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 Savageconvoy wrote:

And now that I think of it, what kind of fixes would you give to Kroot? I really can't stand how they are a race that values ranged and CC while having access to technology from different races, yet doesn't move past the standard rifle and knives. Not to mention that they were no armor because it would make them less nimble and agile, yet cant move at the standard Initiative. Kroot would probably need more work than Firewarriors if they ever planned to be used as an honest troop choice.

And I can't wait for the first person to say "but Kroot are supposed to die." No they aren't, that's not what long time allies do.

Kroot need to be totally redone. I would like to have them as a completely customizable unit to represent how they gain genetic material from defeated foes. Maybe start them off with a basic ws4, bs3, s4, t3, i4, w1, a2 ld??? and a 5+ save. Then you can purchase upgrades for the squad. This could take the form of changing type to jump infantry, increases in toughness, strength or iniatitive, and better saves, give them special rules. The number of items chosen would have to be limited to 2-3, otherwise we would have 25 pt super kroot.

Alternatively, you could represent their carnivorous nature on the battlefield. For instance, if they win a combat and the enemy is destroyed/falls back, they cannot sweeping advance and are pinned automatically, but they gain bonuses depending on what they have killed. e.g. +1 initiative for killing eldar, +1 strength for killing a marine, +1 toughness for killing an ork, or a special rule. Maybe furios charge for orks, fleet for eldar and ATSKNF for marines???? If the squad contains a shaper, he could choose whether to eat the enemies or not.

These could be combined in some sort of way, but personally, I think the first option is better overall, but the second is cooler.

Also, their guns need to be changed. Perhaps 18" assualt 2?

Jefffar wrote:

The Tau are essentially supposed to be smaller humans with bad eyesight a dislike for close combat and some of the best gear in the galaxy. Leave the base stats alone and either adjust the price down or give them the better gear to make them more effective for the price.

As a whole? yes, they are.

The fire caste?

These are the fighter sub-race.

I can't imagine how a "fighter subrace" can survive the evolutionary stages if even less capable in a fight then a human-and humans (in the evolutionary stages, before tech is available) are one of the worst fighters this world has ever seen, at the very least they should be able to take some punishment-therefor the T4.

As for the I4, tau as a whole favor speed, mobility and staying away from a fight (IE: not getting freaking swept) and are trained for just that. why on earth would an army trained to avoid a melee combat can't actually get a proper chance away from one in case they get caught? the point is not to get more damage done in assualt-its to get away. why should I be force to invest in a gun drone (that does not help at all for the squad main purpose-long range shooting) for a chance to run away? no other army is.
If they dont get the I score, they should get an ability that helps retreats. is makes sense and you know it.

The BS4? while a tiny blurb claims they got "poor dept perception" (that does not actually effect direct gunfire accuracy at all as distance is irrelevant!) their targeting technology is often praised as far better then imperial one, and the standard FW helm is said to contain many vision enchanting modules. it might not be a SM-but at least better then an IG vet, and they got BS4 (nobody claimed THEY are as good as SM right?)

the LD, so you wont freaking run away from 3 bolter shots. you don't WANT to brake from shooting, no idea where you got that concept. you do want to run in melee, but that would happen anyway. and again-we have the whole "highly trained warrior subrace", they at the very least have a tiny bit of courage to actually stand and fight-or whats "warrior" in them?


The Tau empire, by fluff and by the game-play mechanics of almost every other unit in the codex, is NOT a freaking horde army, it should not spam tons of relativly expensive yet worthless fire warriors, but fewer yet efficient ones.
I mean, considering our elites and heavy-support (talking on the infantry here) are the most expensive ppm and perhaps the most destructive ppm as well, why are our troops bordering horde mentality? it fits not the fluff, it fits not the playstyle of other units and it fits not their cost.
The FW is a poor design of the old 4th edition mentality of "basic troops don't need anything special or army-spesific about them", the game evolved from that point by now, and so should the fire warriors. they should have the stat line to represent the army, or abilities to do so.
And as states myself, I don't want these buffs for free-I want them, but at a slight price increase, to represent the fact Tau soldiers, by fluff, are not untrained throwaways-and while few in numbers, are very good at gunning down the opposition.

Man this is turning into wish listing. But I do think FW are under powered, not by much though. With some slight upgrades in special gear and a small change in points I they could be viable while remaining part of the fluff. Which is something I don't want changed. In the next codex my biggest fear is that GW is just going to rewrite the fluff as an excuse to make lazy changes to the models and/or sell new kits. I don't think that FW should be able to take heavy weapons in their squads. It's against the doctrine. Each unit is specialized for a task. FW being front line anti-infantry.

There are a couple things I can think of to improve them though. And without just utterly breaking them. Start with the squad:
55-60pts for 6 - Comes with a Shas'ui w/ ld 8 Pulse Rifle and a light marker light - rapid fire/ 30" /networked (can be used by his own squad), would also be BS 4, fluff wise is experience soldier who elected not to become a XV8 and lead FW.
max 12, 8-9ppm BS 4 FW would break so hard with ML
that gives either 45+15 =60 or 40+15=55

Getting really crazy, allow the Shas'ui to take a XV8

With Dfish getting a better Dpod for 5pts and good durability, I don't really want to down it's cost because then people will want to up to the cost of Dpod. But maybe give it some advantage for having a "sealed environment" from the fluff. Possibly better crash resistance such as STR2 hits from explosions.

Yes I'm implying a blanked upgrade to XV8s BS (it's stupid the elites have the same BS as basic troops anyways )

Just some musings though.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the Tau having poor eyesight I think that is aptly represented. By themselves they might have poor (compared to say a SM) maybe BS 2, but they have they in helmet optics that bring them up to BS 3. And they would have the networked optics and targeting systems that would allow them to lock on or highlight high priority targets with markerlights upping the BS.

The whole issue of the "warrior race" Fire Cast being weak is only when compared to the rest of the galaxies fighter races. Keeping in mind that in the fluff, Tau were left alone to evolve on their own planet. Meaning that the now Fire Cast warriors only had to be better then the other races in order to be crowned the warrior class, not necessarily better then the Orcs or Nids because they didn't have to deal with them while evolving.

Although running away when they are completely committed to the greater good annoys me.

And on the topic of running away, it pisses me off that drone squads can fail LD and fall back. Like... wat...

 mh_mini wrote:
As for the Tau having poor eyesight I think that is aptly represented. By themselves they might have poor (compared to say a SM) maybe BS 2, but they have they in helmet optics that bring them up to BS 3. And they would have the networked optics and targeting systems that would allow them to lock on or highlight high priority targets with markerlights upping the BS.

"Poor eyesight" as in a single sentence referring to "poor depth perception", that as I said and people keep ignoring-has NO effect at all on straight shooting, only on ballistic shooting-and the entire Tau armory is set out to be either auto-targeting (like the SMS or AFP) or with bullet speed high enough that ballistic drop can be ignored at rational firefight distances. (pulse and rail technology)
Meaning, even if Tau literally had one eye-and as such NO depth perception at all, they should have STILL have no problem to aim, and with added optics systems should do so much better then regular humans who lacks these systems.

 mh_mini wrote:
The whole issue of the "warrior race" Fire Cast being weak is only when compared to the rest of the galaxies fighter races. Keeping in mind that in the fluff, Tau were left alone to evolve on their own planet. Meaning that the now Fire Cast warriors only had to be better then the other races in order to be crowned the warrior class, not necessarily better then the Orcs or Nids because they didn't have to deal with them while evolving.

How about wild animals? or do you think "left alone" means they were the only living creature on the planet?
They should have been able to take down or at the very least fend off predators BEFORE the invention of basic tools, because at that point genetic evolution is slowed to a grind, and as such there is just no way an entire separate sub-race would be created. note that Tau sub-races are not like human "races" whoare hardly and different then each other outside shallow appearance changes, these guys are VERY different, almost like different members of an ant colony, they have different body structure, different mindsets, and different abilites.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Jefffar wrote:

The Tau are essentially supposed to be smaller humans with bad eyesight a dislike for close combat and some of the best gear in the galaxy. Leave the base stats alone and either adjust the price down or give them the better gear to make them more effective for the price.

As a whole? yes, they are.

The fire caste?

These are the fighter sub-race.

I can't imagine how a "fighter subrace" can survive the evolutionary stages if even less capable in a fight then a human-and humans (in the evolutionary stages, before tech is available) are one of the worst fighters this world has ever seen, at the very least they should be able to take some punishment-therefor the T4.

As for the I4, tau as a whole favor speed, mobility and staying away from a fight (IE: not getting freaking swept) and are trained for just that. why on earth would an army trained to avoid a melee combat can't actually get a proper chance away from one in case they get caught? the point is not to get more damage done in assualt-its to get away. why should I be force to invest in a gun drone (that does not help at all for the squad main purpose-long range shooting) for a chance to run away? no other army is.
If they dont get the I score, they should get an ability that helps retreats. is makes sense and you know it.

The BS4? while a tiny blurb claims they got "poor dept perception" (that does not actually effect direct gunfire accuracy at all as distance is irrelevant!) their targeting technology is often praised as far better then imperial one, and the standard FW helm is said to contain many vision enchanting modules. it might not be a SM-but at least better then an IG vet, and they got BS4 (nobody claimed THEY are as good as SM right?)

the LD, so you wont freaking run away from 3 bolter shots. you don't WANT to brake from shooting, no idea where you got that concept. you do want to run in melee, but that would happen anyway. and again-we have the whole "highly trained warrior subrace", they at the very least have a tiny bit of courage to actually stand and fight-or whats "warrior" in them?


The Tau empire, by fluff and by the game-play mechanics of almost every other unit in the codex, is NOT a freaking horde army, it should not spam tons of relativly expensive yet worthless fire warriors, but fewer yet efficient ones.
I mean, considering our elites and heavy-support (talking on the infantry here) are the most expensive ppm and perhaps the most destructive ppm as well, why are our troops bordering horde mentality? it fits not the fluff, it fits not the playstyle of other units and it fits not their cost.
The FW is a poor design of the old 4th edition mentality of "basic troops don't need anything special or army-spesific about them", the game evolved from that point by now, and so should the fire warriors. they should have the stat line to represent the army, or abilities to do so.
And as states myself, I don't want these buffs for free-I want them, but at a slight price increase, to represent the fact Tau soldiers, by fluff, are not untrained throwaways-and while few in numbers, are very good at gunning down the opposition.

Erm, if your going to try and make a 'That dont make no sense' argument I urge you to keep in mind that the tau core race is caste divided, not race divided. The Etherials are having the castes interbreed probabaly in order to setup a giant division of genetic appeal, but as it stands the genetic separation is very very slight. A fire warrior and an air caste pilot are just about the same stock, only one spent his life running drills, and the other spent his life flying ships. Granted the fire caste warrior is probably going to be beefier, but the genetic diversity you get from just about 10k years of breeding is just about what you see in dogs. Sure some can be tiny, and some can be pretty huge, but you dont get leather skinned 300lbs with chainsaw action teeth fighting machines out of it; You get stuff like floppy ears, curly tail, big stupid eyes, asthma, bushy fur.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mh_mini wrote:


And on the topic of running away, it pisses me off that drone squads can fail LD and fall back. Like... wat...

Completely agree; sure the drones should have some mechanisms built in for self preservation, but I'd have written it so that when drones fall back, they do so in the direction of the nearest Tau unit, and auto rally when within 12 inches of that unit.

davou wrote:

Erm, if your going to try and make a 'That dont make no sense' argument I urge you to keep in mind that the tau core race is caste divided, not race divided. The Etherials are having the castes interbreed probabaly in order to setup a giant division of genetic appeal, but as it stands the genetic separation is very very slight. A fire warrior and an air caste pilot are just about the same stock, only one spent his life running drills, and the other spent his life flying ships. Granted the fire caste warrior is probably going to be beefier, but the genetic diversity you get from just about 10k years of breeding is just about what you see in dogs. Sure some can be tiny, and some can be pretty huge, but you dont get leather skinned 300lbs with chainsaw action teeth fighting machines out of it; You get stuff like floppy ears, curly tail, big stupid eyes, asthma, bushy fur.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Tau/TAU-ACCESSORIES/TAU-AIR-CASTE-PILOTS.html
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Tau/TAU-ACCESSORIES/TAU-AIR-CASTE-GROUND-CREW.html

Don't know about you, but these air caste guys seems VERY different form the fire caste warriors to me. enough to justify the differentiation of sub-races like the imperium got abhumans such as ratlings and ogryans.
The original codex fluff also mentions some air caste have thin membrane wings. some guys having wings seems like a massive change in genetics.

Just remembered another thing tough, tau primitive tau were HUNTERS. how do you expect a race that his finest warriors cant aim, fight, take a hit or move quickly to hunt anything? a bit irrational as I see it. they should at least be good at something to enable the action of the hunt to be productive in any form, aim and agility are the most likely-with the real primitives throwing rocks and sharp sticks, and quickly evolving to low-grade range weaponry such as slings and javelins, given the Tau nature of non-fighter.

I agree that the tau fire warriors should have BS 4 standard, if nothing else from their optics and training. I'm fine with the rest of the stat line as-is, but it just doesn't make sense to me that a race dedicated to shooting and admittedly terrible in CC has only "average" BS.

Look at a 6 point ork boy - WS 4 BS 2. I think it would be perfectly reasonable for a 10 point Fire Warrior to be WS 2 BS 4.

Then they wouldn't be Kroot.

I'm just saying.