if that were the case then Tau wouldn't have any knowledge of how to wage war. If you read background like the Imperial Armour Taros it makes it pretty clear that they have far greater knowledge and ability at waging war than the Imperium.They're not amatuers by any measure.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

That doesn't make any sense. Tau are themed a 'young' race but have been fighting the Imperium for several centuries. A Tau may only live 40 years, but all of those are at the peak of youth and a guardsman starts to become old and infirm by that age. Whereas a Tau will simply die of old age quite suddenly without a long period of aging. They have plenty of time to become veterens, which simply means you are a survivor of several battles that might have killed you so 25-30 age range. Also Eldar have some of the best technology out there, even their armour is designed to offer no impediment to their speed hence they all have fleet.They do not 'lack experience' if that were the case then Tau wouldn't have any knowledge of how to wage war. If you read background like the Imperial Armour Taros it makes it pretty clear that they have far greater knowledge and ability at waging war than the Imperium.They're not amatuers by any measure.

You are mistaking "theme" for a pseudo-realistic comparison that does not exist in 40K.

IG veterans are not "comparable" to Tau veterans, even if they fought the same number of battles. IG veterans are a "movie clichee". A hardned, tough-as-leather guy with scars all over his face who toughes it out. It's not a theme that applies to Tau or that they try to cover or appeal to in a Tau Codex.

Similarly, Eldar, Space Marines or Necrons might be more "technologically advanced" if you try to deduce what technology would be required to "re-create" the often short fig-leaves of techno-babble explanations that Codex Writers left to make them work.

A Black Templar Power Armour is not a "piece of technology". It's a medieval knight's armour that has been given a faux-technology explanation to transplant it into 40K's kitchen-sink setting. But "advancement of technology" is not how a Templar Codex is structured. The "hierarchy" of the Templar Codex follows the logic of a medieval knightly order with new initiates to knight brothers to sworn brotherhood of elite knights.

Likewise, Necron are often described as the "most advanced army". But they are equally not a "technology-race". They are a mix of tomb kings, 1980s Arnold, Star Gate and a few other clichee mixed into 40K, again with some faux-tech-babble given to explain the common tropes of the army (like scary green bzzzzzz beams). Again, the "hierarchy" of the Necron Codex does not follow technology, but the logic of Egyptian royalty and ancient courts, etc.. .

In contrast, the Tau are a "technology-themed" army. They don't strife for the "grizzled-veteran-schtick" of IG, nor for the "royal hierarchy-schtick" of the Necrons. Their codex-internal "hierarchy" is clearly written to reflect a progress of technology with the Elite getting the funkiest gadgets (including "experimental tech"), the common Tau troops somewhat more basic, yet still "awsome" tech and the alien allies the most "primitve" weapons of all.

This, the logic by which "Elites" and "Troops" are differentiated in a Tau Codex is "technology", which is the overriding theme of the Tau army, but not the theme of a Necron, Eldar or Space Marine army in the same degree.

Speaking of drones, the way drones interact with morale needs an overhaul. Why would the Tau flee when their drones are killed? Isn't that the point? No living soldier - even Kroot, Vespid, or Gue'vesa - is expendable, so we have drones.

Drones should be Ld: Fearless. Drones in a unit should not count for morale purposes in any way. Tau don't flee when their drones are killed, wounds allocated to drones don't count for close combat, and drones don't count for purposes of seeing if a unit can regroup.

Every race has some way of ignoring the leadership rules - drones are the Tau's.

You could give Firewarriors BS4 and they would still suck. With no special weapons they offer nothing but highly vulnerable anti infantry firepower which goes largely wasted because everyone and his grandma is sitting in a Rhino.
Still, BS4 ( explain it with super advanced targeting technology if you wish ) + some good special weapons and assault 1 markerlights would help. After all the only shooty armies which can live with a low BS make up this flaw with a huge volume of fire from lots of super cheap units, something that the Tau probably shouldn't be able to do, at least not if we wish to stick to their fluff.

Zweischneid wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:

That doesn't make any sense. Tau are themed a 'young' race but have been fighting the Imperium for several centuries. A Tau may only live 40 years, but all of those are at the peak of youth and a guardsman starts to become old and infirm by that age. Whereas a Tau will simply die of old age quite suddenly without a long period of aging. They have plenty of time to become veterens, which simply means you are a survivor of several battles that might have killed you so 25-30 age range. Also Eldar have some of the best technology out there, even their armour is designed to offer no impediment to their speed hence they all have fleet.They do not 'lack experience' if that were the case then Tau wouldn't have any knowledge of how to wage war. If you read background like the Imperial Armour Taros it makes it pretty clear that they have far greater knowledge and ability at waging war than the Imperium.They're not amatuers by any measure.

You are mistaking "theme" for a pseudo-realistic comparison that does not exist in 40K.

IG veterans are not "comparable" to Tau veterans, even if they fought the same number of battles. IG veterans are a "movie clichee". A hardned, tough-as-leather guy with scars all over his face who toughes it out. It's not a theme that applies to Tau or that they try to cover or appeal to in a Tau Codex.

Similarly, Eldar, Space Marines or Necrons might be more "technologically advanced" if you try to deduce what technology would be required to "re-create" the often short fig-leaves of techno-babble explanations that Codex Writers left to make them work.

A Black Templar Power Armour is not a "piece of technology". It's a medieval knight's armour that has been given a faux-technology explanation to transplant it into 40K's kitchen-sink setting. But "advancement of technology" is not how a Templar Codex is structured. The "hierarchy" of the Templar Codex follows the logic of a medieval knightly order with new initiates to knight brothers to sworn brotherhood of elite knights.

Likewise, Necron are often described as the "most advanced army". But they are equally not a "technology-race". They are a mix of tomb kings, 1980s Arnold, Star Gate and a few other clichee mixed into 40K, again with some faux-tech-babble given to explain the common tropes of the army (like scary green bzzzzzz beams). Again, the "hierarchy" of the Necron Codex does not follow technology, but the logic of Egyptian royalty and ancient courts, etc.. .

In contrast, the Tau are a "technology-themed" army. They don't strife for the "grizzled-veteran-schtick" of IG, nor for the "royal hierarchy-schtick" of the Necrons. Their codex-internal "hierarchy" is clearly written to reflect a progress of technology with the Elite getting the funkiest gadgets (including "experimental tech"), the common Tau troops somewhat more basic, yet still "awsome" tech and the alien allies the most "primitve" weapons of all.

This, the logic by which "Elites" and "Troops" are differentiated in a Tau Codex is "technology", which is the overriding theme of the Tau army, but not the theme of a Necron, Eldar or Space Marine army in the same degree.

This is basically correct.

However, I think we should stay focused on suggesting potential fixes for the mechanical problems the Tau face on the table. Frankly, the Tau are so underpowered that it barely matters exactly what justification is used for a change - a change is necessary.

Zweischneid wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:

That doesn't make any sense. Tau are themed a 'young' race but have been fighting the Imperium for several centuries. A Tau may only live 40 years, but all of those are at the peak of youth and a guardsman starts to become old and infirm by that age. Whereas a Tau will simply die of old age quite suddenly without a long period of aging. They have plenty of time to become veterens, which simply means you are a survivor of several battles that might have killed you so 25-30 age range. Also Eldar have some of the best technology out there, even their armour is designed to offer no impediment to their speed hence they all have fleet.They do not 'lack experience' if that were the case then Tau wouldn't have any knowledge of how to wage war. If you read background like the Imperial Armour Taros it makes it pretty clear that they have far greater knowledge and ability at waging war than the Imperium.They're not amatuers by any measure.

You are mistaking "theme" for a pseudo-realistic comparison that does not exist in 40K.

IG veterans are not "comparable" to Tau veterans, even if they fought the same number of battles. IG veterans are a "movie clichee". A hardned, tough-as-leather guy with scars all over his face who toughes it out. It's not a theme that applies to Tau or that they try to cover or appeal to in a Tau Codex.

Similarly, Eldar, Space Marines or Necrons might be more "technologically advanced" if you try to deduce what technology would be required to "re-create" the often short fig-leaves of techno-babble explanations that Codex Writers left to make them work.

A Black Templar Power Armour is not a "piece of technology". It's a medieval knight's armour that has been given a faux-technology explanation to transplant it into 40K's kitchen-sink setting. But "advancement of technology" is not how a Templar Codex is structured. The "hierarchy" of the Templar Codex follows the logic of a medieval knightly order with new initiates to knight brothers to sworn brotherhood of elite knights.

Likewise, Necron are often described as the "most advanced army". But they are equally not a "technology-race". They are a mix of tomb kings, 1980s Arnold, Star Gate and a few other clichee mixed into 40K, again with some faux-tech-babble given to explain the common tropes of the army (like scary green bzzzzzz beams). Again, the "hierarchy" of the Necron Codex does not follow technology, but the logic of Egyptian royalty and ancient courts, etc.. .

In contrast, the Tau are a "technology-themed" army. They don't strife for the "grizzled-veteran-schtick" of IG, nor for the "royal hierarchy-schtick" of the Necrons. Their codex-internal "hierarchy" is clearly written to reflect a progress of technology with the Elite getting the funkiest gadgets (including "experimental tech"), the common Tau troops somewhat more basic, yet still "awsome" tech and the alien allies the most "primitve" weapons of all.

This, the logic by which "Elites" and "Troops" are differentiated in a Tau Codex is "technology", which is the overriding theme of the Tau army, but not the theme of a Necron, Eldar or Space Marine army in the same degree.

No, Tau go for the, we are the only people who think rationally and have an actual well trained army. Most guard armies amount to throw lasgun in direction of soldier or give them a few days of useless training like in WW2 to get cannon fodder; if he actually survives he gets BS4. Tau are themed as an actual modern army, that goes to great lengths to train its soldiers, to care about their welfare and ensure their support from other branches of the army. They are also themed as 'the elite shooting army' but you're saying the Stalingrad cannon fodder army should not only have better weapons but shoot better than the army which cares about its own troops and trains them accordingly? One theme does not wipe out all other considerations. Crisis suit drivers are specifically described as being 'veterans' and 'elite'. It has nothing to do with the amount of crisis suits. Are you also saying the repeated allusions and references to Tau having better trained troops than guardsmen does not count as GW theming their own army? The only reason they have crap BS is because that codex was from an old edition where everything was toned down and high priced compared to 5th edition. Just look at basic guard infantry. They got orders like first rank fire, second rank fire, frag and krak grenades and actually got cheaper which had nothing to do with army theme at all. They just randomly became massivly better than before.

^ Wrong. Or at least the comparsion is wrong. The Imperial Guard is an elite force. They are pretty much the IoM's version of the Rangers or the Marine Corps. They are well trained, equipped with weapons that can do the job, and bascially have all the support elements the IoM can provide. You mistake the guardsmen with conscripts.

How's this: all drones can be upgraded with any battlesuit weaponry (except railguns). They can also be fielded in squads with any kind of weaponry. Deep striking gun drone squadrons with twin-linked fusion blasters would ruin any mech player's day, and imagine twin-linked flamers deep-striking against a horde army.

Keep on imagining that....

I don't play Tau, but here a few thoughts I've had.

1) Suits. BS4 and slightly cheaper. I mean, they are vets, they should have decent BS. They also are kinda overpriced right now, so could use a point-cut.

2) Firewarriors- keep 'em BS3, but make them cheaper. They are just the basic troops, after all. Allow pulse Riffles to Rapid fire up to 15". Upgrade squad leader to BS4, so his markerlight will actually hit.

Next, give them an option to add Drone controllers (say 1:5 models), who may take up to two Drones equipped with the following:
-Rail Rifle
-Marker Light
-Twin-linked pulse Carbine
Drones should be BS3 and relentless. They are designed to shoot things. Also, they shouldn't count towards squad size, panic, or break tests.

3) Add more options to markerlights. For example, tank hunters.


Lets take a hypothetical Fire Warrior Squad with these changes. Say, 12 Fire Warriors, including squad Leader with Markerlight, Two Drone Controllers with four Rail rifles Drones, and nine normal Firewarriors. Lets say, turn one with two markerlights, shooting at a Rhino.

BS4
9 Shots from pulse riffles, 6 hits. Use the second markerlight to give them Tank Hunters, and thats a pen and a glance. The Drones shoot. 3(ish) hits, lets say 1 glance, 1 pen.

In total, 2G 2P. Thats not to bad.

We need more defensive, anti-CC wargear; denying CC rather than being good at CC.

Give the Ethereals a reason for being anything more than fluff.

I havn't used Vespids enough to judge properly, but I think that they are too weak even for a 'glass cannon' type unit.

Don't make Firewarriors/Suits BS 4; instead, make marker lights more useful/viable.

I'm not necessarily saying that they're underpowered, but 18" range for a heavy machine gun seems pretty poor for a dedicated shooting army.

FW Tetras!

Better unique characters, and Farsight Enclaves having a Doctrine system if not being a separate Codex (Space Marines get all the fun... ). You can't be the Enclaves under 1500pts without using normal Empire rules.

AtoMaki wrote:^ Wrong. Or at least the comparsion is wrong. The Imperial Guard is an elite force. They are pretty much the IoM's version of the Rangers or the Marine Corps. They are well trained, equipped with weapons that can do the job, and bascially have all the support elements the IoM can provide. You mistake the guardsmen with conscripts.

i wouldnt call them rangers though...

I'll agree, In theory, the guard are forged the best 10% of a worlds armed forces when they're called for a tithe. thats how the propaganda machine will spin it. I'll disagree that this what actually happens.
the imperium is nothing if not wasteful of its resources, and platetary governors are nothing, if not dodgy, selfish, and self-serving. giving the best 10% of your forces away? when you've got eldar raiders, ork infestations, cultists, rival governors, etc all over the place, on every home front? when the imperium comes acalling, you'll give some good troops to shut them up, and mix in some chaff... And maybe, those undesirables. you can purge your planet of what you dont want to have there.
And anyways, as mentioned, the imperium is incredibly wasteful of its soldiers. So they're thankful for that they can get. In the end, what about those soldiers? they're throwaway, and expendable to a degree that would shock even ww1 generals. so once the top 10% of a planets armed forces are wasted and chewed up by the meatgrinder in this way, and the next tithe is demanded? what then? you give the next 10% best of your forces. and then they're torn up. its all but impossible to maintain those "top" standards, and to keep giving the "best", in significant numbers, unless youre ruling a fortress world like Cadia. what happens in hive worlds, where the top soldiers are gutter trash, and thugs by any one else's definitions? what happens if you've got a world stuck in the stone age? Or a medieval world? with your population armed with bows, rocks, and swords?
And what happens when a world is demanded to supply a tithe that is beyond it, if it intends only to give its best? you dont get to pick and choose. you're demanded to supply, and if you dont, you're bombed to atoms. the IG codex has an example of a world that was forced to enroll 80% of its population into the Imperial Guard. men, women, children, the old, the young, the weak, the infirm. they're all in there. top forces? maybe a percentage of what was given would count as that.

as for the support elements, thats not strictly true. worlds are meant to supply their own troops with basic equipment.

the guard represents everything, including those "best" tithes, as well as the fodder that they're thankful for getting. its all mixed up in there.

AtoMaki wrote:^ Wrong. Or at least the comparsion is wrong. The Imperial Guard is an elite force. They are pretty much the IoM's version of the Rangers or the Marine Corps. They are well trained, equipped with weapons that can do the job, and bascially have all the support elements the IoM can provide. You mistake the guardsmen with conscripts.

Only works if you apply it to Cadian Shock troops; even then its heavily hinted that you represent such a force with veterans. If you look at Valhallens, Steel Legion and other WW2 themed guard its quite clear that GW is not angling for them to be an elite force at all. They are a fodder army. In fact they even wrote a book where they emphasised that a guard spent 4 months in training, another 4 to reach a warzone and was quite dead after 48 hours. The guard are not an elite force. If you want to have a Tanith army the codex expects you to take vets with camo cloaks. If you want heavy infantry then you take vets with carapace armour. Basic guard troops are fodder in every sense of the term.

Let the markerlights go over BS 5 (though making them generally more useful/viable is a more pressing issue..). Unless I'm mistaken, the 'BS 5 limit' was created in a version of 40K where there was no BS 6*, stopping people from saying "I get BS 6, that means I always hit."

*Though the Archon in the ye olde DE codex had BS 6......odd.

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

FW Veterans are an HQ choice, and only if you take a useless Space Pope.

Though having said that, I agree that the normal FWs shouldn't have BS 4 standard.

On the BS 4 issue just a quick comparison.

On a Toughness 3 target in rapid fire range, a unit of 6 Tau Firewarriors delivers 6 hits which leads to 5 wounds. On the same target 6 Space Marines with BS 4 will get 8 hits and 5 1/3rd wounds.

On a Toughness 4 targets the same Tau unit gets 6 hits and 4 wounds while the same Marine unit gets 8 hits and 4 wounds.

The Strength 5 compensates for the BS 3 and puts Tau shooting around the same as Marine shooting overall.

SDFarsight wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

FW Veterans are an HQ choice, and only if you take a useless Space Pope.

Though having said that, I agree that the normal FWs shouldn't have BS 4 standard.

No, not every guardsman is a cadian. They and Catachan are really distorting examples about what generic guard are like. Both are meant to be the cream of the crop in terms of guard regiments. Your joe guardsman is little better than a piece of meat told to shove his bayonet into a maniqin for four months before he is sent off to war and is then left to huddle up in a trench and shoot anything that he sees.

What you're saying is that Tau. Despite being 'the elite shooty army'; shouldn't have

1-Decent BS

2-Guns that are even marginally better or cheaper than those in other armies

3-Troops that can survive being shot at without running at the drop of a hat

4-Oh and bad enough in CC that SOB can table them unless you use suicide units like kroot that eat into your points and hand kill points away

Battlesuits are a good example. You're paying through the nose for units that have, what, basic special weapons available to everyone. For one BS4 battleusit with plasma, melta and multi you could buy a vet squad with 3 plasmas or even a long fang squad. Nearly double the firepower and with more ablative wounds to soak up fire.

I've been playing Tau for a little while now, they have such amazing strengths and dreadful weaknesses. I've spend a long time looking at the codex wondering how certain tweaks wound possibly help the army to be competitive nowadays. Obviously some of it is wishfull thinking but I'll let you guys judge for yourselves.

1) I think the points costs for most of the units in the Tau codex could be improved quite a bit, compare them to other armies and their elite slot upgrades. Just by reducing most of the units costs down by 5 has such a dramatic effect of making the unit composition far more appealing. Example:
Crisis Shas'Ui become 20 points
Plasma Rifles become 10 or 15points

2) The "sergents" for squads such as Shas'Vres for Crisis Teams and Shas'Uis for firewarriors dont seem to have great purpose other than racking up the cost of the entire unit. I propose that the "sergents" are mandatory similar to how SM need to take them. Example :
Firewarrior Squad
Shas'Ui 1
Shas'La 5
Then add up to 6 Shas'La costing X per model.

For firewarriors the Shas'Ui should just be the same points as the normal Shas'La, allowing for wound allocation to the normal firewarriors and keeping your upgrades and higher Ld for a while longer.
Also they should already have photon and emp grenades included. It gives them more versatility for other targets such as assaulters and vehicles.

Similar for Pathfinders (with the Shas'Ui), make them the same points as Firewarriors because they are the same in all respects. I think Markerlights should remain Heavy Weapons, they are so incredibly useful but there certainly has to be a downside to them.

3) Kroot are a great troop choice but they lack just a few thing in order to give them flexibility on the field. I always imagined Kroot were agile warriors that could be a match for some tyranids. Again, Making the Shaper compulsary in order to give them the higher Ld which is really needed. And give them a 5+ Invulnerable save for purposes of being so agile as well as fleet in order to give them better movement along the board. This would make more sense because with their Rapid Firing rifles, they would not be able to assault after firing so it would make more sense that if they traded off shooting to be able to run then assault instead.

4) The vehicles of the Tau are great, and the vehicle upgrades even more so. The costs of some of the vehicles are a little outrageous like the devilfish, making it 45points instead would means that you're still paying for the higher AV values than normal transports and still get some reasonable firepower for your points cost. Remember thats before upgrades, so the transport ends up being around 70 points after upgrades. The hammerhead also needs a small reduction in points cost BEFORE it is upgraded with weapons.

5) The problem with Tau that I find is most of our weapons seem to be cut short, like burst cannons being 18" instead of 24". Like someone snipped the tail end off our ranges. This extra range for some(not all) of our weapons means that most of the time we are struggling to pick our targets as a shooting army. Whereas most other armies are reaching 24"-48" on most of their heavier weapons. This is really crucial because we were meant to have this ability (target priority in last editions) to be able to pick our targets and threats before they get within asaulting range. Reducing the enemies transports and mobility is key to stopping the merciless assault of most armies. Perhaps if our missiles ( which are already weaker to the IoM equivalent) were 48" instead or markerlights 42", would have a huge impact of how well we can reach the targets we want to.

Thats mostly what I think and feel should be improved but what do you guys think?

Jefffar wrote:On the BS 4 issue just a quick comparison.

On a Toughness 3 target in rapid fire range, a unit of 6 Tau Firewarriors delivers 6 hits which leads to 5 wounds. On the same target 6 Space Marines with BS 4 will get 8 hits and 5 1/3rd wounds.

On a Toughness 4 targets the same Tau unit gets 6 hits and 4 wounds while the same Marine unit gets 8 hits and 4 wounds.

The Strength 5 compensates for the BS 3 and puts Tau shooting around the same as Marine shooting overall.

You ignore the armour save which is the game changer. Most armies in the game have a 3+ or better save and you rarely have armies filled with ork boyz or gaunts to shoot at. With that, the marines can ignore the Tau shooting and will lose only one man next to the Tau losing two men. What you're really saying is that every army has terrible basic infantry shooting and everything is decided in assault. Marines would really just assault the FW and pulverise them in a single turn rather than pelt them until they ran. I only see marines shoot if its a MC or stealers that they'd rather not charge, or SW that can just counter-attack and even then its usually the two plasma guns that do the damage. This game does not want you to take basic infantry in general. They are not worth the points; even marines in terms of shooting. They are just ablative wounds for heavy/special weapons.

For example, my uber anti infantry unit (that I killed 500pts of terminators in one turn by fluke) is maths wise really poor.

24 shots at BS5

20 hits

14 wounds

4.44 marines dead

At rapid fire that goes up to 9 dead marines

Now think what you could take with those points even if I neglect the fish's firing). Two Lemman Russ. Two Trygon. Three Hammerheads. Two decently equiped squads of crisis suits. Five veteran squads with three plasma rifles a shot. Four long fang squads. 30 genestealers. A hundred guardsmen. etc etc. Its not a good deal and it doesn't work in the current meta. I only take it because thematically I like the idea of taking FW and think they're cool. Even my Gue Vesa can get lucky now and then; FW squads are no different!

Jefffar wrote:On the BS 4 issue just a quick comparison.

On a Toughness 3 target in rapid fire range, a unit of 6 Tau Firewarriors delivers 6 hits which leads to 5 wounds. On the same target 6 Space Marines with BS 4 will get 8 hits and 5 1/3rd wounds.

On a Toughness 4 targets the same Tau unit gets 6 hits and 4 wounds while the same Marine unit gets 8 hits and 4 wounds.

The Strength 5 compensates for the BS 3 and puts Tau shooting around the same as Marine shooting overall.

Noone buys Space Marines for the damage output of their Bolters. You miss quite a few crucial features which make Marines so much better as a troop choice.

A) Special and Heavy Weapons. Especially Special Weapons. Want to bust tanks? Melta. Want to kill infantry? Flamer. Want to kill elite infantry? Plasma. Have you ever seen anyone field Marines without those, just Bolters and nothing else?

B) Decent to good HtH. Some, like Grey Hunters or CSM are better, regular Marines less so. Still, the odd Serg with a PF or a PS, along with some basic HtH capabilties lets them perform well in a clinch, support dedicated assault units if needed and stand their ground against most things that are not explicitly dedicated to killing stuff in HtH.

C) Multiple Targets. With Combat Squad and/or Split fire, Marines get even more milage out of their Special and Heavy Weapons.. as well as engage two enemy FoC-entries with only one FoC-choice on the Marine side.

D) Good LD, ATSKNF, good Armour Save. As scoring troops, they bring the survivability to hold/contest objectives in a clinch.

Honestly, if you could save points on Marines by not giving them Bolters, just the Special Weapons and ablative wounds, I think quite a few people would do so. You don't buy Marines for the Bolters. Period. You don't even buy Heavy Bolters on Infantry (the Str. 5 equivalent). It just doesn't cut it.

If Tau Firewarriors dont get A to D as outlined above, and are much more focussed on the "basic, high AP, anti-infantry shooting", they need (at equal point values) to be exponentially better than Marines at the one thing they can do, as to make up for the lack of A to D as outlined above.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:@Juniperius

...Which is why Fire Warrior Veterans bought with an Ethereal are BS4.

Cadian Guardsmen are BS3 and are trained from birth as soldiers.
Fire Warriors are BS3 are are trained from birth as soldiers.
Cadian Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.
Fire Warrior Veterans are BS4 because they're battle-hardened veterans.

Why do the run-of-the-mill soldiers need BS4?

FW Veterans are an HQ choice, and only if you take a useless Space Pope.

Though having said that, I agree that the normal FWs shouldn't have BS 4 standard.

No, not every guardsman is a cadian. They and Catachan are really distorting examples about what generic guard are like. Both are meant to be the cream of the crop in terms of guard regiments. Your joe guardsman is little better than a piece of meat told to shove his bayonet into a maniqin for four months before he is sent off to war and is then left to huddle up in a trench and shoot anything that he sees.

What you're saying is that Tau. Despite being 'the elite shooty army'; shouldn't have

*snip*

Indeed they aren't all Cadian, which makes it even more strange that the Tau don't see base BS 4 outside of HQ choices.

Gameplay wise, markerlights should be made more viable instead of giving XV8s or even regular FWs BS 4, as the fluff and gameplay of the Tau is that they are highly tactical, carefully selecting their quarry which is then disposed of using the most efficant weapons- rather than going 'dakka dakka' everywhere- that's more like Dark Angels or shooty Orks.

On a side note, it was only recently that I found out that "Cadian" means the veteran defenders of the Fortress World, rather than "any Guardsmen who isn't Tallern, Death Corps, Tanith etc". I think it's because Cadian is the standard uniform.

No, Tau go for the, we are the only people who think rationally and have an actual well trained army. Most guard armies amount to throw lasgun in direction of soldier or give them a few days of useless training like in WW2 to get cannon fodder; if he actually survives he gets BS4. Tau are themed as an actual modern army, that goes to great lengths to train its soldiers, to care about their welfare and ensure their support from other branches of the army. They are also themed as 'the elite shooting army' but you're saying the Stalingrad cannon fodder army should not only have better weapons but shoot better than the army which cares about its own troops and trains them accordingly?

The problem is that the fluff of the Imperial Guard codex actually says that the Imperial Guard is a damn good and well trained force. A BS of 3 is actually VERY impressive for a human to do. They are able to accomplish this BECAUSE of their harsh training. The reason why the Guard on TT seem like gak shooters is because they are fighting things lik Genetically engineered warriors.

Most Guard units support massive training to install disipline and order. What you are describing is conscripits which is an incredibly different thing. A Guardsman needs to survive years or a decade of constant warfare before he is a BS4.


Oh by the way, the Soviet in army in Stalingrad did have better weapons and had some excellent shooters. However they had poor leadership on both the strategic and tactical levels.

What I believe most people are saying is that an army that relies on harsh displine and high standards of training (Cadia, Mordian, Steel Legion, Krieg, Vostroyan) or natural skill because of harsh worlds (Catachan, Valhalla, Tanith) bult around a training program by a faction engulfed in war, should be equal to an army in shooting quality of the invdividual soldier as the that of a well trained soldier with aid of technology.

A Tau Grunt fresh out of bootcamp should not have the same accuracy as a battlehardned soldier with decades under his belt, an elite stormtrooper, or a Super engineered man designed to be a killing machine with decades or more of combat experience under his belt on top of heightened reflexes.




We arnt saying Firewarriors are perfect, they just should have different changes besides a simple raise of their BS levels

Galdos wrote:
The problem is that the fluff of the Imperial Guard codex actually says that the Imperial Guard is a damn good and well trained force. A BS of 3 is actually VERY impressive for a human to do. They are able to accomplish this BECAUSE of their harsh training. The reason why the Guard on TT seem like gak shooters is because they are fighting things lik Genetically engineered warriors.

Again, humans receive BS3 or even 4 because of harsh training.

Space Marines because of genetic engineering.

Eldar because of ancient martial traditions.

Necrons because of robotic bodies.

Tau, most likely, because of technology.

Statlines are abstract numbers. They "represent" entirely DIFFERENT things in different factions or even units. There is no rule the stat X must be justified by one reason, but cannot be justified by another. Indeed, if it were, we would just need one Codex for all 40K factions with entries for "newbie unit"; "trained unit" and "veteran unit".

The entire point of different factions with different fluff using the same system of rules is, after all, that different justifications and themes can be represented by the same set of numbers.

Galdos wrote:

No, Tau go for the, we are the only people who think rationally and have an actual well trained army. Most guard armies amount to throw lasgun in direction of soldier or give them a few days of useless training like in WW2 to get cannon fodder; if he actually survives he gets BS4. Tau are themed as an actual modern army, that goes to great lengths to train its soldiers, to care about their welfare and ensure their support from other branches of the army. They are also themed as 'the elite shooting army' but you're saying the Stalingrad cannon fodder army should not only have better weapons but shoot better than the army which cares about its own troops and trains them accordingly?

The problem is that the fluff of the Imperial Guard codex actually says that the Imperial Guard is a damn good and well trained force. A BS of 3 is actually VERY impressive for a human to do. They are able to accomplish this BECAUSE of their harsh training. The reason why the Guard on TT seem like gak shooters is because they are fighting things lik Genetically engineered warriors.

Most Guard units support massive training to install disipline and order. What you are describing is conscripits which is an incredibly different thing. A Guardsman needs to survive years or a decade of constant warfare before he is a BS4.


Oh by the way, the Soviet in army in Stalingrad did have better weapons and had some excellent shooters. However they had poor leadership on both the strategic and tactical levels.

What I believe most people are saying is that an army that relies on harsh displine and high standards of training (Cadia, Mordian, Steel Legion, Krieg, Vostroyan) or natural skill because of harsh worlds (Catachan, Valhalla, Tanith) bult around a training program by a faction engulfed in war, should be equal to an army in shooting quality of the invdividual soldier as the that of a well trained soldier with aid of technology.

A Tau Grunt fresh out of bootcamp should not have the same accuracy as a battlehardned soldier with decades under his belt, an elite stormtrooper, or a Super engineered man designed to be a killing machine with decades or more of combat experience under his belt on top of heightened reflexes.




We arnt saying Firewarriors are perfect, they just should have different changes besides a simple raise of their BS levels

The Tau are part of a warrior caste- like Spartans (shooting-wise, at least).

IMO They're only BS 3 because their eyes are too slow to focus* and for gameplay reasons.

*in the codex IIRC, it says that the Tau's eyes are exelent, being able to see in better detail and wavelengths (Predator?) that the human eye can't, but the slow reaction-focus times of their eyes makes their shooting roughly equal to a human's.

Infact it doesn't say anything about their helmet being an advantage, as much as I wish it did. I guess the helmet optics are for their Darksun filters etc. Or like the Space Marines- just for protection.

*** post deleted by me.

Zweischneid wrote:
- More Special Characters showing off the rich Tau background

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

The problem with keeping firewarriors BS3, +4 armor save, and Ld7 is that in comparisons with todays codexs that they will have to play against the firewarrior is 6 points at best.

The problem for me is that I don't want to play horde Tau. If firewarriors are going to stay 10 points they better have stats to match things that are in the same point range. Ie. DE warriors/wyches, battle sisters, etc. DE have high WS, Init, BS. Sisters have good BS, LD, saves, etc. But people want firewarriors to stay hamstrung with lower stats just because of fluff.

30" range guns mean squat in the world of DOA, outflanking, fast transports, drop pods, scouting ect. The Tau gun used to be a good reason for their current point costs vs stats. But it just doesn't work that way anymore. The game has changed with the last 4-5 codex releases.

Anyway, onto something else. As for HQs I think Tau HQs should all be councils of some sort and give army wide bennifits. Pretty much just the opposite of Space wolves where each is a lone heroic individual, I see the tau leaders taking the field with their most trusted advisors body guards and working as a team.

Etherials should come with 4-6 body guards - good body guards, guys who can actually fight in HTH and put out decent firepower to protect their most cherished citizens. Regardless of range give all tau units a re-roll of all LD checks because they all know an etherial has taken the field. Failure is not an option. Loose the whole price of failure rule, it just hurts.

Master Kroot shaper should come with 4-6 guys (make two of them kroot ox) . I see him showing up with some of his best chosen warriors and war pets (in my preferred world Krootox are like they are in DOW game multi wound MC that dish it out brutally in HTH) Give all kroot units fleet or +1 base attack or whatever.

Crisis suit command squad. Leader + two other suits. Kinda generic but each command squad lets you take one unit of crisis suits as troops choice.

Then you have your special characters that do whatever it is they do.

SDFarsight wrote:

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

I think you are confusing Tau with Tyranids. After all, they did achieve the 3rd sphere expansion. That's more than all Hive Fleets and all 13 Black Crusades taken together managed to achieve. Puts the Tau lightyears ahead of Tyranids and the Black Legion as a "threat" to the IoM on an objective assessment.

Jayden63 wrote:The problem with keeping firewarriors BS3, +4 armor save, and Ld7 is that in comparisons with todays codexs that they will have to play against the firewarrior is 6 points at best.

The problem for me is that I don't want to play horde Tau. If firewarriors are going to stay 10 points they better have stats to match things that are in the same point range. Ie. DE warriors/wyches, battle sisters, etc. DE have high WS, Init, BS. Sisters have good BS, LD, saves, etc. But people want firewarriors to stay hamstrung with lower stats just because of fluff.

Oh no! The only way to improve Fire Warriors without lowering their cost is to improve their stats! Because once we try to, say, give some nice special rules or options to them, we will be devoured by Ttam Darw, the daemon king of 40k!

AtoMaki wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:The problem with keeping firewarriors BS3, +4 armor save, and Ld7 is that in comparisons with todays codexs that they will have to play against the firewarrior is 6 points at best.

The problem for me is that I don't want to play horde Tau. If firewarriors are going to stay 10 points they better have stats to match things that are in the same point range. Ie. DE warriors/wyches, battle sisters, etc. DE have high WS, Init, BS. Sisters have good BS, LD, saves, etc. But people want firewarriors to stay hamstrung with lower stats just because of fluff.

Oh no! The only way to improve Fire Warriors without lowering their cost is to improve their stats! Because once we try to, say, give some nice special rules or options to them, we will be devoured by Ttam Darw, the daemon king of 40k!

GW did that once. Faith for battle sisters. How many people here can tell me what they all are off the top of their head. I'll bet most cant. Base stats are easy to understand and don't require 10 minutes of talking about like half a dozen special rules and don't smack of surprise and the first time they are used against you. I'm not saying its a perfect solution for the tau, I personally don't have a problem with their stats being 2s across the board then some rule saying why they arn't. But I think a lot of people will find it too bothersome to actually take an interest in the army.

Jayden63 wrote:
GW did that once. Faith for battle sisters. How many people here can tell me what they all are off the top of their head. I'll bet most cant. Stat upgrades are easy to understand and don't require 10 minutes of talking about like half a dozen special rules and don't smack of surprise and the first time they are used against you.

All what i wanted to say is that simply giving them BS4 is super-duper lazy and uncreative. Its like saying that guardsmen should have S4 to represent their reinforced boots. Because y'know, fluff wise, they trample the enemy to death....

And by special rules, i mostly meant things like ATSKNF, Combat Squads or the IG Orders.

AtoMaki wrote:

All what i wanted to say is that simply giving them BS4 is super-duper lazy and uncreative. Its like saying that guardsmen should have S4 to represent their reinforced boots. Because y'know, fluff wise, they trample the enemy to death....

If that's what's needed, I'd rather have Guardman Str. 4 for that reason than some convoluted "trample" special rule that just doesn't synch with all sort of other rules. It's not "lazy", it's clean, lean, streamlined rulesdesign that lets you focus on moving units on the board, rather than worryign about the exotic interaction of the nth special rule and special rule exception.

AtoMaki wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:The problem with keeping firewarriors BS3, +4 armor save, and Ld7 is that in comparisons with todays codexs that they will have to play against the firewarrior is 6 points at best.

The problem for me is that I don't want to play horde Tau. If firewarriors are going to stay 10 points they better have stats to match things that are in the same point range. Ie. DE warriors/wyches, battle sisters, etc. DE have high WS, Init, BS. Sisters have good BS, LD, saves, etc. But people want firewarriors to stay hamstrung with lower stats just because of fluff.

Oh no! The only way to improve Fire Warriors without lowering their cost is to improve their stats! Because once we try to, say, give some nice special rules or options to them, we will be devoured by Ttam Darw, the daemon king of 40k!

Necrons seem to be doing well without needing special weapons in their immortals or warriors, I havn't seen "GIVE THEM SPECIAL WEAPONS" anytime soon. Why is this just so exclusive to just tau whining.

GW did that once. Faith for battle sisters. How many people here can tell me what they all are off the top of their head. I'll bet most cant. Base stats are easy to understand and don't require 10 minutes of talking about like half a dozen special rules and don't smack of surprise and the first time they are used against you

By that decree it sounds like you want everything to go back to the Alessio/Jervis Streamlined Era. Ask Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Dark Angels, and Chaos Space marines exactly how much they enjoy everything being streamlined down to just stats.

People would prefer to have cool toys rather than being stuck with just *stats stats stats, new numbers*

Plus I enjoy their new rules, even if faith should not be a Craps game with random rolling. But what can you do when you get cruddance.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

By that decree it sounds like you want everything to go back to the Alessio/Jervis Streamlined Era. Ask Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Dark Angels, and Chaos Space marines exactly how much they enjoy everything being streamlined down to just stats.

People would prefer to have cool toys rather than being stuck with just *stats stats stats, new numbers*

Plus I enjoy their new rules, even if faith should not be a Craps game with random rolling. But what can you do when you get cruddance.

No because what they removed was options, not special rules. You want special rules, take a look at Warmachine where each unit almost to a fault has some exemption to the basic rule set in some way to help make them "stand out". That isn't necessarily what I want to see in 40K. Special rules are for those unique units that look simular but need to act differently. Special rules are what should differentiate pathfinders from firewarriors where the basic model has pretty much the same stats. Special rules are what should seperate HQ crisis suits from elite crisis suits. But all crisis suits don't need to have unique special rule that makes them different from Kroot.

I'm good with special rules, but too many can get bogged down. I just don't feel that there need to be special rule to make a basic stat one point higher. Especially when it is an across the board increase. Give the firewarrior something like battle stances, stubborn, not in the face!, etc.. Now thats a special rule. BS4 to make the unit worth its points is not.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Necrons seem to be doing well without needing special weapons in their immortals or warriors, I havn't seen "GIVE THEM SPECIAL WEAPONS" anytime soon. Why is this just so exclusive to just tau whining.

With options, i thought about stuff like medical drones (gives FnP to the squad) or some sort of "trap grenades" (reduces enemy assault move). I'm not a fan of the "FW with special weapons" idea.

Firewarriors shouldn't have special weapons per se. But I have no problem with the Shas'ui having a markerlight that can call down one of 4 different seeker missiles. Flamer template, small blast, tank buster solid shot, large blast.

Kinda like an CSM obliterator. Keeps the fluff of no special weapons, but has the ingame effect of wanting to get your guys out of the transport to shoot something because you can bring more than just more S5 damage that should be plentiful from your tanks anyway.

Zweischneid wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

I think you are confusing Tau with Tyranids. After all, they did achieve the 3rd sphere expansion. That's more than all Hive Fleets and all 13 Black Crusades taken together managed to achieve. Puts the Tau lightyears ahead of Tyranids and the Black Legion as a "threat" to the IoM on an objective assessment.

Perhaps in the long-term strategic view, but as for threat-level and epic victories, the Tau are lacking. The most notable engagement the Tau won in was the Damocles Gulf Crusade, which ended in the Imperium leaving with bigger priorities- Hivefleet Behemoth.

Not that I want to mock the Tau, they're my favourite army.

SDFarsight wrote:

Zweischneid wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

I think you are confusing Tau with Tyranids. After all, they did achieve the 3rd sphere expansion. That's more than all Hive Fleets and all 13 Black Crusades taken together managed to achieve. Puts the Tau lightyears ahead of Tyranids and the Black Legion as a "threat" to the IoM on an objective assessment.

Perhaps in the long-term strategic view, but as for threat-level and epic victories, the Tau are lacking. The most notable engagement the Tau won in was the Damocles Gulf Crusade, which ended in the Imperium leaving with bigger priorities- Hivefleet Behemoth.

Not that I want to mock the Tau, they're my favourite army.

Again, Damocles Gulf was a Tau victory, even if one won under circumscribed conditions. I don't believe Tyranids ever won.. anything... ever.

Zweischneid wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

Zweischneid wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

I think you are confusing Tau with Tyranids. After all, they did achieve the 3rd sphere expansion. That's more than all Hive Fleets and all 13 Black Crusades taken together managed to achieve. Puts the Tau lightyears ahead of Tyranids and the Black Legion as a "threat" to the IoM on an objective assessment.

Perhaps in the long-term strategic view, but as for threat-level and epic victories, the Tau are lacking. The most notable engagement the Tau won in was the Damocles Gulf Crusade, which ended in the Imperium leaving with bigger priorities- Hivefleet Behemoth.

Not that I want to mock the Tau, they're my favourite army.

Again, Damocles Gulf was a Tau victory, even if one won under circumscribed conditions. I don't believe Tyranids ever won.. anything... ever.

The 'nids win countless battles but never the war. Which is to be expected really, as it's either an option of Holy Terra being eaten or the Tyranids starve due to being unsustainable.

Either way, we may be going off-topic ;^^

Galdos wrote:

No, Tau go for the, we are the only people who think rationally and have an actual well trained army. Most guard armies amount to throw lasgun in direction of soldier or give them a few days of useless training like in WW2 to get cannon fodder; if he actually survives he gets BS4. Tau are themed as an actual modern army, that goes to great lengths to train its soldiers, to care about their welfare and ensure their support from other branches of the army. They are also themed as 'the elite shooting army' but you're saying the Stalingrad cannon fodder army should not only have better weapons but shoot better than the army which cares about its own troops and trains them accordingly?

Most Guard units support massive training to install disipline and order. What you are describing is conscripits which is an incredibly different thing. A Guardsman needs to survive years or a decade of constant warfare before he is a BS4.


Oh by the way, the Soviet in army in Stalingrad did have better weapons and had some excellent shooters. However they had poor leadership on both the strategic and tactical levels.

Then how come a Tau who fights for ten years can't get a BS of 4?

Yeah, the guard if poorly led are meant to be like that as well. Tau are supposed to have outstanding strategic and tactical leadership in terms of how they use their army ie Taros, various battles in the codex. But this is difficult if not impossible to represent on a 6x4 table-top. You have the army led by Farsight but hes just a sword swinging maniac stat wise who lets you spam crisis suits. Same with Shadowsun. Never mind basic suit commanders and what not.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

AtoMaki wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:The problem with keeping firewarriors BS3, +4 armor save, and Ld7 is that in comparisons with todays codexs that they will have to play against the firewarrior is 6 points at best.

The problem for me is that I don't want to play horde Tau. If firewarriors are going to stay 10 points they better have stats to match things that are in the same point range. Ie. DE warriors/wyches, battle sisters, etc. DE have high WS, Init, BS. Sisters have good BS, LD, saves, etc. But people want firewarriors to stay hamstrung with lower stats just because of fluff.

Oh no! The only way to improve Fire Warriors without lowering their cost is to improve their stats! Because once we try to, say, give some nice special rules or options to them, we will be devoured by Ttam Darw, the daemon king of 40k!

Necrons seem to be doing well without needing special weapons in their immortals or warriors, I havn't seen "GIVE THEM SPECIAL WEAPONS" anytime soon. Why is this just so exclusive to just tau whining.

Well to be fair, SOB don't really benefit from having those special weapons any more than another army and their only real adv over FW is their armour. If you play SOB you go for other elite units like you do for every other army. They're hardly mega killers for having one special weapon a squad. Its armies that let your troops take two or more that are ridiculous. They also lack plasma. Major flaw. It is not just Tau whining; I can assure you!

I play dark eldar. Warriors can't survive a firefight. Whilst neither they nor even wyches will manage to beat a marine squad without 2:1 numbers or possibly with pain tokens.Cost isn't a problem its just that the pulse rifle isn't good enough to hurt anything. Neither unit is particularly steller for its points, they only become good when combined with other DE units like ravagers, venoms and raiders which make them a really effective army.

Immortals don't count because they are already carrying special weapons. Something that fires up to three shots a turn at str6 is pretty beastly. Warriors, well, my local Necron player doesn't even use them so take from that what you will. Even then they rely on other units like lords with res orbs and what not to be effective.

time to weigh in properly.

First the harsh criticism.
I dont think a lot of people get it. Tweaks and ideas are fine, but they're not working. at least not here. there are a load of well intentioned, but not well thought out "fixes", that if you ask me, wouldnt fix anything. A lot of them are just bad ideas, push things in the wrong direction, or are "tweaks" to a template that is an already proven failure. tau:empire was essentially a band aid. We're still dealing with the third ed codex, with a minor tweak on top of it, written by a guy who had no idea as to what he was doing, given time contraints, design constraints, and a design philosophy that meant he couldnt do much. as a result, Empire was a flawed load of tosh from the word go. My lists didnt change from the previous codex to the current one. all the new stuff was terrible. it added nothing. in a lot of cases it was unfluffy, poorly thought out, even more poorly implemented, and looked awful on top of that. In a lot of ways, tau are an army built on the foundation of +1-1. what you buy has a strength, and a corresponding weakness. and i think that is a terrible design philosophy. Im paying points for something. Im already paying for an advantage. you dont need to tack on, and overbalance this with dodgy disadvantages, that will typically mean i simply wont take it. also, you must look at the trends in recent codex design. hey, you might not like the borkeness of GKs and whatnot, but that is the style. that is the power level. if you're doing any house rules, or home design, you MUST build, using these trends as a guide (not as a template. dont make your codex tau a copy/paste of all the new!shiny! in all other recent codices)

OK. game theory.
step one. dont tweak what doesnt work. rebuild from the ground up. And we need a foundation. where do we start? We need to ask ourselves one hugely important question. What are the tau? What is their niche? How do we make them a sellable, playable product with a unique style of play and look? that is the most important fundamental question. they were the mobile shooty army. but blood angels do it better now. and can do cc. imperial guard can outmanoevre, and outshoot the tau. eldar can outmanoevre, outshoot, and out-cc the tau. so can basically everyone else. tau used to be about firepower. they were the army with the BFGs. i remember when they came out. strength five basic guns? strength ten railguns? in an era populated by boltguns, rhino rush and lascannons, these were HUGE. no one else had them. And now everyone has big guns. heck, even tyranids (who have an s10 ap1 lance shooting attack!) the tau do not stand out any more, in any way, shape or form. they're not competitive. i've not seen tau amongst my own group in over 2 and a half years now.

When i look at tau in game, i see flaws. they dont play on the tabletop as they are represented in the fluff. So, going back to my original question, i will ask what are the tau? How can we build them, to make them unique, and capable of holding their own in the current era of power? What defines them? What makes them unique?

And the way i see it, here is their "style". and what people should focus on.

(1) they're an army that focuses on long, to extreme range shooting engagements. the only guy who favours getting in up close ("shorten your reach!") is the pariah known as farsight. and yet its odd that for an army who claims long range engagements as their style, tau seem to spend a lot of time within 12" to get the most out of their extremely meagre firepower (rapid fire). So long range engagements should be a key flavour to the tau. leave the short range stuff to the auxiliaries. tau also favour hit and run actions. tau favour moving up to a position, using said position to make a kill, and then moving on to the next position, as part of a greater plan.

(2) they're an army that focuses on mobility. not tactical (ie on the board) mobility. they're not eldar. they dont zip around the battlefield at high speed. tau are about strategic mobility. defence in depth. with mantas et al., if there is a flashpoint, they can redeploy large numbers of cadres to those flashpoints relitavely easily. even with fewer forces than their opponents, because of this, you will always face an equal (or greater number) of tau. on a 6 by 4, the tau should be mobile. in the sense that everything should have access to a 12" move through vehicles, mounts and jetpacks. but specific fast units should be more limited.

(3) firepower. tau are about BIG guns. BIG impressive guns. right now, they're big guns are no more impressive than anyone elses big guns. they should be. tau firepower should be nothing short of terrifiying. a tau gunline should be something you should crap your pants when facing. this should be a key feature of the tau.

(4) auxiliaries. like the romans, and the british empire builders, a key feature of the tau is their use of auxiliary troops to shore up weaknesses, and give unique strengths. "MORE" is not necessarily good. Kroot and Vespids could do with some work, before we even consider anything else!

(5) technology. constantly, their evolving tech is a distinctive feature of the tau. lets not get into the "the imperium are more advanced than the tau" debate here. thats for other threads. But i do feel, given the focus of the race on their tech, the tech should play a large role in what they can do on the table top. right now, we dont see it. crisis suit wargear, and experimental tech is typically useless, pointless, unfluffy, or even worse. even other techy additions (like the screamed about LOLMARKERLIGHTSLOL) are a compensation, and an equaliser, not a strength. and strength they should be. it goes back to the +1-1 idea i mentioned earler. it must stop. tech must do more than make bad units adequate. it needs to be a serious advantage.4

(6) almost 5b. but suits are a serious theme of the tau. crisis, stealth, broadside and new!shiny!suits should all play a role. crisis suits are a signature unit for the tau. right now, they're taken not because they're good, but because they're necessary. big difference.

Right, so looking at the tau, where would i go? What would i do? Without doing a unit by unit analysis (which misses the point, if you ask me) here are some of the areas id address.

First up, looking at commanders. and leadership.
etherials are terrible. Xpts for twin-linked morale, and the disadvantage that if they die, my army runs. score! (see the +1-1 here). its not worth taking. despite the fluffiness of the disadvantage. No, if etherials are to be taken, they need to be worth taking. if that disadvantage must be there, then i want serious buffage, and serious abilities to come with them, and make the chance failure worth the risk. they need to be more than twin linked morale. And how would i do it? Etherials are the tau'va. they are akin to the emperor made manifest to the tau. they're living breathing walking talking temples of veneration, and adoration. Do not mistake them for just encouragement. they're so much more. So, roll with this. No psychic powers, but how about "influences"? the presence of an etherial, according to the fluff is the catalyst for near miraculous feats by the tau that are near his presense. they simply will not fail. they wil not fall, not with an icon of the tau'va behind them. (and here is an idea for a short story - a commissar shooting a guarsdman for the heresy in his report about suggesting this monstrous heresy of xeno "miracles") But yeah, an etherial, merely by being there makes the tau +1. so give him things like "guiding hand", where tau units get to re-roll failed to hit rolls. give him "null zone", where the peace and tranquility he generates in the minds of each tau translates into immunity to psychic powers in that area. Or something along those lines.

Now crisis suit commanders.
again, they're terrible. all they are, are higher BSed versions of crisis suits, who are terrible. While i will discuss suits in general later, crisis suit commanders need to be more than just a regular suit with +1Bs. and they need to have better things than all that useless wargear. what is the point of having a commander's thing being access to a bunch of toys you never take? Hmm? Pointless! So make him a commander. Make him lead. Make his guide. Give him "hunters mark" to represent leading from the front, and leading by example. whatever he shoots, and wounds, if anyone else targets that thing, they get a bonus too. Another idea we hit on when we did a big massive "fix the tau" project back on the old TO website was the idea of the "battlenet". think about it. its the tau technology at work. its the tau tech that lets them punch above their weight, and fight as equals with the great powers of the galaxy. So what was the battlenet? Well, essentially, it was an AI assisted command net. Every tau has sensors on them that record data and is streamed back to this. you've got long range satellite scans, radar, insertsensors here etc. the battlenet is all this data fed back, processed and relayed back to the commanders, in real time. IG commanders wait for a report from an underling. a tau commander sees the shape and flow of a battlefield in a little screen in the top left hand corner of his HUD. he sees his guys, their positions, strength, ability to fight. he sees the enemy. who they are, what they have, vectors of movement etc. at a glance he can see how the batltefield is shaping up, and can respond accordingly. he can issue montka, and kauyon, and other abilities to units (like IG orders) and act like a commander. unfortunately, we never could agree on how to represent the battlenet, but all thought it was a great, new, unique and fluffy idea.

crisis suits. and suits in general.
Next up, as a touched on it above - suits. suits are necessary, not good. please note the difference. again, i find its odd how a long range army relies on its elites getting in close to do the majority of their damage. they need stat changes, and equipment changes. t5, t4(5), 3 wounds? bs4? all have their arguments. personally, id go with 3 wounds and bs4. as a start. id also give them hit and run, or some other "scoot" ability. to stop them being locked down in cc (jetpacks, remember?). biggest change id give them is their guns. Look at the recent trends. look at other codices "shooty" units, and what they get. obliterators.get.every.gun. sternguard can swap out various ammo types. why do the tau have to pick and choose what equipment they take? again, this harks back to an older design phisosophy. cheaper base? cheaper guns? pfft. give them all the guns. give them one big omnigun, with various modes of fire. give the shas'vre in a max squad the option to swap out his omnigun for an even bigger more kickass gun. give them viral ammo (poison), emp rounds (ranged emp grenades), armour cracking ap2 rounds, a spray mode (s5 ap4 template) and a basic bust fire mode (3-4 shots). use one mode per turn. again, look at the recent FW SC. he has an omnigun. there is a precedent. and the most recent tau rumours suggested theyd be getting an omnigun.
id also comment on stealthsuits. they're overpriced, too in your face, the stealthfield is laughable and their fire output is terrible. anytime isee them, i simply see free and easy VPs and KPs. they need something. cheaper probably, and more dakka wound be my preference. Id also like to see new marks of suits. we've heard rumours of a snipersuit. personally, i like the idea of a fastsuit, that counts as a jetbike for movement purposes. give him a pulse blaster for fun.

Fire Warriors.
Next up are our infantry. first up the lambasted, and lamented fire warriors, who really are that terrible. overpriced, underperforming and lacking in any redeeming features. i like them. i mean, i want to like them. but they're just so incredibly useless that there is no point fielding them. again, there are lots of ideas to fix them. bs4. cheaper. etc.i agree they're not worth 10pts by any stretch of the imagination (probably 6-7). cheaper will not solve it. the only ones who will benefit from cheaper fire warriors are kroot. cheaper fire warriors are not better fire warriors. they're still individually terrible. SO now, i can buy 10 for 100pts. why would i take more for the same amount of points? more of a bad thing is not a good thing. i'll still just take 6, and spend what i save on more kroot. and as a result, you've solved nothing. make fire warriors better. Now there is the solution.bs4? yeah, could work.it can be fluffed out (trained from brith, genetically engineered warrior-caste from birth? yup makes sense. only the best shas'la make it to the hunter cadres? yup, plausible. technology! visors that up their BS. again, quite plausible). there is no reason to not have bs4 fire warriors.the arguments that they'd be broken are laughable. in the two turns it would take some armies to reach them in cc, they might have actually earned their oints back this way, instead of being a speed bump before they die. they are squishy, and die to cc like flies. they're squishy and melt under any firepower thrown their way. they can be outranged. heck, use infiltrate/flank and all that. making them killier doesnt break them. but i dont think its necessarily the right thing to do, despite it being the easiest implementation of a solution. Personally, id make them better by focusing on technology (drones etc). buy a full squad, you can have the leader replace his pulse rifle with a drone controller, with 4 gun drones. any of these gun drones (which dont take spaces in transports) can be upgraded to pulse blaster drones, rail rifle drones, sensor drones, stealthfield drones etc. Oh, and as a bonus, id argue that all drones controlled by a drone controller use HIS BS, not their own. hey, he controlls them it makes sense that he aims them too!) ALso, with regard to drones as an aside, id like to put a rule on them that when engaged in cc, the drones of a unit can be sacrificed to allow an auto-successful break-off test. makes sense, when you think about it - to use the drones to protect the living.regarding the drones with BIG GUNS to me it makes sense. there is already a precedent for drones-with-big-guns and for them to be controlled by fire warriors (rail rifle drone teams, which are terrible in their current form, if you ask me). why not expand the technology, and integrate them into FW teams? it gives the fire warriors some respectable firepower (whilst not being fire warrior carried heavy weapons) and it expands the big guns beyond just the Elites section. it also allows some interesting new builts - how about 3 crisis suits with drone controllers, upgraded with rail rifles? expensive, but serious, serious firepower! Getting beyond the drones, and back to the bs4 debate, i think changing the weapons profiles is another option. On TO, we discussed and implemented a change whereby pulse rifles were H2 and carbines were assault2, or 3. and anyone who tried it really liked it, and felt that it fit. the h2 rifles make sense. it represents a constant withering level of firepower all-the-way-in, and not just when you can see the whites of their eyes. its not a "heavy" weapon in the sense that its still a sidearm. plus, as mentioned tau dont go running around, spraying from the hip as a general rule. they move to a position, make the kill from there and then move on to the next kill site, or retreat, and there are any numbers of examples of this style of warfare being employed. nothing there suggests that the tau would be against such a profile. plus, you can argue as well it represents disciplined firing drills, etc. and if you want mobile dakka, look to the carbines.

Auxiliaries.
Right, onto our auxiliaries. kroot. i love kroot. i really do. they're my favourite 40k unit. i think they're awesome. while fine i still think that they could be added to. to be honest, kroot are a bit boring. Allow a shaper (instead of being a quartermaster) to grant evolutionary adaptations (like the kroot merc codex of old) to his kindred. Allow kroot to swap their kroot rifles for kroot hunting rifles (snipers!). And allow kroot squads to be mounted on kroot raptors. t3(4),cavalry rules. i think some savage cavalry options would be a nice new direction for the army as a whole. Also, when it comes to kroot, id like the option of a kroot shaman council. Maybe minor psychic powers (nothing big, or fancy) that would affect kroot, just as etherials effect tau. Id also like to see a kroot SC along the lines of warmachine's totem hunter, or the movies' Predator. A krroot "hunter". a boit like a SW lone wolf. he's out on safari, and looking for a very particular prey. it could be a lot of fun to run with this concept.
Now vespids need a drastic overhaul, both in terms of models and abilities. personally, i prefer making them a little bit different to our other options. right now, they suck. as with a 5+ save, 1 shot on a measly 12" gun, and bs3, they cant kill enough. ever. to make themselves justified. me? Id do what GW originally intended to do, and make their weapons count as s5 ap3 flamers. again, unique enough and different enough to offer a new style of play, and new options that none of our other current options really possess.

Tech, toys and odd bits.
Next up - markerlights. odd one. Im against the notion of "MOAR" markerlights. too many people see the taus special feature as being markerlights. and that the army should be about them, and revolve around them. I dont. Markerlights are cool. Right now, they're a compensation. they're an equaliser. they're not desinged to make good things better. they're designed to make mediocre things average. make them a strength. first up, how we spend tokens. a shiny red dot doesnt disappear, and become unavailable because a tank is using it to lock on. to me, that doesnt make sense. if the dot is there, everyone should be able to use it. So, if tokens are to be spent, spend them on debuffing the enemy unit in question that is being lit up, (and allowing anyone shooting at them to claim the benefits) rather than spending them on buffing individual units with mediocre, incremental benefits. either that or scrap the spending altogether, and make them stack. 1-2hits on a unit does X, 3-4 does X and Y, 5-6 does X,Y, and Z. if im taking a 200pt unit to buff my army, whatever is lit up should be red paste when things shoot at it.

those are just some ideas. heh, other ideas include the rumoured "draw a line across the board, and whatever it crosses, you can roll against" rule for railguns. Which is awesome. Me? id be happy with lance on them! and more dakka for the ion cannon please. 5 shots at least.

And a personal gripe. pirahnas. i hate the models. i hate the fluff. they're jury rigged civilian joyrider craft pressed into military service. We've had enough of the stop gag. Give us a properly designed light scouty vehicle that doesnt look ugly! with pulse cannons!

Deadnight wrote:
A lot.

Now that is a great analysis of our problems, i think those solutions look beautiful and mash well with the fluff.

Make devilfish open topped, allow crisis suits to take them as dedicated transports and count as two models for the purposes of capacity. Make the suits drop their jetpacks for a price discount for the Devilfish, bam, suits are better and firewarriors are better.

Juniperius wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
A lot.

Now that is a great analysis of our problems, i think those solutions look beautiful and mash well with the fluff.

Yup just going with the +1 aspect on Juniperius post.

However, I think the main issue that people who are suggesting stuff have is just a matter of game design philosopy.

1 - Build a unit around the fluff that will work in game.
2 - Build a unit that will work in the game and write the fluff to justify it.

These are two very different design philosophies. I find that making small patches like point decreases, just increased BS, a few updated markerlight options to be the first. What the Tau really need is the second. Much like what happened with the DE codex.

Juniperius wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
A lot.

Now that is a great analysis of our problems, i think those solutions look beautiful and mash well with the fluff.

+1 to that post too, by god yes

Well to be fair, SOB don't really benefit from having those special weapons any more than another army and their only real adv over FW is their armour. If you play SOB you go for other elite units like you do for every other army. They're hardly mega killers for having one special weapon a squad. Its armies that let your troops take two or more that are ridiculous. They also lack plasma. Major flaw. It is not just Tau whining; I can assure you!

Sisters Of Battle can take two special weapons, or one special/one heavy weapon (multi-melta/heavy flamer/heavy bolter)

Deadnight wrote:stuff

Any chance of more regular, smaller paragraphs for those of us who want to retain the use of our eyes after reading?

Avatar 720 wrote:

Deadnight wrote:stuff

Any chance of more regular, smaller paragraphs for those of us who want to retain the use of our eyes after reading?

eyes? pfft, use psychic powers!

Here's another suggestion: Counterattack for the Kroot. They're a relatively powerful assault unit with a rapid-fire weapon. Let them take assaults like a boss.

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:I would allow bs 4 firewarriors if all standard guardsmen got bs 4 ad well. Its only fair. Fluff wise tau have horrible eyesight. So they have machines to make them bs 3, instead of bs 2. So if they magically get +1bs, so should guardsmen...

Fluff wise their eyes adjust slightly slower but they have visual acuity greater than even Space Marines since they can see more of the spectrum then any human (except when space marines have their auto-senses from their helmets) meaning they see infrared and ultraviolet. Meaning that stationary shooting the advantage would be theirs, shooting on the move, not so much. Also, guardsmen aren't trained any better than modern soldiers, tau are trained from a young age and for longer a day (they don't sleep as long) and serve for their whole lives (usually).

8ppm with bs 3 and a 4+ save fire warriors. It sucks for you that the tau fluff doesnt allow organic heavy weapons and they have to rely on other units. Doesnt sound very smart for a shooting army.

Just another idea thats been in my head for firewarriors and Pathfinders.

I agree that a firewarrior squad shouldn't have any "traditional" heavy weapons. I can agree with the idea of fire support drones but I haven't given them much though save 1 however (to be addressed below). But lets look a little more at markerlights. I hear a lot saying to make markerlights assault, but I'm not sure if thats necessary. Keep them heavy, but as all suits have relentless, it wouldn't be hard for the drones to have that as well, thus move and shoot markerlights - problem solved on that end.

Now as for infantry, I say let firewarriors take two markerlights per 6 guys. Markerlight is a wargear and does not replace pulse rifle or carbine, its just an add-on that is used in the shooting phase instead of shooting that models gun - Range 36" So now we have two markers per firewarrior squad and they can do whatever it is markers are meant to do I wont get into any of that stuff, but for now I'm addressing the call down a seeker missile ability. Seekers will need to come in 3 different types. S8 AP3 krack, S6 AP2 blast (Tau plasma), S5 AP4 template (resolved like the IG Hellhound). Now you have two guys who can bring the additional hurt, in the form of whatever is needed and be able to get something more out of them than just S5 AP5 shots.

But I hear your crys. Heavy weapons don't work on guys who live in and out of their transports. But what if devilfish had a special rule where models that have imbarked or disembarked this turn do not count as having moved. Come up with whatever techie fluff for it you like, such as maybe very short range site to site teleporters, 3D HUDs in firewarrior helmets that connect to D-fish scanners and tactical battlenet that show enemy positions even when inside the transport so they know exactly where to aim their guns as they disembark (don't have to search for the enemy once out of the can because they already know exactly in real time where they are), or something much simpler.

But mechanically, this will allow for the firewarriors to disembark - bring the hurt where needed, then reembark and zoom off if the target is neutralized. Just like the fluff says, and it works in game turns because you don't need to wait a full turn to use it. Also keeping the weapon heavy means the above unit isn't exactly free to just run around firing off traditional heavy weapon effects on the move willy nilly.

Anyway, just a long winded idea.

Ohh yeah. Which seeker to use is determined before firing. Also with the above, you can keep BS 3 firewarriors as long as you make pulse rifles duel mode. 36" S5 AP5 heavy 2, 18" S5 AP5 assault 1. And make carbines 18" S5 AP 5 assault 2. Distortion - Distortion - a unit that is hit with a distortion grenade moves as if in difficult terrain on their next turn.

The only support drone that I like with the above unit is a shield drone that gives its attached unit a 4+ cover save. This way firewarriors get a 50% chance of living against anything fired at them unless its a template weapon - Which ultimately I think is fair, the enemy had to get in your face to use it anyway. This can go quite a way to keeping the guys on the table and holding objectives.

Counter-attack for Kroot would be good. They're there to take assaults, might as well make them good at it.

As someone said, if they want to keep FWs as they are, they're either going to need to be beefed with new SRs, or have their points dropped. And as they said, I don't want Tau to be a horde army.

I like the suggestion of making a Shas'ui part of a basic FW team. What if we make the Shas'ui BS4 with a free (or at least cheaper) markerlight? The standard fire warrior is still the same, but they now don't require other units to set them up to be close to useful.

And I like the idea of making Pulse Rifles S5AP5 Assault 1/Heavy 2. Rapid Fire is too constricting, especially since 30" rapid fire brings up so many issues (having to get closer than half range to double-tap, for example).

Deadnight wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:

Deadnight wrote:stuff

Any chance of more regular, smaller paragraphs for those of us who want to retain the use of our eyes after reading?

eyes? pfft, use psychic powers!

So that's a no then?

Pity, I imagined it might've been a decent read. Ah well.

OK Deadnight, you just earned my first ever Exalt, a very coherent analysis of the major issues with Tau.

A thought on your "Battlenet" idea; it's about the ability of the Commander to be, well, a commander. As in, to maximise the ability of the forces under his command.

So how about a the start of the turn he makes a leadership test and gets a number of command actions equal to the amount he beat the test. These command actions can then be used on a unit during any point in the following phase.

For example if you rolled a seven vs LD 10 you'd get three actions, you could then do things like; give a Kroot unit fleet during the movement phase, a firewarrior unit twin-linked during the shooting phase and a Crisis suit unit Counter attack during the assault phase. The key point is you would be able to decide as you went on, which would also allow room for tactical choices.

I think this would provide a similar benefit t the IG order system, but be different enough to make Tau unique.

Avatar 720 wrote:
So that's a no then?

Pity, I imagined it might've been a decent read. Ah well.

or you could maybe read it? honestly, its not that hard. plenty others have read it. if you can read a book, you can read a chapter of a book, and if you can read a chapter of a book, you can read a few paragraphs, which is all this is. Not being cheeky mate, but i personally prefer longer, more well thought out posts to the quick and snappy two-liners all too frequent on forums. have a go at it anyway, im not the greatest at formatting, but i put a lot of thought and effort into it. plus im gonna bribe you with biscuits!

Jadenim wrote:OK Deadnight, you just earned my first ever Exalt, a very coherent analysis of the major issues with Tau.

A thought on your "Battlenet" idea; it's about the ability of the Commander to be, well, a commander. As in, to maximise the ability of the forces under his command.

So how about a the start of the turn he makes a leadership test and gets a number of command actions equal to the amount he beat the test. These command actions can then be used on a unit during any point in the following phase.

For example if you rolled a seven vs LD 10 you'd get three actions, you could then do things like; give a Kroot unit fleet during the movement phase, a firewarrior unit twin-linked during the shooting phase and a Crisis suit unit Counter attack during the assault phase. The key point is you would be able to decide as you went on, which would also allow room for tactical choices.

I think this would provide a similar benefit t the IG order system, but be different enough to make Tau unique.

a lot of our ideas were based on a "montka" issued ability, a "kauyon" issued ability and others. some worked on squads, some worked on all types of a unit, eg we playtested one idea where a commanders "call" let you remove all suits from the board, and re-deep strike them next turn, a la swooping hawks. or else things like applying overwatch to units "kauyon". montka would be more aggressive and offensive. but we could never figure out what to do with it, without making it too similar too, and stepping on the toes of other buffage units like markerlights. Overall one thing we did decide to do was the "inspiring" comes from the etherial. the commander's abilities were meant to be purely battlefield related.

Zweischneid wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

The rich background of being the galaxy's redshirt ever since the 3rd sphere expansion. XD

I think you are confusing Tau with Tyranids. After all, they did achieve the 3rd sphere expansion. That's more than all Hive Fleets and all 13 Black Crusades taken together managed to achieve. Puts the Tau lightyears ahead of Tyranids and the Black Legion as a "threat" to the IoM on an objective assessment.

Tau are redshirts, Tyranids are Worf. The Black Crusade are just lumbered by the writing with perpetually being Stupid Evil. Abaddon is never allowed to win, so he ends up looking pretty useless, despite being the supposed Big, Big Bad of Humanity.

I agree with the BS increase. Adding on more special rules would be extranious and time-consuming, and for the points cost they deserve some sort of boost, because currently they're just not worth having.

If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

I was thinking the XV8's, stealthsuits, even the devilish. Things brake down quickly if you do that too. Tau have a lot of abilities that cap at 5BS.

You wouldn't have to boost the BS of other codexes. Not unless you wanted to.

One of the biggest complaints is that the tau as they are now do not kill enough. We can't table the other guy, we can't cause enough wounds fast enough to force LD checks, etc.

From a game mechanic there are only 4 ways to increase you kill count.

1 - Shoot more shots
2 - hit more often
3 - wound more often
4 - denigh enemy armor saves.

#4 is right out as far as game design goes because you have things like cover saves but more importantly part of the fun of the game is for the defender to try and save the life of his little men by rolling armor saves. If you never get to roll your saves (because your not getting any) the game becomes less fun from an over all stand point.

#3 can be done, but do you really want to give Tau base S6 guns? Would that seem too OTT. As it is there is only 1 S4 gun in our entire codex (kroot rifle). I just don't see much room to increase here.

That leaves #s 1 and 2. One of these has to go up. Its the only way the make the Tau more killy that still gives a chance of being balanced and fun. Game designers are just going to have to pick one and I feel that either one can be jusitifed in a fluffy mannor.

Also nothing that changes in the Tau codex should have any impact on what should and should not happen to other codexs outside of the standard form of Codex Creep. If all Tau become BS5 there is no reason at all for Orks or anyother race to suddenly get a raise in BS. Because if that happened all of a sudden the Tau are back in the bottom of the pile and everyone else who is already strong just make the playing field even that more unbalanced.

Well, there's different things you can have in your troop selection.

1) You can have things that are simply cheap. Their main advantage is that you'll have lots of them (Gaunts? Boyz? Etc.). They are not great at anything, but cheap.

2) You can have things that are good all-round, shooting, assault, good LD, special weapons for different purposes, good armour save, etc.. (Marines iconically? Others like Necron Immortals or DE with notably exceptions in one or two areas where they are notably weaker (e.g. Armour for DE for example). They are more expensive, but you get alot of versatility.

3) Finally, you can have things that are all-round weak, but excel in one particular area (Genestealers, Eldar Wraithguard). They are more expensive, but you get virtually "elite-"abilities in one highly circumscribed field.


So where will Firewarriors go? Cheap, horde-guys? Not likely. Even in their own Codex, this would be more a Kroot role. Versatility? Probably not. Noone wants to turn FWs into Xeno-Marines. Which leaves "highly specialized" in one area. Ergo, FWs should roughly be to "anti-infantry shooting" what Genestealers are to CC or Wraithlords to Troop-resilience. Stats and rules (and fluff) would need to be adapted to make that happen.

One of my problems with a lot of the proposals I've seen to 'fix' Tau is that they take the wrong angle. The Tau are a race that overall is at best equal to humans in their basic qualities and due to social or physical constraints sometimes inferior. Their advanced technology isn't an attempt to change the inherent lack of capability in their base physiology, it's an attempt to circumvent it entirely.

So I don't think that the average Tau should get a lot of attribute amp or special abilities, that's not really the Tau way. So instead of trying to improve the Tau, we should improve the Tau gear.


So let's take the Tau Fire Warrior Team. I'm fine with the basic stats of the Tau in said team being worse off than a Guardsman (though I'd probably bring the Shas'ui up to on par with a Guardsman rather than just make him a LD buff for the squad, his reward for being a veteran). But the stuff he's going to carry will make him more than a match for a Guardsman and make him excell int he primary anti-infantry role in which the Firewarriors find themselves in.

First off, the helmet. Given the Tau's enhanced visual spectrum and the other goodies that Tau technology brings to it, I'd say the Helmet should do 2 things other than keep his head dry. 1) It has the receptors that allow the Fire Warrior to benefit from things like Markerlights, Command Nodes and the like and 2) It gives him the Night Vision USR.

Second, the battle armour. Here I think the Tau are doing pretty good. Why? Well 4+ is a better basic troop choice armour than pretty much any non-marine army gets. He still gets his save against most anti-infantry weapons (ie AP 5) and he can be surprisingly resilient in close combat at times. Yeah he's fragile compared to the Marines and their ilk, but still, the Tau are little blue men, not marines. Save the Power Armour for the Elite slots.

Third, the weapon. Alright, if you really want to rock the Tau Fire Warrior Team as a scary shooting opponent who jsut mows down hordes and even makes marines sweat it out, I have the change for you right here. Small change, but a massive difference into the way the Tau would preform. Make the Pulse Rifle Heavy 2 and the Pulse Carbine Assault 2. That's it, that's all. It's a small change but it will make a world of difference for the effectiveness of the Fire Warrior on the battlefield. If you're the type who likes to have their Tau sit and shoot, go nuts with those pulse rifles and watch all but the toughest opponents melt away under your withering fire. If you're the type that wants to jump out of a transport and shoot the heck out of a unit, grab those carbines and have some fun. Best part there, with the 18 inch range, you don't have to get into assault range on an infantry unit to light them up.

Fourth, the leader. I mentioned the SHas'ui should get a boost compared to the Shas'la. I'm happy with the Shas'ui having what are guardsman stats, maybe with BS 4, maybe not (BS 4 Shasui's would make all the battle suits pretty freaking scary though). The most important things are what the Shas'ui brings to the table, first off being the Bonding Knives. I don't know how many times a unit of my Fire Warriors has been saved by breaking under assault or under fire running away, then rallying and shooting the heck out of the foe. This is actually one of the reasons I don't mind the low Ld scores on Tau, they are supposed to retreat and regroup anyway, so let them retreat and regroup. The other thing I want to bring in with the Shas'ui is a Markerlight that isn't subject to the silly doesn't work for the shootign unit restriction. I find that one hogwash, instead let the Shas'ui designate for his own squad. Suddenly, the Fire Warrior team is Ballistic Skill 4 half to 2/3rds the time (depending on the Shas'ui's BS of course). Incidentally, as fun as Assault Markerlights would be, I find that doens't match the performance of the real tech the Markerlight is trying to emulate, so keep them Heavy 1, still makes those gunlines extra scary.

Fifth, the transport. I love everything about the Devilfish but it's price. I know others want open topped, but the closed system makes sense to me. It fits in the way the Tau do things. The only changes I would make to the Devilfish are in the weapon systems. First, the Drones, I mentioned making the Carbine Assault 2 above, that would apply here. Second, the Burst Cannon, I feel this weapon horribly under performs for what it's supposed to be. Make Burst Cannons 24 inches in range and 4 shots per turn, make them Heavy if to compensate if you feel the need, it's not like they are mounted on anything that isn't a vehicle or has relentless. Finally the Smart Missile System. I think it's rather odd for the Tau to use two very distinct types of missiles that are the same size and fired from the same launchers but have such great differences in performance. So I say combine the Smart Missile System and the Missile Pod. Make both 36 inches, ST 7 AP 4 liek the missile pod missiles. Give both the drone guidance from the Smart Missile System. Missile Pod version has 2 shots per turn (again, suitable for making it heavy, like the Burst Cannon for the same reason) while the new version of the SMS retains it's 4 shots per turn. Suddenly the Warfish becomes a really scary customer, capable of taking on enemy transports far enough away to protect it's dismounts. Also, while we are at it, give the Seeker Missile a bit more bite, no longer make it need a second roll to hit but instead an automatic score on a target light by a Markerlight if the controller wants to fire a missile.

I would also set up a Veteran Fire Warriors Team that doesn't require picking an Ethereal to bring into play. I'd make the basic member a Shas'ui (and thus eligible to take a bunch of wargear possibilities and can be used as another justification for BS 4 Shas'ui) and the sqaud Leader a Shas' vre. Stick them in the Elite slot, but if you take the appropriate HQ option, they come in as Troops. Given they are supposed to be veerans who have survived the attrition necessary to make it to Shas'ui maybe knock down the maximum unit size to 8 (but that gives more room for drones in the Devilfish).

So there, that's my vision for effective Fire Warriors not really any tougher or any skilled than our current versions, but packing a lot more firepower and with more effective command and control options. While they won't be considerably more expensive than they are now (I'd rather a 10 to 12 point Fire Warrior that was worth the cost than dropping the cost of the existing Fire Warrior 1 - 2 points to reflect his ability) they are a unit that is going to be a threat to any infantry unit in the game and even some light vehicles and monstrous transports.

Now if you want to see me produce some radical changes, ask me my opinion on Pathfinders

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

I was thinking the XV8's, stealthsuits, even the devilish. Things brake down quickly if you do that too. Tau have a lot of abilities that cap at 5BS.

Aye, though if I'm not mistaken that 'up to BS 5' rule was designed at a time when BS 6 didn't exist- now it does.

1. ALL XV8 and XV88 are BS 4. All Team Leads come with BK and BSF for FREE.

2. Devilfish drops tp 50 pts.

3. Kroot choose what side of the table to come on from. ALL 4 sides....

4. FW stay at BS 3. Although they get a 'ui for free and everyone get all the grenades for free too.

4. Pulse rifle = Rapid Assault Fire. 30 inch 1 shot, 20 inches 2 shots. 10 inches 3 shots. Same state line for STR and AP though but Assault not Rapid...

5 Tetra = legit model.

6. New Drones:
- Medical Drone = FNP,
- Stealth Gen drone... Roll Nightvision rules to hit and if assaulted enemy is I 1.
- Long Barrel Burstcannon. As Forgeworld.
- Missle Pod Drone. TL MP as normal stat line for MP
- Fusion drone. TL FB as normal sta line for FB.

7. Piranha comes standard with TL weapons and DP and flechettes for current points value. Upgrading to FB is same cost but is now TL.


Those would be my initial changes to the Dex....

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

I was thinking the XV8's, stealthsuits, even the devilish. Things brake down quickly if you do that too. Tau have a lot of abilities that cap at 5BS.

Aye, though if I'm not mistaken that 'up to BS 5' rule was designed at a time when BS 6 didn't exist- now it does.

So we could just raise the cap. Though it would still give us BS 5 hammer heads. I'm grinning evilly as I type that.

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

I was thinking the XV8's, stealthsuits, even the devilish. Things brake down quickly if you do that too. Tau have a lot of abilities that cap at 5BS.

Aye, though if I'm not mistaken that 'up to BS 5' rule was designed at a time when BS 6 didn't exist- now it does.

So we could just raise the cap. Though it would still give us BS 5 hammer heads. I'm grinning evilly as I type that.

I don't think the time has come for BS5 Hammerheads but maybe a BS5 legendary pilot.

Deadnight wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:
So that's a no then?

Pity, I imagined it might've been a decent read. Ah well.

or you could maybe read it?

I tried. It hurt my eyes, thus prompting me to make the post asking for formatting.

I wouldn't have needed to ask if I could read it.

broodstar wrote:

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:

SDFarsight wrote:

nomotog wrote:If we give fire warriors BS4, dosen't that mean everything else has to be bumped up?

The XV8s, other codexes or both?

As for other codexes, there is allegedly "Codex creep" where they are becoming stronger anyway.

I was thinking the XV8's, stealthsuits, even the devilish. Things brake down quickly if you do that too. Tau have a lot of abilities that cap at 5BS.

Aye, though if I'm not mistaken that 'up to BS 5' rule was designed at a time when BS 6 didn't exist- now it does.

So we could just raise the cap. Though it would still give us BS 5 hammer heads. I'm grinning evilly as I type that.

I don't think the time has come for BS5 Hammerheads but maybe a BS5 legendary pilot.

Well that's also what I was kind of getting at in my first post. A hammer head is piloted by a fire warrior bump one you bump the other. You don't have to raise everyone's BS, but it would feel awkward not to.

Are their any legendary pilots in 40k? I think almost all SC are commanders.

PS I think we should stop nesting quotes now.

Heavies:
Make Multitrackers standard on all Tau equipment. Paying for that is dumb.
Don't limit the Skyray missile count.
For Hammer heads: Ion Cannon: 5 pts. Railgun: 25 points
Sniper Drones should be relentless.

Troops:
Create a character that makes Pathfinders into troop choices.
Give Kroot Riders Infiltrate. Make Kroot guns (str 7 ones) assault 2
Shas'ui: make them standard with the Bonding Knife.

Elites:
Marker drones in general need to be relentless and 20 points instead of 30.
Multitrackers standard on Suits/vehicles
Allow Stealthunits to choose different gear options for maximum wound allocation shinanigans. hey, it's an elite right?

HQ:
Make experimental gear freely available to all team leaders and above.
Give command suits access to take on Broadside armor and armaments. Why wouldn't they have that? Kinda like taking Terminator armor for other codex's

Create unlockl character to make Pathfinders into troop choices.

Fast Attack:
Team leaders always have bonding knives.
Stingwings: give the leader an extra wound to help keep the unit upright longer.

Allow Tetra bikes. Great, cheap objective stealing unit, that has markerlights to help zing the enemy with missiles.

Piranhas: Change the way Decoy launchers work. they would be worth taking on this unit if they affected all hits instead of just glancing.

Transports: Devilfish is 10 points too much. Shimeras have similar armaments and lesser armor for 55. I'd say 70 points is fair, given the better armor and slightly better movement. Multitracker standard.

@nomotog IG have a Leman Russ Commander and then there is the Master of the Ravenwing.

Chronus in the C:SM book too.

id like to see a veteran suit pilot. as in a SC that costs Xpoints that is an upgrade to *any* shas'vre suit (stealth, broadside, crisis, *newsuit*) etc. make it a bit diferent to the imperial *upgrade a tank* SC

Cerebrium wrote:Chronus in the C:SM book too.

But it doesn't fit the Tau theme. Imperials and Marines get "better" through experience and battle-field-achievments. "Legendary" veterans with fabled skills are a representation of that.

Tau work to a different logic. They get "better" through technology, not "battle-field" experience. The thematic equivalent would not be "Tank-commander-veteran", but "experiemental-tank-weapon-targeting-system" which might be once-per-army.

Zweischneid wrote:

Cerebrium wrote:Chronus in the C:SM book too.

But it doesn't fit the Tau theme. Imperials and Marines get "better" through experience and battle-field-achievments. "Legendary" veterans with fabled skills are a representation of that.

Tau work to a different logic. They get "better" through technology, not "battle-field" experience. The thematic equivalent would not be "Tank-commander-veteran", but "experiemental-tank-weapon-targeting-system" which might be once-per-army.

Its no more a technocracy than the imperials. i think its a mix.

Lookie, a space marine kill an Ork nob, or does something heroic - he's rewarding with a new!shiny! power sword. If he's really uber, he gets elevated to the first company, and gets his new!shiny! suit of terminator armour. but he gets it because he's earned it.

tau move through the ranks through attrition. the best survive/are promoted. thats why shas'la can become veterans, through proving themselves in combat. the best of those are trained up in the new!shiny! crisis suits (not all tau veterans get suits - epic has a slot for veteran FW teams), which hold a presense to the tau that is akin to terminator armour for marines. they best warriors, having proven themselves, get the best toys.

the argumenr regarding commanders getting the "experimental gear" makes sense. its mentioned in empire - that proven commanders get experimental weapons. personally, i dont like it, but thats just because with the exception of the forgeworld guy with his omnigun, all our experimental weapons and wargear have been terrible. I prefer to think the experimental gear is the pre-production model. Also, rather than experimental gear, i think its better if proven tau commanders get *unique* gear. shadowsuns XV22 is an example - a once-off suit just for her. I think proven heros should have their own unique signature gear that is awesome, not experimental.

But the logic is inversed for Marines. They have a more "fantasy/knight"-logic in that their "best" stuff is the "old" stuff. E.g. relics of the past, artifacts passed down from the Primarchs, etc.. Look at all the special items in particular. Calgar's Gauntlets, Kantor's Bolter, Lysander's Hammer, etc.. . It's not so much "better technology" but "ancient knightly relics" that have been given a half-assed faux-techno-babble fig-leave of explanation to work them into a sci-fantasy setting.

For Tau, the theme runs the other way. It has Alien allies with "primitive" weapons, troopers with better weapons and Elites with fancy technology. Sure, experimental tech in the current dex is overpriced by 5th edition standards, but that is because it's an old Dex. The "theme" and emphasis has been different. Hell, alot of the "experimental" Tau tech gives the very same rules as some Space Marine Gear. Irridium Armour vs. Artificer Armour. Shield Generator vs. Iron Halo, etc.. ,etc.. . But the thematics they put on it are "new tech fresh from the laboratory" while the "thematics" they put on the Marine stuff is "treasured relics passed on from hero-to-hero".

I played 1000 points today against tau with my deathguard and flooored them !!

It was spearhead, with 3 objective markers. I took 3 squads of 7 PM, Lord with MoN, terminator armor + plaguebringer, 4 obliterators and 4 terminators. He had commander with bodyguard + drone, 4 stealth suites, 3 firewarrior teams with drones and 2 hammer heads.

His weapons outranged me for sure and had amazing strenth and ap and all that - but it means nothing if you cannot hit your opponent to start off with !

Tau should not have BS of 3, it should be 4 or each unit should be allowed the option of a marker drone to take it up to BS 4. Once I deep striked my terminators and lord into CC it was all over for him....

I mean fair enough making an army that is all shooting and no CC apart from one unit (kroot) in 40k. But if that is the case at least give them decent BS. I know guard have terrible BS but they at least got template weapons and ordinence weapons that make it less of an issue... Besides a more advanced race like Tau should have better aim than lowly úmies !

sumi808 wrote:I played 1000 points today against tau with my deathguard and flooored them !!

It was spearhead, with 3 objective markers. I took 3 squads of 7 PM, Lord with MoN, terminator armor + plaguebringer, 4 obliterators and 4 terminators. He had commander with bodyguard + drone, 4 stealth suites, 3 firewarrior teams with drones and 2 hammer heads.

His weapons outranged me for sure and had amazing strenth and ap and all that - but it means nothing if you cannot hit your opponent to start off with !

Tau should not have BS of 3, it should be 4 or each unit should be allowed the option of a marker drone to take it up to BS 4. Once I deep striked my terminators and lord into CC it was all over for him....

I mean fair enough making an army that is all shooting and no CC apart from one unit (kroot) in 40k. But if that is the case at least give them decent BS. I know guard have terrible BS but they at least got template weapons and ordinence weapons that make it less of an issue... Besides a more advanced race like Tau should have better aim than lowly úmies !

Your opponent's army was bad. Seriously, Firewarrior heavy Foottau suck so bad, chaosspawn are already getting worried that they appear viable next to them.
Still, outside of perhaps a single semi viable build ( that is, you don't shoot yourself in the foot by fielding it ) Tau are bad and deserve an upgrade.

Yeah, dude had no Markerlights and lack of a lot of twin linked weapons available to him, no wonder he had problems hitting.

Stealth Suits have interesting abilities, but they lack the ability to take a twin linked weapon like a Crisis Suit. While they can take the 10 point upgrade to BS, this block a lot of other useful upgrades from being taken by the squad.

Those Hammerheads are one of the only Tau units outside of the HQ to start with BS: 4, however their primary weapon, unlike those on the Broadsides, isn't twin linked so it is actually less accurate than the Broadsides with their BS 3.

Marker Drones are available to all Tau units by the way, but they are a 30 point upgrade that only works half the time (they have BS 3 themselves).

I agree that non-augmented Tau have accuracy problems compared to Space Marines, but again, non-augmented Tau are supposed to be the equivalent to Guardsmen, not Space Marines.

Tau units have the capability to become incredibly accurate even without markerlights. I knoww the most popular configuration for a Crisis suit these days is a Plasma Rifle, a Missile Pod and a Multi-Tracker on a BS 3 Crisis Suit.

However, for LESS points it's possible to mount a set of Twin Linked Missile Pods or a set of twin linked Plasma Rifles on as suit that has a Targeting Array to become BS 4. Suddenly you have a unit that hits on a 3+ and rerolls misses without using markerlights and is actually cheaper than the most common configuration.

Likewise, the same Targeting Array can be applied to the Stealth Suits so they can also become BS 4. I tend not to do this on the Burst Cannons, but its a must on those Fusion Blasters. You only get 1 shot to make those count, so best make it count.

The same upgrade also fits ont he Broadsides - nothing says Tank Killer like a St 10 AP 1 weapon that hits ona a 3+ and re-rolls misses.

Oh wait, you can also put that same wargear on any of the vehicles except the Hammerhead (which has it already), again giving that BS 4 touch. For real fun combine this with Forge World Tetras and their new High Intensity Markerlights and suddenly you have 4 BS 4 Markerlight shots a turn, the rest of your army will thank you.

So Markerlights aside, all of the Tau Battlesuits and Vehicles can come in at Ballistic Skill 4, often with Twin Linked to boot.



Now I agree, it would be nice if the Shas'la had BS 4 organic to them. Personally I think that it would make the Tau a wickedly potent shooting force just by tossing a BS 4 Shas'la with a Networked Markerlight in each Firewarrior Team, though to be honest, it wouldn't be much greater than a BS 3 Shas'la with the same Networked Markerlight.

To me, that whole Networked/non-Networked Markerlight is one of the bigger problems the Tau face. Markerlights that actually work for the unit firing them are rare (Skyray, Sniper Drone Team) or expensive (Marker Drone) resulting in the need for pricey dedicated marker units (Pathfinders, Stealth Marker Teams). The result is that the Markerlights frequently just don't get used and the Tau remain a shooting army that only hits half the time.

So let's make standard Markerlights work for the team that's carrying them. Suddenly instead of a 10 point upgrade for the squad leader (who is usually a 10 point upgrade himself) that does nothing, you elevate the unit's Ballistic Skill to what is effectively 3.5 (or for the fancier units 4.67). It's cheap, easy and fits with the existing stuff the Tau have.

Next, make the dedicated Marking units more cost effective. The recent Tau update by Forgeworld made those lovable Tetras the default best marking Unit the Tau have available. For about the cost of a minimum squad of Pathfinders with no frills other than the mandatory Devilfish, you can get 2 fully loaded Tetras and here's the fun part, instead of firing only 4 BS 3 Markerlight shots per turn (average 2 Markerlight tokens) you pump out 8 shots at BS 4 per turn (average of 5+ Markerlight tokens) and these Markerlights can move instead of staying put all game and are protected by an AV instead of 4+ armour.

So the tools are there and can be made ready to go with only a few minor tweaks.

Stealth Suits have interesting abilities, but they lack the ability to take a twin linked weapon like a Crisis Suit. While they can take the 10 point upgrade to BS, this block a lot of other useful upgrades from being taken by the squad.


makes them cost 40pts. too much. especially if, for the most part, all they're putting out is ap5.

I agree that non-augmented Tau have accuracy problems compared to Space Marines, but again, non-augmented Tau are supposed to be the equivalent to Guardsmen, not Space Marines.
and yet, tau dont send in non-augmented troops. they are all extremely well equipped. besides, we're talking about a race of genetically pre-disposed, and genetically manipulated (zachary's theorem) soldiers.


Tau units have the capability to become incredibly accurate even without markerlights. I knoww the most popular configuration for a Crisis suit these days is a Plasma Rifle, a Missile Pod and a Multi-Tracker on a BS 3 Crisis Suit.

However, for LESS points it's possible to mount a set of Twin Linked Missile Pods or a set of twin linked Plasma Rifles on as suit that has a Targeting Array to become BS 4. Suddenly you have a unit that hits on a 3+ and rerolls misses without using markerlights and is actually cheaper than the most common configuration.


and costs 60pts for 1 ap2 shot at 24". which is lousy considering you're dealing with 2MEQ wounds. a single krak missile and its gone. just because its an option doesnt mean its worth taking. tl missile pods, on the other hand is the *other* viable build, and even then its too focused to be useful outside of specific light vehicle duties, as ap4 bounces off most hard infantry.

Likewise, the same Targeting Array can be applied to the Stealth Suits so they can also become BS 4. I tend not to do this on the Burst Cannons, but its a must on those Fusion Blasters. You only get 1 shot to make those count, so best make it count.
makes them cost 40pts though. which, frankly, is ridiculous.

The same upgrade also fits ont he Broadsides - nothing says Tank Killer like a St 10 AP 1 weapon that hits ona a 3+ and re-rolls misses.
losing out on the ablative shields, or the target lock abilities though.

Oh wait, you can also put that same wargear on any of the vehicles except the Hammerhead (which has it already), again giving that BS 4 touch. For real fun combine this with Forge World Tetras and their new High Intensity Markerlights and suddenly you have 4 BS 4 Markerlight shots a turn, the rest of your army will thank you.

are tetras in the codex? No, then dont count them. and what other vehicles do we have? devilfish and skyrays. the former will cost you 120pts if you're taking its "warfish" adaptation, and 120pts for 7bs4 is, frankly, ridiculous. as to the latter, well, the less said about the skyray, the better. its the most useless tank in the game.

So Markerlights aside, all of the Tau Battlesuits and Vehicles can come in at Ballistic Skill 4, often with Twin Linked to boot.
most of the time, its not worth it though.

the problem with all this again boils down to the +1-1 design of the third ed tau codex, which no one is addressing. you get more dakka, but less accuracy, or more accuracy, and less dakka.swings and roundabouts that leave you with a big, fat 0. bs4, or bs20 means nothing to me, unless i can put out enough firepower to kill whatever is coming at me in the 2 turns it will take for them to reach my lines and engage me. 1 shot from a bs4 suit wont do that.


To me, that whole Networked/non-Networked Markerlight is one of the bigger problems the Tau face. Markerlights that actually work for the unit firing them are rare (Skyray, Sniper Drone Team) or expensive (Marker Drone) resulting in the need for pricey dedicated marker units (Pathfinders, Stealth Marker Teams). The result is that the Markerlights frequently just don't get used and the Tau remain a shooting army that only hits half the time.

So let's make standard Markerlights work for the team that's carrying them. Suddenly instead of a 10 point upgrade for the squad leader (who is usually a 10 point upgrade himself) that does nothing, you elevate the unit's Ballistic Skill to what is effectively 3.5 (or for the fancier units 4.67). It's cheap, easy and fits with the existing stuff the Tau have.

Next, make the dedicated Marking units more cost effective. The recent Tau update by Forgeworld made those lovable Tetras the default best marking Unit the Tau have available. For about the cost of a minimum squad of Pathfinders with no frills other than the mandatory Devilfish, you can get 2 fully loaded Tetras and here's the fun part, instead of firing only 4 BS 3 Markerlight shots per turn (average 2 Markerlight tokens) you pump out 8 shots at BS 4 per turn (average of 5+ Markerlight tokens) and these Markerlights can move instead of staying put all game and are protected by an AV instead of 4+ armour.

So the tools are there and can be made ready to go with only a few minor tweaks.

and even with these tweaks, markerlights are pretty terrible. im sorry, but tau should not be the "markerlight spam" army. tau use markerlights, but tau are not defined by them. handing them out like candy, or building them up to be their equaliser isnt the solution. you dont make a build to make bad things average, which is what this is. markerlights, like the rest of the codex need a thourough overhaul. and rather than being handed out like candy, keep them limited, but make them awesome. make them make good things better. if im paying 200pts for a unit that will do this, they'd damn well kill whatever they light up.

What if we gave pulse rifles some kind of "Withering Fire" ability?
They are plasma guns after all, and if giving them AP3 is out of the question, then how about an ability which forces the enemy to add +1 to their armor saves if their target has been previously fired upon by pulse rifles. +2 if they've been fired upon twice before. This would represent the toll taken on armor of being shot with rapid fire, superheated plasma.

This modification would be permanent. Since in 2 turns Firewarriors are locked in melee. But they will have served a very important roll of making the enemy more vulnerable to all attacks.

Such a rule might encourage people to take a lot more Firewarrior squads.

With 3 FW squads firing at a terminator squad, for example, the 2rd FW squad would be forcing 3+ saves, and against the 3rd FW squad, the termies are getting a 4+ save.

I don't play Tau enough to picture how this effect might play out... Thoughts from Tau vets.?

Just a few things I think that could be an easy change that would help the Tau out.

1) Allow Fire warriors to upgrade there pulse rifle to a rail rifle. If you think this is to much maybe only allow 1 unit per army to do this. I have never understood why they cant use them from a fluff point of view as pathfinders use them and the are just highly trained fire warriors.

2) Make kroot hounds a better maybe T 4 or 2 wounds move them to fast attack and give them the beast USR.

3) Give all Crisis suits 4 attachment points. This would allow you to add targeting arrays to extinguish suit configurations and you could have you BS 4 if you want it. Also you could use that 4th spot to add flamers to all suit configurations which wont make them better in HTH which people dont want but would help them thin out a unit before they take a charge.

4) Take away the mandatory devilfish for pathfinders.

5) Give stealth suits something similar to a disruption pod but make it 5+ or 6+.

6) Make Stimulant injectors standard issue war gear instead of special issue as stealth crisis and broadside suits could greatly benefit from FNP.

7) Move Airbursting Fragmentation Projector from special issue to maybe 1 per team. This would help tau with crowd control.

8) Give a kroot shaper a power weapon or maybe allow 1 in ever 5 or 10 kroot to take a power weapon.

Give command suits access to take on Broadside armor

iridium?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the less said about the skyray, the better. its the most useless tank in the game.

Skyray are actually pretty good, they just don't have a place in a tau army because HS slots are at a premium. If we could somehow have infinite HS slots and infinite Elite slots, without needing anything else, we'd pack a hell of a punch, and lose every objective game ever.

Planetfall works out well

fire1122 wrote:

1) Allow Fire warriors to upgrade there pulse rifle to a rail rifle. If you think this is to much maybe only allow 1 unit per army to do this. I have never understood why they cant use them from a fluff point of view as pathfinders use them and the are just highly trained fire warriors.

this will be the case in warhammer 50k, but right now it wouldnt really fit. that said, if fire warrior squads got access to rail rifle drones via drone controllers, its a workable fix that fits the fluff, and doesnt over ride the "no special weappons for fire warriors" ethos. and pathfinders are not *highly trained* fire warriors. a fire warrior does not get promoted to being a pathfinder. they're all shas'la. they're all of the same rank. pathfinders have a different skill set. they're recon. they're eyes and ears. they pull a cadre forward. fire warriors, as good as they are, are gunslingers. they stand in the line and shoot.

fire1122 wrote:

2) Make kroot hounds a better maybe T 4 or 2 wounds move them to fast attack and give them the beast USR..

there is no precedent for this.

fire1122 wrote:
3) Give all Crisis suits 4 attachment points. This would allow you to add targeting arrays to extinguish suit configurations and you could have you BS 4 if you want it. Also you could use that 4th spot to add flamers to all suit configurations which wont make them better in HTH which people dont want but would help them thin out a unit before they take a charge.

so they cost more, and you havent solved any oftheir fundamental problems. please... stop thinking along the lines of a template that has proven to be a failure. hardpoints? please! it wouldnt matter if they had six! they cost too much, and they're too fragile. omniguns. if sternguard get various ammo types, and if obliterators get all the guns in one, the same should be the standard for our uber shooty unit. with bs4 and hit and run as a standard. in third ed, this would not have worked. fifth ed? with the power creep we've seen, this is the least that can be done.

fire1122 wrote:
4) Take away the mandatory devilfish for pathfinders.

agreed. rather than the fish though, i think they need vet packages (like IG vets) to represent their role on the battlefield more, as spotters, snipers, or artillery callers.

fire1122 wrote:
5) Give stealth suits something similar to a disruption pod but make it 5+ or 6+.

make then cheaper, faster and give them more dakka. D-pods wont work on them if they cant kill stuff.

fire1122 wrote:
6) Make Stimulant injectors standard issue war gear instead of special issue as stealth crisis and broadside suits could greatly benefit from FNP.

combat drugs are for dark eldar. stim packs are for terran marines... now, if you want FNP, please come up with a solution that fits the theme of the tau. selfrepairing molecular armour? sold. combat drugs? copypasted from DE. fail.

fire1122 wrote:
7) Move Airbursting Fragmentation Projector from special issue to maybe 1 per team. This would help tau with crowd control.

nope. its a terrible gun. omniguns for all suits, and the shas'vre in a max squad gets to upgrade to a bigger more dakka-yer gun.

fire1122 wrote:
8) Give a kroot shaper a power weapon or maybe allow 1 in ever 5 or 10 kroot to take a power weapon.

nope. power weapons doesnt fit. poisoned weapons? maybe. on shapers. "power weapons" isnt the answe. kroot arent assault troops. they're light infantry skirmishers who are chucked into the meatgrinder when necessary. shapers, rather than giving 6+ saves to people, or having "power weapons" which wont help, should give evolutionary adaptations (fleet, +1i, +1s, +1t, etc) to their kindred. kroot with kroot rifles, and possibly kroot hunting rifles (sniper rifles) is as far as id take it. power weapons do not fit.

kroot arent assault troops. they're light infantry skirmishers who are chucked into the meatgrinder when necessary. shapers, rather than giving 6+ saves to people, or having "power weapons" which wont help, should give evolutionary adaptations (fleet, +1i, +1s, +1t, etc) to their kindred. kroot with kroot rifles, and possibly kroot hunting rifles (sniper rifles) is as far as id take it. power weapons do not fit.

First off, kroot aren't meatgrinder fodder like IG, they are mercenaries and they will value their own lives should it seem that the odds truly are against them. They are not idiots, as has been proven through the fluff. They'll even do better morally if they get paid more, but being chucked into a situation where they will all die? Yeah no, their greater good is Cold Hard Cash, and the tau understand that, even if they try to educate them about the greater good overall.

On the games workshop site, kroot have three evolutionary patterns that can be given to them as a way of changing them up.

Headhunters: 4+ poisoned on each of them

Stalkers: Infiltrate, MTC, Night Vision, and stealth

Vulturekin: Jump Infantry with Hit & Run

I think these actually work pretty well for templates on an evolutionary pattern, I honestly dislike the stat upgrades as it doesn't make sense thematically unless they change overall (kroot hounds and krootox for example) You could make other types of kroot that have evolved, but the base kroot should not advance far enough to gain stat upgrades unless they change physically enough that they can't resemble themselves (Vulturekin get a pass since it's just kroot with wings)

Dreadnight, my post was to show that options were already in place. We don't need to create new things to make the Tau work, we need to tweak the stuff that is already there.

As for your comment on +1 -1, to be honest, that isn't the issue for me, if the -1 was thought out and appropriate.

The problem the Tau face is that many of their units are +1 -2 or -3 with a lot of those negatives not making a lot of sense or being legacy text because of older rulesets. We need to clean up the stuff that doesn't make sense anymore and leverage what the Tau have into something very practical.

Stuff like

Special issue wargear being one per army items when most of them aren't really that special or can't be used as a part of a unit
Markerlights not working for the unit that uses them
Drones losing relentless when they are added to Infantry units
Expendable drones counting against Tau units for Morale Checks
Ethereals causing Tau to Fall Back when killed
Crisis Suits not actually being Relentless
An armour save being an optional upgrade for the Kroot
Kroot losing some of their abilities if there aren't any trees on the board
Mandatory Devilfish on Pathfinders
Pathfinders as a Fast Attack unit that is supposed to remain stationary the whole game
Sniper Drone Teams as a separate unit to Pathfinders

Once those things were cleaned up, then I think it would take very little to make the Tau a premier codex again. Just increase the range or rate of fire of anything not a 'Rail' or 'Marker' type weapon and adjust the point costs (downwards) to more accurately reflect what the Tau units can do.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

First off, kroot aren't meatgrinder fodder like IG, they are mercenaries and they will value their own lives should it seem that the odds truly are against them. They are not idiots, as has been proven through the fluff. They'll even do better morally if they get paid more, but being chucked into a situation where they will all die? Yeah no, their greater good is Cold Hard Cash, and the tau understand that, even if they try to educate them about the greater good overall.

On the games workshop site, kroot have three evolutionary patterns that can be given to them as a way of changing them up.

Headhunters: 4+ poisoned on each of them

Stalkers: Infiltrate, MTC, Night Vision, and stealth

Vulturekin: Jump Infantry with Hit & Run

I think these actually work pretty well for templates on an evolutionary pattern, I honestly dislike the stat upgrades as it doesn't make sense thematically unless they change overall (kroot hounds and krootox for example) You could make other types of kroot that have evolved, but the base kroot should not advance far enough to gain stat upgrades unless they change physically enough that they can't resemble themselves (Vulturekin get a pass since it's just kroot with wings)

hence my point on "when necessary". its not the best use of them by a long shot. Regarding those evolutionary adaptations, i like them. stat upgrades have a precedent in the old kroot minidex with the nymune upgrade (fleet), the ork-hybrid (+1T) etc. if kroot can, in months, learn ot breathe chlorine, then they can be beefed up

Jefffar wrote:Dreadnight, my post was to show that options were already in place. We don't need to create new things to make the Tau work, we need to tweak the stuff that is already there.

As for your comment on +1 -1, to be honest, that isn't the issue for me, if the -1 was thought out and appropriate.

The problem the Tau face is that many of their units are +1 -2 or -3 with a lot of those negatives not making a lot of sense or being legacy text because of older rulesets. We need to clean up the stuff that doesn't make sense anymore and leverage what the Tau have into something very practical.

i completely disagree. +1-1 as a design philosophy was fine back in third. But in 5th, the power curve has simply been pushed out. everything now is +1, or even +2 or +3. things are *better* and *more powerful* than ever before. applying a +1-1 to the tau will simply result in their codex remaining at the bottom of the pile. the options may be in place, as you say. but they're terrible. an option is only worthy of consideration if its worth taking. Otherwise its wasted text. And might as well simply not be there. "tweaks" wont work here. tweaks to a rubbish codex are just that. Minor changes simply will not solve any of the major, and minor flaws we currently have. I want "new". I want "more". I dont want "rehashed".
Im sorry, but the imperial guard were not "tweaked". Some things were, and some were completely rewritten. Same with BLood Angels, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar... THe simply fact is the design philosophy of the game has moved on, and these old templates, and these old design philosophies are dinosaurs. they're extinct. and yet people still try and use them.

Jefffar wrote:
Special issue wargear being one per army items when most of them aren't really that special or can't be used as a part of a unit
Markerlights not working for the unit that uses them
Drones losing relentless when they are added to Infantry units
Expendable drones counting against Tau units for Morale Checks
Ethereals causing Tau to Fall Back when killed
Crisis Suits not actually being Relentless
An armour save being an optional upgrade for the Kroot
Kroot losing some of their abilities if there aren't any trees on the board
Mandatory Devilfish on Pathfinders
Pathfinders as a Fast Attack unit that is supposed to remain stationary the whole game
Sniper Drone Teams as a separate unit to Pathfinders

(1) suits need a redesign altogether. iirc GW were talking about 3 wounds basic, bs4, and omniguns. that is the solution. Not more SI gear, that is crap to begin with.
(2) markerlights arent all that and a bag of chips. Personally, i'd like to see how markerlights are used completely changed. i hate spending tokens. the red dot doesnt disappear if something else from another squad locks on. And furthermore, i dislike the small, incremental buffs they give to individual units. a little bit here... a little bit there... Old codex MLs were better. hits at bs5, no cover saves. If "spending" must remain, then they should be used to debuff an enemy unit (so anyone shooting at them claims the benefit), and not to buff a single friendly firing unit.
(3) agreed. but drones need to be expanded on. their role could be so much greater.
(4) makes sense to me. "DAMN! they killed my shield drones! next shot is me! i'm outta here". personally, im all for sacrificing drones. sacrifice thedrones to allow an automatically successful break off test from CC. and yes, there is a precedent in the FW rules for XV-9s.
(5) See my earlier post. etherials are a classic example of +1-1. causing the army to fall back is very thematic and characterful. Maybe if they acted like Bjorn, and counted as a new objective? personally though, i think it should remain, but the benefits they bering to the table need to be so much more than twin-linked morale to make it worth it. See? re-write. Not a tweak.
(6) relentless suits makes sense. they've always been that way.
(7) never bothered me to be honest. i like cheap kroot.
(8) see above post on pathfinders. "No" to devilfish, "yes" to "mission packages".
(9) As FA, the thing is they deply last. or at least they used to. if they had a way to become troops, id be all for it. but i've no serious issues with FA.
(10) get rid of sniper drone teams altogether, if you ask me. integrate rail rifle drones into the rest of the list. Any model with a drone controller can purchase rail rifle/pulse blaster drones. any drones controlled in such a way use their controllers BS, not their own (he controls them, it makes sense that he aims them, right?). Now, you can have suit/rail rifle drone squads. serious cost, but serious dakka. and fire warriors get access to extra dakka that will help them actually have a presence in a very thematic way.

Jefffar wrote:
Once those things were cleaned up, then I think it would take very little to make the Tau a premier codex again. Just increase the range or rate of fire of anything not a 'Rail' or 'Marker' type weapon and adjust the point costs (downwards) to more accurately reflect what the Tau units can do.

i think there is a lot more to it that tweaks and point cost reductions. cheaper fire warriors, for example, are not *better* fire warriors. they still suck. they still wont be taken. all it will do is let me take more kroot.

hence my point on "when necessary". its not the best use of them by a long shot. Regarding those evolutionary adaptations, i like them. stat upgrades have a precedent in the old kroot minidex with the nymune upgrade (fleet), the ork-hybrid (+1T) etc. if kroot can, in months, learn ot breathe chlorine, then they can be beefed up

I'll admit that the kroot mini-dex is one of the very few I've yet to find (I actually didn't know about it till now) And I still even have the old feral ork list alongside the harlequins, but I guess I didn't come across as properly. When I meant by stat upgrades, I just meant that they shouldn't provide just one stat upgrade and that is it, if there is to be an evolutionary guideline, it should be more along the line of.

Kroot-Ork: +1T, -2I, Furious Charge, Mob Mentality (Gains bonus leadership for nearby extra Kroot-Ork units)

Not just a +1T or +1I, but something a bit more "pathish" rather than "statish", this way it can be more advanced without needing to have odd things here and there (Mixing and matching would be hectic on the army lists, it was removed from tyranids for a reason) Because the alternative would just be a mild +1 stat bonus across the entire group that could only take one thing, which didn't work for Chaos Marks than (And still doesn't), and it wouldn't really work now.

After some pondering, i got the follwoing ideas that could (potentially) make the Tau super-cool:

- Markerlights happen at the start of the Tau shooting phase, before shooting. They hit on a 2+, and don't count as shooting in any respects but they need LoS and they must be within range as normal. Effects as currently, except that cover decreasing is capped at 6+ and Ld decreasing effects breaking tests too.
- Seeker Missiles are auto-hitting and have two firing modes: a compact (S9, AP1, 2D6 armour pen, InstaKill regardless of Toughness) and a submunitions (S6, AP3, Large Blast). They are always treated as Barrage weapons. Seeker missiles are no longer upgrades for vehicles, but may be bought as a Heavy Support selection (don't take up HS slot though) for 10 points per missile. No limit on how many missile you can buy.
- Sky Rays are revamped to defense units. They have Coteaz's reserve-overwatch rule and carry special Seeker missiles (S8, AP2, Large Blast, always fired with BS5). Tough they can fire only 2 missiles per player turn and they have Limited Ammunition (8).
- Fire Warriors gain some sort of "Suppressing Fire" ability: if they cause more hits on a unit than models it has, then the unit is automatically pinned (regardless of Ld, Fearless or anything). If the FWs se Pinning weapons then the number of their hits are doubled for the purpose of "Supressing Fire".
- Also, Pulse Rifles are Heavy 2/Rapid Fire and Pulse Carbines are Assault 2+Pinning.
- Obliterator Crisis suits! Yeah, silly idea, but more i think about it, better i like it. So each Crisis suit carries four weapons (one AT, one anti-GEQ, one anti-MEQ/TEQ and one anti-light vehicle). Something like a Multi-Melta, an Airbursting Frag Projector, a 24" range Plasma Cannon (with S6) and a Missile Pod that penetrates armour like Ordnance.
- Oh, and all suits are T4(5), except Stealth Suits what are just T3.
- Railguns have a +2 damage modifier (including the +1 for AP1) on the vehicle damage table.
- All drones have Close Protection (or what's the name).

I guess that's all so far.

Deadnight wrote:i think there is a lot more to it that tweaks and point cost reductions. cheaper fire warriors, for example, are not *better* fire warriors. they still suck. they still wont be taken. all it will do is let me take more kroot.

With is one of the reasons I suggested upping the rate of fire of their weapons and getting that BS boost within the squad through an organic marker light.

If Firewarriors always laid down 2 shots per and fired at BS 4 half the time without the help of another unit they would be a lot more killy.

Jefffar wrote:

With is one of the reasons I suggested upping the rate of fire of their weapons and getting that BS boost within the squad through an organic marker light.

If Firewarriors always laid down 2 shots per and fired at BS 4 half the time without the help of another unit they would be a lot more killy.

in this, we are in agreement. i was one of the first (might even be the first, actually - not sure there) to suggest, and root for h2 rifles, and a2 carbines, along with better access to powered up drone mounted weapon systems. BS4 can be justified. Im not against the idea, as i can see it as an alternative.

I'll admit that the kroot mini-dex is one of the very few I've yet to find (I actually didn't know about it till now) And I still even have the old feral ork list alongside the harlequins, but I guess I didn't come across as properly. When I meant by stat upgrades, I just meant that they shouldn't provide just one stat upgrade and that is it, if there is to be an evolutionary guideline, it should be more along the line of.

i dunno. Kroot have very limited space to take onboard new genes to be honest. to me it makes far more sense that a kroot takes an individual trait from what its eating, rather than its entire genome.

Kroot-Ork: +1T, -2I, Furious Charge, Mob Mentality (Gains bonus leadership for nearby extra Kroot-Ork units)

See above. the path sounds OK in theory, but ultimately i dont think its the right way forward. its about kroot taking on individual traits, not the whole genome. +1t, -2i, FC. mob mentality. that makes them orks in all but name. And how much will this cost? ideally, i want one trait, for +1pt a model, or +2 at most. i dont want orks working for the tau. but kroot with some ork traits? perfect. quite easily represented by t4.

Not just a +1T or +1I, but something a bit more "pathish" rather than "statish", this way it can be more advanced without needing to have odd things here and there (Mixing and matching would be hectic on the army lists, it was removed from tyranids for a reason) Because the alternative would just be a mild +1 stat bonus across the entire group that could only take one thing, which didn't work for Chaos Marks than (And still doesn't), and it wouldn't really work now.

why mix and match? kindreds follow their shaper. he picks an evolutionary adaptation, and the whole kindred get upgraded with it. simples! Mild stat bonuses would work for kroot, if you ask me. you mention the chaos codex. there is nothing wrong with marks. +1t, +1i, +1a, and a 4+inv are all fine. the problem with codex:chaos is that thats as far as it goes. you cant have plague marine terminators. you cant have berzerker bikers, or noise marine havoks. the problem is that, essentially as an adherent to nurgle gets promoted, he goes from an awesome plague marine to a really dodgy terminator!

jgehunter wrote:

Cerebrium wrote:Army-wide BS4. There's no reason the premier shooting army should be generally BS3.

I don't know the codex, but it may be to do with game balance. At least when the codex was not outdated.

Yeah, Tau players don't realize that with BS4 and S5 weapons, the Tau units would be significantly more expensive than they are now. Probably on par with Space Marines.

Would fundamentally change how the army plays. The Firewarrior is a professional soldier like a Guardsman. Technology is their advantage, not being significantly better.

Yeah, Tau players don't realize that with BS4 and S5 weapons, the Tau units would be significantly more expensive than they are now. Probably on par with Space Marines.

Immortals are the closest thing to that, they have S5 AP4 (change with telsa) With a space marine statline. for 1 point more than a marine.

The closest would be more like sisters of battle, which are around 10 points.

Tau having BS 4 would make them around there, since SoB have BS4 as well. I'd say about 10 points per model still, due to the lack of special weaponry, due to the decreased initiative, due to the lower stats on leadership, no special rules like acts of faith or shield of faith.

Basically BS4 would only justify it still being 10 points.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Yeah, Tau players don't realize that with BS4 and S5 weapons, the Tau units would be significantly more expensive than they are now. Probably on par with Space Marines.

Would fundamentally change how the army plays. The Firewarrior is a professional soldier like a Guardsman. Technology is their advantage, not being significantly better.

marines used to cost 15 for a marine with a bolter. now they're 1pt more for a bolter,bolt pistol, frags and kraks. space wolves get ccws in the mix as well. a bs4 fire warrior, with a 4+ save and an s5 gun. if sisters of battle cost less than 10pts for power armour, bs4 and boltguns, and all the regular equipment on top of that, then 10pts for a fire warrior that is bs4, and loaded with a pulse rifle, pulse pistol, defensive grenades is entirely reasonable. this is 5th ed. its all about the troops. and troops are getting cheaper.

if i had to pay 15pts for a fire warrior, id expect ap2 rifles.

space wolves get ccws in the mix as well.

Please don't bring them in, there's an example of balancing in the others, space wolves still have the issue with having both bad internal and external balance. At least untill they bring all space marines down to that level anyways.

Crisis Suits not actually being Relentless

They actually are. Jump packs=relentless.

Plus, they don't have a single heavy weapon other than the forgeworld SMS sooo...

imrandomghgh wrote:

Crisis Suits not actually being Relentless

They actually are. Jump packs=relentless.

Plus, they don't have a single heavy weapon other than the forgeworld SMS sooo...

Crisis Suits have the following nerfs, which remove some of the jump pack (jet pack) advantages. Specifically:

* They are relentless, but not for the purposes of heavy weapons. Although none of the weapons for Crisis Suits in the codex are heavy, markerlights are, which means the Crisis Suits are useless as a platform for marker drones and marker drones are a useless upgrade for Crisis Suits.

* They don't get to make their six-inch jump on the turn they Deep Strike.

Both of these nerfs are quite worthless, and add to the general atmosphere of "you get something cool, but it will cost you so much that it's useless" or "you get something cool, but an important part of it is removed" that permeates the codex.

Yeah, the team lead of a Crisis Suit Team gets to carry a markerlight if he so chooses. So every Crisis Suit Team has access to Heavy Weapons, not just the Forgeworld ones.

Overall I think the Crisis Suits need more 'heavy' weapons. So many of their options require you to get within 12 inches to get any real effectiveness out of them it's ridiculous for an army that more or less prides itself on being the worst close combat army in the game.

Make them truly relentless and make the Fusion Blaster a Multi-Melta instead of a Meltagun. Make the Plasma Rifle Heavy 2 and the Burst Cannon Heavy 4 and reach out 24 inches.

Although none of the weapons for Crisis Suits in the codex are heavy, markerlights are, which means the Crisis Suits are useless as a platform for marker drones and marker drones are a useless upgrade for Crisis Suits.

Drones adopt the unit type of the unit they are bought for. Marker Drones bought for Crisis Teams inherit their type as Jump Infantry (Jet Pack), and are therefore relentless, making them a viable upgrade.

"Infantry(Jet Pack)" is not a unit type. Infantry is a type. Jumppack is a type.

Jetpack is wargear. Sadly. And only Shield drones take on the save and toughness of their parent.

ElectricPaladin wrote:

imrandomghgh wrote:

Crisis Suits not actually being Relentless

They actually are. Jump packs=relentless.

Plus, they don't have a single heavy weapon other than the forgeworld SMS sooo...

Crisis Suits have the following nerfs, which remove some of the jump pack (jet pack) advantages. Specifically:

* They are relentless, but not for the purposes of heavy weapons. Although none of the weapons for Crisis Suits in the codex are heavy, markerlights are, which means the Crisis Suits are useless as a platform for marker drones and marker drones are a useless upgrade for Crisis Suits.

* They don't get to make their six-inch jump on the turn they Deep Strike.

Both of these nerfs are quite worthless, and add to the general atmosphere of "you get something cool, but it will cost you so much that it's useless" or "you get something cool, but an important part of it is removed" that permeates the codex.

That was written in 4th ed, the relentless-jetpack rule is 5ed. It is just like the target priority tests, it is a leftover from the previous edition and no longer applies. Plus, that restriction would not have applied to marker drones even in 4th ed, as they are not part of the crisis suit.

Cite your source sir. 4th Ed it no argument I recognize.

The fact is, the Jetpacks are a sidebar in the main rulebook, and are not a unit TYPE. The unit types are listed at the very beginning of the book and then explained later. It does not include Infantry(jetpack). So a Markerlight in a Crisis unit is NOT relentless. Relentless is a funcrtion of Jetpacks.

I am a Tau player so dont get me wrong. I'd love for the rules to be more expansive. They aren't.

So the only Drones that are relentless are those that, sadly, don't need to be.

Interestingly the only unit able to actually move after Deep striking are the Gun Drone units, specifically. That's another change they need to look into for Tau. While it is technically correct according to the Codex and FAQ (yes I read it) it is frustrating! Why the Gun Drone units? Why no others? grr.

Jancoran wrote:"Infantry(Jet Pack)" is not a unit type. Infantry is a type. Jumppack is a type.

Jetpack is wargear. Sadly. And only Shield drones take on the save and toughness of their parent.

What are you talking about, suits are all Jump Infantry(Jet Pack)(excluding broadsides of course).

As Jet Pack is not listed in war gear, and it listed in unit type, it is a unit type that has it's own unique rules otherwise it would be written like this

Unit Type: Jump Infantry

Wargear: etc... Jet Pack etc...

Jump Infantry (Jet Pack) certainly is a type, it's there in the Tau codex; the Unit Type of a Crisis Battlesuit is Jump Infantry (Jet Pack) therefore the Unit Type of attached Drones is Jump Infantry (Jet Pack).

Your argument that Jet Packs are wargear only, falls down when you notice that Crisis Suits do not have Jet Packs; they are instead listed as being Jump Infantry subject to the Jet Pack rules. If Jet Packs are indeed wargear as you say, then Crisis Suits do not have them and are therefore not subject to their rules.

Avatar 720, however the specific description for the Crisis Suit indicates that they must be stationary to fire heavy weapons (page 27 of the codex) so while the Crisis Suits are Relentless, they must still be stationary to fire their heavy weapons.

So Relentless, but not.

Jefffar wrote:Avatar 720, however the specific description for the Crisis Suit indicates that they must be stationary to fire heavy weapons (page 27 of the codex) so while the Crisis Suits are Relentless, they must still be stationary to fire their heavy weapons.

So Relentless, but not.

However, that XV8 special rule would not apply to the Jump Infantry(Jet Pack) drones that are attached to them correct?

It doesn't, however those markerlights cost 3x as much as the one the team leader can take.

Jefffar wrote:It doesn't, however those markerlights cost 3x as much as the one the team leader can take.

XV8 team leads do not have the option of taking Markerlights. you may be confused with Stealth Suits, which have no psuedo-relentless special rule in the codex.


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Jefffar wrote:... So Relentless, but not.

As XV8s have no option to take heavy weapons of any kind, therefore that line in the 'dex is somewhat superflous.

Jefffar wrote:Avatar 720, however the specific description for the Crisis Suit indicates that they must be stationary to fire heavy weapons (page 27 of the codex) so while the Crisis Suits are Relentless, they must still be stationary to fire their heavy weapons.

So Relentless, but not.

I was talking about the drones, not the suits.

Jade.Longinus wrote:

Jefffar wrote:It doesn't, however those markerlights cost 3x as much as the one the team leader can take.

XV8 team leads do not have the option of taking Markerlights. you may be confused with Stealth Suits, which have no psuedo-relentless special rule in the codex.


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Jefffar wrote:... So Relentless, but not.

As XV8s have no option to take heavy weapons of any kind, therefore that line in the 'dex is somewhat superflous.

My bad on the Team Lead one, however the XV8 variants from Forge World (which are tourney legal unless the tourney explicitly prohibts them) carry Markerlights or SMS.

Jefffar wrote:My bad on the Team Lead one, however the XV8 variants from Forge World (which are tourney legal unless the tourney explicitly prohibts them) carry Markerlights or SMS.

They are allowed in standard 40k tourneys? Not apocalypse? I'm new so I don't know but most official tourneys I've read about indicate that only Codex entries are allowed.

However, the Forge World non-Apocalypse only units are phrased as being Codex Entries. They aren't specifically in the physical codex book, but they are still considered Codex Entries by GW and FW.

Some Tourney Organizers just say "No Forgerworld" due to a reputation for overpowered or Apocalypse only items. As well as they are not common so players with a Forgeworld item may have the advantage of surprise over their more conventional opponents.

Jade.Longinus wrote:

Jefffar wrote:My bad on the Team Lead one, however the XV8 variants from Forge World (which are tourney legal unless the tourney explicitly prohibts them) carry Markerlights or SMS.

They are allowed in standard 40k tourneys? Not apocalypse? I'm new so I don't know but most official tourneys I've read about indicate that only Codex entries are allowed.

Not for most tournaments, which specify the printed codex and (usually) the nightspinner and Sisters PDF. Which excludes other published material, regardless of the IA rules.

XV8 team leads do not have the option of taking Markerlights. you may be confused with Stealth Suits, which have no psuedo-relentless special rule in the codex.

Being jump infantry, without the restriction placed on crisis suits by their description, XV25s CAN fire their markerlight while moving, and they can do any relentless things they feel like doing.

Also, ftr, drones do count as relentless when attached to crisis suit teams, but markerlight drones are still worthless pieces of crap.

Jancoran wrote:
Sniper Drones should be relentless.

they are. all jet pack troops are relentless as of 5th Ed.


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it seems someone beat me to this statement, thats what i get for not reading all the comments

Sniper Drone Teams are Unit Type: Infantry IIRC, so are not Relentless.

I stand corrected sniper drones are infact infantry

Yeah, the Drones are one of the things I feel they really messed up on.

1) BS 2 . . . 2? I can give the Shas'la 3 comfortably, but the Drones at 2? No. They need to be BS 3 (4 on the Sniper and Marker Drones).

2) Flip-flopping on them being Relentless depending on who they are floating beside.

3) Having them count for Morale tests. They are supposed to be expendable for fething sake.

4) While I don't think they should necessarily be Fearless when in separate squadrons (I can imagine their CPUs getting overwhelmed by the chaos of battle and the Drones either not doing anythign for a turn (ie being pinned) or returning to base for further instructions (ie Fall Back) I do think they need to at least be stubborn when independent. Also, since their AI's network when they are independent to improve their processing power, perhaps a version of the Ork Mob Rule where the Ld of a group of drones is dependent on how many drones are in the group.

I think they should gain some sort of ATSKNF rule when independent; rack it up to them calculating a higher chance of success if they fall back, regroup and reassess the situation.

Sounds more like Combat Tactics than ATSKNF. ATSKNF allows for rallying when below 50%, like a Bonding Knife.

I actually think Combat Tactics makes a lot of sense for the Tau, what with their natural penchant for falling back from advancing enemies.

ATSKNF isn't just rallying under 50%, it's an auto-rally even if under 50%, but everything else applying (such as no rallying within 6" of an enemy model).

The auto-rallying is the main part I want.

For the Drones, I can see that. The Tau get Bonding knives and the Auxilliaries have such poor armour they die out before they get a chance to run anyway.


Here's an interesting one. Take independant drone units (ie Gun Drone Squadron, Heavy Gun Drone Squadron, Sensor Towers and Sentry Drones) out of the FOC altogether. Make them add on units that don't tie up a slot.

Sniper Drone teams have a spotter so they wouldn't be in that list. Besides, I'd rather take them, Pathfinders, and Stealth teams and mix them all together into a nasty mobile, stealthy unit that can either be configured for marking and sniping or commando raiding.

Basically each Stealth suit would be able to carry a Carbine + Markerlight, Rail Rifle + Target Lock, Burst Cannon or Fusion Blaster. The team leader could also equip with a Marker Beacon. Make it an elite slot and you have Tau Special Forces ready for action.

You made me remember the abomination that is the heavy gun drone. I'm going to go drink now.

Savageconvoy wrote:You made me remember the abomination that is the heavy gun drone. I'm going to go drink now.

What's so fearful about TL burst cannons? or burst cannon and markerlight? Seriously, it drains your railgun supply and isn't even useful.

Or do you mean how bad it is.

How bad they are. When I first read their entry I thought it was some kind of joke. Then when I saw they were heavy support I almost rage puked.

Hence one of the reasons I think Drones should be moved out of the FOC.

"I'm making all the suits walkers so crisis will be front armor value 12 and Broadsides will be front armor value 13"

Not sure this is the way to go, also don't believe that the crisis suits, even if walkers, would have such high armor values. They are lighters, not walking armored boxes like dreadnoughts.

Also if you make them walkers then the leader can no longer be in a suit. I think the best improvement for the crisis suits would be to Make them work more like termie armor: 2+ or 3+ armor save with a built in invulnerable save as well. Right now they are just too fragile and if you put your leader in one you have the option of using him offensively and watching him pop really fast or having him hiding out a lot and wasting the points. Making them walker's changes their concept a bit more dramatically.

Skriker

My friends (who both play Tau) abuse the heck out of Markerlights. When you have 3 full units of fire warriors firing on you with BS5, things tend to go poorly.

Skriker wrote:"I'm making all the suits walkers so crisis will be front armor value 12 and Broadsides will be front armor value 13"

Not sure this is the way to go, also don't believe that the crisis suits, even if walkers, would have such high armor values. They are lighters, not walking armored boxes like dreadnoughts.

Also if you make them walkers then the leader can no longer be in a suit. I think the best improvement for the crisis suits would be to Make them work more like termie armor: 2+ or 3+ armor save with a built in invulnerable save as well. Right now they are just too fragile and if you put your leader in one you have the option of using him offensively and watching him pop really fast or having him hiding out a lot and wasting the points. Making them walker's changes their concept a bit more dramatically.

Skriker

Crisis with 2+/5++ and broadsides with av 10/11 would at least make fluff sense.

Because it doesn't make sense that striking scorpion armour is as durable as that of crisis suits.

or, I think making them T5 alone would be enough to make them so much better. Because I mean how much better would they be if they were impossible to ID with krak and lascannons?

And a 3m tall giant battlesuit thing should really be tougher than a 2m tall superman.

imrandomghgh wrote:or, I think making them T5 alone would be enough to make them so much better. Because I mean how much better would they be if they were impossible to ID with krak and lascannons?

And a 3m tall giant battlesuit thing should really be tougher than a 2m tall superman.

That toughness increase would definitely help. Just as they are now if they get sneezed on they break.

As for the comparison to terminators, the terminators are space marines after all, and we can't have anything in the game that is better than a space marine! Tongue firmly in cheek here.

Skriker

Skriker wrote:

imrandomghgh wrote:or, I think making them T5 alone would be enough to make them so much better. Because I mean how much better would they be if they were impossible to ID with krak and lascannons?

And a 3m tall giant battlesuit thing should really be tougher than a 2m tall superman.

That toughness increase would definitely help. Just as they are now if they get sneezed on they break.

As for the comparison to terminators, the terminators are space marines after all, and we can't have anything in the game that is better than a space marine! Tongue firmly in cheek here.

Skriker

I think you hit the part about the space marines dead on.

Because a multi-ton gigantic battlesuit with weapons on slightly weaker than those of a dreadnought could never match is protection to heavy armour IN SPAAAACE

There are a lot of problems with the Tau as currently implemented, so I will focus mostly on Firewarriors for now.

The problem with Firewarriors is that they are essentially just a variation on Eldar Dire Avengers, anti-infantry specialist that are good at little more than fighting light/medium infantry. And they are not even good at that, as ubiquitous 5th edition cover saves and codex creep have rendered them rather impotent at even this basic function. In many ways Dire Avengers are more flexible, with the ability to take Warlocks and the far more effective albeit more expensive Waveserpent transport. And unlike Firewarriors, Eldar have an assortment of other troops choices to oversee other duties.

Even the Firewarrior's signature weapon is of little benefit. Sure, its useful against AV10 vehicles an some higher toughness models in a pinch, but most of the time its just another way to increase the statistics of wounding, interchangeable with improved BS, ROF or decreased model cost. And its not enough of an increased chance to justify the high point cost and other shortcomings of firewarriors.

Kroot do offer a rather excellent alternative Firewarriors, but unfortunately still end up filling the same tactical niche. Their boltguns perform the same anti-infantry function as the pulse rifle, albeit better against T3 and T4 do the reduced model cost, and the ability to assault, while highly welcomed, is just another source of str 4 attacks.

At the end of the day, there are a large range of threats, such as Rhino/Razorback/Chimera spam, for which all Tau troops are largely ineffective against. And this problem that cannot be corrected by a simple increase in stats, BS4 firewarrios will be just as useless against Chimera front armor as BS3 firewarriors for instance. These shortcomings, especially combined with the crippling price of the Devilfish, lead a number of serious problems with Tau list design:

-In order to field enough troops to reliably claim objectives, Tau are forced to forgo a considerable degree of more specialized types of firepower, such as template attacks, anti-vehicle or anti-TEQ shooting, and substitute it with an excessive amount of anti-light infantry firepower.

-To avoid further exacerbating the above problem, units that primarily provide anti-light infantry shooting outside of the troops slots need to be avoided in competitive list. So Gun Drone squads, Stealth Suit squads and burst cannons on Crisis Suits have no place in competitive list.

-Because not even the most basic special weapons, including flamers and meltaguns, can be taken within the troops slot, Crisis Suits or vehicles end up fielding these weapons instead, which are considerably weaker than what they should be fielding. There is something wrong when an IG veteran can pack a heavy flamer but the signature elite shooting unit of the Tau are restricted to normal flamers.

In light of the above problems, Tau troops require at least two changes. First, their firepower to cost ratio needs to be increased, both to put it in line with the 5th edition power creep and to ensure that Tau shooting is at least marginally superior to that of most 5th edition codices. Secondly, more specialized firepower needs find its way into the troops section to avoid the aforementioned problems. This could be done in several ways

1. Introduce new troops choices capable of using heavy or special weapons. Perhaps just special weapons, as they can remain mobile on normal troops. Heavy weapons can then be restricted to seeker missiles, vehicles and battlesuits who would not be hampered by them.

2. Fix seeker missiles and markerlights. Makerlights need to be assault if firewarriors or other troops are supposed to use them to call in seeker missiles, otherwise why not just cut out the middleman and have the troops carry around missile launchers. Seeker missiles need to have unlimited shots as they are just crack missiles, and 10 points per shot is absurdly expensive for krak missiles.

3. Let firewarriors carry special weapons but not heavy weapons. I know some people consider firewarriors carrying special weapons heresy. However, the reason for this restriction is to keep to firewarriors mobile while restricting the heaver stuff to the battlesuits, who will not be encumbered by such weapons. However, special weapons are no more restricting than the firewarrior pulse rifles, so this shouldn't be a problem. As an added bonus, with the firewarriors now wielding the flamers and meltaguns, Crisis Suits can then be freed to carry around genuine heavy weapons.

Also, for the love of all that is good and holy, pulse carbines need to be assault 2. They are worthless as currently implemented.